Next week, Vancouver City Council is going to consider a massive social housing development in East Vancouver. Also, on the agenda, expanding free public Wi-Fi in the Downtown Eastside and an update on City plans to dissolve the Park Board. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
Legislation brought in last year will require the government to examine the links between racialization, socio-economic status and environmental risk. That link is very clear in communities like the Aamjiwnaang First Nation just outside of Sarnia, Ontario, in an area known as Chemical Valley. Last year, the Ontario government released the findings of the Sarnia Area Environmental Health Project. Elaine MacDonald joins me to talk about project and the experiences of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation.
This week Pharmacare legislation was introduced on Parliament Hill. The historic program was announced after months of negotiations with the NDP, who pressed the government to launch Pharmacare as a condition of their supply-and-confidence agreement. On Wednesday, Lorraine Chisholm spoke with Nikolas Barry Shaw, a key campaigner on this issue, in advance of the legislation being tabled the following day. Nikolas Barry-Shaw is the Trade and Privatization Campaigner for the Council of Canadians an...
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Canada introduced a program to allow Ukrainians to temporarily come to Canada. Two years later, the government has introduced a new temporary residency program for people in Gaza. However, Palestinians in Canada are discovering there are major barriers to getting their family members out of the war zone. We speak with Matthew Behrens of the Rural Refugee Rights Network.
If you live in Metro Vancouver, and get around on transit, you know that the bus network has been seeing unprecedented levels of overcrowding. Even though buses move the majority of riders, there’s no committed funding to expand the system. Dennis Agar thinks that needs to change and he has plenty of ideas about how to do that. Agar is the executive director of Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders. We speak with him in this episode.
On Feb 22, the BC government brought in their 2024 budget, the last one before the October provincial election. While Kevin Falcon characterized the projected deficit as “reckless” and John Rustad says it was set to “bankrupt the people of the future”, Alex Hemingway says this budget rightfully prioritizes public investment over austerity, but it could go a lot further. Alex Hemingway is a Senior Economist and Public Finance Policy Analyst at the CCPA’s BC Office.
We speak with Marusya Bociurkiw, director and writer behind a new documentary tracing the explosion of grassroots feminist media projects from Halifax to Vancouver. She explores how women took up cutting-edge media technology to document everything from violence towards women to how to insert a diaphragm. Analogue Revolution kicks of the GEM festival in Vancouver on March 5.
Next week, Vancouver City Council will debate paying a certified living wage to everyone who works for the City, both staff and employees of a contracted service. Redeye collective member Ian Mass also discusses the city’s climate emergency action plan and a revitalized vision for West End services in his regular City Beat report.
This month, the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge by Quebec to the Canadian government’s Indigenous child welfare law, reversing a Quebec Court of Appeal decision to declare the 2019 federal law partly unconstitutional. The decision was widely celebrated by First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders. Yet, according to lawyer Bruce McIvor, the decision has a troubling assumption at its core. Bruce McIvor is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation and a founding partner at First People’s Law.
Since the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began, nearly 400 schools have been damaged or destroyed. Last month, Israel destroyed Gaza’s last standing university. According to Chandni Desai, Israel has a long record of targeted attacks on Palestinian academics and institutions that produce knowledge and culture. Chandni Desai is Assistant Professor in the Critical Studies of Equity and Solidarity at the University of Toronto.
A new report measures how much a family needed to earn to afford the necessities of life in Metro Vancouver in 2023. It found that the gap between the minimum wage and a living wage continues to widen, as housing and food costs spiral upwards. We speak with senior economist Iglika Ivanova, one of the co-authors of the Working for a Living Wage report.
On February 1, Premier Danielle Smith announced that she plans to implement a slate of policies that target transgender and gender-diverse children and youth in Alberta. The proposed measures go far beyond what has already been brought in in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. We speak with Corinne Mason, professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
It seems that the more that comes out about the effects of social media on children and youth, the more concerned we should be. Now a law firm that represents victims of social media has filed cases against platforms including Meta, Snap, TikTok, and Discord, on the basis that they are harmful by design. Lorraine Chisholm speaks with Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center.
In January, the Federal Court agreed with Wilderness Committee and others that the federal government had failed in its duty to protect bird habitat under the Species at Risk Act. The court said Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault needs to reconsider protection measures under the legislation. We speak with Charlotte Dawe of Wilderness Committee.
Vancouver City Council meets next week to talk about those 100 mental health nurses promised in the last election campaign. It’s also going to look at a people-focused Gastown and revisit the living wage debate. Ian Mass joins us with these stories and more in his regular City Beat report.
In the early 2010s, the Harper government’s muzzling of scientists was an issue of urgent concern. Researchers at Dalhousie University have surveyed the current situation and found that, despite some improvement, environmental scientists are still reporting significant interference in their work. We speak with researchers Manjulika Robertson and Samantha Chu.
A couple of weeks ago, the federal government announced a new cap on the numbers of international students coming to Canada. They’re aiming for a 35% reduction over last year. The government and current media coverage of the cap appears to blame international students for Canada’s housing and health care woes. We speak with Leah Hamilton of Mount Royal University.
On Friday, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel has to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide. In response, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly only noted that the ICJ “ delivered its response” and didn’t express support for the ruling or calling on Israel to comply with its legally binding provisions to prevent genocide against Palestinians. Canada’s complicated relationship with the crime of genocide is the subject of a recent article by law prof Heidi...
The 2022 Vancouver municipal election brought in new mayor Ken Sim and a majority of ABC councillors to push through Sim’s significant list of campaign promises. OneCity councillor Christine Boyle joins us to talk about what to expect from the ABC council in 2024.
BC’s hospitality industry got over a billion dollars in government subsidies during the pandemic. At the same time, the mostly female and racialized workforce either lost their employment or had their hours cut. A new report says fallout from the pandemic is still impacting workers’ health and livelihoods. We speak with the report’s author, Alice Mūrage.
More and more Canadians are unable to access public primary healthcare, according to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal at the beginning of December. In fact, about 20% of Canadians have no family doctor at all, and many more have irregular access to clinicians. The CMAJ study compares the Canadian primary care system with New Zealand and eight countries in Europe including France, Germany, Italy and the UK. Dr Tara Kiran is the senior author of the study and a family ...
Vancouver mayor Ken Sim’s specially appointed budget task force missed its deadline for the 2024 city budget but - better late than never - the report comes before council this coming week. The task force is calling for a radical rethink of what the city is prepared to fund as part of its core services. In City Beat, Ian Mass tells us all about the task force report, plus another major project in the offing – the redevelopment of the Jericho Lands.
British Columbia is preparing a strategy to supply critical used in electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines. The Mining Association of BC is promoting the expansion of over a dozen mines to produce the minerals, and is pushing the province for regulatory and other changes to facilitate mine expansion. Nikki Skuce is co-chair of the BC Mining Law Reform Network and author of report called Critical Minerals: A Critical Look. We speak with Nikki Skuce in this episode.
In 2020, there were widespread calls to defund the police following the police murder of George Floyd. In Canada, a poll from that year found over 50% of Canadians wanted to see police budgets reduced. Despite this, no major Canadian city police department has had its funding reduced and in fact, budgets have gone up. We speak with Ted Rutland is associate professor in geography, planning and environment at Concordia University in Montreal.
There are more than 40,000 ride-hail and food-delivery workers in BC. The province brought in new proposed labour standards in November but Véronique Sioufi says they don’t go far enough, leading to entrenched racism in the sector. Véronique Sioufi is the CCPA-BC’s researcher for racial and socio-economic equity.
Municipalities and the labour movement are among those calling for British Columbia to include caste-based discrimination in its human rights legislation. Burnaby city councillor Sav Dhaliwal took up this challenge last year. He joins us to talk about caste system discrimination and what Burnaby has done about this issue.
On December 29, the BC Supreme Court granted a temporary injunction to the Harm Reduction Nurses Association, putting BC’s Bill 34 on hold for 3 months. The Bill imposes sweeping restrictions on the province’s decriminalization pilot launched a year ago. We speak with Caitlin Shane of Pivot Legal, one of the lawyers representing the Harm Reduction Nurses Association.
On December 12, COP 28 closed with an agreement that the UN heralded as the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. At the meeting in Dubai, world leaders agreed to quote “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems”. I spoke with Jens Wieting shortly after the climate conference wrapped to get his assessment of what this means for BC and for Canada.
In City Beat this week, Ian Mass tells us about the stunning move to abolish Vancouver’s Parks Board, Vancouver’s 2024 budget which includes a climate emergency budget for the first time, plans for new artist studios and much more.
Education and public schools are often a hot button issue. Parents, teachers and governments sometimes have criticisms about our schools. But most people agree that public education should be supported and preserved as an important part of a democratic society. BC's Institute for Public Education is asking British Columbians to share their hopes and dreams for public education. We speak with teacher and IPE board member Barbara Silva.
