Redeye

At the beginning of March, the annual wild salmon juvenile out-migration begins. At this moment in Clayoquot Sound, as the young fish head out to sea, they are under threat from a fish farm operated in their waters by the global corporation, Cermaq. There has been a long fight to close down offshore fish farms in BC, and recently there has been some success in closing them down. But the fight is n...

Niall McNeil is an accomplished artist, a lifelong performer and a person with Down syndrome. Marie Clements is a renowned Canadian writer, director and producer. Niall and Marie collaborated on the new NFB documentary Lay Down Your Heart. The film is about Niall McNeil and his family and friends. Lay Down Your Heart airs at the inaugural Down Syndrome Film Festival on March 18 in Burnaby, BC. We...

The polluters must pay. That’s the message of a new campaign to hold the fossil fuel industry to account for the mounting costs of the climate crisis. Sue Big Oil was started by West Coast Environmental Law last year, and has since been taken up by a broad coalition of advocacy groups and British Columbians. We speak with David Ravensbergen of the Council of Canadians.

As B.C. continues to ramp up fracking for natural gas, we are seeing an increasing number of studies describing human health harms to those living close to this industry. Dr. Margaret McGregor is a family physician, health policy researcher and clinical associate professor with the Department of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia. She joins us today to talk about fracking and he...

BC’s first budget under Premier David Eby was released on Tuesday. It includes funding increases in housing, health care, income supports and cost of living tax credits, and allocates a record level of investment towards capital infrastructure. To discuss both the new spending and what’s missing from the budget, I’m joined by Alex Hemingway, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alter...

BC’s first budget under Premier David Eby included substantial funding increases in a number of areas that will benefit British Columbians. But following a series of announcements on biodiversity, old growth, and the environment in Eby’s first months, all eyes were on the budget to match talk with money. The result was mixed, but fell short in many areas for changing course on fossil fuels and the...

Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report to talk about Vancouver city council debating a staff report proposing a 9.7% tax increase, an announcement that Vancouver is selling non-market housing sites back to a developer and how Burnaby wants to convert part of a park for industrial use.

Most people have the sense that health care in Canada is in crisis. Health care funding and responsibility is kicked around like a political football. Most recently, the federal-provincial health care deal put 48 billion dollars worth of new money on the table over the next 10 years. Yet the deal requires provinces to spend just 58 cents out of every new dollar on actual new health care programs w...

An art exhibition in Grand Forks last summer showed gallery visitors images of Mexican temporary farm workers that don’t fit the stereotype. The men were in blue jeans, with bare torsos and holding and wearing objects that can best be described as regalia. The objects are the work of Rocio Graham, a Mexican-Canadian multidisciplinary artist based in Sinixt and Syilx territory, also known as Christ...

Vancouver City planners see their missing middle housing proposals as an important opportunity to fulfil ABC Vancouver’s housing promises. Abundant Housing Vancouver calls the proposals “an extraordinary disappointment … the smallest possible increment of change…”. We speak with Peter Waldkirch of Abundant Housing Vancouver, a non-partisan group of housing advocates.

Nicole Chan was a police officer employed by the Vancouver Police Department. She was 30 years old when she died by suicide in 2019. At the time of her death she had been on leave, awaiting the conclusion of an investigation into her complaint about fellow officers. Meenakshi Mannoe of Pivot Legal Society says the coroner’s inquest into Chan’s death puts a spotlight on the VPD, emergency psychiatr...

Ben Parfitt says that the pending closure of a pulp mill in Prince George and the loss of 300 high-paying jobs in the community is just the beginning of what promises to be a new and painful chapter in the province’s beleaguered forest industry. Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Starting January 31, the province of BC decriminalized the personal possession of certain types and amounts of drugs. But the policy does not cover some commonly used controlled substances and the amounts permitted are too small to have an impact, according to advocates and drug users. Pivot Legal and VANDU have collaborated on a Know Your Rights card to help people figure out if they are protecte...

Colonialism and systemic racism are embedded in Vancouver’s bylaws. A motion before Vancouver Council wants to take a deep dive into these bylaws using an equity lens. Council will also consider a climate justice charter written by people with lived experiences of systemic inequities. Ian Mass joins us with this week’s episode of City Beat.

Despite the climate crisis, 80% of new vehicles sold in Canada in the last two years were SUVs and pickup trucks, up from 55% a decade ago. A research team at SFU says the Canadian obsession with SUVs is seriously disrupting our climate goals. We speak with Zoe Long from the Sustainable Transportation Action Research Team.

In a small Indian village, Ranjit wakes up to find that his 13-year-old daughter has not returned home from a family wedding. A few hours later, she’s found stumbling home. She had been dragged into the woods and raped by three men, all known to the family. Ranjit and his wife go to the police, and the men are arrested. The new documentary, To Kill a Tiger, follows Ranjit’s uphill battle to find j...

The 45-year old Vancouver Folk Music Festival is a much-loved event for music fans and an important showcase for musicians. So it came as a shock when the festival’s board announced two weeks ago that the 2023 festival had been cancelled and they wanted members to vote to dissolve the society. Following a groundswell of support, the board postponed the AGM and held an open meeting to discuss the f...

We are probably all familiar with the letter-writing campaigns of Amnesty International. Now Amnesty Canada has a new podcast: Rights Back at You. The podcast aims to unravel the Canada you think you know and challenge the systems that hold back human rights. The podcast launched February 1 with an episode on facial recognition and policing protest. We talk with the host of Rights Back at You, Dan...

There has been a rapid increase in Canadian university tuition fees, creating a barrier for low-income students and widening the gap between privileged students and those who struggle to pay for their studies. Grace Barakat is a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto. She talks with us about how changes in the cost of tuition are having an impact on Canadian students and their futures.

Canada’s drug prices are the fourth highest in the developed world. New guidelines aimed at lowering prescription drug prices have been in process for more than 2 years, and have met with intense pressure by the industry lobby group, Innovative Medicines Canada. Dr. Joel Lexchin examines the lies and half-truths put out by IMC. Lexchin is Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management at York...

Ian Mass joins us with City Beat to talk about Indigenous-led supportive housing, a business-friendly mayor, fires in Downtown Eastside hotels, the demise of Vancouver’s Renter Office and increasing the supply of renewable energy.

A new report by Women Transforming Cities looks at ways to speed up implementation of TRC calls to action within municipalities. As almost 80% of Indigenous people in BC live, work, and study in urban and off-reserve areas, municipalities play a big role in fostering Indigenous relations. Yet, researchers found that almost half of municipalities identified a lack of knowledge and understanding abo...

British Columbia is awash in housing announcements and plans. A rental protection fund designed to thwart real estate investment trusts, one stop shopping for provincial housing permits, a refreshed 10-year housing supply plan, a promised BC Builds plan and a brand new housing ministry. Economist Alex Hemingway joins us to help us figure out if all these plans will change the game on housing in BC...

When Pedro Castillo was elected president of Peru in April 2021, he embodied the hopes of millions of rural, Black and Indigenous peoples. Following more than 18 months of opposition from Congress and the Peruvian elite, Castillo was impeached and jailed after he attempted to rule by emergency poweres. Protests against the arrest have been met with lethal force by the police and the army. As many...

Vancouver parks board threatens to turbocharge commercialization of parks and city council plans for urgent measures to uplift Chinatown and increased support for renters. Ian Mass has these stories and more in this week’s City Beat.