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Opinion  

Kirk LaPointe: Housing crisis at heart of potential Poilievre-Eby alliance

Poilievre, Eby on housing

At first blush, B.C. Premier David Eby and federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre have little in common other than being carbon-based forms of life.

They couldn’t be more polarized ideologically or more obsessively certain about their contrasting visions of government’s role in the economy. One searches for answers via government involvement, one searches for answers to government involvement. Eby leverages public investment and regulatory reform, Poilievre would reduce government intervention and quicken market responses.

Before long, whether we like it or not, and unless there is the shock to end all shocks in Canadian politics, they’ll lead our senior levels of government – possibly for years to come.

But upon closer examination, you can detect at least one shared purpose upon which they might one day do business: Cities and their lethargic housing construction.

May I say: City mayors, beware. Hide the good cutlery.

As we know, Eby has been playing tough-love with cities and housing for some time now. He wants to densify loads of single-family residential housing zones, accelerate permitting, suffocate public hearings and stimulate a larger stable of towers near transit routes. His government identified a “naughty list” of shameful municipalities that need to raise their game quickly with building quotas or face provincial edicts through a rare use of constitutional authority.

Now, it is fair to say his government is late to arrive on this issue and with these prescriptions. The horse has not merely left the stable, but has bred and been earmarked for the glue factory. Still, it’s rarely too late for any government to foist last decade’s ideas if it conveys the appearance of taking something seriously with a rapid response.

Ever politically shrewd, Eby and Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon carpet-bombed the province with housing legislation late enough in the election cycle so as not to be blamed if plans aren’t fulfilled by the Oct. 19 vote day.

“We’re on it,” they’ll say, and hardly anyone will call their baby ugly.

On the other hand, the prime minister, or what’s left of him and his party by the next election in the fall of 2025, won’t be so lucky. The public patience will be wearing thin when we are one more year out and even further away from satisfying the demand for housing stock. When Justin Trudeau says we’re on it, the voters may just say, “we’re on to you.”

On the other side of the 2025 federal election, polls tell us, is bound to be Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre, and on the basis of what he’s saying so far, he’d bring a pretty sharp stick to the cities and their housing activity.

At a speech earlier this month to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, Poilievre characterized all forms of government as toll-takers on an asset class. He is particularly perturbed with municipalities for not only their fees but their languid processes of issuing permits and approvals.

His beliefs can get the better of the facts when he claims that 60 per cent of a new unit’s cost in Vancouver is attributable to governments. Experts don’t agree it’s quite that high but don’t think the claim is whackadoodle, either, when the Conservative leader includes not only the assortment of charges but the expense that saddles developers when permitting processes protract.

Poilievre wants levies conquered, processes at warp speed, and an increase of 15 per cent in housing completions year-over-year in major cities. The would-be PM says his government would take federal money away from cities if they don’t meet their finished-housing targets and continue to lose funds until they catch up on the shortfall. Transit and infrastructure funds would be withheld until a sufficient number of high-density housing around stations is not only scheduled but built and occupied. (They would earn bonuses for exceeding targets.)

That they will disagree as diametrically dissimilar leaders in style and strategies is unquestioned. That they approach challenges differently doesn’t mean they can’t be buddies on this one matter. That they will one day stand on the same stage and shake hands on a done deal pushing this city or that one concerning the critical, chronic housing shortage is something I wouldn’t bet against.

They would have a common perceived villain who, for once, isn’t each other, and their momentary truce would be just too tempting to pass up.

Kirk LaPointe is a journalist and former publisher and editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president editorial of Glacier Media Group.



Opinion: Vernon-Monashee MLA Harwinder Sandhu shares how working remotely could have saved her daughter's life

'MLA to a mom to a nurse'

The B.C. legislature was ­thrashing out final consideration this week of allowing MLAs to participate remotely.

Taking part via video has been permitted since the ­pandemic started four years ago, on a temporary basis. There was one last debate Wednesday before they voted to make it a permanent option.

The talk was about ­parliamentary principles and expectations.

Pretty mundane stuff.

Vernon-Monashee NDP MLA Harwinder Sandhu joined the discussion (in person) toward the end. She made some points about how it can allow flexibility and saves travel time and costs.

Then she got personal.

During last fall’s sitting, she had house duty the morning of Nov. 27, meaning her attendance was mandatory. But her teenage daughter, Jasreen, had become seriously ill.

Sandhu could have taken leave, but didn’t want to miss the sitting. So she called in on her phone to fulfil her house duty — from her daughter’s bedside at Vernon Jubilee Hospital.

With her background blurred on the phone video link, she was listening to proceedings when a nurse started an infusion for her daughter.

“Within seconds, my daughter was developing anaphylactic reaction, unable to speak, unable to breath.

“When I looked back, I saw she’d turned red, her heart, like she’s trying to tell me it’s going to explode.

“Immediately, I knew that she was red. So quickly, I was able to turn off the camera and run. There was a saline syringe. I happened to be able to stop the pump … and that saved her life.”

Nurses rushed in and Sandhu, who is a career nurse on leave from the hospital, apologized.

“I didn’t want to overstep.”

A nurse waved it off, expressing amazement at how she handled it.

“She said, ‘It was phenomenal to see, not only that you saved her life; in those couple of minutes, you switched from being an MLA to a mom to a nurse.’”

Sandhu said it was then she realized: “My goodness, if I wasn’t there, my daughter, who wasn’t able to press the call bell and wasn’t able to breathe, the outcome would have been different.”

“I did not realize until then that this [remote option] could even save lives. So that’s why I thought I’d share my thoughts.”

In an interview Friday, she said she shared the story with her colleagues in the NDP caucus only shortly before she rose in the house.

She got a standing ovation and a round of hugs. There was a warm round of applause in the house, as well.

Sandhu’s husband, Baljit, is also a health-care worker and happened to be working elsewhere in the hospital at the time.

“He didn’t know it was happening. He was pretty amazed and of course grateful.”

Sandhu said her daughter recalls thinking during the episode that she was “drifting away” from her mother. It was very traumatic.

Jasreen spent about a week in hospital with her mother sleeping in the room and is now home under treatment and recovering.

A committee had already agreed to make the change, and Sandhu’s experience just confirmed the decision. So they took the leap and made it a permanent option. It will save hours of travel time, lots of tax dollars in costs and lower emissions.

One of the more compelling advantages is that it eases one of the many challenges that deter people from running for office.

Even being allowed to substitute a call for in-person attendance just a few times during the several months the house sits could make the job more appealing.

The big downside is that it can be glitchy and awkward, as it was during the first few sittings during lockdown.

Cabinet ministers’ attendance is crucial, and opposition MLAs stressed there is no substitute for live debate with them.

In-person is the default expectation, and remote is to be used only in special circumstances.

After four years of embarrassment and hilarity about Zoom mishaps around the world, Sandhu’s simultaneous performance in a crisis as MLA, mother and nurse proves the value of the remote option.

It also shows a lot about her dedication in all three roles.

Les Leyne is a columnist with the Victoria Times Colonist



Rob Shaw: B.C. ready to get tough on tech titans with sweeping legislation

Tough on tech titans

British Columbia vaulted to a national leadership position Thursday with new legislation to allow it to sue a wide variety of companies — including social media tech giants — for harming people’s health.

Premier David Eby had foreshadowed the move in January, saying he wanted to ensure that the death of 12-year-old Carson Cleland, who took his own life after falling victim to online sextortion, was not in vain.

But the actual bill introduced in the legislature Thursday was much broader than expected.

Eby and Attorney General Niki Sharma cited several examples of how it could work: Government suing a beverage company for marketing an energy drink full of caffeine to kids, a vape company that targets children with addictive flavours, an image-sharing service (like Snapchat) that fails to put in safety measures to prevent child exploitation, a social media app (like Facebook or Instagram) where the algorithm pushes toxic content around body image and dieting that contributes to eating disorders, or a website that allows intimate images to be shared without consent.

“The message to these big, faceless companies is you will be held accountable in British Columbia for the harm that you caused to people,” said Eby.

The Public Health Accountability and Cost Recovery Act even allows the province to hold liable individual company board members and executives.

“We will pursue the directors and the officers of these companies for costs,” said Eby.

The result is legislation that leads the country, said Emily Laidlaw, the Canada Research Chair in cybersecurity law at the University of Calgary, who specializes in online harms and platform regulation.

“It's something that we're missing in Canada right now, I mean social media essentially self-regulates,” she said. “And so this enables the government to address what is kind of a profound societal issue, and put in place consumer protection expectations for social media.”

The first target is likely Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which Eby has used as a rhetorical punching bag for almost a year after it banned Canadian news sites amid a dispute with the federal government.

“I think their conduct is incredibly reprehensible,” Eby said Thursday, tearing a strip off the company publicly for at least the third time.

“This is a company that, in the middle of forest fire season when I was asking, ‘Please allow local news coverage of wildfires through,’ instead chose to hold local communities hostage so that they could advance their financial negotiations with the federal government.”

The case against Meta is also well-advanced due to the fact a former Facebook product manager, Frances Haugen, blew the whistle on the company in the United States, revealing it knew Instagram was worsening body image issues amongst youth, for example, and yet failed to mitigate the harms to its users, choosing profit over safety.

But beyond Facebook? B.C. could be charting new waters.

“How wide are they looking at for social media services?” asked Laidlaw. “Are they going to include Amazon on this? Because Amazon, products that have been sold on it, have been used to take lives. And so, I have a wait and see approach to see how they tackle these particular issues.”

The legal battles will play out over years in courtrooms. Eby cited B.C.’s successful lawsuits against tobacco companies and opioid manufacturers, under other legislation.

Yet success is hard to measure under these kinds of laws.

More than a decade later, B.C. is still negotiating settlements with the tobacco industry and hasn’t seen any cash whatsoever. Pharma company Purdue agreed in 2022 to settle for $150 million with B.C. over addictive pain medication — a small drop in the bucket compared to the many lives ruined and billions in health-care costs during the eight-year public health emergency on overdose deaths still fuelled by opioid addiction.

That may be, at the end of the day, all B.C.’s new legislation will do — allow the province to recover a tiny fraction of the cost of the harms to British Columbians, even as the overall problem still continues.

Eby, though, said the tobacco and opioid examples are illustrative because the courtroom wrangling and bad publicity also helped drive the companies out of business.

“I’m sure [it] has put a chill through that industry in terms of their role in promoting harmful products,” he said.

“So, to date, we haven't actually seen a full trial on these things. We have seen bankruptcies and settlements. And that is certainly a possible outcome.”

There is a larger value, too, other than just the dense legal wrangling, said Tracy Vaillancourt, the Canada Research Chair in school-based mental health and violence prevention at the University of Ottawa.

“I think it sends the right message when we put legislation behind something,” she said. “We’re signalling to society what we value. And here we’re signalling that your province, British Columbia, is valuing children and their well-being.”

Social media apps that attempt to gauge what content you like, and pump more of it at you as quickly as possible, likely aren’t disappearing any time soon, even if a collective effort of national and subnational governments took down a major player like TikTok.

After all, people like getting more of the content they want — say, cat videos for example, because objectively cats are awesome.

It’s when the content starts to turn, perhaps by reinforcing unrealistic body types or harmful diet trends, that the algorithm becomes dangerous.

“Young people don’t understand how sophisticated these algorithms are,” said Vaillancourt.

“So it’s an inherently unfair fight, in a sense, because they’re not aware of the fact that they’re being manipulated and the manipulation is causing them harm.”

Opposition BC United leader Kevin Falcon offered tentative support for the legislation, but said he’ll want to see further details. It could ultimately pass the legislature with unanimous support.

What kind of difference the new legislation actually makes, how much money it recovers and whether it forces companies to put more effort into the safety of their services, remains to be seen.

“Companies … are profiting as they offer services that we would never tolerate them to offer in the real world,” said Eby.

“We would never allow a company to set up a space for kids where grown adults could be invited in to contact them, encourage them to share photographs and then threaten to distribute those photographs to their family and friends.

“That place would be shut down in 10 minutes, the proprietors would be in jail. And yet for some reason, these companies, when they do the exact same thing through cell phones, the billionaires who run them resist accountability, resist any suggestion that they have responsibility for the harms that they are causing.”

To start to turn that tide, B.C. is putting the first of several legal lines in the sand.

Rob Shaw has spent more than 15 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.



Indigenous wisdom offers deep insights into addressing global challenges

Learning from First Nations

The Secwepemc story, "Coyote brings food from the Upper world," narrates how coyote brought plants for food and medicine to earth.

Coyote emphasized caring for the land, sharing resources and preserving the environment.

It's an interesting origin tale filled with many lessons. It emphasizes the significance of using food as medicine and maintaining a harmonious relationship with the environment. The story portrays how different animals contribute knowledge to help Coyote's family stay healthy, showcasing the importance of sharing wisdom and resources within communities.

It’s not a coincidence that a two-day conference held this week at TRU shared the same name as this powerful story. The Coyote Brings Food conference shared the research of 16 Indigenous researchers from around the globe, offering remarkable perspectives on food security and environmental protection. Several of the authors attended the conference in person. The event was held during IDays, a week-long celebration of cultures present on TRU’s campus.

The conference celebrated a unique partnership between TRU’s Knowledge Makers and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The partnership aimed to create an environment where ideas about sustainability and utilizing natural resources could be shared and nurtured, much like Coyote's story emphasizes caring for the land and sharing resources.

Just as the Secwepemc story teaches the value of collaboration and mutual respect between species for the overall health of the community, the FAO and Knowledge Makers partnership and conference sought to create an opportunity for diverse voices to converge, share wisdom, and contribute to a collective understanding of how to address pressing global issues.

The FAO collaborates with academic and research institutions to address hunger, malnutrition, and sustainable development goals. The FAO partners with universities to mobilize knowledge, strengthen capacities, provide evidence-based solutions, and share experiences.

TRU’s Knowledge Makers is a collaborative teaching initiative that helps undergraduate students learn how to engage in research and publish as Indigenous researchers. It was envisioned by three Indigenous professors at TRU. One of them, Dr. Rod McCormick, continues to oversee the program. He is a member of the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk) Nation and now lives on Tk’Emlups te Secwepemc lands with his partner and children, who are all Tk’Emlups band members.

The partnership between TRU’s Knowledge Makers and the FAO brings together academic research and global food security initiatives. It recognizes the role of Indigenous knowledge and practices in agriculture and ecosystem management. Most importantly, it envisions the value of integrating traditional approaches into broader food security strategies.

By combining the unique perspectives of Indigenous scholars with the extensive resources and global reach of the FAO, this collaboration envisions a more inclusive approach to food security and sustainability issues.

The publication of a special edition of the Knowledge Makers Journal will be a lasting legacy of this partnership. This particular edition of the Knowledge Makers Journal includes the works of all 16 authors, each of them focussed on different aspects of climate and food security related to their geographical areas:

• Christine Olsen, based in Sweden, brings a Sámi perspective through her paper "It's Time to Put the Power of Plants Back into People’s Hands." Ilana Zakh, representing the Even people from Siberia, delves into "Reindeer Herding: Keeping the Even Culture Alive and Contributing to Food Security."

• Miriam Tambieva provides a unique view on food processing and storytelling from the Karachay-Balkar Indigenous people of the North Caucasus, while Paige Mo’okini Oliveira, a Kanaka ??iwi from Hawaii, discusses sustainable solutions in her work "Knowledge is Fluid."

• Joeann Walters from Aotearoa and Laxmi Chaudhary from Nepal offer insights from their respective Indigenous communities on environmental stewardship and public health.

• Pretty Sharma, a conservationist from Nagaland, and Namayani Edward from the Maasai community in Tanzania contribute their perspectives on sustainable landscape management.

• Ghasala Imane Mohamed from Mali and Purba Drong from Bangladesh discuss resilience in the face of climate change and traditional food habits, respectively, while Rosa Marina Florez Cruz and Dayanna Palmar Uriana offer perspectives from Latin America.

• From North America, Dustina Gill from the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate explore perspectives from the Buffalo Nation and the Bundle Carriers Project, and Melanie Kirby, a Tortugas Pueblo member, discussing pollinator conservation.

• Shannon Udy, a Métis student from McGill University, offers a perspective on Indigenous food security. Ryann Monteiro from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah in Massachusetts shares her insights on resisting the consumption of Indigenous knowledge.

The journal can be found here: https://knowledgemakers.trubox.ca/conference/#thejournal.

Each author expands our understanding of Indigenous perspectives on food systems and climate action. Their work shows the power of Indigenous-led knowledge sharing and research, highlighting the critical role Indigenous wisdom can play in addressing global challenges.

This remarkable journal, enabled by the partnership between the Knowledge Makers program and the FAO, recognizes the significant role that Indigenous wisdom and practices can play in modern agriculture and ecosystem management. Most importantly, it envisions the integration of traditional approaches into broader food security strategies.

This integration is crucial. Indigenous knowledge systems offer deep insights into sustainable living. Often overlooked in mainstream discussion, these systems are vital for developing comprehensive strategies addressing global food security and environmental challenges.

The Coyote Brings Food conference at TRU was more than an academic gathering — it was a manifestation of the timeless wisdom embedded in Indigenous stories like that of the Secwepemc.

It highlighted the importance of inclusive dialogue and collaborative effort in addressing global issues, exemplified by the research partnership between TRU's Knowledge Makers and the FAO. It also points to a future where diverse knowledge systems are acknowledged and recognized as fundamental to our pursuit of a sustainable and equitable world.

Brett Fairbairn is the president and vice-chancellor at Thompson Rivers University. He can be reached by email at [email protected].



Confusing costs of public home supports in B.C.

Home care costs

Canadians are justifiably proud to live in a country that believes in equality and in the value of a free and accessible health care system.

Although this system is strained for capacity, we should still be proud of our goals and what we have achieved. Despite this, there are clearly some issues when it comes to the limits of what can be provided in public health care.

One of the first questions when trying to define these limits is the question of what actually constitutes health care?

Clearly, a surgery or a visit to a family doctor is health care. Just as clearly, a golf round or dinner out at a fine dining restaurant are not health care. The questions then come up, as we get closer and closer to the edges of what is health care, such as, if fine dining isn’t health care, what about just dining? What about basic food? A meal in a hospital isn’t fine dining, but it’s considered part of health care costs (and paid for by the government), but a meal for someone sick at home is not.

These subtle differences strike at the heart of why it is difficult to develop a system of public home supports that is fair, equitable and meets the needs of all Canadians.

There is a line between changing a bedpan and changing a tire that defines the limit of what Canadian governments are willing to provide.

In B.C., one of the compromises we’ve made is that home supports, such as long-term care but unlike hospitals, are publicly subsidized but still involve some private payment. Many patients and families are surprised to learn that even supports from a public system still cost them a considerable amount.

The formula used in B.C. to determine the cost of public home support is complex, but for completeness, here it is. Your daily rate is calculated by multiplying your remaining annual income (as defined in the Continuing Care Fees Regulation) by 0.00138889. The definition of “remaining annual income” is even more complex, but is given in the continuing care regulations, and includes the income of both the patient and their spouse, minus reasonable expenses depending on the size of their household.

These fees are determined after an assessment by a case manager, and can be waived if the patient is registered for palliative care or in receipt of the Guaranteed Income Supplement.

In some cases, though, they can be a major expense for patients with a limited income. The B.C. Office of the Seniors Advocate estimated in 2023 that for patients paying for daily home supports, the median cost was $15,081 annually. That could amount to a substantial portion of a person’s income, but is still much cheaper than long-term care, either private or publicly subsidized.

The challenge of determining whether something is health care leads to strict limits on what public home support workers are allowed to do. Because the supports are publicly delivered, even if privately paid, HSWs in the public system can only provide assistance that has been directed by a case manager, usually limited to support with a patient’s (not their spouses) activities of daily living.

This has led to an array of bewildering stories—frail, elderly couples required to split their laundry, food which can be served but not heated up and medication delivery arranged but then charged to patients who can’t afford it.

When we speak to care providers, we hear they’d like to do more for their patients but are faced with restrictive policies and high workloads that force them to move on to the next patient.

B.C. needs care solutions that remove barriers to people remaining at home. For example, removing the administrative middleman that stands between the patient (and their family) and the care provider might be a good way to streamline support.

That would allow them to decide directly what help they value, and pay for it accordingly, rather than risk paying a high price for services that may or may not be what’s important to them.

Creating these direct connections would be the best way for people to stay happy and thrive in their own home, regardless of whether their needs are considered health care or not.

Dr. Kevin Wade is a palliative care physician and the chief medical officer with Gravitii Technologies Inc., a B.C. company that has developed a platform to connect the public with compassionate, professional home care providers.



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