In a 2002 collection of essays published on the occasion of Vancouver artist Stan Douglas' Every Building on 100 West Hastings, two well-known urban scholars wrote on the questions of gentrification and urban "regeneration." The authors surveyed global trends before guessing for Vancouver itself, with the following prediction: "given... the emerging recession, gentrification will likely intensify across Vancouver and radically transform the Downtown Eastside."

There is both a parliamentary crisis and a global economic crisis, therefore a storm on both fronts of Canadian politics. "It is difficult to brain-storm if a storm blows outside the brain," and so there has been much confusion in every part of the nation. In fact, there has been confusion in the form of confusing the two crises themselves.

For example, if one were to accept the thinking of the leadership of the NDP, one might conclude that the solution to the constitutional crisis is therefore a solution to the financial one. It is this mix-up on the part of the NDP has led to the amateur and unfortunately anti-political Keynesian imperative to "spend, spend, spend" by any means necessary more-or-less irrespective of outcome.

Harper's Conservatives are in the midst of an attempt to change Canadian immigration policy. Significant amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act are being added to a budget motion, Bill C-50.

The changes are debatable in the way that all legislation is debatable, since, of course, the bill is open to parliamentary deliberation. The changes are also debatable in a second meaning, more as a matter of judgment: the bill is questionable, problematic, perfectly reactionary, and so on.