BC Politics

Premier Horgan is looking at the feasability of a interprovincial travel ban because of Covid-19.

The B.C. government is getting legal advice to determine whether an inter-provincial travel ban would be doable — or even constitutional — as a way to protect the province while the number of COVID-19 cases soars in other parts of Canada.

Premier John Horgan on Thursday said he and other leaders will be speaking about the issue later in the day and on Friday during a virtual, two-day cabinet retreat. He said he's aiming to nail down by the end of the summit which options the government can take, if any.

"People have been talking about [a ban] for months and months, as you know, and I think it's time we put it to bed finally and say either, 'We can do it, and this is how we can do it,' or 'We can't,'" the premier said. "We have been trying our best to find a way to meet that objective ... in a way that's consistent with the charter and other fundamental rights here in Canada. So, legal advice is what we've sought." ...

B.C.'s case counts have fairly consistently been in a better place than those in provinces like Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. In Ontario, a strict new stay-at-home order came into effect at 12:01 a.m. local time as case counts spiked and patients crowded hospitals. The epidemiological curves in Quebec and Saskatchewan are also trending upward, while B.C.'s is now heading down after a peak in November. ...

An emergency room doctor from Whistler, B.C., joined the call for inter-provincial restrictions this week after seeing a "worrying" number of patients from Ontario and Quebec who had travelled west over the holidays. ...

There have been questions about the constitutionality of an inter-provincial travel ban since the idea first arose in the spring. Given the extreme situation in which governments find themselves — trying to manage a lethal global pandemic changing by the day — the idea of an inter-provincial travel ban isn't out of the question.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-premier-john-horgan-1...

The BC NDP MLA's are going to be behind picket lines if something doesn't give in their talks with their unionized staff.

Constituency staff who run the offices of B.C. New Democrat MLAs have voted to strike, after a year of failed negotiations with politicians on a new collective agreement. CHEK's Rob Shaw has more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgqykdigY_Y

BC Changes Law to Let Oil and Gas Companies Delay Well Cleanup

The B.C. government is quietly moving to let oil and gas producers delay cleaning up and restoring their dormant well sites, says Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau.

“The BC NDP voted to give yet another break to oil and gas companies, allowing them more flexibility on dormant well cleanups,” Furstenau said in a statement this week.

“This is the wrong decision to make in the midst of a global ecological crisis,” she said. “The work of cleanup should be the sole responsibility of oil and gas companies, and we should be requiring them to clean up on time.”

At issue was a clause buried in Bill 21, the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 2), 2021, a bill that amends at least a dozen different laws.

The change to the Oil and Gas Activities Act “will provide the Oil and Gas Commission with enabling powers to exempt oil and gas development permit holders from requirements of the Dormancy and Shutdown Regulation in circumstances that merit it.”

The regulations had required companies to clean up and restore wells that were no longer producing oil or gas within set time limits....

The disturbing rise of involuntary “care” as a solution to homelessness

On April 27, 2021 Julian Daly, CEO of Our Place Society, published an op-ed praising the Province of BC’s efforts toward opening complex care facilities for those “individuals who wander our streets in obvious and alarming distress” so “unwell” that they “fail to retain housing.” On May 23rd, Jeff Bray, the Executive Director of the Downtown Victoria Business Association supported Daly’s call stating that, “For some with severe trauma, mental illness, and/or addictions […] there is need for involuntary, 24-hour, secure care to properly support their journey to recovery.” Mayors across BC, housing providers, and business associations are united in shifting the blame for visible poverty, from the failures of the state and the market, to the backs of those failed and betrayed by our systems. 

Calls for complex care are gaining traction in BC with the rationale that there are some living on the streets that are just too “mentally ill” for regular housing who require an “involuntary” approach to care. Building on our statement against displacement and warehousing, VTAG condemns this crude woke-washing of incarceration, which dehumanizes, medicalizes, and criminalizes people living in poverty. Rather than pathologize and incarcerate more of our neighbours to protect the wealth and power of developers and land owners, all levels of government must commit to a solution which addresses the root of the issue, by building and sustaining adequate, affordable, accessible, and autonomous housing for all. ​

Rights are lost not gained in complex care 

According to mayors from across BC, complex care facilities are “small, specialized locations” for 30-50 people living with severe mental health and addictions issues not currently served by supportive housing. While acknowledging “involuntary care” as a key feature, proponents of these facilities are careful to point out that they are not the institutions of old. Although there is recognition of the inhumane and abusive conditions that inspired the deinstitutionalization movement, there is no elaboration as to how they will be different aside from being rebranded with friendlier language. The BC Mental Health Act, which overrides the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to permit involuntary detainment, has been identified as problematic for having no oversight and for being discriminatory toward people with disabilities. There is currently no requirement to track or publish information on involuntary admissions, no mechanism for automatic review, and no regulated accountability measures. Yet, Daly and others who call for complex care manipulate the rhetoric of rights to argue for involuntary care. According to Daly, “[…] we believe it is the right thing to compel care. We believe that in doing so their rights are recognized – the right to be safe, the right to be housed, and the right to good health.”

quote:

Complex care shifts the blame from the system to individuals failed by it 

Bray argues the need to, “strike a balance between accommodating individual rights and protections and preventing our present reality: people dying in despair – and literally dying – in the streets.” Deaths from criminalization and a toxic drug supply; unavailable and inadequate housing; legislated poverty from abhorrently low disability and income assistance rates; racism in health and social services; these are mobilized to argue that involuntary care is for people’s own good. Rather than making the logical changes to systems causing illness and death (such as the decriminalization of drugs and a regulated safe supply), involuntary care situates the solution and problem in individuals who are blamed for their suffering, and early deaths. Why does this happen? Enacting real solutions would require the state to acknowledge its responsibility and its failures and use its power to regulate the wealthy and the privileged. It is far easier to impose violent, oppressive non-solutions upon people who have been made vulnerable by the state.....

..more from above

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Horgan arguably took another lesson from the 1990s: a fear of a capital strike — that is, a disinvestment campaign by segments of B.C.’s business class until the NDP either capitulates to their demands or is driven out of office. In his memoir, Harcourt recalls businesspeople accompanying his overseas trade missions dissuading their foreign counterparts from dealing with B.C. The lesson? Make sure your policies don’t ruffle too many corporate feathers. That’s one way to interpret Environment Minister Heyman’s commitment to a buy-in from all sectors for the CleanBC plan. And yet, as Klein puts it, any climate plan approved by the fossil fuel sector, with its vested interest in continued extraction, is not a plan worth having.

Fear of capital’s reaction also informed Horgan’s reluctant green light to Site C. He expressed concern that cancellation would jeopardize B.C.’s international credit rating — a claim disputed by independent project financing experts.

Gene McGuckin, a veteran trade unionist, anti-pipeline activist and founding member of the Vancouver Ecosocialists, offers his own explanation.

“Strategically, the NDP is a reformist party, steeped in nearly a century of belief that gradual reform is the only way to achieve significant political victories over capitalism’s damaging, profit-driven policies — whether social, political or ecological,” he emailed. “Elections are seen as the only mechanism for gaining the parliamentary power to implement such reforms.”

McGuckin says the NDP’s activist members are less conservative than the party leadership, which thus faces a dilemma. It depends on members as donors and campaign troops, and attracts idealists open to radical action — like the rapid decarbonization of Canada’s economy envisaged in the Leap Manifesto, narrowly endorsed by the federal NDP convention in 2016.

But if the leadership is to maintain corporate-friendly policies (especially when in government), left-leaning activists must be kept at arm’s length from real power within the party.

According to the party’s constitution, the BC NDP “shall be controlled by its membership.” In reality, maybe not so much. The premier’s power is reinforced by a buttoned-down culture of intra-party solidarity, arguably greater than that found in the NDP’s federal wing or overseas counterparts like the Australian or British Labour parties.

..even in her short stint walia was the most effective executive director that i have known.

Eby’s Actions in ‘Burn It All Down’ Conflict ‘Chilling,’ Says Walia

Three months after Harsha Walia’s resignation as head of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, concerns and unanswered questions remain about B.C. Attorney General David Eby’s role in her departure.

“I’d like an apology from Eby for getting involved,” said Veronica Martisius, staff counsel on policy for the BCCLA, speaking on her own behalf and not for the organization. “He should have just stayed out of it and left it up to us.”

Eby met twice with BCCLA president David Fai in the days before the association announced it had accepted Walia’s resignation.

Martisius was part of an ad hoc BCCLA committee working on how to respond in the wake of the June 30 “Burn it all down” tweet Walia made on a personal account.

Walia had been commenting on a news story about the burning of two Catholic churches following the discoveries of unmarked graves on church and government-run residential school grounds.

As an Indigenous person, Martisius said, she understood Walia’s tweet to be a call to dismantle the system rather than a literal call to violence. Martisius is a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River in Brantford, Ontario and has Kanyen’kehá:ka and European ancestry.

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While Eby has said he had nothing to do with Walia’s resignation, Martisius said pressure from the attorney general ultimately limited the organization’s options.

Eby’s involvement “drove the process,” she said. “He should have known what he was doing was inappropriate because of the position he was in... He’s in a massive position of power and influence.”

In the days before the BCCLA announced Walia’s resignation, according to Eby’s July calendar, the attorney general met twice with BCCLA president David Fai and once with Law Foundation executive director Josh Paterson.

People within the BCCLA were told that during one of the meetings with Fai, Eby let him know about the upcoming meeting with Paterson and they understood it to be a threat to the organization’s funding.

The Law Foundation is a major funder of the BCCLA, providing a $380,000 annual operating grant, about a quarter of the organization’s revenue. Both Eby and Paterson are former executive directors of the BCCLA.

B.C. museums face reckoning over history of stolen Indigenous artifacts, settler-focused exhibits

This week, the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria announced the closure of two exhibits to consult with First Nations and reconfigure its third-floor galleries to reflect a more diverse range of experiences after decades of activism by Indigenous peoples.

“Museums, which started out as colonial collecting institutions, typically fall into the trap of depicting Indigenous communities like those of the distant past and settlers as the main actors of society,” said Ry Moran, former director of the National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

“Royal B.C. Museum’s decision indicates a recognition that museums have to be much more truthful and honest in how they present history. It’s time that settler and First Nations peoples on the same land tell their stories together,” said Moran, a Red River Métis member who currently works as a librarian for reconciliation at the University of Victoria.

Troy Sebastian of Ktunaxa Nation left his job as curator of the Royal B.C. Museum’s Indigenous Collection in February.

“The museum’s third floor has two sections,” Sebastian described on Twitter. “On one side, the history of B.C. is told without any presence of Indigenous peoples, while the First Peoples Gallery depicts Indigenous peoples as backward, nameless, faceless and uncivilized.”

The curator also questioned the rightful ownership of Indigenous items, including a cradleboard the museum acquired in 1929 when First Nations children were forced to attend residential schools and their culture was outlawed.

Previous Indigenous Collection curator, Lucy Bell, cited a toxic workplace culture of racism as the reason for her 2019 resignation. A B.C. Public Service Agency investigation released in June found the Royal B.C. Museum’s human history exhibits were outdated and narrowly focused on the province’s European colonial past.....

This is a decent article about injunctions but it fails to make the ties to the union movement that they were used as a bludgeon against for generations.

Judge rejects eviction orders against homeless encampment in Vancouver

A B.C. judge has rejected two orders evicting people who have been living at a homeless encampment in downtown Vancouver.

In a ruling delivered Thursday at the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Justice F. Matthew Kirchner concluded that the Vancouver Park Board was not justified in issuing the eviction orders on July 8 and Sept. 7 of last year.

Both orders forced dozens of homeless people living in the CRAB Park homeless encampment, located east of the Vancouver Convention Centre on Burrard Inlet, to leave.

Residents of the encampment moved to the area in May last year, the most recent park near the Downtown Eastside to become home to those experiencing homelessness. 

quote:

No adequate notice, opportunity to be heard

In his written decision, Justice Kirchner supported Bamberger and Hebert's argument that both orders unreasonably assumed that there would be enough indoor shelter spaces to accommodate those living in the park when they are forced out.

Justice Kirchner wrote that Park Board general manager Donnie Rosa had the responsibility to verify whether closing the last major public park in the Downtown Eastside to overnight shelters would prevent them from accessing services and facilities needed to survive.

"There is nothing in the record to show that [Rosa] turned her mind to this question or that she reasonably addressed it," he wrote.

The judge also concluded that the residents of the encampment were not granted adequate notice or the opportunity to be heard before the eviction orders were implemented.

"Those individuals have a right to notice and a right to be heard, as their rights, privileges, or interests are uniquely affected," wrote Justice Kirchner.

The judge also suspended a court injunction application by the Vancouver Park Board that would have forced residents of the encampment to comply with the eviction order and remove all their shelters and belongings from the park.

The injunction application has been adjourned until the Park Board general manager has reconsidered the eviction orders.

This includes considering "the full range of options open to [the general manager] to manage the encampment, including the potential to accommodate some persons with a daytime sheltering arrangement," wrote Kirchner.

The latest Angus Reid poll has the NDP lead shrinking, but still a substantial 13% lead with 44% for NDP, 31% for the Liberals, 16% for the Greens and 6% for other parties. 

The Liberals are once again facing controversy in their leadership race.

The NDP and Premier John Horgan have weathered a trying fall and winter in British Columbia. More than two-in-five (44%) of British Columbians say they would vote for the NDP if an election were held, a number consistent with October, though a six-point drop from highs seen in November 2020 and June 2021.

B.C. has seen record high hospitalizations during the Omicron wave, with reports nurses and doctors are “exhausted” and “ready to quit.” Horgan has been receiving more criticism from constituents on his handling of the pandemic – two-in-five say he’s been doing a “bad job”, the highest number in the last two years.

Indeed, the gap between the B.C. NDP and the right-leaning B.C. Liberals has closed to 13 points, the closest it has been since before the pandemic. Three-in-10 (31%) British Columbians say they will vote for the Liberals, who will select a new leader on Feb. 5. The leadership race is not without its controversy: the party’s election organizing committee will hold an audit of some party memberships after there were membership applications with addresses where there are no homes.

Sixteen per cent of British Columbians say they will vote for the Green Party in the next election:

https://angusreid.org/provincial-politics-quebec-ontario-election/

In the latest poll the NDP lead has shrunk to 8% according to a Research Co. poll dated Feb. 18. However Premier Horgan holds a substantial lead in performance approval at 69%, which is up 7% since October, over the new BC Liberal leader, who is 38%, partly because he is unknown to many voters and partly because of memories of his time in previous BC Liberal governments. The lead for the NDP has shrunk from 13% to 8% because of consolidation of the right wing vote as the NDP is actually up 2% since the last poll.  Housing (#33%), among everyone but especially among the young who find it hard to break into the skyhigh housing market,  followed by healthcare (23%), economy and jobs (16%), environment (10%), Covid (6%) and public safety (4%) are the main issues.

NDP 46%

Libs 38%

Greens 13%

Cons 2%

 The BC New Democratic Party (NDP) holds an eight-point advantage over the opposition BC Liberals among decided voters in British Columbia, a new Research Co. poll has found.  

In the online survey of a representative provincial sample, 46% of decided voters would cast a ballot for the BC NDP candidate in their constituency if a provincial election were held today.  

The BC Liberals are in second place with 38%, followed by the BC Green Party with 13% and the BC Conservative Party with 2%.  

The BC NDP holds substantial leads over the BC Liberals among decided voters aged 18-to-34 (43% to 36%) and decided voters aged 35-to-54 (48% to 35%). The race is closer among decided voters aged 55 and over (BC NDP 46%, BC Liberals 42%).  

While the two main parties are separated by just three points among male decided voters (BC NDP 44%, BC Liberals 41%), the New Democrats have a substantial lead over the BC Liberals among female decided voters (47% to 35%).  

Almost seven-in-ten British Columbians (69%) approve of the performance of Premier and BC NDP leader John Horgan, up seven points since a similar Research Co. poll conducted just before the last provincial election in October 2020.  

The approval rating for Kevin Falcon—who became the leader of the BC Liberals earlier this month—stands at 38%. The indicator is similar for BC Greens leader Sonia Furstenau (36%, -10) and lower for BC Conservative leader Trevor Bolin (19%).  

“British Columbia’s two main party leaders are not having difficulties connecting with their base of support,” says Mario Canseco, President of Research Co. “Nine-in-ten BC NDP voters in 2020 approve of Horgan (90%), while two thirds of BC Liberal voters in the last provincial ballot approve of Falcon (67%).”  

A third of British Columbians (33%, +10) identify housing, homelessness and poverty as the most important issue facing the province today—a proportion that rises to 41% among those aged 18-to-34.   Health care is second on the list of concerns with 23% (+2), followed by the economy and jobs (16%, -9), the environment (10%, +3), COVID-19 (6%, -7) and crime and public safety (4%, =).

https://researchco.ca/2022/02/18/bcpoli-feb2022/

..from a dogwood email.

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More than 10,000 B.C. households were hooked up to fracked gas pipelines last year. Fortis, a Newfoundland-based company, is aggressively trying to expand the market for its dirty product.

And instead of seeing the danger of promoting fracked gas as a “clean” energy solution, the BC NDP are basically giving each other high fives in the Legislature over it.