With greater and greater frequency lately, the right wing is using one-offs to move public opinion. They are using stories and anecdotes appealing to our emotions and focused on a single person or incident in an effort to stop us from making higher and better choices for all of us. A case in point —…
Category: Vancouver
Is Kinder Morgan going to be Justin Trudeau’s Standing Rock?
I’ve been one part saddened and one part outraged by the video footage coming out of Standing Rock, North Dakota over the last number of weeks as passive, unarmed water protectors are attacked on a daily basis, sometimes by police in riot gear. Police and security forces have not hesitated to use attack dogs, Taser…
Bernie Sanders: 2020
I just woke up from the worst nightmare I’ve ever had — Donald Trump won the U.S. election! But wait. It’s not a nightmare — it really did happen! We will be debating and analyzing Tuesday’s election results for a generation to come. But for me the No. 1 takeaway is the outright opposition within…
Affordable housing: Gregor Robertson still doesn’t get it
It’s perfectly clear to anyone paying attention that we have a housing crisis in Vancouver today — a crisis that has been with us for quite some time and is only continuing to get much worse. But the only thing more troubling than the crisis itself is the lack of leadership and complete absence of…
A tale of two school boards: One fiery, one fired
One of my fondest political memories is the night when results came in for the by-election of a brand new Vancouver School Board in 1986. Two years earlier, in 1984, COPE (Coalition of Progressive Electors) had won a bare majority on the school board, electing five of the nine trustees. They had campaigned very heavily…
Diminished by a mega-mall
Tsawwassen Mills shopping mall had its official opening Wednesday, October 5. This is a shopping centre of truly gigantic proportions situated on Tsawwassen First Nation land in Delta near the ferry terminal. Described by some as “alarmingly big”, this mega-mall is over 1 million square feet in size and composed of not one but 16…
Empty home tax: All sizzle, no steak
At long last Mayor Robertson has announced a tax to encourage owners of empty residential properties in Vancouver to put these on the rental market. This would be great news if the plan had been well thought out and actually had the impact it was expected to have. But as has been the case with…