On Tuesday the province gave Uber the green light to begin operating in BC. If you see the world through the eyes of a consumer, this is great news. If you see the world through the eyes of a worker, this is definitely bad news. Most of us, in Metro Vancouver at least, have had…
Category: Vancouver
A positive new direction for HandyDART
As co-chair of the HandyDART Riders’ Alliance, since last October I’ve been sitting on a task force set up by TransLink. Our mandate is to advise TransLink on HandyDART issues. The creation of this task force and the appointment of many individuals from the HandyDART community to it is another indicator of the positive working…
The power of progressive consciousness
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 —…
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…