Fridays at The HUB Community Space lately have been highly productive, all day sessions of community creativity. This past Friday Nov. 8th 2019 was no exception.
Various folks came and went from The HUB all day as they engaged in Music Making, Electronic Sound experimentation, Discussions on Local Gardening,Urban Food Production, and much more.
Copious amounts of coffee and tea were consumed while local residents felt open to express themselves in this truly Free Space.
This fully grassroots and unique Community HUB is free of bureaucracy and is open to all.
If you have any desire or need for such an open space, there are several open and available time slots throughout the coming weeks. You or your group are invited to contact The HUB Community Space and request a booking.
Please feel free to contact us via e-mail at thehubvictoriabc@gmail.com
Here is but one example of the recent and welcomed requests for the use of this community space that we hope to see happen here.
Kai Concerto
Hello!
I hope you don’t mind me reaching out with a request! A friend told me that you might have space available in the downtown core that is available to rent for free, which would be amazing. A group of people in my community and I have been developing an idea to host a gender-inclusive clothing swap where trans people in the community can come to bring old clothes that no longer suit their body or gender identity and then pick up some new clothes that are more affirming. We previously hosted these events in Montreal and they were so popular that we had them every month! I’m not sure if your space is available for repeat bookings, but if the first event is a success, it’s definitely something we have the time and energy to support =)
Please let me know if you think your space would be a good option for an event like this!
Have a great day!
———————————————————————————————————————–
Hello Kai
Thank-you for expressing interest in the use of The HUB Community Space.
As Director of this community space your proposed event is also of a personal interest to me as I am a long time advocate of repurposing items in general.
It seems in our ‘throw away’ society, used or unwanted items that would be of interest to others are often ending up in landfills or garbage dumps.
Would your proposed event be a evening, daytime , weekend or weekday activity?
Yes indeed “Trans Rights” like many of the rights and freedoms in Canada are rights to be cherished and protected.
Also as a father of a Trans-daughter I have given this and related subjects much thought in recent years.
Regardless of what is actually written into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms there are several assumed rights and freedoms most Canadians perceive to be theirs such as Freedom of assembly and Freedom of speech.
All of these above mentioned, so called “Freedoms” were challenged and hotly debated on Oct. 10 2019 at The HUB Community Space in Victoria and on social media, when (despite extreme opposition) a presentation by controversial, trans-gender speaker Jenn Smith went ahead regardless of the all-out attempt to shut down this event.
Community
While observing all of this in the past days, the vision of the The HUB Community Space itself has been repeatedly brought into question by some, including some in authority.
The idea that this grass roots, no-budget, free space is not actually building or promoting community is beyond ridiculous.
The Jenn Smith speaking engagement on Oct. 10th 2019 aside, It must be pointed out that this highly successful, adlib, volunteer run, unplanned, and unfunded community center has (in its short time) been host to, but not limited to…..
-environmental groups
-book clubs
-Book Launch
-non-profit Annual General Meetings for Non-Profits
-a First Nations Beading Club
-Meetings for Playwrights
-Regular support sessions for Female Immigrants and refugees
-Theater Rehearsals
-Creative Art Studio Access
-Art Gallery (where artists can display their art for free)
-Regular Co-working Office Space (volunteer staffed and open to all, for free, twice a week)
-Local University Geography Classes
-Substance Recovery Peer support Group with Regular Drop-in access
-Yoga Sessions
– Media Club
-Music Rehearsals
…..And WOW….. what a list…. Is this not community?
…..And what about the 25 brave souls who walked the gauntlet of foul mouthed screaming protesters? 25 persons determined to attend the Oct 10th. Jenn Smith event at The HUB Community Space? Are they not a part of the “Community”
To clarify, The HUB Community Space does not have an agenda to advocate or oppose socio-political views of individuals or groups. The HUB Community Space doessupport freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.
The apparent recent erosion of these freedoms, in connection with other local “community centers” in the Victoria area, is what has gained the attention of this Director in this case.
FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY AND THE NEED FOR POLICE PROTECTION
Regardless of where one stands on the issues raised by outspoken trans-gender speaker Jenn Smith, it is clear that a strong police presence being needed to protect life and property from the protesters gathered on public land adjacent to a private, quiet and peaceful event for 25 persons, is wholly unreasonable. It is certainly not the responsibility or fault of those who gathered to hear the presentation.
In addition, it seems clear that some influential persons in the community have greatly contributed to the “hate” and hypocritical intolerance towards this speaker that prevails at this time.
Seen here is an extremely homophobic social media post from BC-NDP Vice President Morgane Oger who surprisingly also identifies as Trans-gender.
As Director of The HUB Community Space in downtown Victoria, veiled and not so veiled threats came to me personally via emails, messages, and social media posts in the few days and hours leading up to this unscheduled, last minute speakers event at The HUB.
The violence and angry foul language used to shut down a previous Jenn Smith event, in the nearby municipality of Oak Bay, was a horrific attack on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, to be sure.
Seen here is an independently produced recount of the recent events in OAK BAY…
It is clear to me now that the negligent lack of local law enforcement, at the previous Oak Bay event, was greatly contrasted on Oct. 10th. The amazing efforts of the Victoria Police Dept.,who contacted me personally, prior to the event at The HUB Community Space were admirable. They assured me that The HUB’s right to freedom of assembly and that of the protesters outside would be protected.
Princess Chica The Political Puppy (who was present on Oct.10th) thanks VicPD for not choosing sides and respecting citizens right to Freedom of Assembly at The HUB Community Space while also keeping the peace
Here are but a few examples of disturbing posts received by The HUB Community Space directed towards speaker Jenn Smith in the hours leading up to this event ….
-Lynd-zee LooWhy must we be ‘calm’ and ‘reasonable’……
Seeking comment From Jen Smith after his Oct. 10th presentation at The HUB Community Space he directed me to this post….
Jenn Smith · 9:53I know at least two people that stayed away because they did not want to go into the mob, there may have been more. This was a little more intimidating than previous gatherings because of the limited space on the sidewalk out front.
————————————————————————————————————
To be fair, as Director of The HUB Community Space, I invited School Board Trustee and anti-Jenn Smith activist Ryan Painter to discuss or debate gender issues at The HUB Community Space on Oct. 10th 2019 in a manner taught to me by our amazing and current Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps. That is of course, the method of “Civil Discourse.” Mr. Painter refused with the rhetorical and ideological line that these issues were “not up for debate.”
This brings me to the next topic…..
JENN SMITH AND HIS NEED FOR PERSONAL PROTECTION
As seen in the above link from the aforementioned “Oak Bay” event, the Oak Bay police had failed to keep the peace during this event. This caused the freedom of assembly to be unprotected. In the end, Oak Bay police were forced to provide protection for Jenn Smith, as they escorted him through what can rightly be called a threatening mob of activists.
The circumstances at the Oak Bay event and those of the event hosted at The HUB Community Space, have reasonably caused Jenn Smith to fear for his safety while exercising his right to freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of speech. Ironically this fear has been created by a radical, and extremist movement that claims to be one of inclusion and tolerance.
Due to this fear of personal safety, and lack of funding, it seems Jenn Smith has given in to allowing unvetted, volunteer security escorts at public events. This is where I have made some additional and disturbing observations.
I have gone to great lengths, and paid a great personal price for allowing this event at The HUB Community Space to take place. I needed to get to the bottom of the actual reasons why this so called “controversial speaker” has been banned from local community centers, and the ongoing rhetoric that Jenn Smith is linked up with neo-nazis and white supremacists. (A repugnant thing, if true)
To be fair, if the threatening mob had not caused Jenn Smith’s rights and safety to be violated, I submit that no security measures would have been necessary. I place the blame for the need of security squarely on the unruly protesters gathered at these events.
That said, I must now focus on the individual who approached Jenn Smith at the last minute to volunteer as his security escort for the event on Oct.10th.
Despite Jenn Smith’s attempts to control this volunteer during his presentation, this individual was disruptive during the actual discussion, as the other 24 persons present attempted to have a civil discourse.
This so-called “security escort” was certainly annoying, with his physical stance and verbal outbursts towards the attendees, who attempted to debate reasonably and discuss the issues. A sad commentary that Jenn Smith must depend on un-vetted individuals for security due to his lack of funding and the threatening mob outside.
While Jenn Smiths messages on freedom of speech and assembly during this presentation did in fact resonate with me personally, I found this situation with his volunteer “security person” one of the minor regrets of this event.
I offer my sincere apology to the one woman who became upset and left the event due to this individual , despite several of those in attendance encouraging her to stay.
Jenn Smith offered me an unsolicited and heartfelt apology for the behavior of his unvetted and seemingly untrained security escort and I absolutely accepted this apology.
It seems Jenn Smith himself is a compassionate individual capable of “civil discourse” but falls victim to the need for someone tough enough to escort him in and out of tiny, peaceful events that are made hostile by an anti-free speech crowd of protesters.
Biased Media Reporting?
Despite the biased and incorrect reporting from local media that 10 or so folks attended Jenn Smiths “anti-trans” presentation at The HUB Community Space, the actual count (reduced by mob intimidation) was in fact 25. This included families, children, the elderly, and members of the LGBTQ community as well. (A diverse attendance to be sure)
This dispute of ‘numbers in attendance’ is reminiscent of American, petty, main stream media disputes over how many folks attended Obama and Trump Presidential inaugurations as if numbers in attendance proved right and wrong.
Despite local media reporting that Jenn Smith (who identifies as Trans-gender) is “anti-trans gender”, this is most certainly not the case, and in fact (according to Jenn Smith) a libelous statement.
Having attended the presentation by Jenn Smith with other critically minded folks, I can state that the presentation was certainly not “anti-trans” in any way.
There were no “neo-nazi” groups present.
No “hate speech” was included in this presentation.
Much more disturbing is the apparent, political and ideological attempts to interfere with the right to peaceful assembly in this case.
It was never my intention to involve Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps in this free speech exercise but unfortunately she has seen fit to directly involve herself.
Those who know the true history of The HUB Community Space are aware that I personally have long been one of Mayor Helps biggest fans and I have spent many an hour in recent years defending her on social media.
Mayor Helps invited me, long before the past 2018 civic election, to participate in closed meetings to help create her 2018 election platform.
I served as her volunteer sign co-ordinator during the election campaign.
Mayor Helps picked vegetables in my garden and I wrote and published supportively in her favor on my amateur blog.
All that said, Mayor Lisa Helps apparent political or ideological concern regarding this Jenn Smith presentation on Oct.10th did not grant me the consideration of a simple inquiry from her. Instead it seems that Mayor Helps chose to work with those opposed to this free speech, in finding ways to shut down the event, and deny The HUB Community Space the freedom of peaceful assembly that any citizen should take for granted.
I will not be presenting here the emails and social media posts that have brought me to this conclusion but I do invite Mayor Helps to discuss this with me privately and clarify any possible misconceptions.
The ideological interference from specific individuals in the community knew no bounds, as an organized effort to shut down this event gained momentum. (As if Jenn Smith was Hitler himself.)
Employees and officials from all quarters were contacted and harassed into joining the effort. Despite having just recently completed a fire safety inspection of The HUB Community Space, we received an unscheduled, high ranking fire inspection the day of the event. Some in authority over me personally applied pressure to cancel this event. Clearly they don’t really know me as I only became more determined to protect the rights presented in this article’s introduction.
It must be noted that it was in fact this ongoing opposition to Jenn Smith’s right to peaceful assembly that caught my attention in the first place, and in turn caused me to consider hosting this speaking event.
I submit that had the Anti-Jenn Smith crowd simply left this speaker alone, I would never have heard of him.
It is this violent and organized opposition to him that actually provides the platform and popularizes or advertises his events.
In conclusion of this section of my report, I will remind readers that two elected Victoria City Councillors attended the event in Oak Bay. They lent support to the illegal mob that shut down Jenn Smith speaking, despite the clear declaration from Oak Bay Mayor Kevin Murdoch, prior to the event, that no Hate speech was contained in that presentation.
Personal Commentary
The ideological opposition to the Oak Bay event and the event at The HUB Community Space on Oct. 10th seems no different from any other anti-something hate filled movement as they screamed “murderer” and other hate filled, foul language that I will not repeat here.
Indeed some (but not all) of a historically bullied and denigrated portion of our community seems now to have themselves become the bullies.
According to a recent, Anti-Jenn Smith Facebook post I received “The textbook definition of bullying is the repeated use of force, coercion, or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate others.” Oh the irony!
When reading the following quotes posted on social media by anti-Jenn Smith activists, pay close attention to the hypocritical narrative that the LGBTQ community normally and rightfully abhors, because the denying of one’s preferred identity is the biggest insult of all.
Dianne Phillips · Jenn Smith ……… You were so desperate to belong you started dressing as one of the popular girls in school. …..
Dianne Phillips · Jenn Smith which gender identity term do you identify with?
None, right?
Dianne Phillips · …… “Jenn Smith” isn’t transgender! He’s just a guy with mental health issues…..
With Apologies to the reader, I have to insert this one a second time because WOW!
Jenn Smith · ……. observers should ask here why these people always attack me and my identity when they are the “respect identity crowd.”…….
Slander, Libel and Abuse
Also of note was the libelous commentary and outright lies posted on social media.
For some time now it seems Jenn Smith has been called a neo-nazi and the like. Among the most ironic was the comments that this person who identifies as Trans-gender is “anti-trans” or a “bigot”.
Not only did I find no evidence of this anti-trans gender claim, it seems this mob mentality has now begun to be directed at me personally as Senior Director of The HUB Community Space with attacks and effort to deny rights and freedoms.
All within hours of Jenn Smith announcing his event at The HUB Community Space I was being called an anti-First Nations bigot and have been erroneously linked to those opposed to the removal of the Sir John A Macdonald statue in Victoria. (Interesting statements, given that I infact, am a First Nations person whose grandmother suffered in residential schools. I was personally present and discussed the removal of the Mcdonald statue, with our Victoria Mayor herself, the night before its removal as I tried to assure her that she was “extremely brave” in standing up for local First Nations.)
Here are a few examples of erroneous posts received on The HUB Community Space Facebook page for which I see no evidence.
Jay Ayr · 0:11 ………these organizations made up of supposedly adults repeatedly attempt to intimidate the LGBTQ2+ community either with mockery, threats of physical violence, or actually engaging in violent tactics for the purposes of intimidating marginalized people to fall in line………
Hannah Hickli · 0:23Your willingness to propagate hate and cause harm is disgusting. May you never know peace……
Mya Ceilidh WilsonYou should be ashamed of yourself. You, and your business practice REEK of wounding, and hatred.
Mark SwarekPlease don’t join. This “community center” supports hate speech.
Violet N BrownThanks for being so homophobic and transphobic. You guys really know how to be supportive to peoples rights and lead a great example to the community of satanic red necks and low life’s. Way to go 💩🔥
Josie Aileen PattersonPlatforming this particular brand of hateful, bigoted, ignorant, purposely misrepresented rhetoric is not only dangerous, it’s downright disgusting.
In contrast, It is quite evident that a large portion of our “community” does not agree with this Anti-Jenn Smith movement.
Seen below is some examples of the love and support received by The HUB Community Space with regards to the last minute and unscheduled speaking event on Oct. 10th 2019.
Zoe RaeTo add… I have been to Jenn’s talk, with my LGBT daughter and we both quite enjoyed it. We each had parts we didn’t agree with but there certainly wasn’t anything hateful. In fact, quite the opposite. There was tons of love and concern for kids coming from not only Jenn, but the audience as well
Sue BrassetWhere are the protesters of children and women? Where is free speech. Just because you and I have different ideas and opinions does not mean we cannot express those ideas and opinions
Jeanette Standerwick …………... I have personally heard Jenn Smith . There is no hate
Priya ReddyIt’s a good idea. Make sure it’s clear as possible that the threat to public safety is coming from trans extremists not your alleged hate speech
Zoe RaeAs the mother of two LGBT kids, my whole family is thankful to you for standing up for free speech. Not all LGBT people agree with these extremists or that discussing ideas openly equals hate. You are showing true diversity by allowing diversity of thought. Within my own household we do not all agree on all matters but we certainly don’t slander, attack or threaten each other over these differences. We try to understand or agree to disagree. Thank you for standing up to the bullies!
Ian Stewart ………… Thank you for standing against censorship!
Sue Brasset …… agreed. We all have a responsibility to get to the facts and we all have should have freedom to research facts for ourselves. Freedom of speech is being assaulted on many fronts these days and we must fight with integrity
Ana HesseKeep up the good work HUB. Freedom of Speech is a right worth protecting.
Thanks for having Jenn Smith speak. Voices need to be heard speaking truths. There is nothing hateful being said by Jenn.
Ella Josten · 0:00Well done HUB for hosting Jenn. You are on the right side
Ella Josten · 0:00 …….. Absolutely correct that Jenn is not the only trans person to speak out……..
Jeanette Standerwick posted ….. “thank goodness there are still people that stand for free speech”
In Conclusion
A personal story…..
As a former Director of a local tenant action group in Victoria I was present more than a year ago (post meeting) when a fellow director who identifies as “lesbian” told the story of her partners poetry recital that once upon a time had taken place in a gay bar.
She explained that the audience was “just gay men over 50” and therefore was “incapable of appreciating the poetry” and was “undeserving” of the effort. The derogatory theme of the story related towards a specific segment of the LGBTQ community was accually insulting to me personally as an over 50s hetro-male and the hypocrisy of those statements have been difficult to put aside in my mind.
This person also attempted to remove my power to assign the female gender to my tiny female dog (Princess Chica) when she questioned my calling Chica “My pretty pretty princess” this person asked with purpose “have you asked Chica how she identifies?”
I strongly urge the radical segments of the LGBTQ community to examine their own actions so as not to diminish the rights and freedoms of anyone in our community that YOU have fought to gain for so long.
Peace and Love to All
See also this article written by a Trans identified person……
Fall has brought a bumper harvest of Grapes on Greater Victoria vines this year.
For those with access to some Grapes (30 pounds or more) I highly recommend that you take the time to experience the unusual pleasure of Stomping some Grapes and make a batch of wine or cider.
Local resident Christine Selig provided these photos of herself Stomping Grapes, for cider, in her kitchen, while enjoying a glass of local Merlot.
Christine said “The Grapes from this local vine were passed on to me because they were going to go unused….having the opportunity to Stomp some Grapes and feel them squish between my toes was definitely a bucket list item for me….”
The 50 pounds of fruit used in this Grape Stomp may be Teeny Weeny by industrial standards but the experience is huge for the person doing the Stomping.
Federal parties roll out their strategies to help urban Canadians keep housing costs in check
Jeff Gallant, a single father, has twice been forced to leave houses rented in Charlottetown because the owners decided to sell or renovate. He says rental charges have skyrocketed in the city, where vacancy rates are below one per cent. (David Common/CBC)
Jeff Gallant lived in his new home just 17 days before the For Sale sign went up.
Soon after the single dad rented the house, it was sold and the new owners sent him notice of a major renovation that would force Gallant and his two young children to leave. A similar thing occurred at his previous place, and it’s happening to so many renters in Charlottetown that a new term has been born: Renoviction.
Charlottetown is a prime example of the scarce vacancies and spiraling costs facing renters in communities across the country.
“It’s getting ridiculous,” Gallant says of the rental market. “Prices have doubled pretty much, and that boils back to supply and demand. They know there’s nothing here, [so landlords] jack up the price.”
Cost of living is a big election issue, a CBC News-commissioned online poll from June suggests, and housing is the biggest single expense for most Canadians, according to Statistics Canada figures on annual household spending.
As the campaign has unfolded, the federal parties have begun to unveil plans on how they’d make life more affordable for voters.
The Liberals aim to build 100,000 affordable housing units over a decade. They would also encourage home ownership through a first-time home-buyer incentive that subsidizes up to 10 per cent of the purchase of a new home and five per cent on resale homes — with restrictions.
The NDP have a more ambitious plan, committing to build 500,000 affordable housing units in a decade.
A central message of the Conservative campaign is that it wants people “to get ahead, not just get by,” and that the government needs to get its hand out of Canadians’ pockets in areas like the carbon tax, which the party describes as ineffective. The Conservatives have promised to ease building regulations to increase the housing supply, and said Monday that if elected the party would change the maximum mortgage term, increasing it from 25 years to allow up to 30-year mortgages. It is also promising to review the “stress test” for first-time buyers applying for a mortgage.
Housing costs
The reality is that finding affordable housing is increasingly difficult in many parts of Canada.
The smallest provincial capital, Charlottetown, has one of the lowest rental vacancy rates in the country. It hovers just above zero per cent, new Kijiji listings last just minutes before apartments are snapped up, and renters complain about spending ever more of their limited dollars on housing.
It is an old axiom of financial planners that renters should never spend more than 30 per cent of their gross earnings on rent and utilities. In Charlottetown, low income renters (those earning less than $21,361) spend on average 62 per cent of their earnings on housing.
The numbers get only marginally better when income levels increase.CBC’s David Common asks the mayor of Charlottetown, Philip Brown, what he thinks needs to be done to fix the severe housing shortage in the city. 0:34
Data gathered by the Canadian Rental Housing Index shows that Toronto renters earning as much as $45,498 a year are dedicating 40 per cent of their earnings to monthly housing costs. Live outside the downtown core, in York or Peel region, and those middle income earners are paying an average of per cent 44 and 38 per cent respectively.
In Regina, low-income renters spend more than half their pre-tax earnings on rent and utilities. In Calgary it’s 62 per cent, and 91 per cent in Vancouver.
This may help to explain why so many adult children are returning to live with their parents even after they’ve entered the workforce, or why many young adults choose to have roommates to defray living costs.
Across Canada, it’s not simply a question of how much accommodation costs, but also about keeping up with the need for more places to live.
In 2018, there were 37,000 new apartments built nationwide, but demand increased by 50,000 units, according to tracking done by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
And Canadian cities continue to grow, driven by factors such as immigration and stronger job numbers.
With housing-related problems rising and the cost of living a primary issue for Canadian voters, Charlottetown Mayor Philip Brown figures political party leaders in the midst of a federal election campaign should be talking more about it. When he was elected last year, he describes how he used a congratulatory phone call from the Prime Minister to drive home his top priority.
“We have a problem with affordable and accessible housing,” Brown says he told Justin Trudeau on a call shortly after his election as mayor in November 2018. “We need more public spending from the provincial and federal governments to up the supply of affordable and accessible housing.”
Charlottetown Mayor Philip Brown says he has urged Justin Trudeau and his government to do more to address the growing shortage of affordable housing. (Natalia Goodwin/CBC)
Each community has its own housing challenges, and one of the big ones for Charlottetown is that short-term rentals for the city’s giant tourism industry suck up a lot of housing stock.
Another is house prices — Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) data shows they’ve jumped 38.5 per cent in the past three years alone in P.E.I.’s capital. By comparison, prices rose 25.3 per cent in Toronto, 21.6 in Ottawa and 33.3 in Victoria. A market where buyers get into bidding wars is new for Canada’s smallest province, which recently surpassed 153,000 residents, and it’s persuading some landlords to sell.
Added to that, the province’s population is growing, with people moving to P.E.I. from other nations and parts of Canada on both a permanent and temporary basis. The University of P.E.I. hasn’t built a new residence in 14 years, for example, while its student population has increased by about a third. There have been significant increases in the number of students on campus requiring housing, with half now coming from out of province or out of country.
“And that, in turn, is pushing more demand on downtown housing,” Brown explains.
Holland College student Sierra Elkerton was debating whether she could even afford to stay in school after she was evicted by her landlord because the building was not up to code. She managed to find a new apartment, but for nearly double the monthly rent.
“Realistically I don’t want to pay that, but it looks like I’m going to have to,” says Elkerton. “The cost of living is way too high considering it’s such a small city.”
College student Sierra Elkerton’s rent in Charlottetown nearly doubled with a recent move. She’s finding it increasingly difficult to afford school as a result (CBC)
She’s not alone. A global survey by money manager BlackRock Inc. found “many Canadians feel that they are in a financial squeeze — hard pressed to save amid what they perceive as a high cost of living, including devoting much of their income to paying for their homes.”
Canadians who responded to the poll said they spend an average of 43 per cent of their income on housing — whether renting or owning.
Among the 20 countries surveyed, only the Netherlands and Sweden had higher housing costs, at 51 per cent and 45 per cent respectively.
Charlottetown’s mayor is well aware of the numbers. In his community, he’s most focused on trying to help the people who find themselves paying more than they can afford — and those who can’t find anything at all.
“We may be a small city,” he says, “but we’ve got big city problems.”
The mayor says he would like to hear commitments from party leaders this election cycle to use the big federal wallet to help cities build more affordable housing.
“I got two calls this past week and one visit to the office,” Brown says. “From a woman who was living in her car in the Walmart parking lot, and another woman that’s been in [a shelter] now for almost a month and she needs a place to live.”
This fellow and others can now legally and safely use the lanes! A segment of Victoria’s newest protected bike lanes along Wharf Street open for public use today. The phased opening will start from the Johnson Street Bridge to Fort Street and includes the pedestrian scramble crosswalk adjacent to the Victoria Visitor Centre. The section…
The Pandora Arts Collective Society (located at 1923 Fernwood rd. in Victoria) https://pandoraarts.ca/ has joined a growing number of local artists that currently display their works at The HUB Community Space in Victoria’s downtown core.
On Saturday / July 27th. several members of this group were left to their own devises and discretion, hanging works of art at will.
The following Sunday morning I was 1st to arrive at The HUB thus allowing me the initial peek into this expanding grass roots showing.
The works of several artists can currently be seen at The HUB Community Space located at 829 Fort st. in Victoria. Please feel free to request a viewing or simply stop by during one of our many public community events here. We are on Facebook @thehubvictoriabc
……and please encourage local artists to contact us at The HUB Community Space regarding potential, free access to wall space so the world can see their creations.
Artists currently showing at The HUB Community Space:
Perhaps we can not clawback these outrageous public salaries but we certainly slap a tax of 5% on all salaries and incomes over $150, 000 per year. Those funds could be used for housing and other pressing social needs. This greed and wealth inequality must be reversed, and we are paying for it.
Last week, B.C.’s Finance Ministry released details of management compensation in public sector agencies. These include Crown corporations, post-secondary institutions, health authorities and government ministries.
A close read shows blatant inconsistencies that defeat any attempt at rationality.
Let’s start with Crown corporations. The CEO of the British Columbia Lottery Corp. takes home $411,000 a year in salary and benefits.
That’s quite a bit more than the CEO of B.C. Transit earns, for reasons that are not easily explained.
B.C. Transit is constantly at the centre of demands for more service.
The lotteries corporation has a monopoly. It couldn’t fail to make a profit if it tried.
What it has failed to do is stamp out money laundering at casinos. Not all of that is due to leadership failures at the company.
Law enforcement has been lax, and neither the province nor the federal government, until recently, has been much help.
Nevertheless, running the lotteries corporation is a breeze compared to handling the transit operation. So why does the Lotteries CEO make more?
The CEO of the Insurance Corp. of B.C. is paid $468,780, a huge salary for a company bleeding money. Again, some of the fault lies elsewhere. But shouldn’t a CEO’s salary reflect the health of his organization?
Moving on to the post-secondary sector, the president of the University of Northern British Columbia takes home $326,000 a year in pay and benefits. The CEO of the B.C. Institute of Technology earns less.
Yet BCIT’s budget is twice as large. So what’s the explanation?
It isn’t cost of living. Housing prices in Prince George are a fraction of those in Vancouver.
How about health care? The CEO of the Northern Health Authority gets $382,000.
The CEO of Fraser Health Authority, with a budget four times larger, makes less. Where is the sense in this?
When the C. auris fungus enters a patient’s bloodstream through an intravenous line, it can be harder to treat successfully. (Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty)
The emergence of a partially drug-resistant fungal infection in Canadian hospitals and elsewhere has doctors and scientists scrambling to understand the pathogen and stop its spread.
Candida auris was virtually unknown until 2009, but the past decade has seen outbreaks of infectionin hospitals and long-term care facilities around the world, predominantly among patients with weakened immune systems, such as people receiving chemotherapy or surgery and those who receive medication through large intravenous lines.
So far C. auris remains relatively rare, said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease physician at Toronto General Hospital. But the fungus, which can cause infections, including of the blood, of wounds and ears, has three main features that make it worrisome to health-care professionals:
It’s tricky for some laboratories to identify.
It can be hard to treat successfully when it invades the bloodstream.
It’s frequently resistant to one or more classes of antifungal medications that doctors turn to first.
“It poses a bit of challenge to treat, and the reason is there can be delays in diagnosis: conventional labs might not be able to detect that it’s Candida auris right away,” said Bogoch.
“With the delayed diagnosis, that can often delay appropriate treatment — and if we delay treatment for fungal infection, especially when they’re in the blood, people can get very sick, very quickly.”
Serious infection
In Canada, provincial laboratories and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg are able to identify the specific infection. In the developing world, detection isn’t always possible, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Symptoms may not be noticeable because patients with C. auris infection are often already sick in the hospital.
Based on information from a limited number of patients, the CDC estimates more than one in three patients with invasive C. auris die.
Canada has had a total of 20 cases of C. auris from 2012 to June 2019, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) said:
6 cases in Central Canada (Quebec or Ontario) between 2012 and 2017.
14 cases in Western Canada (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta or British Columbia) between 2014 and June 2019.
“We absolutely will be seeing more cases,” Bogoch said.
At left, a microscopic image of Candida auris cells. At right is a culture of the yeast in a petri dish. (The Journal of Infection in Developing Countries)
Why C. auris started spreading widely after it was first spotted a decade ago in the ear of a patient in Japan remains a mystery. (Auris means ear.)
Dr. Tom Chiller, chief of the CDC’s Mycotics Diseases Branch, and his colleagues set out to understand its origins, and documented their findings in a commentary published earlier this month in the Journal of Fungi.
To find some clues, Chiller’s team peered into the genome of C. auris and related species, and mapped where its been detected in hospitals globally.
To follow another lead in the investigation, Dr. Arturo Casadevall and his colleagues compared C. auris to some its closest relatives in the laboratory and found the pathogen is more resistant to heat and grows at higher temperatures.
Body temperature no barrier
Our normal body temperature of 37 C prevents most fungal species from replicating. But C. auris’s genome showed that it has adapted to higher temperatures, said Casadevall, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. That heat tolerance could contribute to its emergence as a fungal disease in humans.
Casadevall and his colleagues at the University of Texas in Houston and Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute in Utrecht, Netherlands, suspected the world’s warming climate could be contributing.
They brainstormed for a common denominator to explain C. auris’s “mystifying” appearance in three very different regions of the world with distinct flora and geographic conditions: South Africa, South America and India.
‘Looming problem’
“The big picture here, the concern here is that as the planet gets warmer, more of these [fungal] organisms that currently are not a threat may adapt to the higher temperatures,” Casadevall said. “It’s a looming problem.”
He put together the genetic evidence with the conjecture in what the American Society for Microbiology called an opinion/hypothesis paper titled “On the emergence of Candida auris: Climate change, azoles [an antifungal agent], swamps and birds.” It was published in this week’s issue of the society’s journal mBio.
CDC’s Chiller said several factors may be contributing to the emergence of C. auris, including:
Expansion of industrial farming.
Warmer temperatures.
Changes to the fungus itself.
“We don’t know what role the environmental changes are playing in this emergence. However, we do know that fungi are very susceptible to changes in the environment and would want to understand better what effects changes have in this and other species,” Chiller said in an email in response to Casadevall’s paper.
Chiller’s team also speculated about the roles of health care, antifungal use and human activities in helping C. auris spread.
For infectious disease physicians, hospital outbreaks are a concern given the fungus’s other unique characteristics, such as tolerance of hypersaline conditions and the ability to lurk on dry surfaces like bed railings.
Even after a C. auris infection is treated, patients might continue to carry it on places like their skin without it causing illness. They can still spread it to other patients if precautions aren’t taken.
MARISSA TIELJul. 25, 2019Vancouver Island’s first BC Cannabis Store is set to open in Campbell River on July 31. The first location opened in Kamloops last fall. Black Press file photo Vancouver Island’s first BC Cannabis Store is set to open in Campbell River on July 31. The first location opened in Kamloops last fall. Black Press File Photo
Vancouver Island will soon have its first BC Cannabis Store.
The Campbell River location at Discovery Harbour Shopping Centre is set to open its doors to the public at 10 a.m. on July 31.
“We are looking forward to opening a BC Cannabis Store in Campbell River, as we continue our efforts to roll out our network of retail stores and service the province,” said Kevin Satterfield, director of retail operations, cannabis operations. “BC Cannabis Stores is committed to being a good neighbour and integrating into the Campbell River community.”
The store’s regular hours will see it open seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays.
Graham Keehn posted a photo of a man clinging to the Johnson Street Bridge as it is being lifted on Friday, July 19, 2019. We’ve added a red circle to indicate where the man is.
Photograph By GRAHAM KEEHN VIA INSTAGRAM
Graham Keehn was keeping a sharp eye on the Johnson Street crossing because, well, the patio on which he was perched knocks $3 off a particularly delicious drink whenever the bridge goes up.
Sure enough, the span lifted just before 8 p.m. Friday to let a barge pass through. Hold on, said Keehn, is there a guy on the part of the bridge that was now pointing skyward?
Yes, yes there was. The guy was maybe a fifth of the way up the pedestrian-and-bike part, clinging to a railing while standing on a narrow vertical support that had become horizontal as the deck rose. “He was super-casual, drinking a beer,” Keehn said.
When the bridge dropped and the barriers reopened — the same barriers the man had squeezed past in the first place — the fellow did “a little walk of shame” into the waiting arms of a couple of cops.
Happily, the man wasn’t injured. Nor was he charged. But he was drunk and he was lucky. It wouldn’t have taken much to slip from his narrow ledge after working his way past the bridge’s safety barriers.
All of which goes to prove A) alcohol doesn’t improve judgment, and B) you can’t build barriers high enough to stop bad judgment.
“It was determined that the man bypassed the bridge safety systems and went onto the bridge after the lift sequence began,” is the way VicPD described the situation Tuesday, while simultaneously urging users to obey the bridge’s warning signals.
NDP MP Murray Rankin stands during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
Photograph By SEAN KILPATRICK, THE CANADIAN PRESS
You can just about hear Murray Rankin gulp over the phone from Ottawa.
“Let’s be honest, it’s daunting,” the Victoria MP says of his new challenge. “But it’s so important.”
“It” is Rankin’s appointment by Justin Trudeau to head an independent watchdog for Canada’s security and intelligence agencies, one intended to ensure their activities are legal, reasonable and necessary.
The job, announced Wednesday, comes with a ton of responsibility and with access to secrets that Rankin will never be allowed to divulge. So much for easing into post-political life.
The new National Security and Intelligence Review Agency will, for the first time, bring oversight of all of Canada’s cloak-and-dagger efforts under one umbrella.
That means the new agency will absorb the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which looks at the activities of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. It will also watch over the lesser-known Communications Security Establishment and the intelligence- and security-related activities of all other federal bodies — the RCMP, the Defence Department and the Canada Border Services Agency, to name a few.
“We have oversight over the whole thing,” Rankin says.
The former UVic law professor announced in January that he would not seek re-election to the House of Commons seat he first won in 2012. That the prime minister should, after consulting with other party leaders, appoint a New Democrat to chair the new agency offers reason to have faith that it will be independent, Rankin says.
Rankin says the call from Trudeau came as “a complete surprise, and a pleasant one.” (The two were to meet when the prime minister was in Victoria last week, but couldn’t make their schedules mesh.)
Rankin’s background did offer hints that he might be considered for the job, though. As a grad student at Harvard Law School he focused on national security and freedom of information. He later served as a lawyer for the Security Intelligence Review Committee and as a special advocate under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act — a lawyer with security clearance, appointed by the court to ensure people held or facing deportation for security reasons were treated fairly.
Researchers found that emergency department visits due to alcohol increased 86 percent for women and 56 percent for men.
Dr. Peter Tanuseputro is a physician-scientist at the Ottawa Hospital and the Bruyère Research Institute. (Julie Ireton/CBC)
More young people in Ontario — especially young women — are ending up in hospital emergency departments because of excessive alcohol use, according to a new study from scientists in Ottawa.
The research, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday, looked at a total of 765,354 emergency room visits in Ontario due to alcohol use between 2003 and 2016.
Researchers found that emergency department visits due to alcohol increased 86 per cent for women and 56 per cent for men.
“It’s eye-opening,” said Dr. Peter Tanuseputro, a family doctor and scientist at the Ottawa Hospital and the Bruyère Research Institute.
(Ottawa Hospital Research Institute)
Excessive drinking, blacking out, and the need for detox led to the emergency room visits, as well as more serious liver or pancreas illnesses.
“I think all of society, to be quite frank, needs to see this data,” said Tanuseputo.
“It’s a responsibility of all of society to look at these numbers. Look how sobering they are and make sure that the trends don’t continue.”
240% more ER visits in 1 age group
This upward trend is consistent with previous studies suggesting the average weekly alcohol consumption in Ontario and elsewhere is increasing, according to the researchers.
“The largest increase over this period was among women aged 25 to 29, and in this group, we saw a 240 percent increase in visits to the ER because of alcohol,” Tanuseputro said.
The researchers said they decided to analyze the data following the introduction of beer sales in some Ontario grocery stores in 2015.
The program has expanded to include wine and cider and the province is now pursuing a plan to make beer available at corner stores.
“Any time you make things more convenient, I think there’s always concern,” said Tanuseputro.
“People are consuming more alcohol and people are consuming alcohol in patterns that are more harmful than before.”
‘Rosé all day’
The results of the study are no surprise to Bailey Reid, 33, who gave up alcohol more than two years ago because of her own bingeing, black-outs and loss of self-control.
The marketing of beer, wine, and liquor to young people, especially women, is a big part of the problem as far as she is concerned.
“I think especially after 2010 is when I really noticed [it],” said Reid.
“I was in a store the other day and there was a tank top that said ‘Rosé all day’ in the youth section. It’s just so weird.”
Bailey Reid speaks and writes about her decision to stop drinking alcohol after realizing her drinking was getting out of control. (Bailey Reid)
She points to what she calls an “Instagram culture” that glorifies excessive drinking and brunches having fun with the idea of hangovers.
There’s also a concerning change, notes Reid, now that alcohol sales have expanded past the LCBO.
“We’re not thinking about alcohol as being potentially dangerous —but the study is clearly showing that it is dangerous.”
I had to create a special category just for the BC Liberals: Incompetence
“The final housing-start number at the end of the year remains unknown. But there is one thing we all know for certain after watching the spectacle this spring: many of the New Democratic Party’s political opponents don’t care about the facts, they’re just cheering for B.C. to fail.”
BC Politics
Not long ago BC Libs and friends warned of ‘plummeting’ into ‘economic winter.’ Now, crickets.
Will McMartin is a public affairs consultant, once active with BC’s Social Credit party. He’s provided political analysis for news media including The Tyee.
BC Finance Minister Carole James. Construction forecasts are surging to record levels. The opposition isn’t cheering. Photo source: BC Government Flickr.
Another day, another discussion of housing by B.C.’s legislators. Except this one, on June 10, was measurably different. B.C. Minister of Finance and Deputy Premier Carole James unveiled to the legislative budget committee some show-stopping statistics about housing starts in the province.
Namely, that residential-home construction “has significantly increased over the past three years.” In fact, given April’s statistics, the province was on track to see 51,093 housing starts in 2019. “Which,” said James, “is a very strong number.”
That last sentence may be the understatement of the year.
If B.C. does surpass 51,000 housing starts this year that not only would be a “very strong number,” it would be astonishing and extraordinary.
Yet, James’ utterance received no publicity. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Frenzied warnings of ‘economic winter’
Contrast the deafening silence that greeted James’ housing-start revelation to the massive eruption this spring when her 2019/20 Budget and Fiscal Plan estimated that housing starts in the current calendar year would come in at 34,015.
Since 2001, the start of the BC Liberal Party’s 16-year reign in government, annual housing starts in B.C. averaged 30,680, so the finance ministry’s projection for 2019 was more than 3,300 greater than the recent historic average.
And for 2020 and 2021, James’ budget expected to see housing starts of 31,846 and 30,517 — again, slightly above and close to the 18-year average.
No matter. Critics preferred to key off the fact that the number of housing starts had surged upward over the 2016-2018 period to a yearly average of approximately 42,100. That was more than 12,000 higher than the recent average. And so those critics pounced on James and the Horgan government.
“Instead of cutting red tape and trying to turbo charge housing starts to drive down costs,” Jordan Bateman, communications and marketing vice-president with the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of B.C., seethed in a news release, “the NDP is quietly choking out the market.” Subtly, he gave this headline to his release: “Economic Winter Is Coming to B.C.”
Meanwhile, a budget analysis by the ICBA offered that “the single most troubling number was the projected 30 per cent drop in housing starts.” That sentence later was attributed to Bateman’s boss, Chris Gardner — a former senior political aide to former BC Liberal premier Christy Clark — by Tracy Redies, a BC Liberal MLA.
Formerly run by Philip Hochstein, who announced his retirement in 2016, the ICBA between 2005 and 2017 gave the BC Liberal Party and individual candidates nearly $452,000.
The ICBA budget commentary was dire and unequivocal. “This contraction will be widely felt. It underscores the flaws in a NDP housing strategy that’s based on higher taxes, with little regard for increasing supply, and casts further doubt on revenue projections.”
Not surprisingly, numerous BC Liberal MLAs promptly joined the chorus.
Todd Stone from Kamloops-South Thompson (whose tenure as a cabinet minister featured a multi-billion dollar “dumpster fire” at the Insurance Corporation of B.C.) was so aggrieved at the NDP government’s housing-start forecast that he introduced a motion for debate. “Be it resolved that this House agree that housing supply is critical to housing affordability.”
“The result of this government’s demand-obsessed actions,” Stone advised the House, “are suppressing the construction volumes of rental stock in communities across the province.”
“How tragic,” chimed his colleague, Abbotsford-Mission’s Simon Gibson. “This is the province of hope and excitement for our country. How tragic that housing starts are going down. It’s almost unbelievable.”
The most active housing critic was Surrey-White Rock’s Redies, who declared on Feb. 20, “The budget confirms that under the NDP’s economic mismanagement, housing starts are going to fall by almost one-third.”
She added: “Housing starts are plummeting under this government, which means housing affordability is about to get worse.”
Came across this article from last year. It’s dead on. The damage that these incompetent, and greedy, troglodytes did to BC will be felt for a long time. Yes, there should be an enquiry. Housing crisis? Exhorbitant ICBC rate increases? Blame it all on these greedy cave dwellers.
Rich Coleman said he didn’t knowingly ignore the problem of money laundering in B.C. casinos; he just did what the police asked him to.
CHAD HIPOLITO/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
For most of their 16 years in power, the BC Liberals relied on the same line of attack against their NDP opponents: They were the business-savvy party that understood what it meant to guard the public purse while the New Democrats were hopeless incompetents who ran the province into the ground in the 1990s.
It was a strategy that worked until it didn’t and the Liberals succumbed to their own arrogant ways.
And the past few months have revealed just what an outrageous deceit the Liberals’ long-held case for power actually was. Yes, governments taking over from a party that was in power as long as the Liberals always uncover a skeleton or two. But the mess the former administration left behind for its NDP successor to clean up is, on many levels, shocking in its scope and magnitude. And we’re discovering new things by the day.
The latest is the contemptible disregard the Liberals demonstrated toward criminal activity taking place in the province’s casinos, especially in Metro Vancouver. Easily more than $100-million was laundered through these venues, to be used elsewhere in the economy. The man in charge at the time, solicitor-general Rich Coleman, has said he didn’t knowingly ignore the problem; he just did what the police asked him to.
But now people are coming out of the woodwork to dispute Mr. Coleman’s version of events, including the former head of the province’s illegal gambling enforcement team. Fred Pinnock told Global BC this week that the Liberals were absolutely aware of what was going on in the casinos but didn’t act because they didn’t want to disrupt the flow of money into the provincial treasury as a result of it. An explosive charge if there ever was one.
Mr. Pinnock referred to what was going on in the casinos as the “wild west.” Which, funnily enough, is the same term people used to characterize the province’s campaign finance laws under the Liberals – because there effectively weren’t any. The Liberals loved all those millions they were getting from developers who were getting richer by the day under the party’s governance.
It was Mr. Coleman who gave the order to scrap Mr. Pinnock’s enforcement team in 2009, a move that a recent report into money laundering activities in the province suggested helped criminal elements make major inroads into the province’s casinos. No wonder there are growing demands for a public inquiry into this matter. The thought of such a probe must be making members of the former government very uncomfortable.
And then, the other day, B.C.’s Auditor-General, Carol Bellringer, tabled a report that examined the former government’s disastrous handling of a land sale in Coquitlam. She found that, through nothing but incompetence, the government knowingly undersold 150 hectares of land, losing tens of millions of dollars in the process.
For those with access to some Grapes (30 pounds or more) I highly recommend that you take the time to experience the unusual pleasure of Stomping some Grapes and make a batch of wine or cider.
Vancouver Island’s first BC Cannabis Store is set to open in Campbell River on July 31. The first location opened in Kamloops last fall. Black Press file photo Vancouver Island’s first BC Cannabis Store is set to open in Campbell River on July 31. The first location opened in Kamloops last fall. Black Press File Photo
/arc-anglerfish-tgam-prod-tgam.s3.amazonaws.com/public/PBTSVOUZAJBG7LCEAIQMIHHOBI.JPG)
Inside Victoria 