Category Archives: canada

Leap Manifesto to anchor major November 5 climate rally in Vancouver

Author and Leap Manifesto supporter Naomi Klein (right) poses questions during the filming of This Changes Everything as husband Avi Lewis listens behind a camera operator.
Author and Leap Manifesto supporter Naomi Klein (right) poses questions during the filming of This Changes Everything as husband Avi Lewis listens behind a camera operator.

When the Leap Manifesto was published one month before Canada’s October 19 federal election, it temporarily derailed the campaign of NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, journalist and filmmaker Avi Lewis recalled in a telephone interview.

“In the electoral moment, the manifesto was seized on by the right-wing corporate press and used as a dagger to stick in Mulcair’s back,” Lewis told the Georgia Straight.

The manifesto—a call for urgent government action on climate change and a shift away from fossil fuels—was endorsed by high-profile Canadians such as Leonard Cohen and David Suzuki as well as a number of NDP candidates and the party’s union backers. It was subsequently used against Mulcair in arguments that his party was too left-wing to form a government.

A National Post headline described it as nothing less than a “plan to overthrow capitalism”. A Globe and Mail editorial warned that it, “if taken seriously, would pretty much put an end to every [energy] project ever—pipelines, windmills and solar-panel farms included”.

Despite those attacks, the document hasn’t gone away and many people are taking it seriously. On November 5, the Leap Manifesto will be at the centre of an outdoor rallytaking place in downtown Vancouver at Jack Poole Plaza beginning at 12 p.m.

“The first responses were very dismissive,” Lewis said. “But we have a policy agenda now, which has survived that initial onslaught and is gathering momentum in this post­election moment.”

Lewis will be there alongside the event’s main speaker, Naomi Klein, plus a number of other notable attendees and musical guests.

Two days earlier, on November 3, Lewis and Klein’s latest documentary, This Changes Everything, is scheduled to be released on iTunes. And all week, some 3,000 members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) will be in Vancouver for the group’s annual convention. That gathering has allowed Leap rally organizers to predict that hundreds or even thousands of people will gather for Klein’s speech in Coal Harbour.

Lewis acknowledged that an important question is how Canada can pay for the renewable-energy infrastructure and public-transit projects for which the manifesto calls.

“We anticipated that question, took it very seriously, and gave it a serious, deep policy response,” he said.

That came in the form of a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) paper titled “We can afford the leap”. In a telephone interview, one of the document’s coauthors, CCPA senior economist Marc Lee, said the money is available and can be accessed with progressive government policies.

“We need a revenue source like a carbon tax,” he told the Straight. “So we’re increasing the taxes paid on the bad stuff now, using that revenue to plow into green infrastructure and other climate-action measures.”

According to the CCPA paper, abolishing fossil-fuel subsidies would save Canada’s federal government $350 million annually. It also suggests the country could end “special tax treatment for capital gains income” to recoup $7.5 billion per year, return the corporate tax rate to where it stood in 2006 to earn $6 billion per year, and implement a new federal upper-income tax bracket for incomes over $250,000 for revenue worth $3.5 billion per year.

Finally, the paper outlines how Canada should implement a national carbon tax. It suggests it start at $30 per tonne, which would result in earnings of $16 billion per year. That could eventually be increased to as high as $200 per tonne for federal tax earnings of more than $80 billion per year, though that rate would have to phase in slowly and over the long term, Lee noted.

“The manifesto itself is rhetoric and talking about a vision,” he said. “The piece we did was to say that vision is empirically supported.…Based on the research that we have done over recent years, we think there is a good economic case to be had for it.”

Lee said he believes it is possible for Canada to shift to 100 percent renewable energy within 20 years. He described that goal as ambitious but not unrealistic with the right leadership. Lee added that the election of a majority Liberal government may serve as an “opening” on that front.

“The adults are in the room again and you can actually have a conversation and talk about how Canada can do its part on the global stage and meet its climate obligations,” Lee said. “But I am a bit wary about what we’re ultimately going to get.”

Roseanne Moran, a CUPE communications representative and organizer of the November 5 rally, told the Straight that the goals outlined in the Leap Manifesto can happen without sacrificing jobs.

“That’s why we signed on to it,” she said. “We think it is the right route to sustainable jobs, sustainable communities, and protecting the environment. We don’t think there has to be a tradeoff between good jobs and protecting the environment for the future.”

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This article was originally published in print and online at Straight.com on October 28, 2015.

NDP cites evidence of emails deleted from top government accounts, including premier’s

A freedom-of-information request filed by the NDP found more than 800 "message tracking logs" for emails related to an account operated by Tobie Myers, chief of staff to B.C. Minister Rich Coleman, yet a separate request for the contents of some of those emails resulted in the government producing just three messages.
A freedom-of-information request filed by the NDP found more than 800 “message tracking logs” for emails related to an account operated by Tobie Myers, chief of staff to B.C. Minister Rich Coleman, yet a separate request for the contents of some of those emails resulted in the government producing just three messages.

The B.C. New Democrats say they are collecting a growing body of evidence that proves a Liberal government practice of deleting emails was “systemic” and explicitly for the purpose of preventing the release of information to the public.

In a telephone interview, David Eby, MLA for Vancouver–Point Grey, said the NDP will forward the documents it has collected to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C. (OIPC) and that body can then decide if a formal investigation is warranted.

The Opposition member’s claims come on the heels of an October 22 OIPC report that details how employees in the premier’s office, plus staff at two ministries, had “triple deleted” emails, taking extra steps to expunge records from computers. The results of that investigation implicate the premier’s deputy chief of staff, Michele Cadario. In addition, the OIPC has accused one government employee, George Gretes, of giving false testimony about the practice while he was under oath. That case has been forwarded to the RCMP.

“The practice we observed was the routine emptying of the Recover Deleted Items folder to ensure that emails were permanently deleted from an employee’s system,” the OIPC report reads. “This is not the intention of the Recover Deleted Items folder and for employees managing their mail account it serves no legitimate purpose.”

The file the NDP is building already includes information on a number of additional email addresses that were not the subject of that investigation, Eby said, one of those being an account that belongs to the premier herself.

Eby explained the NDP filed a freedom-of-information request that asked for all correspondence to and from Premier Christy Clark’s public and private email addresses for a two-week period in December 2014 (coinciding with an announcement about the Site C dam). That request resulted in the government stating it could find no records meeting the criteria of the request.

A subsequent freedom-of-information request asked for the “message tracking logs” for the same account and same period, Eby continued. The government’s response to that request, however, stated that there were more than 150 emails sent from the premier’s public account during that time frame.

Eby said the NDP has similar evidence of missing emails for accounts controlled by Tobie Myers, chief of staff to Rich Coleman—who oversees several ministry portfolios, including liquefied natural gas—as well as the email account of John Dyble, deputy minister to the premier. (B.C. NDP leader John Horgan provided more information related to the case of Myers in an October 26 blog post. An October 27 report by the Vancouver Sun adds details to accusations regarding Dyble.)

Eby maintained that those discrepancies—a number of which were reviewed by the Straight—suggest that hundreds of emails pertinent to government business were deleted from the premier’s account as well as the accounts of top government officials.

Meanwhile, freelance journalist Bob Mackin has stated publicly he may have proof that emails were deleted from accounts belonging to Sam Oliphant and Maclean Kay, both of whom work in the premier’s office as media relations officers.

The premier’s office did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. Clark has said her government is cooperating with the OIPC and has emphasized that she has ordered all government employees to refrain from deleting emails.

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This article was originally published in print and online at Straight.com on October 28, 2015.

Marijuana advocates point to Liberal hints of what legalization might look like under Justin Trudeau

Jodie Emery, a lead advocate for marijuana reform and once in the race to represent the Liberal Party of Canada in Vancouver East, says legalization will be good for everybody, with sales projected to rake in billions for the government. Cannabis Culture photo.
Jodie Emery, a lead advocate for marijuana reform and once in the race to represent the Liberal Party of Canada in Vancouver East, says legalization will be good for everybody, with sales projected to rake in billions for the government. Cannabis Culture photo.

The unofficial leader of Canada’s marijuana-reform movement had a succinct reaction to the Liberal’s October 19 victory over the tough-on-crime Conservatives.

“Holy smokes,” Jodie Emery said in a telephone interview. “We were all joking about how activists are out of a job. Mission accomplished. Now what?”

In his campaign for prime minister, Liberal party leader Justin Trudeau promised his government would fully legalize and regulate the sale and consumption of recreational cannabis. That pledge went significantly further than NDP leader Thomas Mulcair’s plan to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of pot. While decriminalization leaves supply to the black market, Trudeau insisted Canada should regulate cannabis in ways similar to how the country handles other controlled substances, such as alcohol and tobacco.

“It is time that Canada adjusted to the reality that controlling and regulating marijuana is a way of both protecting our kids, protecting the public, and ensuring that we are not financing gangs to millions and millions of dollars,” Trudeau told the Straight at an August 19 campaign stop in Vancouver.

Now, Emery said, there are a thousand questions about how that will happen.

“What kind of system are we going to have?” she asked. “Now it really comes down to the details….But right away, they have to stop arresting people. The first step has to be an immediate decriminalization-type system where nobody is arrested for possession anymore.”

In March, Trudeau told CKNW Radio that a Liberal government would begin by decriminalizing marijuana “in a very rapid fashion”. That requires removing cannabis from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which would save a lot of people from negative interactions with police. From 2003 to 2012, the B.C. Ministry of Justice recorded charging 44,522 people for crimes related to cannabis. (Though it might be further down the road, Trudeau has also said a Liberal government would be “looking into” how it might “overturn previous convictions” for crimes related to marijuana.)

Exactly what comes next is less certain, but a 38-page Liberal party draft “policy paper” dated January 2013 provides many hints.

It recommends marijuana be sold in retail storefronts, perhaps similar to those already operating in Vancouver. That document repeatedly emphasizes a legitimate marijuana industry should be heavily regulated. It points to tobacco and alcohol sales as examples, noting there are strict rules for how those products are supplied, sold, and advertised.

It also analyzes American states that have legalized cannabis such as Washington, and acknowledges a number of issues with which those jurisdictions have struggled.

“To be successful and prevent organized crime from maintaining a black market, the price of legal marijuana must be lower than it is now,” it reads. “At the same time, the product’s quality must be at least as good – if not better.”

As the owner of a number of Vancouver dispensaries, Don Briere conceded he stands to gain a lot from Trudeau’s plan. “We were dancing in the streets,” he recalled of election night. But Briere argued people who have nothing to do with pot also stand to benefit.

He explained that while he’s paid federal GST on weed sold through his dispensaries, he hasn’t paid PST to the province. That’s because authorities consider cannabis sold through Vancouver storefronts to be medicinal, and medications are exempt from PST. Briere said if a new Liberal government permits the sale of recreational marijuana, those sales would be subject to PST, and that would translate into millions of dollars in new money for the provinces.

“I alone have paid over $200,000 in GST on marijuana,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of time, and we’ll continue to add to that.”

In the Liberals’ policy paper, it’s calculated that legalizing marijuana will bring in $4 billion in government revenue each year. In addition, an older special senate committee report, from 2002, estimates between $300 and $500 million spent on law enforcement and the justice system annually could be saved by legalizing cannabis. Meanwhile, the Liberals project implementing a new regulatory scheme will carry a price tag of just $65 million over five years.

In a telephone interview, Joyce Murray, the re-elected Liberal MP for Vancouver Quadra, was reluctant to predict what tangible form legal marijuana sales might take. She said the initial emphasis will be on consultation and discussions with the provinces and municipal governments.

“What’s important is the principles,” she said. “And the principles are to prevent under-age access to marijuana as well as to stabilize the safety of the product.”

Dan Werb is director of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy and the lead author of an August 2015 report that summarized existing research related to marijuana use and the consequences of proposed regulations. He noted legalizing cannabis can lead to increases of reported use among youth, but emphasized that’s not an inevitable outcome.

“From a public health standpoint, look to the successes we’ve had with tobacco regulation,” he said. “We’ve seen an incremental decrease in the use of tobacco among young people. And I think that is a responsible framework to use.”

Emery warned that Trudeau hasn’t acted on the marijuana file yet.

She stressed that a number of players will not be jockeying for influence over how new regulations take shape. She said those could include reform advocates, health watchdogs, industry stakeholders, and representatives and lobbyists for potential competitors to recreational marijuana such as pharmaceutical corporations and beer and liquor retailers.

Emery also emphasized that today, police across Canada still have the authority arrest anybody caught with a joint.

“The Harper legacy of prohibition will continue for some time,” she said. “And now the Liberals will have to make sure they don’t over-regulate.”

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This article was published in print and online at Straight.com on October 21, 2015.

Vancouver groups go old school to mobilize the youth vote for Canada’s #elxn42

The Zolas’ Zach Gray has lent his voice to Turn Up YVR, which aims to improve the woeful voter-turnout rate among 18- to 34-year-olds. Travis Lupick photo.
The Zolas’ Zach Gray has lent his voice to Turn Up YVR, which aims to improve the woeful voter-turnout rate among 18- to 34-year-olds. Travis Lupick photo.

Call it rock the vote or a magical mystery tour, but whatever was happening aboard a bus cruising down Kingsway last Saturday (October 10) was a very fun way to participate in democracy.

Zach Gray of Vancouver indie-rock band the Zolas played guitar and belted out their hit song “You’re Too Cool” while enthusiastic backup vocals were provided by the Boom Booms’ Aaron Ross, Geordie Hart, and Tom Van Deursen.

“Every morning chipping away,” Gray crooned with everybody singing along. “’Til the walls fall down!”

That bus was the third like it to snake around Vancouver that rainy afternoon. The vehicles met crowds of young music fans at Broadway and Cambie Street, people piled in, then the groups toured from one advanced polling station to the next to help the passengers vote and get a jump on the October 19 federal election.

Just before embarking on the last ride of the day, Gray said he’s optimistic that 2015 will see young people break from their reputation for apathy. The reason he’s so sure is Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.

Gray explained that although people can feel overwhelmed by the amount of information usually required to make an educated voting decision, that isn’t the case this year. “This is the first election in my lifetime where it’s this obvious who to vote against,” he said.

The campaign Gray joined on the bus, Turn Up YVR, is a nonpartisan initiative that’s encouraging everyone to vote regardless of the party they support. But there was one refrain the Straight heard repeated on those buses again and again: anyone but Harper.

On that note, here’s an interesting pair of statistics: in the 2011 federal election, Conservative candidates received a total of 5.8 million votes, and in 2015, there are 5.8 million eligible voters who are between 18 and 29 years of age.

If it’s true that young people are more likely to vote against Harper, they could see him removed from office quite easily. If they voted.

Of course, we know that many do not. According to Elections Canada, in 2011 only 39 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds left the couch for the polls, and for 25- to 34-year-olds, that number was only 45 percent. For comparison’s sake, 75 percent of the 55- to 64-year-old crowd voted in 2011. Elections Canada data shows roughly the same results for the 2008, 2006, and 2004 general elections. In those years, not once did even 50 percent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 make it to the polls.

Despite the depressing math, a plethora of individuals and organizations are working around Vancouver this week to get young people involved in politics.

A few hours before that bus ride with the Zolas and the Boom Booms, the Straight caught up with Vancouver singer-songwriter Dan Mangan, who was also at Broadway and Cambie to help with Turn Up YVR. He conceded many before him have tried and failed to get young people to vote.

“What makes us think this will work?” Mangan asked with a laugh. “We’ve seen four years of majority government with Harper and it’s pretty scary,” he said.

This election cycle, Mangan is also leading a campaign of his own, Imagine October 20th. Similar to the anyone-but-Harper sentiment expressed by Gray, the stated objective there is not to elect the Liberals or NDP but instead to remove the Conservatives from power.

“It’s also about painting the whole process with a more optimistic tone,” Mangan said. “I think there is so much mudslinging and attack ads in the political sphere that what we want to do is think about what a breath of fresh air eating breakfast on October 20th would be with Harper gone forever.”

Music is just one of a number of tools that young people have deployed this year in the hope of getting their peers to the polls. South of the border, pundits have dubbed America’s 2016 presidential contest the “Snapchat election” because candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul have reached out to millennials using that mobile app. But here in Canada, 2015 youth-voter drives are consciously going old-school.

In a telephone interview, Aaron Bailey, president of UBC’s student union, the Alma Mater Society, said that perhaps the biggest impact
on youth engagement this election is coming from a partnership between universities and Elections Canada.

For the first time, Elections Canada facilitated student voting with advanced polling that opened on 39 campuses across Canada from October 5 to 8. The pilot program let people vote where they attend school regardless of the riding in which they were registered, removing what many visiting students view as a significant barrier to participating in national elections.

“All they needed was…[approved ID] and then they could vote anywhere,” Bailey said. “Which was huge, just making it so convenient for students so that they didn’t really have an excuse not to vote.”

According to Elections Canada, more than 70,000 people voted that way, though that preliminary figure also includes ballots cast at a number of community centres that ran a similar program.

On the phone from SFU, Simon Fraser Student Society president Enoch Weng and VP external relations Kathleen Yang said the same Elections Canada program was a big hit at SFU. “All of our social-media channels have been used to promote that,” Weng said.

Yang, however, emphasized that “social media alone is never enough.” She said the student society decided to focus on face-to-face events; for example, SFU’s main campus hosted an all-candidates debate for Burnaby North–Seymour. “We had four candidates participate,” she said. “Of course, the Conservative candidate declined.”

(Conservative candidates across Canada have largely boycotted riding debates and refused media requests, which the Toronto Star and other papers have reported is part of a partywide policy. The Conservative party did not respond to repeated Straight requests for an interview on the subject of the youth vote.)

Alex McGowan, VP external for the Kwantlen Student Association, framed the issue of low voter turnout as a matter of chickens and eggs. Do candidates ignore young people because they don’t vote in large numbers, he asked, or are youths apathetic because politicians don’t speak to their issues?

Regardless of the answer, McGowan continued, Kwantlen hoped to address the problem by facilitating meetings where students and candidates could get to know one another. He explained that although voter drives often rely on digital tools such as Instagram and email blasts, Kwantlen’s goal this year was to use real-world encounters to convince students and politicians of one another’s relevance.

“There’s been a demographic shift where now the millennial generation, 18 to 35, is the largest potential voting bloc, larger than the baby boomers,” McGowan said. “That means young people have a lot of potential, a big weight, and if they come out and vote, policies will start to be aimed at them.”

Meanwhile, a number of organizations are reaching out to youth with strategic-voting initiatives that aim to prevent left-leaning (often younger) people from splitting their votes among the Liberals, NDP, and Greens. Those groups suggest people vote for whichever candidate it is in their riding who stands the best chance of defeating their Conservative counterpart. The largest and best organized is Leadnow, which bases its national recommendations on polling data collected for specific contests.

There are also a number of less conventional voter drives targeting young people. For example, Vancouver resident Karilynn Ming Ho launched a Change.org petition that’s calling on Canadian hip-hop superstar Drake to encourage his fans to vote. At the time of writing, it had more than 8,000 signatures. There is also a chain of Vancouver marijuana dispensaries that is using an upcoming Snoop Dogg concert to attract attention to the October 19 election. But perhaps the biggest stir has come from Shit Harper Did (SHD), a troupe of Vancouver comedians that has attracted national headlines with its entertaining and well-researched lampooning of the prime minister.

In a telephone interview, SHD writer and coordinator Emma Cooper agreed that the group has successfully tapped into the youth vote like few other organizations in Canada. She said that was no accident.

“We’re very research-based,” Cooper said. “The whole point is that it looks fun. But you work really hard to make jokes and to target and make humour that engages young people. It’s about looking and seeing that people are not voting, seeing the research that proves that, and asking what they are going to respond to.”

Despite a Facebook page with more than 50,000 likes and YouTube videos with six-figure views, Cooper conceded that SHD faces the same million-dollar question as most modern-day campaigns: how to turn online clicks into real-world votes.

“We’re not going to tell you how to vote,” she said, acknowledging the contradiction there with a laugh. “We’re just doing whatever we can to inform people with our reach and our competitive advantage, where we have a huge online community that is kind of in this positive place because we’ve made a bunch of jokes.”

On the phone from UBC, Bailey answered the same question with a more pointed response. “There is no excuse and no opportunity to complain among young people unless they actually take the time to educate themselves and vote,” he said.

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This article was originally published in print and online at Straight.com on October 14, 2015.

Confidential documents suggest B.C.’s new $10.45 minimum wage may have been one big mistake

“Raising the minimum wage allows B.C. to keep pace with minimum wages in the rest of Canada while maintaining our competitiveness," said B.C. Minister of Labour Shirley Bond (right) at a press conference in March 2015. Government of British Columbia photo.
“Raising the minimum wage allows B.C. to keep pace with minimum wages in the rest of Canada while maintaining our competitiveness,” said B.C. Minister of Labour Shirley Bond (right) at a press conference in March 2015. Government of British Columbia photo.

British Columbia’s new minimum wage of $10.45 an hour is the second-lowest in all of Canada, according to the federal government’s Labour Program. When New Brunswick implements a promised increase in 2017, B.C.’s rate will rank dead last among Canada’s 13 provinces and territories.

And that’s where it is going to stay. Each jurisdictions’ minimum wage is tied to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or a similar economic indicator. So even though B.C.’s wage is scheduled to rise each September, it will remain low compared to all other provinces because rates there will rise the same way.

It is unlikely this situation was an intentional outcome of the provincial government.

After reviewing hundreds of pages of government documents related to changes to B.C.’s minimum wage implemented on September 15, the Straight can report it was most likely an accident, a mistake that the government is now refusing to acknowledge or redress.

Good intentions

Upon assuming office in 2011, B.C. Premier Christy Clark personally took an interest in the minimum wage. After her predecessor, Gordon Campbell, left it at $8 an hour for a decade, Clark promised to raise it from the gutter.

“We’re not going to be number one in the country by any stretch,” Clark said on CKNW radio on March 17, 2011. “But we’re going to be catching up. We won’t be at the bottom anymore.”

Stephanie Cadeiux, B.C. minister of labour at the time, repeated that pledge in the legislature on May 9, 2011: “In fact, it is not going to be the lowest in Canada,” she said. “When it reaches $10.25 next year, we will be tied for the second-highest in Canada, actually.”

The good intent expressed in those public remarks is supported by cabinet submissions and briefing papers the Straight obtained through freedom of information legislation.

In those documents, bureaucrats repeatedly describe B.C.’s minimum wage as among the country’s lowest, express concern for that fact, and offer solutions to improve the state of B.C.’s lowest earners.

So how did B.C.’s new minimum wage end up near the bottom in the country?

Sliding back to near last place

Although some of the released documents are heavily redacted, those files make clear there was a great deal of time and thought put into the 20-cent increase to $10.45 and the decision to tie the new wage to the CPI.

There were meetings and many emails on the matter. Civil servants looked at different minimum rates across the country, gathered information on other provinces’ plans for the future, and projected how B.C.’s minimum wage would compare to those plans.

“In 2014, every province other than B.C. raised its minimum wage at least once,” reads a February 2015 cabinet submission marked confidential. “Several provinces have scheduled increases for 2015. Since May 1, 2012, B.C. has slid from 3rd (behind only Yukon and Nunavut) to 9th among all Canadian jurisdictions as of January 1, 2015. Based on current commitments in other jurisdictions, B.C. will likely be last among Canadian jurisdictions if there is no increase by October 2015.”

The month after that cabinet submission was received by the premier’s office, the government announced its new rate of $10.45, stating that this latest increase would place B.C. at about the middle of the pack.

Which it did, but only for 15 days from the time it was enacted.

The documents include specific comparisons to other jurisdictions’ plans to raise their minimum wages, but not to increases scheduled for later than mid-2015.

On October 1, Alberta went to $11.20, Manitoba  to $11,  Saskatchewan to $10.50, Ontario to $11.25, and Newfoundland and Labrador to $10.50. Those changes dropped B.C. back to second-to-last place in the country.

A predictable outcome

Repeated interview requests sent to the premier’s office and the B.C. Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training in September and October were either refused or ignored. When the Straight asked in writing if the government was aware that $10.45 ranked near the bottom of the country, Ministry of Jobs spokesperson Gabrielle Price supplied statements that ignored the question. She also refused to say whether or not the government would be willing to re-examine the issue.

Shane Simpson is B.C.’s opposition critic for economic development, jobs, labour, and skills and NDP MLA for Vancouver-Hastings. In a telephone interview, he recounted taking similar questions to his government counterpart, Shirley Bond.

“I talked to the Minister of Jobs in the estimates process in the spring about this, and I asked whether there were any plans or intentions to make any other adjustments to the minimum wage over and above the CPI,” Simpson recounted. “She said, ‘No’. She said, ‘We’re pretty comfortable with where we are and we are going to stay here.’ ”

If this situation was the result of a mistake, the documents suggest the province will now resist returning to the matter to correct it.

In several places in the released papers, it is stated that pegging B.C.’s minimum wage to the CPI would help prevent a build-up of discontent among low-income earners that, history had shown, would eventually force the government to implement a dramatic wage increase that would upset business owners.

“Experience indicates that when the minimum wage is fixed for long stretches of time, political pressure eventually builds to enact big increases—and it is these, rather than small periodic increases, which cause the most serious disruptions for the business sectors that rely on relatively low-paid employees to staff their facilities and run their operations,” reads a February 2015 cabinet submission.

Calls for a correction

B.C. Federation of Labour president Irene Lanzinger told the Straight her organization predicted that the 20-cent increase would not be enough relative to other jurisdictions. She asked, therefore, why bureaucrats in the B.C. Ministry of Jobs were not able to do the same.

After reviewing a number of the documents obtained by the Straight, Lanzinger said her staff came to the same conclusion: that the provincial government did compare B.C.’s new minimum wage to that of other provinces, and also that it looked at how those jurisdictions planned on increasing their rates in the near future. But what they didn’t do is look far enough down the road.

“The quote in the documents is, ‘If we don’t do something by October 2015, we will be last,’ ” she said. “So they did something by October 2015. But what they did was just so inadequate and so minimal.”

Lanzinger encouraged the government to re-examine the province’s new minimum wage and consider another raise that will lift B.C. from the bottom in the country.

“She [Clark] specifically said we weren’t going to be at the bottom, that we were going to put things in place to make sure that we didn’t end up at the bottom,” she said. “And here we are at the bottom.”

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This article was originally published online at Straight.com on October 10, 2015.

CBC doc Hold Your Fire reveals B.C. police shot and killed 28 people experiencing a mental-health crisis

A new documentary scheduled to air on CBC examines a number of deaths involving police, including that of Paul Boyd (left), a Vancouver animator who was shot and killed in 2007.
A new documentary scheduled to air on CBC examines a number of deaths involving police, including that of Paul Boyd (left), a Vancouver animator who was shot and killed in 2007.

Research behind a forthcoming CBC Television documentary includes new data on Vancouver police encounters with people experiencing a mental-health crisis. It suggests despite progressive training, many incidents still end with an officer deploying lethal force.

For the period 2004 to 2014, investigative journalists Helen Slinger and Yvette Brend analyzed hundreds of coroners’ reports from jurisdictions across Canada.

In British Columbia, they found evidence police or RCMP officers shot 28 people who were experiencing a mental-health crisis, Slinger revealed in a telephone interview. That was out of 72 such incidents for the country as a whole.

The filmmaker added that according to a “very conservative estimate”, nearly 40 percent of all fatal police shootings in Canada involved either a person with a mental illness or an individual experiencing a mental-health crisis.

Slinger noted distinct themes emerged in those coroners’ reports.

The first was that when a police officer did fire a weapon, that usually happened almost immediately after they encountered a person in distress. The second was that training could be clearly traced to make a notable difference in outcomes.

“It comes down to what happens before police arrive at the scene,” she said. “If you are trained to approach with a command and control attitude, that could very likely backfire with someone in mental distress.”

The documentary is called Hold Your Fire. It was produced by Bountiful Films and is scheduled to debut on CBC Television as part of the network’s Firsthand program on Thursday, October 22.

The hour-long film looks at a number of police-involved deaths across the country. Those include the case of Sammy Yatim, who was shot by Toronto police in 2013, and Paul Boyd, a Vancouver animator who police shot and killed in 2007.

With video footage of those deaths plus interviews with family members, Hold Your Firemakes the case that neither young man needed to die.

“The police were the cause of the violence that night,” Boyd’s father says in the film.

Slinger’s findings mirror those of the Georgia Straight’s own analysis for British Columbia.

In February 2015, the Straight published a review of more than 120 coroners’ reports that dated from 2007 to 2014.

During that period, it was found there were 99 incidents where someone died in the custody of the RCMP or police.

Of those cases, the Straight determined 17 deaths involved a mental-health issue, 59 involved substance abuse, and at least 13 involved both drugs and a mental-health component. (The Straight’s analysis differed from Slinger’s in a number of ways. For example, in addition to looking at cases involving a mental illness, it also included situations where a person struggled with a serious addiction issue.)

Again echoing Slinger’s findings, the Straight’s investigation revealed that the first few minutes or even seconds of an encounter often meant the difference between life and death.

It’s those brief windows that Slinger focuses on in her documentary.

“We started out looking for that moment, asking, ‘how do you pull back?’” she said. “And what I felt was really obvious is it is how the particular unit goes to that call that makes all the difference.”

Slinger said if there is one message she hopes people take from her documentary, it is that police officers need to slow down when responding to an individual experiencing a mental-health crisis.

Hold Your Fire presents tangible lessons for how that can be accomplished without significantly adding to the risks that police officers face on the job.

While Slinger described the Vancouver Police Department as a force where there is “still lots of room for improvement”, she also said it stands “among the most progressive police forces in the country in terms of their programs for people with mental illness”.

She suggested what’s at play within the VPD and other departments across Canada is a sort of competition between old and new schools of police training.

For example, the documentary explains that in North America, many departments train officers to respond with lethal force if a person perceived to be a threat moves within 20 feet of an officer. That lesson, which can be engrained to a point where it can play out almost as a muscle reflex, can come into conflict with training for how one can de-escalate a potentially violent situation without using lethal force.

“Vancouver has kept moving in that direction with a number of programs that are very progressive,” she said. “I think it just hasn’t made its way through the entire force yet. But I do think things are changing.”

In 2014, Vancouver police recorded an all-time high for apprehensions it made under the Mental Health Act, a law that permits officers to detain individuals deemed to have a mental disorder and to pose a threat to themselves or others. Officers apprehended 3,010 people under the act, a number that has increased each year, up from 2,278 in 2009.

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This article was originally published online at Straight.com on October 6, 2015.

RCMP record reveals a long list of calls to Kinder Morgan properties in Burnaby

RCMP officers drag an opponent of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline project away from a November 2014 demonstration atop Burnaby Mountain. Jackie Dives photo.
RCMP officers drag an opponent of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline project away from a November 2014 demonstration atop Burnaby Mountain. Jackie Dives photo.

How much time does the Burnaby RCMP spend policing Kinder Morgan properties?

It’s a question politicians are asking again after RCMP records obtained by the Georgia Straight shed some light on how many calls the force receives in relation to the pipeline company.

“There are a whole lot of calls in 2014 and 2015, more so than other years,” said Burnaby city councillor Sav Dhaliwal. “I think that is a result of activity relating to the expansion project. That has brought Kinder Morgan into the public arena.”

Dhaliwal was referring to the company’s plans to twin an existing pipeline that carries heavy crude oil from Alberta to a port in Burnaby. Last November, the RMCP arrested dozens of people when they refused to leave a protest on Burnaby Mountain that aimed to disrupt survey work Kinger Morgan was conducting in the area.

Those sorts of heightened tensions around environmental concerns are driving the increased volume in calls, Dhaliwal suggested.

“The last couple of years, the activity just suddenly picked up,” he continued. “I think Kinder Morgan bears the responsibility for any additional activity for the RCMP on the financial side of it.”

RCMP data supplied in response to a freedom of information request provides basic details for 53 calls the force received in relation to Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby Mountain facilities and the company’s Westridge Marine Terminal from 2010 to March 2015. However, the record is not complete and the actual number of calls the RCMP received could be much higher.

The RCMP withheld information on an unknown number of calls citing sections of the Access to Information Act. Those pertain to disclosures of information obtained or prepared in the investigation of a crime or enforcement of the law.

In a brief telephone interview, Burnaby RCMP Cpl. Daniela Panesar declined to discuss specifics. The spokesperson for the force clarified that the list displays calls to police and does not state whether any call resulted in an officer or officers being dispatched. Panesar also declined to provide any context or opinion indicating whether the volume of calls to Kinder Morgan facilities was in any way atypical.

Documentary filmmaker David Lavallee has a rough idea how much time went into each of those 53 calls.

In a telephone interview, he recounted one afternoon last November when he recorded video of Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Marine Terminal using an unmanned aerial vehicle. Lavallee is producing a film about unconventional energy reserves and that terminal is a key transit point for bitumen mined in Alberta.

Two days after filming, Lavallee told the Straight he received a voicemail message from the RCMP. Two weeks after that, two community RCMP officers knocked on his door and left a business card while he was out.

In a subsequent telephone call with a third officer, RCMP national security investigatorGregory Haasdyk, Lavallee asked how authorities came to know of his interests in energy infrastructure.

“He [Haasdyk] said, ‘We got a call, a complaint, from Kinder Morgan, who had called in your [licence] plate,” Lavallee said.

In a recording of that conversation, Haasdyk maintains a friendly tone and answers Lavallee’s questions.

“Kinder Morgan does make a lot of complaints,” Haasdyk says. “And if we don’t know who they are complaining against then, yes, we do have to go and find that out.”

After reviewing the RCMP record obtained by the Straight, Lavallee noted he could not find his own encounters with the RCMP listed there. Another incident missing from the document is a March 6 call the RCMP received about an SFU professor named Tim Takaro. On that date, Takaro caught the attention of a Kinder Morgan security guard by taking a photograph of the Burnaby Mountain property. Five days later, he too received acall from the RCMP.

Lavallee said those two missing dates make him suspect the actual number of calls the RCMP fields in relation to Kinder Morgan is much higher than 53.

“Certainly, in my case, it was an egregious waste of taxpayer dollars,” he added.

In a telephone interview, Kinder Morgan spokesperson Ali Hounsell said any call the company makes to the RCMP is a matter of public safety.

“When our security folks do report something, it is because there is something suspicious,” she emphasized.

Hounsell noted Kinder Morgan’s private guards will engage a person before calling police. She cited a recent encounter with a CBC National News crew where guards asked journalist Chris Brown why the group was filming adjacent to company property.

“Those are normal conversations that happen, I would say quite regularly,” Hounsell said. “It’s just when it’s something unusual that it does get reported to police.”

Meanwhile, a number of other RCMP documents have come to light in recent years that use dramatic language to describe environmentalists and First Nations people.

“There is a high probability that we could see flash mobs, round dances and blockades become much less compliant to laws,” reads an RCMP document dated December 2012. “The escalation of violence is ever near.”

A 2014 RCMP intelligence assessment similarly warns that in British Columbia, “there is a coalition of like-minded violent extremists who are planning criminal actions to prevent the construction of the pipeline.”

B.C.’s lone Green party MLA, Andrew Weaver, described the sort of government surveillance revealed in those documents as “carried away”.

On the RCMP call list obtained by the Straight, he asked the same questions posed by Dhaliwal.

“I don’t want to second guess it [the RCMP] but it does seem like a lot,” Weaver said. “It really begs the question: why? Why were the RCMP being called so many times? What for? What could possibly warrant it?”

He also asked if citizens were getting in trouble for simply wandering to close too a fence, and warned that could constitute an infringement on their civil liberties.

Weaver revealed such an incident happened to him, though under different circumstances. He recounted travelling Europe for a summer with a friend named Tony.

“Tony saw this amazing power plant, which was so archaic that he wanted to take a picture of it,” Weaver recounted. “So he took out his camera to take a picture. And security guards came running up with sub-machine guns.”

“But this was in East Germany,” Weaver said with a laugh. “I would have loved for it to have been 1984 but it was 1982. So this is the direction we are heading.”

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This article was originally published online at Straight.com on October 3, 2015.

2015 stats for marijuana offences show police tactics changed before Vancouver’s dispensary boom

One of Vancouver's largest dispensary operators, Don Briere of Weeds Glass and Gifts, has said he welcomes the city's proposed regulations and hopes they will help bring the industry into the light. Travis Lupick photo.
One of Vancouver’s largest dispensary operators, Don Briere of Weeds Glass and Gifts, has said he welcomes the city’s proposed regulations and hopes they will help bring the industry into the light. Travis Lupick photo.

Over the last several years, the number of medicinal marijuana dispensaries operating in Vancouver has ballooned, from fewer than 20 in 2012 to more than 100 today.

That might have people wondering how police enforcement of marijuana laws has changed during that time, especially since the City of Vancouver lent a great deal of legitimacy to dispensaries when it proposed a legal framework for marijuana sales last April.

As the VPD turned a blind eye to over-the-counter marijuana sales, one might expect the department’s overall numbers for cannabis offences experienced a sharp decline.

But it turns out VPD enforcement numbers have barely changed at all.

During the first six months of 2015, the VPD registered 473 cannabis offences. Multiply that number by two and one can very roughly project 946 for the year.

That compares to 1,048 marijuana offences in 2013 and 864 in 2012.

This means the VPD is on track to record a very average number of marijuana offences this year, despite the proliferation of dispensaries likely giving many people the perception Vancouver police tactics have shifted.

(Numbers for 2015 were obtained via a freedom of information request. The Straightrequested statistics for 2014, but the VPD withheld that data citing a section of the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection Act that allows a public body to refuse disclosure of information previously scheduled for release within 60 days.)

In a telephone interview, the Straight asked Sgt. Const. Brian Montague why it looks like the VPD is continuing to bust people for marijuana while letting dispensaries go about their business.

“The numbers might seem a little misleading until you explain the fact these aren’t arrests, they are not charges; they are criminal offences,” he said. “In the vast majority of cases where we come across cannabis, there isn’t a charge for cannabis recommended.”

When an officer does catch somebody smoking a joint, Montague said the most likely outcome would be for them to destroy the drugs but otherwise let that citizen go about their day. The encounter still goes into a police database as a marijuana offence (along with the offender’s name and related information) but that’s usually where the matter ends.

Montague explained what statistics for 2015 and recent years actually show is that the VPD changed its enforcement strategies on marijuana long before the dispensaries started showing up at the rate they are today.

“We ask, is a recommendation of criminal charges proportionate to the offence that is being committed?” he continued. “And a lot of times, the answer to that is no.”

On September 17, the Vancouver police board formally received a complaint regarding the department’s alleged failure to enforce drug laws against storefronts selling marijuana.

Ahead of that meeting, the VPD prepared a written response to those allegations.

“In the case of dispensaries, the VPD must consider evolving community standards,” it reads. “The City’s decision to create a regulatory framework rather than using its bylaws to shut down dispensaries; the prioritization of police resources when weighed against other more serious drug offences occurring in Vancouver, and the costs and benefits of taking enforcement action against marihuana dispensaries. As a result, the Chief Constable has decided that such actions will only be taken when there are overt public safety concerns present.”

It’s noted there that since 2013, the VPD has executed 11 search warrants against dispensaries when complaints against those locations were filed and found to have merit.

The police board dismissed the September 17 complaint.

After reviewing the data for 2015, Kirk Tousaw, a B.C. lawyer who specializes in drug law, similarly said it’s his experience that in Vancouver, very few of those offences proceed to see people charged with a crime.

“It is a maintenance of the status quo,” he said. “Enforcement of simple [marijuana] possession does not appear to be a high priority.”

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This article was originally published online at Straight.com on October 1, 2015.

From activists to CEOs, here are 14 women who run Vancouver’s booming marijuana industry

Village Dispensary owner Andrea Dobbs is part of a wave of women at the forefront of Vancouver-based cannabis businesses. Travis Lupick photo.
Village Dispensary owner Andrea Dobbs is part of a wave of women at the forefront of Vancouver-based cannabis businesses. Travis Lupick photo.

One of the first lessons a marijuana enthusiast learns is to purge a grow operation of males. Only the females of the cannabis plant—identifiable by pistillate flowers, in contrast to a male’s staminate flowers—produce the cannabinoid chemicals sought for their psychoactive effects. So gardeners pull the male plants out by their roots and discard them as useless.

On the human side, nobody is actively purging Vancouver’s burgeoning marijuana industry of men, but many facets of the business are similarly dominated by women.

“Here in Vancouver, women have been at the forefront of this industry from the very beginning,” said Jamie Shaw, president of the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries (CAMCD).

She recalled that one of North America’s first marijuana storefronts, the nonprofit B.C. Compassion Club Society, was founded in 1997 with feminist ideals at its core.

“In our early days, 70 percent of the Canadian workforce was male, so we made it policy that 70 percent of our staff had to be female,” Shaw told the Georgia Straight. “And we still have that policy.”

Hilary Black, who cofounded the Compassion Club alongside Shaw, recalls that things happened a little more organically.

“I was 20 years old,” Black recounted. “We were all in our mid- to young 20s. It was just a group of women who were willing to engage in civil disobedience and provide services for marginalized and chronically ill people.”

Regardless of how conscious the group was of its feminist bent back then, Black said the tradition is something worth keeping alive today.

“Women were the roots and the pioneers of medical cannabis in this country,” she emphasized. “And I think it is really important that we continue to see them having a leading voice and influence as the movement moves into an industry.”

Almost 20 years after the Compassion Club opened its doors on Commercial Drive, there are plenty of Vancouver women following in its footsteps. Shaw pointed to Dori Dempster of the Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary, the Village Dispensary’s Andrea Dobbs, and Jessika Villano of Buddha Barn Medicinal Cannabis. Women are also behind some of the city’s most popular oils and edibles, Shaw continued—Brina Levittof Green Penguin Delights, for example, and Apothecary Labs’ Gabriele Jerousek. Another is Mary Jean Dunsdon, better known as Watermelon, whose online cooking show has earned her an international following. (Dunsdon also appeared on the cover of the Straight back in 2008.)

It’s not just in the dispensary industry that women are running the show.

UBC’s Rielle Capler has focused on marijuana and patient care as a research area for more than a decade. Before that, she was another woman involved early with the Compassion Club. More recently, Capler has become a big contributor to evolving legal frameworks, having helped draft the standards and certification program for dispensaries that the City of Vancouver adopted last June.

On the research front, Capler called attention to a cannabis study that was published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review on September 14. Bucking the academic trend of papers often being dominated by men’s names at the top, that study was coauthored by eight B.C. researchers, including Capler, plus Kim Crosby, Lynne Belle-Isle, andSusan Holtzman.

“To do the dispensaries, that was civil disobedience,” she said. “And research was an area that needed pioneering as well because it is still a taboo topic.”

Of course, the Canadian cannabis movement’s most visible face is also a woman’s.

Jodie Emery has carried the crown since her husband, Marc, began a five-year prison sentence in 2010. He was released in August 2014 but has appeared content to see Jodie remain the lead spokesperson for the push to reform marijuana laws.

In a telephone interview, Jodie Emery speculated that one of the reasons women have risen to the top of marijuana reform is that pot—or at least its more legitimate areas—is a relatively new industry that’s going mainstream after efforts began to force old-boys’ networks and institutional sexism out of the workplace.

“Because the legal or semilegal marijuana industry is new, there are positions available for women that men may have otherwise filled before,” she said. “Women have had an equal opportunity to be involved.”

That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement, she added. For example, Emery agreed that her husband’s name often still comes first in media reports on the reform movement, despite Marc taking a back seat for some time.

“Something that women have always dealt with is being somebody based on their husband being somebody,” she said. “I struggle with it.…But I’ve never encountered anyone belittling a female [marijuana] activist.”

At the Village Dispensary in False Creek, Dobbs similarly told the Straight that the marijuana industry is better to women than most but is still far from perfect.

“You get a lot of people calling you ‘darling’; you get a lot of references to ‘the kind of girl that smokes weed’,” she said. “Or, ‘She’s pretty for a girl that smokes weed.’ So there is a lot of that kind of stuff.”

Dobbs also noted that as Canada inches closer to legalizing recreational marijuana, she has started to see the industry adopt chauvinistic advertising strategies, like those on display in beer commercials.

“You see a lot of young, hypersexualized girls handing out leaflets and flyers feeling kind of excited to be part of it but not recognizing that they are not being taken seriously,” she explained.

Working to counter that sort of sexism is Women Grow, a professional association with groups in more than 40 cities across North America.

The Vancouver chapter was founded by Shaw and Shega A’Mula, CAMCD chief operating officer and a relatively new face in B.C.’s marijuana movement.

In a telephone interview, A’Mula gave credit to the women who blazed a trail for her and said she hopes Women Grow can help do the same for the next generation. She invited anybody interested to the group’s next meeting, a networking event scheduled for this Thursday (October 1).

“It’s a really empowering environment,” A’Mula said. “It’s not all big business, like other cannabis events.…It’s a way to have fun, connect, and have conversations you probably can’t have elsewhere.”

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This article was originally published in print and online at Straight.com on September 30, 2015.

Chris Hedges to tell Vancouver the world needs rebels to lead a revolution

Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges is scheduled to speak on state decay and revolution at a September 25 event in Vancouver.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges is scheduled to speak on state decay and revolution at a September 25 event in Vancouver.

Chris Hedges sees revolution on the horizon.

It’s a phenomenon he’s witnessed before. Hedges draws on decades of experience reporting from revolts and counter-insurgencies around the world. He’s covered the dissolution of the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia and Romania, met with guerilla leaders amid conflicts in Central American, and reported from Yugoslavia as the country fell into civil war and acts of genocide.

“The veneer of power appears untouched before a revolution, but the internal rot, unseen by the outside world, steadily hollows out the edifice state,” Hedges writes in his latest book, Wages of Rebellion. “And when dying regimes collapse, they do so with dizzying speed.”

The world is once again characterized by “popular uprisings exploding in waves”, he continues.

“The promised prosperity that was to have raised the living standards of workers through trickle-down economics has been exposed as a lie,” Hedges writes. “A tiny global oligarchy has amassed obscene wealth, while the engine of unfettered corporate capitalism plunders resources; exploits cheap, unorganized labour; and creates pliable, corrupt governments that abandon the common good to serve corporate profit. The relentless drive by the fossil fuel industry for profits is destroying the ecosystem, threatening the viability of the human species. And no mechanism to institute genuine reform or halt the corporate assault are left within the structures of power, which have surrendered to corporate control. The citizen has become irrelevant.”

On Friday, September 25, the American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author is scheduled to opine on those ideas in Vancouver at St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church at Nelson and Burrard.

Ahead of that engagement, Hedges spoke with the Georgia Straight. The transcript of that conversation that follows has been lightly edited for length.

Georgia Straight: “Can you give us a short preview of your upcoming talk in Vancouver?”

Chris Hedges: “The system of corporate capitalism, or what political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called inverted totalitarianism, is not only not sustainable, but it is unravelling. We can’t continue this kind of assault on the climate, we can’t continue these kinds of wars, we can’t continue the reconfiguration of the global economy into a global neo-feudalism, where money is concentrated into the hands of an all-powerful, tiny, oligarchic elite at the expense of everyone else. We are already seeing the signs of disintegration. You look at the political farce that is happening in the United States because the system has been seized by corporate oligarchs and no-longer responds to the grievances, needs, justices, or rights of the citizenry. You see it in the refugee crisis that is besetting Europe, you see it in the wildfires that are sweeping across California. We better wake up and we better respond quickly, or we’re headed for massive societal breakdown. It is already beginning.”

GS: “Getting to your latest book, Wages of Rebellion: You use the word ‘rebel’ with a positive connotation. Let’s begin there: What is a rebel and why is that what’s needed?”

CH: “A rebel is somebody who rises up against the established order and is willing to carry out acts of self-sacrifice in order to defy that order. It is rebels that have always moved history forward. Rebels very rarely succeed. Most of them are wiped out. I mean, that is just a historical fact. But our passive acquiescence to this system, at this point, makes us complicit in our own self-annihilation. So it is to the rebels that we have to listen.”

GS: “When you look around today, who do you see who fits that description?”

CH: “There are lots of them. [Edward] Snowden, [Julian] Assange. They’re there. [Noam] Chomsky, [Ralph] Nader.”

GS: “Early in this conversation, I wanted to raise the issue of Canada’s upcoming election happening this October. Are you watching or thinking about Canada’s election?”

CH: “I’m aware of it. You are able to mount a third party in the NDP in a way that we [the United States] are not. I mean, the game is fixed here.”

GS: “What differences do you see between the two systems? Are the differences as strong as they used to be?”

CH: “There is quite a bit of difference. There is more room within the national discourse for more radical critiques in Canada. Canada is not, like the United States, an inherently violent culture. You are not an imperial power; we, across the border, are infected with that imperial hubris, that belief that we have the right to use our military to impose our ‘virtues’ on the rest of the world. And your political system is not as corrupted as ours. So there is more space for dissent within the system. Now, I don’t know to what extent, if the NDP takes power, it can actually confront these corporate forces embodied in TransCanada and everything else. That I don’t know. I just don’t spend enough time in Canada to know the answers to those questions.”

GS: “Speaking more generally now, how would you describe your faith in electoral politics?”

CH: “I don’t have any faith in electoral politics. We have to begin to build mass movements that take power back. I spend a lot of time in the book, Death of the Liberal Class, chronicling how all the mechanisms by which citizens once were able to defend their interests have been taken from them. So I don’t waste much time on electoral politics.”

GS: “Electoral politics is obviously failing to solve very big and complex problems like inequality and climate change. After so many years, what can be done?”

CH: “I think what people are doing: organizing at a local level to stop fracking, getting arrested at military bases that operate drones, severing ourselves as much as possible from the tentacles of consumer society – that’s what local food production and sustainable agriculture is about. There is a myriad of ways in which we can fight back, and on all of those fronts, that is what offers us hope. But believing that the NDP or Bernie Sanders is going to come in alone and change anything of any substance is very naïve.”

GS: “Towards the end of Wages of Rebellion, you present the story of an Albertan man named Wiebo Ludwig. Some people would call that example radical or an extremist. Is that what’s needed and where we’re at?”

CH: “He was an extremist and he was a radical.”

GS: “And is that what is needed?”

CH: “Yes. Wiebo Ludwig found out that it didn’t matter how many letters he sent. They were going to take that sour gas out of the land and he was right.”

GS: “Can you talk about online activism? Where does it fit into all this? And young voters and the need to overcome apathy?”

CH: “The young generation kind of gets it. Obviously, you have that segment that is staring with their mouths open at their electronic hallucinations, which is just what the corporate state wants. But you look in the United States at groups like Black Lives Matter, or at Idle No More or the Quebec student movement, and you have pretty sophisticated movements among young people who have figured out the political system. Even the protests at the G20. Occupy was a youth-driven movement, the Quebec student movement was a youth-driven movement, Black Lives Matter is a youth-driven movement. And I’ve met all of these leaders and I am a lot more impressed with them than I am with people my own age.”

GS: “I’m surprised we were able to end on an optimistic note.”

CH: “I’m not very optimistic. Things are pretty grim. And that is part of the existential crisis of our time. We do have to grasp the reality that we face and yet resist anyway. But I certainly find a lot more hope in the young, in this generation – which is not being fooled by Obama – than I do anywhere else. I certainly don’t find it among the old, established left, which has kind of just sold out to the Democratic Party of the United States. The political consciousness in the groups that I just mentioned, I think, is quite high.”

Chris Hedges is scheduled to speak in Vancouver at St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church at 7 p.m. on Friday, September 25.

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The article was originally published at Straight.com on September 20, 2015.