Category Archives: Vancouver

Second Generation health care puts a squeeze on space in the Downtown Eastside

The Portland Hotel Society's Coco Culbertson is concerned about changes to health-care in the Downtown Eastside coming at the expense of non-medical programs that are often preferred by clients distrustful of larger institutions. Travis Lupick photo.
The Portland Hotel Society’s Coco Culbertson is concerned about changes to health-care in the Downtown Eastside coming at the expense of non-medical programs that are often preferred by clients distrustful of larger institutions. Travis Lupick photo.

David Ogilvie has created artwork since his childhood, but it wasn’t until he was 66 years old that he sold his first drawing. At a café on Main Street, the artist gave credit to Gallery Gachet, a space on Cordova Street near Columbia.

“The modest success that I’ve gained has been at least partly due to them,” Ogilvie said. He recounted that in 2015, Gallery Gachet gave him his first proper exhibition and, soon after, the Capilano Review made an offer for a series of his work.

Ogilvie said it can be hard to explain the difference this made in his life, and similarly difficult to explain the health benefits that Gallery Gachet provides to the Downtown Eastside. But he argued that its impact on mental health in the community is significant.

“Without Gallery Gachet, I don’t think I would have gotten this far,” he said. “I might not have made it at all.”

For 22 years, the gallery has operated with support from the provincial health ministry. But in September 2015, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), the regional care provider in charge of that money, eliminated Gallery Gachet’s $132,000 in annual funding.

The cut was the first of many moves VCH has begun as part of its “Second Generation” strategy for health care in the Downtown Eastside. The plan is described by VCH as no less than a “system transformation”. As the name Second Generation suggests, it represents the most significant revision of health care in the Downtown Eastside since VCH’s inception in 2001.

Already five years in the making, Second Generation entered an implementation phase last February. That is scheduled to continue through to October, with an official launch planned for the following month.

What’s at stake is almost $60 million that VCH spends every year on the health of Vancouver’s most marginalized residents, those of the Downtown Eastside.

A September 3 VCH media release lists a host of new mental-health and addictions services planned as part of Second Generation. That document and related materials describe a renewed emphasis on clinical services and integrated care delivered with a low-barriers approach that is heavy on peer involvement. The release warns that programs not falling within this focus on clinical applications may be discontinued.

“VCH contracts without a clear health mandate or those offering stand-alone services without formal connections to health care services may not be renewed,” it reads.

Critics of the plan argue that such a tight focus on medical and psychiatric programs will come at the expense of services that, though less formal, are no less beneficial.

Ted Bruce was interim executive director of the Portland Hotel Society for 14 months before he retired in August 2015.

“There is a need for clinical services but there is also a need to balance the clinical services we provide with some of those other, softer, support systems, which are just as important,” he told the Straight.

Portland operates Insite, North America’s first supervised-injection facility, plus 19 social-housing projects throughout the Downtown Eastside.

“What’s important to any population—and, particularly, these folks—is social inclusion, the ability to build community amongst themselves, and the ability to support each other,” Bruce explained. “The kind of programming that has long-term vision—of not just a clinical service but services that build inclusiveness and community—it’s a very important. But that’s often what is not happening when there is an emphasis only on the clinical.”

Bruce stopped short of direct criticism of Second Generation but added: “There are some things that VCH needs to think long and hard about.”

VCH’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Patricia Daly, is quoted in the September release acknowledging that the transition may encounter resistance.

“This is just the beginning of a long-term strategy for change in the Downtown Eastside that will evolve over time,” she said. “We know not everyone will agree with the changes being made, but as health care providers we know that services in the Downtown Eastside can be improved”.

Three organizations lost in the shuffle

Gallery Gachet was the first nonprofit to lose funding.

On April 7, VCH announced that a second organization would be dropped in the shuffle: the Drug User Resource Centre (DURC), a drop-in across the street from Oppenheimer Park that the Portland Hotel Society has run since 2003. DURC previously received $634,000 a year from VCH.

On May 13, in an email to the Straight, VCH named a third: ARA Mental Health, which offers advocacy services for people with mental-health challenges in a building at Pender and Beatty streets. The organization, founded in 1996, has received about $220,000 in annual government funding the past few years.

VCH has extended support to both DURC and ARA to continue operating while they seek new sources of funding, but only through to the end of this summer.

To be sure, VCH services in the Downtown Eastside are expanding by a number of measures. The clearest of these is funding. VCH has said it is increasing what it spends in the neighbourhood by $4 million a year, bringing the annual total to $59 million. There are also extended service hours coming to a number of existing clinics and an entirely new addictions-treatment centre tentatively planned for Powell Street.

Of course, Gallery Gachet’s take on Second Generation focuses on the money it lost to allow for those programs to expand.

“The pattern that I would say seems to be becoming clear,” said Cecily Nicholson, the organization’s financial administrator, “is that there is a lack of attention to preventative means, social, and tertiary services—services that are not directly clinical but are also completely necessary.”

She described Ogilvie’s story as typical of the gallery’s membership, many of whom struggle with mental-health challenges.

“Like the fellow who just brought in his sculpture last week,” Nicholson said. “These are people who are isolated in SROs—very poor housing conditions—but with wall-to-wall art in their rooms. And they have not been able to share it. That is a common narrative.”

She warned that as VCH moves to fill gaps in its system, it is this population that’s at risk of falling through new cracks that open up.

A state of extreme anxiety

For this article, the Straight spoke with some two dozen people employed by VCH-funded nonprofits and the clients for whom those organizations provide care.

Several people who have spoken to the Straight on a regular basis in the past refused to go on the record for an interview about Second Generation. They cited fears of placing funding in jeopardy. Some pointed to nondisclosure agreements that are now routinely built into contracts with VCH and even applications for VCH contracts.

Those and other conversations revealed a community in a state of extreme anxiety for the changes that are coming.

Coco Culbertson is in charge of housing, community, and peer development for the Portland Hotel Society, one of the few nonprofits that was willing to comment on the record for this story.

She noted that it is still early days in the rollout of Second Generation, and she stressed that service providers don’t yet fully understand how the plan will change health care in the Downtown Eastside.

“It remains to be seen,” she said. “And I think it’s important we stay in discussion with VCH.”

At the same time, Culbertson expressed concern for a focus on clinical services coming at the expense of community programs that she maintained—although perhaps not involving a psychiatrist in a lab coat—do improve people’s health.

“From the PHS Community Services Society’s perspective, nonclinical, nonmedicalized, and noninstitutional approaches to care are at the heart of what we do and why we’ve been successful in engaging thousands of people every day in the Downtown Eastside,” Culbertson said. “I would hope that VCH will continue to value those interventions.”

Marion Allaart is executive director of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (Vandu), a nonprofit founded in 1998 that was instrumental in the fight for Insite. Asked about Second Generation, Allaart’s response was representative of other nonprofit employees who only spoke off the record.

“We’ve been expecting them to come for us for a long time,” Allaart told the Straight.

Service improvements throughout the community

VCH’s mental-health and addictions programs in the Downtown Eastside are overseen by Andrew MacFarlane, operations director of community health services (inner city–east). In a wide-ranging interview at VCH headquarters at West 6th Avenue and Cambie Street, he began by outlining the problems that VCH aims to address with Second Generation.

“We’ve, historically, not been great about being low-barrier and accessible for vulnerable people,” MacFarlane said. “Between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. doesn’t work for a lot of people that have chaos in their lives.”

To that end, MacFarlane said, VCH is extending service hours and expanding programs at three existing clinics: at 59 West Pender Street, 569 Powell Street, and 330 Heatley Street.

At those locations, he said, doors will soon be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

A second complaint VCH heard in its consultation phase for Second Generation was of a system heavily burdened by its complicated structure, where services are isolated from one another in ways that prevent many mentally ill people from receiving care.

“We had programs that were really siloed,” MacFarlane said. “If you saw a mental-health clinician somewhere, then you had to walk somewhere else to a primary-care doctor, who may or may not be in the loop on what is happening with your mental-health treatment.”

To address that problem, new “integrated health-care teams” will deploy at those three locations and others to offer more holistic care, he continued.

“We have a model that we’re implementing that is about having one care team that is really interdisciplinary with a single care coordinator at the centre of it,” MacFarlane said. “Each client will have a designated care coordinator, which will provide a single point of contact for other care providers and agencies.”

Second Generation will also bring a whole new point of access to the Downtown Eastside: the Railtown Centre for Addictions (a working title that could change). VCH declined to reveal a location for the building but multiple sources told the Straight it will likely open on Powell Street east of Oppenheimer Park. VCH will run the centre itself (as opposed to contracting it to a nonprofit). It is scheduled to open this fall.

MacFarlane described the Railtown Centre as a low-barriers medical hub for people with addiction issues.

“This includes an interdisciplinary team, an on-site physician, pharmacist, nurses, and evidence-based psychosocial supports such as social workers, counsellors, peers, and financial workers,” he said.

He noted it will also involve a drop-in component that, crucially, will allow people to connect with addictions services without having to make an appointment or work their way up a wait list.

Through all of that, MacFarlane maintained that harm-reduction programs such as needle exchanges will continue to be a “core competency” of VCH’s work in the Downtown Eastside.

He said that Insite, the city’s only low-barrier supervised-injection facility, has already seen its hours shifted to open earlier in the morning. MacFarlane added that VCH also hopes to soon see supervised injection occur at additional locations. “We are actively pursuing approval to go ahead with that,” he said.

Feedback falling on deaf ears?

For Second Generation, VCH conducted an extensive consultation process that lasted longer than two years.

It commissioned three lengthy papers that presented Downtown Eastside residents’ views on what they want for the community. Today, VCH points to those documents as evidence the Second Generation rollout is following the advice of the people it serves.

At the daily street market on the unit block of East Hastings Street, the Straight asked one of those papers’ authors, Ann Livingston, if Second Generation’s implementation fits with the community feedback she presented in her report.

“Hell, no,” she replied. “I don’t think they’ve looked at it at all.”

Livingston, a cofounder of Vandu, argued that Gallery Gachet and DURC, though not perfect, made people feel welcome and a part of decisions related to their care.

“The things that make the most difference in people’s lives is being welcomed, having autonomy, and having power,” Livingston explained. “Trauma-informed services should be accessible. People should feel welcome. They shouldn’t have to buzz to get in; they shouldn’t have to be a client; they shouldn’t have to give their name….That’s a model for trauma-informed services. But that seems to have been dropped.”

Support for change

Livingston and other Downtown Eastside residents interviewed for this story also raised serious questions about the first big winner in the funding shuffle that’s come with Second Generation: Lookout Emergency Aid Society. She criticized the group’s record on harm reduction in Surrey, where it previously operated as Keys Housing and Health Solutions under the direction of Fraser Health Authority. Livingston took issue with restrictive hours for harm-reduction programs and a past requirement for needle exchange to happen on a one-for-one basis (since abolished).

When DURC lost $634,000 in annual funding from VCH, Lookout gained about $200,000 to allow it to extend hours and expand services at a drop-in centre called LivingRoom, located on Powell Street just east of Oppenheimer Park.

In a telephone interview, Lookout’s executive director, Shayne Williams, defended the organization’s harm-reduction services in both Surrey and Vancouver. He said harm reduction will also be a big part of expanded programs at LivingRoom, though he added it was too early to say exactly what shape those will take.

Williams did, however, note the new LivingRoom will fit with VCH’s stated emphasis on clinical applications. “It certainly won’t be hardcore clinical,” he said. “But the focus will be to be proactive. To help folks get connections to care, to VCH services, to other, more clinical services, and to be that kind of entry point for folks.”

Stephen Finlay is executive director of ARA Mental Health. Despite VCH eliminating funding for his organization, he was largely supportive of Second Generation.

“For many years, everybody has complained—and rightly so—that clients get shuffled from door to door,” he began. “Vancouver Coastal Health listened to that. And they are trying to set up this service so that there is less of that.”

Discussing cuts to his organizations and others like Gallery Gachet and DURC, Finlay alluded to an issue larger than VCH. He pointed out that the health-care provider no longer receives annual budget increases like it once did.

Budgetary constraints

A review of VCH’s annual reports shows Finlay is correct.

In 2009, the B.C. Ministry of Health gave VCH a seven-percent increase to its total operating budget. Since then, there’s been a downward trend in the amount of annual increases. In 2010 and 2011, the increase was three percent each year, then four percent in 2012, two percent in 2013, and three percent in 2014. Then, in 2015, provincial contributions to VCH were reduced by one percent from the previous year.

Since 2010, the change in ministry funding for VCH has averaged plus–two percent per year, barely keeping up with inflation, let alone costs associated with new technologies and aging baby boomers.

Asked if this situation has put a squeeze on services in the Downtown Eastside, VCH’s director of strategy deployment, Natasha Golbeck, remained upbeat.

“We’re always challenged in health care to do more with less and to be increasingly efficient and thoughtful about where we spend resources,” she said. “We are not doing more with less; we’re doing more with more.”

Pressed on whether or not VCH is preparing to eliminate funding for other programs beyond Gallery Gachet, DURC, and ARA Mental Health, Golbeck responded: “The things that are going to be lost have already been lost. At this point, we have made the reallocations that we’ve needed to make.”

The Ministry of Health did not make a representative available for an interview. Quoted in a VCH media release, minister Terry Lake threw his weight behind the Second Generation.

“Change is never easy, but we know it’s desperately needed in the Downtown Eastside,” he said. “Many residents increasingly struggle with chronic conditions and changing addiction issues, but a lack of integration between health services creates barriers to accessing treatment. I applaud Vancouver Coastal Health for making the changes needed to improve patient care in this neighbourhood.”

Losing space

DURC, expected to close by the end of the summer, is a low-barriers community centre that serves as a safe space for alcoholics and people addicted to hard drugs, including stimulants such as methamphetamine and crack cocaine. It offers laundry and showers plus harm-reduction services such as a crack-pipe vending machine and a managed-alcohol program that lets severe alcoholics brew their own beer.

Each Friday afternoon, the managed-alcohol program convenes at DURC for a regular meeting called the “Drinkers Lounge”. What’s said there is usually confidential (as with Alcoholics Anonymous meetings), but the group permitted the Straight to attend on April 29 on the condition that names be withheld.

Participants explained how the program saves people from drinking Listerine and hand sanitizer across the street in Oppenheimer Park. The homebrew they make at DURC is safer, and the Friday meetings allow DURC to connect members to health services, including detox and rehab.

The April 29 meeting began with a roll call of the 35 people in attendance. Next there was a round of happy birthdays, followed by a reading of the group’s rules and mandate. To conclude the meeting’s opening, people were asked to stand for a moment of silence and invited to recite the names of friends or family who had recently passed away or gone missing. One by one, 16 names were called out.

Moving to an open discussion, the topic of the day was DURC’s pending closure and VCH’s reallocation of funds to the Lookout drop-in centre called LivingRoom.

“Where are we going to go?” asked a man in the back. “The City of Vancouver doesn’t want us on the streets around here. They don’t want us in the park. They’re doing this to get rid of us.”

Liz Evans founded the Portland Hotel Society in 1993 and served on the organization’s executive management team for 20 years before she resigned in 2014. She declined to speak specifically on Second Generation, but expressed concern for marginalized people losing the spaces where they feel comfortable.

“If you’re living in a tiny SRO room, 120 square feet, where all you have that’s yours is a sink and a fridge, then having a café to sit in is meaningful,” she said. “And it just feels like space is being lost.”

On May 6, the Portland Hotel Society’s interim executive director abruptly stepped down. Pending the appointment of a new leader, Coco Culbertson is acting as a spokesperson for the organization.

She voiced concerns about the pace with which the Downtown Eastside is changing but maintained that it has learned to take care of itself.

“This community has always had a strong voice when it gets together,” Culbertson said.

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This article originally appeared in print and online at Straight.com on May 21, 2016.

Metro Vancouver hospitals refer hundreds of immigration cases to border police

Byron Cruz of Sanctuary Health warns undocumented immigrants that if they go to a hospital, they might be reported to the Canadian Border Services Agency. Travis Lupick photo.
Byron Cruz of Sanctuary Health warns undocumented immigrants that if they go to a hospital, they might be reported to the Canadian Border Services Agency. Travis Lupick photo.

Byron Cruz has encountered the sorts of situations that arise when someone is afraid a trip to a hospital could end with them being deported from the country.

He once helped a man injured on a construction site connect with a veterinarian who stitched closed a deep cut, for example. And Cruz says it’s common for pregnant women to seek his network’s help for deliveries.

“My number works as a 911 number for undocumented people,” he said, interviewed at his office in the Downtown Eastside. “We never announced our services, but my number has been given to people as the number they can call. That is very scary, because 911 is for emergencies.”

Cruz is an organizer with Sanctuary Health, a group that promises people can access care without fear of any complication that might arise from their immigration status.

He said that recent months have seen Metro Vancouver’s community of undocumented immigrants—which he estimated numbers between 3,000 and 5,000—grow increasingly reliant on such services that exist outside the province’s health-care system. A troubling statistic obtained from Fraser Health, which operates 12 hospitals throughout the Lower Mainland, may reveal why.

From January 2014 to October 2015, Fraser Health referred approximately 500 patients to the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), the federal police force tasked with immigration enforcement.

“When we learned this, we were very shocked,” Cruz said. “This has to be taken very seriously.”

The issue of CBSA referrals gained widespread attention in 2014 when it was reported that the previous year transit police forwarded 328 incidents to CBSA. Those calls resulted in 62 investigations and at least one death: in December 2013, Lucia Vega Jiménez committed suicide while in CBSA custody after transit police arrested her for fare evasion.

Since then, the City of Vancouver has worked to designate itself a “sanctuary city”, where undocumented immigrants can access municipal services regardless of their status. But the rest of the region has not shown the same enthusiasm for such policies.

In a telephone interview, Fraser Health spokesperson Tasleem Juma confirmed that 500 calls to CBSA was an “approximation” for the period January 1, 2015, to October 7, 2015.

Juma claimed that Fraser Health does not know how many of those referrals resulted in CBSA launching an investigation, nor could she say how many ended in deportation. “Once the information goes to CBSA, what they do with it they don’t report back to us,” she said.

CBSA refused repeated requests for an interview. A spokesperson for the B.C. Ministry of Health told the Straight the province does not have a policy on immigration referrals and leaves those decisions to each service provider.

According to Juma, Fraser Health primarily contacts CBSA for billing purposes. She explained that nonresidents are charged different rates from residents and sometimes a call to CBSA is required to confirm a patient’s status. However, a Fraser Health policy document obtained by the Straight states that both physicians and nurses have “responsibilities” to attempt to see a nonresident discharged back to their home country.

Juma maintained that those sections are written to mean staff should ensure a nonresident will have access to health services after they leave Canada.

“We are not in the business of dealing with immigration issues,” she said. “When somebody needs emergency care and they come to us, we will take care of them.”

Juma added Fraser Health is open to revising guidelines for dealings with CBSA to harmonize its policies with providers across the region. “I think that would go a long way in relieving people’s concerns about coming to get health-care services,” she said.

Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) and Providence Health Care, which operate Vancouver General and St. Paul’s hospitals, said they could not supply numbers for CBSA referrals by deadline.

Juan Solorzano, VCH executive director of population health, told the Straight VCH now requires that a patient give their permission before a call is made to CBSA. He noted they can refuse, in which case, if residency status cannot be confirmed for billing purposes, the patient will be charged the higher rates of a nonresident.

“That policy was updated in August 2015,” Solorzano said. “We will no longer call the border services agency without consent from the client.”

Regarding the 328 cases transit police sent CBSA in 2013, Anne Drennan, a spokesperson for the force, told the Straight her organization has implemented similar reforms. She revealed that in 2014, there were only 48 referrals. And so far in 2015, transit police have called CBSA just 18 times.

“We had no interaction with CBSA in November,” she said. “What changed was the policy. We no longer ask people about their status in the country.”

City councillor Geoff Meggs delivered an update on Vancouver’s efforts to become a sanctuary city. He reported that a draft document is essentially finished and expected to begin circulating among advisory councils before the end of the year. From there, he said, he hopes it will go before city council during the first half of 2016.

Meggs acknowledged that immigration is primarily a federal issue and so the city’s authority on such policies is limited. But he added that Vancouver is acting where it can.

“Immigration and residency status is not relevant to us,” he said. “So you are safe to do business with us.”

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This article originally appeared in print and online at Straight.com on December 9, 2015.

Airbnb could be taking 2,400 units out of Vancouver housing stock, study finds

Applying filters to data presented by the Inside Airbnb website shows a large number of Vancouver listings are for an entire place that is also available for more than 90 days of the year. That suggests some of these 2,408 units may not have full-time residents and are essentially operating as hotels.
Applying filters to data presented by the Inside Airbnb website shows a large number of Vancouver listings are for an entire place that is also available for more than 90 days of the year. That suggests some of these 2,408 units may not have full-time residents and are essentially operating as hotels.

Fresh data about Airbnb rentals in Vancouver suggests a growing number of the city’s couches, spare rooms, and entire homes and apartments are up for rent via the popular mobile app.

According to online information obtained on December 3, there were 4,728 Airbnb listings for the city.

Of those, 3,179, or 67 percent, were for an entire place; 1,399, or 30 percent, were for a private room; and 150, or three percent, were for a shared room.

The data was collected and made available by Inside Airbnb, a website run by New York–based photojournalist Murray Cox. He describes the project as an “independent, non-commercial set of tools and data that allows you to explore how Airbnb is really being used in cities around the world”.

Cox’s study also found that of those 3,179 Vancouver listings for an entire place, 76 percent or 2,408 units fall into a “high availability” category, meaning they are available to rent for more than 90 days per year.

“Entire homes or apartments highly available year-round for tourists probably don’t have the owner present, could be illegal, and, more importantly, are displacing residents,” the website states.

In April 2015, the vacancy rate for the Vancouver region (as opposed to the city) was 1.4 percent, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corperationdown. That’s down from 1.8 percent the previous year.

Cox’s look at Vancouver was constructed with the help of Karen Sawatzky, an SFU master’s student who published similar information last summer. In a telephone interview, she cautioned that there are differences in how the two packages were assembled and presented. But Sawatzky said even a rough comparison makes clear that more Vancouver residents are renting spaces on Airbnb.

Her data was captured on June 1, 2015. It showed 3,473 Airbnb listings for Vancouver, 2,466 of which were for an entire dwelling.

Sawatzky noted June is typically a busy month for the tourism industry, whereas December is not. She said the increase in the number of listings heading into the winter months raises questions about whether Airbnb is seasonal or becoming a more permanent way for people to make money by renting rooms year-round.

NPA city councillor Melissa De Genova told the Straight she requested that city staff review the Airbnb issue last summer and is waiting to hear back.

“We have to look at our existing rental stock and how Airbnb is affecting that,” De Genova said. “If those properties are coming off the market because it is more lucrative for the owner to rent them as an Airbnb to tourists, we certainly have to look at that.”

De Genova emphasized that the so-called sharing economy has developed as an important new sector and one that provides services many people enjoy. She said she doesn’t believe Airbnb should be banned from Vancouver and recommended the city accommodate and regulate Airbnb in ways that minimize impacts on renters and communities.

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This article originally appeared in print and online at Straight.com on December 9, 2015.

Downtown Eastside street vendors blame city for loss of income and community

A new city-sanctioned site for vending at 501 Powell Street has failed to attract many customers. Travis Lupick photo.
A new city-sanctioned site for vending at 501 Powell Street has failed to attract many customers. Travis Lupick photo.

A survey of more than 50 street venders in the Downtown Eastside reveals that a majority feel they are negatively impacted by new policies the City of Vancouver implemented on November 16.

Since that date, the Vancouver Police Department has kept hawkers off the once-crowded unit block of East Hastings Street, which runs between Carrall and Columbia streets.

The survey, conducted between November 21 and November 24 by the Carnegie Community Action Project, collected 48 responses to the question: “How have you been impacted by the VPD’s crackdown?” Of those, 38 people, or 79 percent, reported a loss of income.

One respondent claimed that the change led them to prostitute themselves. Several others warned that the crackdown on venders will drive low-income people to commit crimes such as robberies.

In a telephone interview, Vision Vancouver councillor Andrea Reimer acknowledged concerns for venders’ incomes. “That came through loud and clear,” she said about the survey.

Reimer emphasized that the city didn’t just “encourage” venders to move from the unit block but also made two alternative sites available. Those are 62 East Hastings and 501 Powell Street. (A Sunday market on Carrall between Cordova and East Hastings will also continue to operate.)

The survey suggests a majority of venders have issues with those sites, mainly, that they do not attract the same volume of foot traffic as the unit block.

Reimer noted that very few respondents suggested abolishing either of the new sites. “If there were a way to get the customers up…if you can solve that problem, then this is a preferable model,” she said. “But it’s really challenging.”

According to Reimer, part of the blame for so many people living in poverty in the Downtown Eastside lies with the province. “If anything, what that document represents to me a damning indictment of a lack of welfare-rate increase since 2007,” she explained.

In addition to economic hardship, a number of people said the clearing of the unit block resulted in a loss of community.

“I don’t know where everyone is,” one response reads. “I can’t find friends and family. The street market was social and we looked out for each other. I have lost friends.”

A small minority describe the city’s program in a positive light. “Glad its been cleared up,” one person said. “I was embarrassed.”

Doug King is a lawyer with Pivot Legal Society who has publicly denounced the city’s new policy on the unit block as one of “displacement”.

“We believe that the ultimate solution is bylaw reform,” he said. “The street-and-traffic bylaw is archaic in how it is worded.”

That piece of municipal legislation forbids unauthorized street vending. King suggested the law be amended to limit nuisances related to vending but allow the activity itself.

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This article originally appeared in print and online at Straight.com on December 2, 2015.

Cigarette-style warning labels about climate change may soon appear at gas stations around Vancouver

The City of Vancouver could follow the City of North Vancouver and become the second municipality to require gas-pump warnings on the effect of fossil fuels on climate.
The City of Vancouver could follow the City of North Vancouver and become the second municipality to require gas-pump warnings on the effect of fossil fuels on climate.

In the early 2000s, Health Canada began requiring graphic warning labels on cigarette packages. In explicit detail, they depict children harmed by secondhand smoke and conditions such as lung cancer to remind consumers of tobacco products’ full effects on human health.

Now a plan is in the works to see the same sort of campaign raise awareness of climate change via messages posted on fuel pumps at gas stations.

In a telephone interview, city councillor Tim Stevenson said the idea caught his attention last spring and he’s been pushing hard for the City of Vancouver to make it happen.

“There were initial concerns that this would be problematic, legally, but both the head of the law department and internal staff have told me there is no impediment,” he told theStraight. “I am anticipating that staff will come back within two to three months, and then we can move forward.”

Stevenson said the idea has worked its way into the “Greenest City Action Plan”, a strategy document that sets goals the city says will make Vancouver the cleanest metropolis in the world by 2020.

If Vancouver does require information about fossil-fuel emissions to be displayed on gas pumps, it will become the second in the region to enact such a measure. On November 17, councillors for the City of North Vancouver voted unanimously in favour of a bylaw that requires gas stations to post such information.

“We’re told we’re the first in the world,” Coun. Linda Buchanan told the Straight by phone.

Buchanan said the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. She acknowledged there have been some concerns raised about whether overtly negative messages could anger people and turn them off the issue of climate change. Therefore, Buchanan continued, city staff are exploring how attention can be called to the connection between fossil fuels and climate change in ways that are positive.

“This is about establishing that link for people but also engaging them in the dialogue,” she said.

The idea came from Our Horizon, a Canadian environmental group that focuses on helping cities reduce carbon emissions. On the phone from Victoria, B.C. campaign director Matt Hulse called attention to recent news that the New York state attorney general is investigating oil giant Exxon Mobil to establish whether or not it has lied to the public about fossil fuels, climate change, and impacts on human health. That inquiry, revealed by the New York Times on November 5, has attracted comparisons to legal troubles cigarette companies have faced since the early 1990s. Hulse listed additional parallels between tobacco and oil.

“Both have addictive qualities,” he told the Straight. “There are similarities in their problems, and that encourages similarities in their solutions as well.”

Hulse noted that studies have shown cigarette packages’ graphic warnings have proven effective in reducing the number of people smoking, and he said he is optimistic a similar campaign could do the same for oil.

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This article originally appeared in print and online at Straight.com on November 25, 2015.

First Nations activist appeals Vancouver police dismissal of complaint

A review and dismissal of a complaint against the Vancouver police filed by Audrey Siegl includes many pages that are almost entirely redacted. Travis Lupick photo.
A review and dismissal of a complaint against the Vancouver police filed by Audrey Siegl includes many pages that are almost entirely redacted. Travis Lupick photo.

A prominent First Nations activist is appealing a decision by the Vancouver Police Department’s professional standards section (PSS) to dismiss a complaint she filed claiming abuse of authority and oppressive conduct toward a member of the public.

Protesters cry gentrification after city clears vendors from unit block of East Hastings

SFU student Amy Widmer said she organized a protest against the city clearing vendors from the unit block of East Hastings because that program fits into a wider pattern of gentrification and displacement. Travis Lupick photo.
SFU student Amy Widmer said she organized a protest against the city clearing vendors from the unit block of East Hastings because that program fits into a wider pattern of gentrification and displacement. Travis Lupick photo.

A small but vocal protest stopped the flow of traffic along East Hastings Street at Main for more than an hour this afternoon (November 20).

The demonstrators, mostly students from Simon Fraser University, said they were there in response to what they described as the city’s forced removal of vendors who once lined the unit block of Hastings between Carrall and Columbia streets.

“The recent police action displaced vendors along East Hastings Street and displaced everyone who was sleeping along this street as well,” said Amy Widmer, an SFU student and one of the protest organizers. “I don’t want to swear but this is bullshit. It’s another action to provide space for the wealthy.”

Before last Monday (November 16), the unit block was crowded with hawkers, many of whom survive off vending as their primary source of income. But beginning on that date, the City of Vancouver working with the Vancouver Police Department implemented a program that aims to keep the block free of street vending.

A heightened police presence was deployed to the area in an effort to deter crowds from congregating there. Meanwhile, the city made available two new sanctioned sites for vending. Those are at 62 East Hastings Street and 501 Powell Street. A third location open on Sundays at Pigeon Park will also continue to operate.

The November 20 protest began on the south side of the unit block of East Hastings Street near Carrall. Interviewed there, a well-known activist who calls himself Homeless Dave told the Straight the new sites the city is promoting don’t make up for the space they took from vendors by moving people from the unit block.

“This is a small marketplace,” he said of 62 East Hastings. “It’s much smaller than what’s required, it’s off the street to the side, and it isn’t frequented. It’s not visible.”

Dave similarly described the second new site, at 501 Pender Street, as “terrible”.

“There are no people there,” he said. “It is out of the way. People, the foot track around here and from Gastown, they’re not going to go there.”

From the south sidewalk of the unit block, a crowd of between 20 and 30 people moved into the street and blocked both lanes of traffic along East Hastings. The group then moved to 138 East Hastings and stopped there, continuing to impede vehicles.

Widmer said the demonstration targeted that address because it’s an example of higher-income people moving into the Downtown Eastside in ways that push lower-income residents from the neighbourhood.

“We are at Sequel 138 because these condos are opening in three weeks and it is no coincidence that they [the city] are displacing all the vendors just before the opening of these condos,” she said. “This is the gentrification process.”

From the sidelines of the demonstration, Landon Hoyt, executive director of the Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association, said he sympathizes with a lot of what the student demonstrators were saying.

“We understand the reasons for wanting to protest this kind of stuff,” he said. “We’ve worked with the Downtown Eastside Street Market for quite a while now. We’re all about finding income-generating opportunities in whatever form. And so the city providing this space that is safe and legal and checks all the boxes for these people to vend, we think it’s a really positive thing.”

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This article was originally published online at Straight.com on November 20, 2015.

City sweeps Downtown Eastside vendors off the unit block of East Hastings

Before Monday, November 16, a section of East Hastings Street that runs between Carrall and Columbia was crowded with street vendors. But since that date, merchants have been kept away by an increased police presence. Travis Lupick photo.
Before Monday, November 16, a section of East Hastings Street that runs between Carrall and Columbia was crowded with street vendors. But since that date, merchants have been kept away by an increased police presence. Travis Lupick photo.

The City of Vancouver has finally cleared vendors from the unit block of East Hastings Street, officials confirmed in a November 17 meeting with community members and police at the Woodward’s Building.

Taking care to avoid saying that people are being forced to leave the area, the city made clear it will no longer tolerate the crowd that for years has congregated along the north side of the street that runs between Carrall and Columbia.

An email obtained by the Georgia Straight provides more information. On November 13,Mary Clare Zak, City of Vancouver managing director of social policy and projects, sent relevant stakeholders a note about the initiative.

“As many of you are aware, City staff (along with Park Rangers, VPD and Housing Outreach) have been working over the past months to find ways to address the subject of street vending in the DTES, most notably in the 0-300 blocks of East Hastings,” it begins.

“The objective of the Street Vending Task Force is to assist and facilitate the movement of street vendors from the Unit Block E. Hastings Street and surrounding area, to designated vending locations,” the email continues.

It states that beginning November 16, “you will begin to see a larger City presence in the DTES, including VPD officers, as we continue our efforts in the area to ensure it is a safe place for everyone”.

It appears three events aligned to create the right time and an opportunity for the city to clear the block of hawkers, many of whom survive off vending as their primary source of income.

The first, discussed in Zak’s email, is the city opening new sanctioned sites for street vending; those locations are 62 East Hastings and 501 Powell Street. Council approved these last June.

“The ability to better consolidate the activity, along with a thoughtful and constructive enforcement approach, will decrease and address unlawful vending taking place in other areas of the Downtown Eastside, including the blocks of East Hastings between Main and Carrall Street,” a staff report reads.

In addition, the Sunday market on Carrall Street between Cordova Street and East Hastings will continue to operate.

The second issue at play is what Vision Vancouver councillor Andrea Reimer told the Straight is an increased level of violent crime in the area and deteriorating health conditions on the block.

“There is not a desire to force anyone [to move],” she said by phone. “There is a desire to support the safest possible environment.” Reimer denied that the actions described in Zak’s email are about moving vendors off the block.

The third factor is the demolition of a building that previously occupied 41 East Hastings, at the centre of the block. According to a report that went before city council in September 2013, that site—previously a three-storey building housing a ground-floor bottle depot—will soon host a 14-storey social-housing project operated by Atira Development Society.

VPD Const. Brian Montague said the construction project will not leave room for vendors.

“There is going to be scaffolding there,” the force spokesperson told the Straight. “They are just not going to be able to be there anymore. So we are using it as an opportunity to encourage people to go to one of these three sites rather than making it a habit to go to that specific block.”

As the Straight went to press on November 17, city officials were still in the meeting with vendors and community members convened to discuss the project.

There at the Woodward’s Building, city communications manager Tobin Postma said there are now enough official locations for vending and so no longer any reason for unsanctioned vendors to line the block. VPD district commander Howard Chow confirmed that the force has increased patrols in the area. Addressing community concerns, Chow claimed that ticketing would not be used as a tactic for moving people along.

In a telephone interview, Roland Clarke, a coordinator for the Downtown Eastside Street Market Society, recounted watching the first day of the initiative unfold.

“There were at least five or six police officers visible on the block,” he said. Clarke added that they remained there for some time and their presence dissuaded people from stopping to sell goods.

“The city is rolling out a policy to really try and prevent the unsanctioned vending,” he concluded.

Clarke noted the market society has no formal interest in vending on the unit block but said it plays an informal role in keeping the peace in the area, given many people who occupy the strip are also registered members who participate in the sanctioned Sunday market on Carrall.

A video recorded on November 16 and shared with the Straight confirms Clarke’s account of November 16, showing the north side of the unit block completely cleared of vendors. When the Straight visited on November 17, VPD officers were stationed in pairs at either end of the block and for the second day in a row, the area remained empty.

Sarah Blyth is a member of the street market society’s board of directors and a former Vision Vancouver parks commissioner. She said the non-profit—which has more than 800 registered vendors—is trying to make the best of a bad situation.

“I think it is a push to get rid of the vendors on Hastings Street and to get them into 62 and 501 Powell,” she said. “The thing is, there is not enough space. So it’s really going to be difficult to do.”

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This article originally appeared in print and online at Straight.com on November 17, 2015.

FOI watchdog finds City of Vancouver chief of staff “deletes emails on a weekly basis”

A January 2015 complaint reviewed by B.C.'s privacy commissioner reveals chief of staff for the City of Vancouver Mike Magee deleted emails on a weekly basis. Matt Burrows photo.
A January 2015 complaint reviewed by B.C.’s privacy commissioner reveals chief of staff for the City of Vancouver Mike Magee deleted emails on a weekly basis. Matt Burrows photo.

The Mayor of Vancouver’s right-hand man has been regularly deleting emails, a practice that has engulfed the provincial government in a widening scandal related to how civil servants destroy information in ways that may interfere with the public’s access to information.

That city-hall revelation was included in a complaint review by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (OIPC) pertaining to Mike Magee, chief of staff for the City of Vancouver.

“The City informed me that its IT department searched Mr. Magee’s City email account for all emails fitting the criteria set out in your request, which includes all emails to, from and CC,” it reads. “Mr. Magee has advised that he saves very few of his emails and deletes emails on a weekly basis.”

The OIPC’s decision is dated January 28, 2015, but was not made public until freelance journalist Bob Mackin published it online on November 10. It pertains to a complaint he filed with the OIPC alleging the city failed to meet its obligations under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The OIPC ruled in the city’s favour and dismissed Mackin’s complaint.

Magee was not made available for an interview. Deputy city manager Sadhu Johnstontold the Straight there are rules that ensure staff comply with record-keeping requirements. He said each staff member is responsible for their own email account, but he argued that storage constraints mean staff can’t retain every digital record they send or receive.

“We do expect people to delete emails from their accounts,” he said. “Most of our staff get hundreds of emails per day and, as the OIPC says, you have to determine whether the record is transitory or permanent. And if it’s permanent, you do need to store it on our document storage system.”

Mackin told the Straight he published the OIPC review that mentioned Magee’s emails because of attention paid to similar practices in an October 22 OIPC report that described how employees in the premier’s office and two ministries regularly deleted emails from their accounts. The OIPC expressed concern for a practice known as “triple deleting”, where civil servants took extra steps to make deleted records difficult to recover.

Johnston said he was “not aware of people doing that” at City Hall.

“I wouldn’t call it triple deleting,” he added. “But, yes, you can delete emails from your inbox that are transitory.”

The same day Mackin published his concerns, the OIPC announced it had begun a review of Vancouver’s access to information practices. OIPC spokesperson Cara McGregor told the Straight it was not initiated in response to a specific complaint. She said it was part of an ongoing “audit and compliance program” started in 2014.

At the same time, a related OIPC media release describes Vancouver as “among public bodies with the highest number of complaints and access to information appeals received by this Office”.

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This article originally appeared in print and online at Straight.com on November 10, 2015.

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.