City council voted to ask the province to dissolve the Vancouver Park Board

Good morning,

I haven’t had a haircut in more than two years. And before that haircut, in September 2021, I hadn’t had a haircut since a few months before the original pandemic lockdowns in early 2020. All of that is to say that I went into the pandemic a clean-cut, bright-eyed fellow. Today, if I let my hair down, it reaches most of the way down my ribcage.

But I’ve gotta tell you, the prospect of having a drink while getting a haircut is tempting. What am I talking about, you ask? Read below and find out!

— Dustin Godfrey

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WEATHER

Friday: 8 🌡️ 4 | 🌤️

Saturday: 8 🌡️ 5 | 🌤️

Sunday: 9 🌡️ 6 | 🌤️

Monday: 8 🌡️ 7 | 🌧️

CITY COUNCIL

City council voted to ask the province to dissolve the Vancouver Park Board

What’s up?: We all knew this day was coming — and it’s finally come and gone. After council’s 8-3 vote to ask the province to dissolve the elected body, the Vancouver Park Board is on its way out… right? Well, maybe. Vancouver city council voted to kill the park board, despite what CTV called “vocal opposition.” In all, 162 speakers signed up to make themselves heard at the council meeting, most in opposition.

• Background: Mayor Ken Sim campaigned last fall with ABC at first on dissolving the park board, then walking that pledge back to asking the province to help fix the park board — “and if that means getting rid of the elected park board and have them report to council, that is exactly what we will do,” he told CTV News during the campaign.

ABC announced its plans to vote to scrap the elected body — one that isn’t seen in any other BC municipality — last week, and much drama ensued. Sim said the move was to generate savings and efficiencies for local governance — but the Vancouver Sun reported Sim has yet to provide any evidence for how those savings would come about.

Who said what: “The process to me is shocking,” CBC quoted Coun. Adriane Carr as saying. “I have to say I have never heard of a case where a duly elected body was eliminated by another elected body, midterm, with a stroke of a pen.”

“What the motion we're looking at here is a giant real estate play,” current park board commissioner Tom Digby said, according to CTV. “It is literally an attempted real estate coup d'etat.”

That sounds dramatic! Sim, for his part, called Digby’s statement “ridiculous,” adding: “We are literally building in massive protections [for park space]. We've actually increased the level of protections so our parks will be parks for future generations.”

As the Vancouver Sun noted on the potential loss of green space in Vancouver — particularly around waterfront areas — Sim’s office was “not answering questions Wednesday to dispel such notions.”

And while Sim says the city has increased the level of protections on parks, some have pointed out one particular clause in Sim’s motion, which calls for a “process for revoking and/or cancelling the designation of areas designated as permanent public parks.” That process would require a unanimous vote by city councillors and a referendum.

But not all parks have “permanent” designation, and it’s not clear what the process will mean for those areas.

So that’s it? It’s over?: Again, not absolutely. The proposal will still need to go to the BC government, which would then have to amend the Vancouver Charter. But as CBC noted, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs said last week in a statement that the call was city council’s to make.

And the park board isn’t going down without a fight, the Tyee noted. With three ABC commissioners now sitting as independents, following last week’s drama-infused announcement, ABC now holds only three of seven seats on the board, with the Greens holding the seventh seat. The board voted 4-3 to recommend the province keep the park board intact.

• Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer reported that BC Conservatives Leader John Rustad called out Sim’s plan and pushed for the BC NDP to hold a referendum on the issue.

No matter what, it’s a mess for the BC NDP, with Palmer quipping, in reference to the Surrey Police/RCMP debacle, “Deep down inside, they must be whispering a prayer that this emerging civic controversy does not turn into another Surrey.”

Speaking yesterday at an unrelated news conference, Premier David Eby has managed to at least kick any decisions down the line for now, with CityNews reporting that he said folding the park board would need to come with a plan — including on Indigenous consultations.

VANCOUVER NUMBERS

💰 $21.7 million: The amount owed by Vancouver resident Earl Douglas Pasquill to his wife. The BC Securities Commission can test new powers from 2020 to collect, the BC Supreme Court recently ruled. [Vancouver Sun]

🚝 25%: How many more passengers the new Mark V SkyTrain cars will be able to carry. The new cars are en route and expected to be fully implemented by 2028. [CBC]

💊 123,000: The number of people who received free pill contraceptives in BC since the province began offering it in April. Another 30,000 got free intrauterine devices. [CTV]

TOXIC DRUGS

Deaths among people experiencing homelessness increased 138%

What happened: BC’s chief coroner may be departing from government, but she’s not leaving without imparting the importance of her role in addressing the toxic drug crisis in BC. Just this week, she released a report that found 342 unhoused people died from the unregulated drug supply in 2022, an increase of 138 percent over two years.

That figure also towers over the 2015-22 average of 183 deaths per year, with a particularly significant increase in 2022, compared to 2021. Of the 1,464 unhoused people who died of toxic drugs between 2015 and 2022, 306 were in Vancouver. Another 146 were in Surrey, and 118 were in Victoria.

• Of those deaths, nearly three-quarters were aged 30 to 59 and 82 percent were male. Due to lacking data on homelessness in much of the time period considered, the coroners service said it couldn’t draw correlation between homelessness rates and deaths.

Background: Lisa Lapointe announced last week that she’s leaving the position of chief coroner in BC, where she’s been a controversial figure. Harm reduction advocates and drug user groups hailed her as a public figure with considerable integrity, as she pushed the province to adopt non-prescriber models of safe supply.

• Lapointe recently made waves when her death review panel — which included dozens of researchers, public health officials and one police chief — recommended non-prescriber models of safer supply, such as compassion clubs. The BC NDP immediately shot the recommendation down.

An unusual report: The BC Coroners Service also released a statement on deaths in November. The report is unusual in that she’s typically not reported on toxic drug deaths in December. But the statement, issued Wednesday, said it wanted to ensure people are aware of the risk of toxic drugs, as the weeks since October have seen an increasing death toll.

In all, BC saw more than 200 deaths from toxic drugs in November, though data is still under review, and for seven weeks there have been an average of seven deaths per day. It’s not clear how many of those were in Vancouver, but the dashboard, updated to October, puts Vancouver at 26 percent of all deaths in the first 10 months of the year.

• By comparison, the number of unhoused people who died from the toxic drug supply in Vancouver accounted for about 21 percent of the provincial total. The difference may be attributed to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside — home to many unhoused individuals — has a concentration of services, like overdose prevention sites.

Meanwhile, advocates are warning of Xylazine, a tranquilizer not designed for human use, in the drug supply, the Tyee noted.

Lapointe frustrated, angry: In an interview with The Canadian Press this week, Lapointe criticized the BC government’s response since declaring a public health emergency in 2016 as piecemeal and not co-ordinated or “commensurate with the size of this crisis.”

On the death panel review, Lapointe even wondered whether the government had read the report before rejecting it out of hand, according to CP.

THE AGENDA

🌊 Vancouver’s not at fault, but it might feel it if a newly discovered fault line along the Saanich Peninsula goes off. Scientists list Vancouver as one of several communities, including some in Washington, at risk of tsunami if the 72-km fault line causes an earthquake. [Phys.org]

💉 Did you use LifeLab’s services on or before Dec. 17, 2019? Then you might be up for $50-150! The medical lab service provider recently settled a lawsuit, agreeing to pay $9.8 million for a data breach. [Global]

👮 Heiltsuk Nation member Maxwell Johnson is calling for a police watchdog to look at disciplinary actions against officers who handcuffed him and his granddaughter as they tried to open a bank account at the Bank of Montreal, after the officers didn’t attend an apology ceremony. [CTV]

🏒 Roberto Luongo confirmed his Canucks contract 10 years ago “obviously … didn’t suck.” In April 2013, at that year’s trade deadline, he stated otherwise — but he’s singing a different tune as his name is added to the team’s Ring of Honour. [Vancouver Sun]

📈 Metro Vancouver homes are expected to rise three percent in 2024, according to a Royal LePage report — with condos taking a larger jump, at four percent, compared to single-detached homes’ increase of 2.5 percent. [Vancouver Sun]

💸 No profit, no problem? Not according to one study, which finds Vancouver’s “non-profit industrial complex” is structured in a way that can undermine — or act against — the intended positive goals. [The Tyee]

⛵️ The Coal Harbour marina is in a boatload of trouble — first, it was the subject of two lawsuits, both by one owner of a boat moored there; now, it’s suing that same boat owner for allegedly failing to pay moorage fees and for “public drinking, public intoxication and nudity.” [Vancouver Sun]

EVENTS GUIDE

The 16th annual Kingfisher Bluez Christmas Party | Commodore | Sunday, 7pm | Peach Pit, Spank Williams and more performing | Tickets $124

Just For Laughs Vancouver | Various locations | Feb. 15-24 | This isn’t for a couple months, but tickets are on sale today at 10am! | Tickets

Damian + Stephen Marley: Traffic Jam Tour | Queen Elizabeth Theatre | Feb. 27, 8pm | Tickets for this also go on sale at 10am today! | Tickets

Zakk Sabbath | Commodore | Dec. 20, 6:30pm | Like Black Sabbath? Well, here’s the next best thing | Tickets $62

The Emo Nightmare Before Christmas | Hollywood Theatre | Tomorrow, 10pm | It’s emo night at the Hollywood Theatre | Tickets $28

Sinbad! | Metro Theatre | Until Jan. 1 | A fantastically funny show written by the queen of Pantomime | Tickets $40

Winter Harp | Shadbolt Centre | Tomorrow, 3pm and 730pm | Stories, poems and, yes, music, including the harp | Tickets $40

Goh Ballet's The Nutcracker | Queen Elizabeth Theatre | Until Dec. 17 | Telling the tale of Clara and her beloved Nutcracker Prince through ballet | Tickets $132 and up

FOOD

🎄 Looking for a spot that’ll serve you on Christmas? Here’s an idea — or 16 — for you. [Vancouver Sun]

🎉 Or maybe you’re looking further ahead to NYE? Here’s 18 ideas for restaurants to hit up. [Vancouver Magazine]

🍔 You’ll have to go all the way out to Coquitlam for this one, but the Gordon Ramsay Burger has finally arrived in Metro Vancouver! [Vancouver Sun]

🍻 Some metal in your beer? No worries, not that kind of metal — local band Hyperia teamed up with Main Street Brewing to bring us the Hybeeria Ouroboros Lager. [Straight]

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• Another Commercial Drive staple, the Cannibal Cafe, named for a song by the punk band SNFU, fronted by the Vancouver-famous Chi Pig, is closing. [Straight]

• Get buzzed while you get a buzz — barber shops and others are opening up to liquor under looser regulations in Vancouver. [Vancouver Sun]

• If you think Vancouver’s music scene isn’t doing too hot, the city has a new music task force on the job. [Straight]

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GAME TIME

If you’re feeling bored, here’s a relevant Wordle for you to park yourself in front of!