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Good morning,

I don’t often spend much time looking at weather forecasts. Not because I have a problem with them, just that I don’t really think about it that much unless I’m specifically planning something outside. And even then, I can be a bit forgetful about it. Since taking on some of these newsletters, I’m spending more time looking at the weather, and I have to say that today’s forecast was kind of painful to key in.

I don’t know, I’m thinking I should ask for hazard pay if I’m having to look at all this future cloudy, rainy weather.

In today’s newsletter, we’ve got an appeal of the public substance use decision, as well as some of the testimony in this week’s Winters Hotel inquiry, plus some good food news!

— Dustin Godfrey

Editor’s note from Geoff — in Wednesday’s email, I misspelled Kevin Quinn, the CEO of TransLink. Apologies for the error, and thank you to all the readers for pointing it out.

If you find this newsletter valuable, please consider forwarding it to your friends. New to the Lookout? Sign-up for free.

WEATHER

Friday: 9 🌡️ 8 | 🌧️

Saturday: 11 🌡️ 11 | 🌧️

Sunday: 14 🌡️ 12 | 🌧️

Monday: 13 🌡️ 8 | 🌧️

TRANSIT

Transit strike escalation possible

With only two months left to go in a court injunction against a law that expanded police power to displace drug users from public spaces, the provincial government is seeking a review of the decision by BC’s top court.

What’s happening: The province is asking the BC Court of Appeal to overturn a Dec. 29 decision by BC Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson, which put a pause on Bill 34 until March 31. 

What’s with the act? The law would have severely constrained the already limited decriminalization pilot project launched a year ago. It was a response to claims that public substance use was on the rise because of the pilot project.

• Opponents of the bill say the powers afforded to police and the areas covered by the public substance use ban are overly broad, and that police would need only have “reasonable grounds to believe” a person had used drugs to tell them to move along or potentially arrest and confiscate their drugs.

A tweet by the plaintiffs in the court case, the Harm Reduction Nurses Association, after news broke of the appeal noted the bill “poses immense risk of death and injury to the most at-risk British Columbians. The evidence is clear that criminalization and displacement only exacerbates the deadly risk of the unregulated drug supply.”

Frustrated BC NDP: Premier David Eby expressed his frustration with the decision multiple times, calling it “profoundly concerning that we can regulate alcohol use, we can regulate tobacco use, but apparently the court has told us that we cannot regulate hard drug use in our province,” according to The Orca.

• However, this comment from Eby, a former lawyer with the BC Civil Liberties Association and Pivot Legal Society, is entirely untrue. The judgment addresses this question, with Hinkson specifically saying the province can regulate public drug use in a way that doesn’t violate drug users’ charter rights.

Grounds for appeal: The province is arguing six grounds of appeal, several of them legal issues, including an argument that the judge failed to afford enough deference to legislators and that pausing the entire law was an overly broad remedy for a finding of irreparable harm.

• But the appeal application also takes aim with how the judge came to find that, on the balance of convenience, allowing the law to proceed could cause irreparable harm, saying the finding “is not firmly grounded on the evidence that was before him.”

It is also arguing the judge “failed to consider that the alleged irreparable harm is avoidable by people who use drugs and, therefore, not irreparable” and that the judge relied on inadmissible opinion evidence.

What the ruling said: The last point is hard to square with the decision, in which Hinkson stated he didn’t place reliance on the opinion evidence the province is referring to, finding the evidence in the 2022 Death Review Panel report “on its own … establishes the risk of irreparable harm to at least some of the plaintiff’s members and to [people who use drugs].”

• It’s not clear how the province plans to argue the irreparable harm is avoidable on the part of drug users, but Hinkson noted one path for drug users to avoid this harm — overdose prevention (OPS) and supervised consumption sites (SCS) — is severely lacking.

“Even where OPS or SCS exist, they do not operate 24 hours per day or 7 days a week, and only 19 provide inhalation services, despite the fact that smoking is the most common method of consumption among unregulated drug toxicity deaths at 65 percent in 2023,” Hinkson wrote.

The timing of the appeal: While the appeal itself was filed a couple days before, The Orca broke the story Wednesday night — the same day in which the BC Coroners Service announced that 2,511 people died from the unregulated drug supply in BC in 2023.

• Mental Health and Addictions Minister Jennifer Whiteside responded to questions by reporters Wednesday afternoon, saying the government stood by the decriminalization pilot project.

In response to questions about the 2023 Death Review Panel’s report’s primary recommendation for a de-medicalized safe supply program, Whiteside repeatedly dodged the question and touted the province’s prescribed safer supply program. 

VANCOUVER NUMBERS

🚌 72 hours: That’s how long the next work stoppage may be next week for CUPE Local 4500 transit supervisors, potentially shutting down bus and SeaBus transit for three days if a deal isn’t reached by Feb. 3. [Vancouver Sun]

💰 5%: Where the Bank of Canada’s interest will hold at least until the next interest rate announcement on March 6. One economist says the country shouldn’t hold their breath for a “soft landing” from inflation rates. [CityNews]

🦠 145,000: A lab at St. Paul’s handles that many microbiological samples each year from BC and Yukon, with 70 percent of the samples being handled by AI powered robots called Tarzan and Jane. [CTV]

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DTES

What the Winters Hotel inquiry has heard so far

A coroner’s inquest into a fire at the Winters Hotel in the Downtown Eastside is underway, looking into the deaths of two residents of the Downtown Eastside building in April 2022. The inquiry is hearing from a number of witnesses, including Misty Fredericks, niece of Mary Ann Garlow, one of the people killed in the fire.

Tragedy: Fredericks spoke for her cousin, John Garlow, who she described as having to jump from a third-storey window to escape the fire, shattering both his legs, according to The Canadian Press. His mother’s last moments were spent ensuring he got out, Fredericks testified.

• Garlow had to jump out the window because there was no other way out, with the doors chained closed and sprinklers in the building not working.

The family of Dennis Guay, the other person who died in the fire and who was deaf, submitted a statement to be read to the jury, saying his death left a “massive void,” according to The Canadian Press.

Shopkeeper’s testimony: A shopkeeper whose business was destroyed in the fire testified that her husband tried to go into the building and put out the fire, but all eight fire extinguishers were empty, according to CTV.

• The shopkeeper, who told the broadcaster she knew Mary Ann and Guay and described them as friendly, testified that she and her husband had approached firefighters to warn them that the two were still in the building but were ignored.

An earlier fire: The Winters Hotel had another fire a few days before the fatal one, and Vancouver Fire Rescue Service Capt. Kris Zoppa testified that he left that scene with a “bad feeling,” according to The Canadian Press.

• Zoppa told the jury he’d given Atira Property Management, which runs the building, a violation notice and instructed them to quickly restore the sprinkler and alarm systems, which weren’t functioning during the first fire.

A manager at the building later testified that staff were encouraged to only call pre-approved tradespeople for work on the building and to only do so during regular business hours to avoid overtime, due to tight budgets, The Canadian Press reported. As a result, the work was scheduled to be done the day of the fire.

No plan to notify deaf tenant: After the first fire, Zoppa gave Atira instructions for fire protection practices, but according to The Tyee, while a fire watch patrol was started, its staffer wasn’t aware of the specific instructions, like wearing visible clothing or carrying an air horn.

• That same staffer testified that he would instead notify people of a fire by yelling, clarifying that he wasn’t aware of protocols for notifying deaf tenants, such as Guay, of a fire.

THE AGENDA

🤷 Mayor Ken Sim said, while announcing the park board transition committee, it was “clear” going into the 2023 election that his ABC slate would disband the park board, but was it? One park board commissioner who campaigned with him disagreed. [CityNews]

👃 Do corporate communications pass the sniff test? A UBC Sauder fellow says two stinks in one week — one from Fortis and another from the Parkland Refinery — and a lack of timely communication to the community about them raises questions about how corporations can gain and maintain the public’s trust. [Vancouver Sun]

😷 On that note, while the refinery said residents don’t have to worry about negative health effects from the smell, which is continuing over several days, fire departments responded to multiple calls, and an air-quality tracker saw a new record for number of reports, including multiple people reporting a cough, sore throat, headache and dizziness. [Vancouver Sun]

🏗️ Some people certainly won’t be happy, but a 30-year plan to build dozens of buildings totalling about 2,600 units — more than half of them below-market rentals or social housing — in the Jericho Lands proposal is getting closer to final approval after a vote Wednesday. [CBC]

🚌 Is Vince Ready… for the job? He’d better be, as he’s once again appointed to the special mediator role, to try to talk down months of broken negotiations between the Coast Mountain Bus Company and CUPE Local 4500 to avoid further strike actions. [CityNews]

➡️ Defence lawyers are refusing to show up to court for post-trial proceedings in Ibrahim Ali’s murder conviction, saying they are afraid of the father of Ali’s victim after he allegedly brought a gun to court. [Vancouver Sun]

🛝 Amendments made to a sensory park proposal changed the plan to instead call for a review of accessible and inclusive parks, and for the Vancouver Park Foundation to start a private fundraising campaign for equipment with the potential to build a sensory park in the future. [Vancouver Sun]

🏔️ Vancouver may be consistently rated one of the best cities to live in, but one immigrant from South Africa says she had to leave before she could call it home, citing loneliness and livability issues. [CBC]

PHOTO OF THE DAY

The old courthouse and the International Cinema, somewhere around the 1950s, according to this Reddit post.

FOOD

🥖 There’s a great reason we have the phrase “bread and butter” and Scout Magazine gets it. They’ve mapped the best bread in Vancouver — go try a new sourdough or an intriguing multigrain at one of these spots! [Scout]

🍸 Or, if you’re looking to get some beverages with a special vibe, check out the Straight’s list of the best “unique, intimate, and under-the-radar cool” bars in Vancouver. [Straight]

🍔 The McRib returns. This is hardly local, but listen, it’s big news and we needed you to know that after a decade away, McDonald’s is bringing the McRib back. [Daily Hive]

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• The Junos are coming back to Vancouver in 2025 after last being hosted here in 2018. The announcement was made at the Fox Cabaret, but the actual event will be held at Rogers Arena from March 26-30. [Postmedia]

• Chinatown is set to receive more than 100,000 visitors next month for the annual Lunar New Year Parade. This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the event, which got its start in January 1974. [Global]

• Vancouver Park Board gave the go-ahead to a weekend-long waterfront EDM show at New Brighton Park in May, with potentially thousands of people coming to the area each day. [Daily Hive]

• Deadpool 3, shot in part in Vancouver, has wrapped up filming, according to local legend Ryan Reynolds. The movie is opening in theatres in July. [Vancouver Sun]

• Is Vancouver okay? CBC set out to check in with locals downtown after a month of wild weather and a transit strike. [CBC]

• Want to have your announcement featured? Learn how here.

VANCOUVER GAMES

This week’s Wordle takes a certain kind of disposition, and maybe a bit of wishful thinking in Vancouver during the winter. Do you think you can get it? Try it here.