Should we defund private SROs?

Good morning,

Freedom of information is a prohibitively boring topic for most people, and I get it. When movies are made about journalism, they generally don’t linger on the precise wording of a request for government records, nor the negotiation between government and requester over the scope of a request, nor the quasi-judicial process for arbitrating disagreements between public bodies and the requester.

But access to government records is what produces some of the most important accountability journalism not only at the national or provincial level, but also at the local level.

So when the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of BC reports that the system for freedom of information in BC is slower than ever, I hope your eyes don’t just glaze over. Hold your elected officials to account for this, because without it, it’ll only get harder to hold them accountable for future issues.

— Dustin Godfrey

WEATHER

Wednesday: 7 🌡️ 4 | 🌦️

Thursday: 7 🌡️ 4 | 🌧️

Friday: 7 🌡️ 0 | 🌦️

WINTERS HOTEL

Should we defund privately owned SROs?

The deaths of 63-year-old Mary Ann Garlow and 53-year-old Dennis Guay were deemed an accident by the jury in a two-week coroner’s inquest into the fire at the Winters Hotel that killed them, according to Global. But that doesn’t mean their deaths weren’t avoidable.

What happened: The verdict came after testimony from a variety of sources, which outlined a number of areas where safety precautions were inadequate or altogether missing. That included a missing safety plan for the aging SRO and 50-year-old sprinklers and alarm that didn’t meet today’s standards, according to the Tyee last week.

• The jury heard that non-profit supportive housing operator Atira Property Management, which operated the Winters Hotel, had been ordered by a coroner to put in place a fire safety plan but still didn’t have one when the building burned down in April 2022, the Tyee reported.

The fire safety plan: Atira told the jury it had a fire safety plan, but the document was destroyed in the fire, adding that Royal City Fire Supplies Ltd. would have a copy — but that company’s CEO testified he couldn’t find any fire safety plan for that building, according to the Tyee.

• The reporting echoes earlier testimony from a Winters Hotel staff member, who said he wasn’t aware of any procedures to notify Guay, who was deaf, of a fire, according to the Tyee. The jury also previously heard the fire captain who responded to the previous fire ordered Atira to have the sprinklers reset — but that they weren’t scheduled to be reset until the day of the deadly fire that followed, according to The Canadian Press.

The recommendations: The jury returned from deliberations on Monday and delivered 25 recommendations. Those included that BC Housing work with operators of SRO buildings to bring them up to a higher standard than the bare minimum in fire safety codes or otherwise replacing the buildings entirely.

The jury also recommended that a “resource team” be formed to help respond to emergencies at the buildings.

• Jury foreperson John Knox noted testimony that staff at the buildings are “overwhelmed during emergencies,” The Canadian Press reported. The jury also called for the VPD to work with SRO operators to develop best practices for finding missing people, as Atira initially said all tenants of the building were accounted for.

Guay’s and Garlow’s remains weren’t found until days later, while the building was being torn down and rubble removed. Further recommendations revolved around alerting deaf residents of the fire, including potential legislative requirements, and other precautions.

The biggest recommendation: The jury’s widest-reaching recommendation was for the province to end or phase out the practice of publicly funded SROs being operated in privately owned buildings. Atira backed that finding up in a statement, The Canadian Press reported.

• “It is becoming increasingly clear that no reasonable investment in these buildings will ensure the health and safety of staff and tenants,” the non-profit said in a statement to CP.

In its statement, Atira Women’s Resource Society said it supports all the recommendations put forward by the jury, calling funding for supportive housing an “investment in the future.”

VANCOUVER NUMBERS

⚡️ 570,000: The number of apartments that could be powered and heated by the energy used for a cryptocurrency mining operation. Vancouver forestry company Conifex Timber Inc. lost its BC Supreme Court bid to force BC Hydro to provide a massive amount of energy each year to a crypto mine. It would require 2.5 megawatt-hours to operate. [Global]

💰 $8 million: A lawyer who admitted to misappropriating that much money from client trust funds to feed his gambling addiction has been banned from practising law for seven years. [CBC]

🏘️ 1,928: A new BC Housing proposal for Rupert and East Broadway would include that many social housing units. The site, called Skeena Terrace, currently houses 230 subsidized units in 60-year-old buildings, meaning the redevelopment would increase the number of units more than eightfold. [CBC]

📈 1.8: The number of percentage points shelter costs — rent and mortgages — are expected to contribute to inflation over the year. It’s about four times above the average from the last five years. [Financial Post]

📉 538%: The land valuation in a Kerrisdale property decreased by that much year-over-year, while the 96-year-old building, which houses the community staple Kerrisdale Cameras, mysteriously increased by just over the same amount, at 539 percent. [Vancouver Sun]

🧑‍⚖️ $6.4 million: The combined assessed value of three Vancouver properties tenants allegedly used to produce and sell drugs at. The BC government is asking for the court’s permission to seize the properties, despite no charges being laid. [Vancouver Sun] 

🏢 $300 million: The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Oxford Properties Group, owned by Ontario’s municipal workers’ pension, sold two downtown Vancouver office buildings, with tenants that included Amazon, to German firm Deka Group for that much. [Vancouver Sun]

🏨 $596,000: The federal government spent that much money on luxury hotel rooms in Vancouver that went unused after nearly half of the European parliamentarians listed as delegates at the annual Organization for Security and Co-operation didn’t show up. [CBC]

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DREAM HOME

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THE AGENDA

🤝 Vancouver’s park board is going ahead with hiring a legal team to fight the bid by Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim to shutter the elected board. The vote fell along predictable lines, with the four independent and Green commissioners in favour and the three remaining ABC commissioners against. [Vancouver Sun]

👮 A woman who stabbed a man during a drug deal gone wrong told investigators her first call after the stabbing was to then-celebrated Vancouver detective James Fisher. The woman claims Fisher advised her on how to hide the man’s blood in her car. [CBC]

📚 It’s unclear if an allegedly fast-tracked school for Olympic Village is on the tracks at all. The BC NDP promised to speed up the construction of the school, earmarked since 2007, but today, the property remains untouched. [CBC]

🤷 Will an extension to the foreign homebuyer ban to 2027 make much of a difference for the Lower Mainland? Likely not, some experts say, with one noting only 1.1 percent of sales involved non-Canadian buyers in 2021, the year before the ban was announced. [CTV]

🚔 The Independent Investigations Office is investigating after the VPD arrested a woman who says she was resting an injured knee and, in doing so, allegedly dislocated her shoulder and severely tore her rotator cuff. [CBC]

🧑‍⚖️ The BC government isn’t currently considering relocating the Downtown Eastside courthouse, despite calls from Crown prosecutors after one was hospitalized in an assault on her way to work. [Vancouver Sun]

🏡 The airspace above the zoned height allowances on a piece of land is public space — and one economist says governments shouldn’t hand that public space over to private landowners freely, arguing upzoning should come with a compensation to the public who owned that airspace. [The Tyee]

🚛 With 34 incidents of trucks crashing into overpasses since the end of 2021, the industry has offered a number of reasons, including a lack of training and more. But some truckers say pay pressures and stiff competition that hires inexperienced drivers are also to blame. [Vancouver Sun]

🚨 The BC RCMP sent its Community-Industry Response Group to police events protesting Israel’s war on Gaza, describing the events as “pro-Hamas.” The C-IRG is under investigation for widespread allegations of misconduct over its deployment in protests against resource extraction projects. [The Tyee]

👀 Vancouver will see some level of tourism increase from the World Cup, but experts say people shouldn’t set their expectations too high. While the games here and in Toronto should add $1.2 billion to Canada’s GDP, the cost to taxpayers between the two cities is estimated at about $550 million, and experts say claims of long-term tourism boosts aren’t realistic. [Vancouver Sun]

ARTS

Theatre

Metro Theatre’s rendition of Send Me No Flowers, following the hypochondriac who thinks he’s dying and wants to set his wife up with her ex so she doesn’t get lonely, launched over the weekend and is running through to Feb. 24 at its Marine Drive space.

Or you can watch a crew of up-and-comers with Langara College’s Studio 58 portray fairytale icons like Little Red Ridinghood, Rapunzel and more in the musical Into the Woods until Feb. 18.

Music

City and Colour is returning to play Rogers Arena tomorrow night, showcasing the band’s seventh album, The Love Still Held Me Near. Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats are opening for City and Colour. [Vancouver Is Awesome]

Francophone music, dance and art is coming together on the West Coast from March 8-10 in the 35th annual Festival du Bois — though you’ll have to make your way out to Coquitlam for it. [Straight]

Movies 

Vancouver’s Union Street was once home to the Black neighbourhood Hogan’s Alley, which was displaced in the 1970s with the construction of the viaduct. Jamila Pomeroy’s Union Street, playing twice this evening at the Vancity Theatre, is a documentary that unveils the story, as well as the erasure of Black history in Canada and the spread of the Ku Klux Klan in Vancouver and elsewhere north of the border. [VIFF]

The Braid, playing tonight and tomorrow at the Vancity Theatre, brings viewers to Italy, India and here in Canada, as three women struggle and persevere in their own ways with strong acting and an emotional pay-off.

Art

If cocktails aren’t art, then I don’t know what is! Anyway, Science World’s popular Science of Cocktails fundraiser is coming back for its seventh year on April 11. [Daily Hive]

If you’re looking for more traditional art forms (for whatever reason), Scout Magazine has seven exhibitions you can check out this month. [Scout]

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• Our little furry neighbours were making a feast of, uh, something? A viral video going around on social media showed dozens of rats crowding at Art Phillips Park, apparently eating something on the ground. [CTV]

• Hello, Kitty! …Kitty? Hello? Kittyyyy? Where are you? Kitty?! Hello!? A forthcoming Hello Kitty Cafe that was originally planned to open in July before being pushed back several times has been delayed yet again, this time to (allegedly) March. How long before we just say Goodbye Kitty? [Daily Hive]

• Beer and meat — simple pleasures that are brought together in the Brewery and Beast event, returning early this year on June 2. [Vancouver Is Awesome]

• Out with the Callister Brewing, in with the CowDog Brewing Company. After the former closed, the latter is moving into the East Vancouver (or “yeast van,” as CowDog is calling it) location. [Daily Hive]

• Instruments, a bizarre curated selection of books, and more — Vancouver Is Awesome has put together a number of facts about the Vancouver Public Library that you may not know. [Vancouver Is Awesome]

• Grade 12 student Seth Moon was enrolled in parkour classes at just 10 years old, and the teenager is putting those skills to good use, excelling at the sport, which he showcases on his Instagram page. [Daily Hive]

• Listen, we get it. You lose faith in a team after spending so much time investing in them emotionally, and then all of a sudden they’re leading the entire league halfway through the season? What the heck! But hey, now that the bandwagon is back, Pass it to Bulis is back with the 2023-24 Bandwagon Canucks Fan Cheat Sheet. [Vancouver Is Awesome]

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VANCOUVER GUESSER

Thinking of times with nicer weather, cycling around UBC and looking at all the homes I could never pretend to dream of affording. This is SW Marine Drive, but can you guess the cross street? A hint: It’s an avenue. If you get it right, you may be featured in our next newsletter!