Metro Vancouver’s transit authority, TransLink, just slashed services that tens of thousands of us rely on, including frontline and healthcare workers and ordinary British Columbians who take the bus or SkyTrain to work every day.[1]
The ongoing pandemic epoch has exposed a clear duality marked both by increasingly obvious and blatant inequalities, hypocrisies and systemic failures as well as beautiful, loving and creative responses in the form of mutual aid communities and direct action to save lives.
VANCOUVER -- Homeless activists and their supporters occupied the recently closed North Surrey Recreation Centre for several hours Wednesday night to call attention to the danger the COVID-19 pandemic poses to people living on the streets or in insufficient housing.
Dubbing the occupation the "Hothouse Squat," the group issued a press release saying it planned to occupy the vacant building as a safe place to live during the pandemic.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps wants the B.C. government to use its emergency powers to requisition empty hotel and motel rooms for people without homes during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Health officials in British Columbia and Saskatchewan are advising people to self-isolate if they’re returning from an area of Alberta where an oil sands site is suffering from a COVID-19 outbreak.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority said in a statement that it and the Northern Inter-Tribal Health Authority have begun a contact tracing investigation into new cases of the novel coronavirus in the province’s north that are related to cross-boundary travel.
It’s a question that’s been debated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau eyed broader emergency powers for the federal government and left the door open to using cellphone data to track compliance with physical-distancing rules.
The occupation was an effort to call attention to the DTES population at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic and the city's perceived lack of action, said advocates.
