This is a written version of a speech that COPE councillor Jean Swanson delivered in a January 13 Zoom call to party supporters and various media people:
“I’ve been pondering for a while. Should I retire, or should I keep working for housing, renter protections, ending homelessness, racial and Indigenous justice, climate action, and supporting working and low-income folks in the city?
Pressure continues to mount against the Coastal GasLink pipeline in Interior B.C., as posters appeared in Vancouver on Thursday highlighting the violation of Indigenous rights and the impacts of climate change.
The first poster, put up at the intersection of Main and Union, shows armed RCMP agents with the text: “Reconciliation won’t come at the barrel of a gun. Call off the RCMP.”
A new conservation foundation is working to provide Indigenous and other land-based communities with funds to protect endangered ecosystems and build economic alternatives to the logging of at-risk old-growth forests.
Trans Mountain has a lot of work to do in 2022 if it is to meet December in-service date
Trans Mountain Corporation has a lot of work to do in 2022 if it hopes to meet the target in-service date for its expanded pipeline and its capital budget of $12.6 billion.
Trans Mountain can only pray Mother Nature does not throw more wildfires, floods, or plagues at it this year.
According to recent third quarter financial reports, the project is only half built and 71% of the $12.6 billion capital budget spent.
Three years ago RCMP moved onto Wet’suwet’en territory, tearing down a barricade on a forest service road that blocked access to the planned route of the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
The single-day enforcement on Jan. 7, 2019, resulted in the arrest of 14 people, both Wet’suwet’en and their supporters. But it didn’t bring a resolution to the dispute over the pipeline, opposed by Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs.
A major piece of unfinished business left behind at the end of last year looks certain to haunt British Columbia in 2022, as the province’s NDP government faces determined Indigenous opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the project itself runs into serious financial headwinds.
An annual surtax on houses valued over $1 million could help reduce housing inequality and cool housing markets, a report says.
Paul Kershaw, founder of Generation Squeeze and author of the report published Wednesday with input from 80 experts, said it's part of a suite of recommendations aiming to shift the cultural view of housing as an investment to housing as a place to live.
