Can you hear the awkward silence? That’s the sound of Environment Canada not releasing its annual report on national carbon emission trends, amid news that America and China have both made ambitious commitments to curb climate change.
Category: News
Reporting from the First Nations resistance camp that’s evicting Imperial Metals
After a man-made lake full of mining waste spilled in British Columbia in early August, locals have been up in arms about the residual damage caused. We visited an active First Nations mining resistance camp that sits eight kilometres away from the spill zone.
The Mount Polley disaster has sparked a First Nation blockade
After a man-made lake full of mining waste collapsed last week, BC Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett compared the disaster to an avalanche.
‘I was a PR campaign’: oil cleanup worker
As Cold Lake disaster oozes into year two, wildlife rehabber remembers ‘insane’ media day.
Canada is super chill about commercial drones
Unlike the US, Canada is pretty lax about commercial drone use. Wildlife scientists, filmmakers, and real estate photographers (to name a few) have taken advantage of these flying robots in Canadian airspace.
Why do the residents of Victoria, BC buy more sex toys than any other place in Canada?
Grey, wet vibes in Canada’s sex toy capital.
Is Vancouver the bitcoin capital of Canada?
The city’s patented mix of real estate market speculators, gaming industry nerds, recreational druggies and lefty counterculturists seem to be creating a perfect storm of bitcoin enthusiasm.
The RCMP and CSIS are creeping on environmentalists
Heavily redacted documents released in November show that Canadian spies ‘monitored’ opponents of the Enbridge Northern Gateway through social media, blogs and a storytelling workshop at a church in Kelowna, B.C.
BC’s ‘other’ multi-billion dollar energy projects
Most Canadians are vaguely aware that Enbridge is planning a massive pipeline expansion through northern British Columbia. But there are two other megaprojects in BC—one more costly, the other more risky—flying under the radar.
Canada sets refugee removal target at 875
This year border services in Canada have a set a minimum quota for stripping refugee status. Here is what you need to know about refugee cessation and vacation—the two ways border services take away protected status and residency.
The spill that keeps on spilling
Eight months and nearly two million litres of spilled bitumen later, Canadian energy company CNRL hasn’t figured out how to stop four mysterious leaks in northeastern Alberta.
Doctors in BC can no longer prescribe heroin
There’s at least one recorded casualty in the fight over prescription heroin in British Columbia. Back in September, B.C. doctors won approval from Health Canada to prescribe diacetylmorphine—the active ingredient in heroin—to 20 hardcore addicts in Vancouver. That decision lasted two weeks.
Chuck Strahl oversaw government spies while registered as an Enbridge lobbyist
Like those underemployed twenty-somethings the internet loves to ridicule, former cabinet minister Chuck Strahl has to hustle a few side jobs to get the bills paid. “I’m not independently wealthy,” he told the National Post earlier this month, when questioned about his work as both an energy lobbyist and a government spy watchdog.
Young Bucks in the Mushroom Kingdom
It’s been a banner year for British Columbia’s wild mushroom foragers. And with one month left in the high season, there’s still money to be made.
Mennonites in southern Alberta have connections to a notorious Mexican drug cartel
I called up the DEA—not to discuss their expensive, racist and failed war on drugs—but to unpack the devoted/bearded supply chain that brings Calgarians their party drugs.
An oil spill in Cold Lake, Alberta can’t stop, won’t stop
Over 1.5 million litres of heavy crude has seeped out of the ground at a military base in northeastern Alberta. Regulators aren’t sure of the cause or when the spill will end.
British Columbia should keep an eye on the Fukushima disaster
Just a friendly reminder that two-and-a-half years after an earthquake and tsunami caused a series of equipment failures and nuclear meltdowns in northeastern Japan, the threat of radiation poisoning in the Pacific Ocean will be around another 40 years or more. Have a nice day.
The B.C. government trusts Nestlé with the province’s fresh water
B.C. hasn’t bothered to update a century-old law that allows multinational corporations like Nestlé to take water without measuring, reporting or paying for it. You’re welcome, billionaires.
Canadian crowdfunding just got crowded
In 2013, crowdfunding is no longer the realm of little guys and start-ups. Not only is Spike Lee funding hislatest million-dollar film on Kickstarter, but Vancouver’s own educational institution Science World recently turned to online community donations to build an upcoming exhibition called AMPED.
‘You are not a loan’
B.C. has a debt problem.
On average, British Columbians owe $38,837 in non-mortgage loans—more than any other province. Across Canada, consumer debt grew 37 per cent over the last five years—way ahead of the country’s nine per cent inflation rate.
Women-only recovery experiment: did it work or not?
For Sherri Johnstone, resident at the Rainier Women’s Treatment Centre in the Downtown Eastside, the last two weeks have brought on some tearful goodbyes. As Health Canada funding for the four-year pilot project ceased Dec. 1, Johnstone and the Rainier’s 37 current residents are adjusting to immediate cuts in staff and programming.
“It’s been hard,” says Johnstone, who struggled with crack addiction and failed at traditional treatment programs before she was referred to the Rainier in 2011. “We started to open up to these women and now they’re not here… Now we have to do that again with somebody else — it makes me feel like I’m almost back at day one again.”
Occupy Wall Street’s new job: disaster relief
Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, many New Yorkers are struggling to understand why parts of the city are still in crisis. By the time the lights in my East Village apartment returned, the citywide death toll had crept north of 40, thousands were still displaced and hundreds of thousands remained without basic utilities like electricity, water and heat.
Amid this darkness and uncertainty, a once-familiar movement reignited. Long before the first subway tunnels were pumped dry, members of Occupy Wall Street sprang into action, assessing the needs of people who lost everything in the storm.
Schooled in the rodeo
In her first semester at the University of Saskatchewan, Katie Dutchak missed barrel racing with her horse Rootbeer Kazanova. A competitive cowgirl throughout high school, she missed the type of community the rodeo had offered her.
Not anymore. Last January, the first-year arts and science student teamed up with fellow student and racer Shelby Clemens and brought competitive rodeo back to U of S.
Ban billboards, fund journalism!
Scanning Monday’s headlines, you may have spotted Postmedia’s announcement that it will cancel its wire service and cut 25 jobs. The news comes less than a month after the Vancouver Sun and Ottawa Citizen introduced online paywalls to combat a steep decline in print ad revenue.
We’ve known the financial picture for Canadian journalism has been in decline for a while. But one quick-and-dirty answer that has yet to be considered in Canada comes courtesy of a documentary called This Space Available, which is showing in Toronto for the first time today.
Indie theatres weather the liquor license storm
Following months of struggle with British Columbia’s Liquor Control and Licensing Branch, the Rio Theatre in East Vancouver will gradually return to the mixed programming it cultivated before 2012. For most of this year, the Rio operated under an imposed liquor licensing condition that prevented the venue from showing films.
Although the single-screen venue expects to make a full recovery, owner Corinne Lea says her company is not out of the woods yet. “Because our finances got depleted so badly, our biggest challenge is just digging ourselves out of the hole,” Lea says. “Now we’re creeping back.”
Is Vancouver’s public consultation process broken?
In the heat of debate over the Rize development in Mount Pleasant, residents began to question the entire public consultation process. “It is not the developers that are the enemy,” Annabel Vaughan told the council chambers on Tuesday, February 28. “The enemy is the flawed process that the City uses for rezoning large development sites.”
Standing before the developer, city council and a long list of concerned speakers, Vaughan said surrounding residents and businesses should have been more meaningfully consulted before the design process even began. “The current public process brings out the worst in everyone,” she observed. “Developers and architects design projects in isolation and then land ‘spaceships’ into neighbourhoods.”
Canadian-made video games recognized at Fan Expo
From coast to coast, Canada punches above its weight in cutting-edge video games.
“We’re the third largest superpower for developing them in the world,” explains Victor Lucas, creator and host of the television show Electric Playground. “Canada has a tenth of the population of the United States, but we’re not far off in cultural output within this sector.”
Iconic films find new dimension
Before audiences step into the theatre, they’ll already know the ending of Titanic 3D. (Spoiler alert: it sinks in all three dimensions.) But one unsettling question mark looms above the blockbuster’s re-release: can James Cameron credibly convert a 2-D classic into the eye-popping 3-D of Avatar?
Homeless count sweeps Vancouver
For a third year in a row, Vancouver’s spring homeless count wrapped up late last night. Volunteers scoured alleyways, parks, shelters and hospitals to gather information about the city’s shifting homeless population.
“We ask where they stayed last night, what their age is, whether they’re with a spouse or child or other relative,” says Judy Graves, co-ordinator of Vancouver’s tenant-assistance program. Graves oversaw Metro Vancouver’s first homeless count in 2002. She says details like income, gender, physical disabilities and illnesses are also collected.
Red Gate petitions to rent city-owned building
Since the Red Gate artist studio was shut down in October 2011, former manager Jim Carrico has been busy looking for another affordable haven for artists.
“I’ve been riding my bike around, putting the word out,” Carrico explains, estimating that he’s researched between 20 and 30 new locations. “The main thing we’re looking for is studio space, rehearsal space, production space—a place where people can afford to make art.”
“Affordable” is not an easy thing to come by in Vancouver, says Carrico, but at 281 Industrial Avenue, the price was just right: $8,500 per month.
Residents of Asia Hotel asked to leave by summer
For two weeks of February, a notice posted in the Asia Hotel on Pender Street informed tenants they have to move out by the end of June. And while the announcement has since been taken down, pending building repairs suggest the 34 to 38 low-income, Downtown Eastside residents will still have to relocate in the coming months.
“We just found out our lease for the Asia Hotel will not be renewed,” read part of the notice, “and therefore everyone must be out of the building by the end of June this year.”
Canada’s first robocall rally unites generations and parties with comedy
If the Vikileaks debacle taught us anything about modern scandal in this country, it’s that Canadians enjoy a few laughs with our outrage. Amid the crowd marching from the Vancouver Art Gallery to Victory Square on Saturday March 3rd—a rally calling for a public inquiry into the growing robocall scandal—good-natured Canuck humour was out in full force.
