The following is a news story I wrote about tonight’s city council meeting in Vancouver. It is not an opinion piece.

More than 160 people registered to speak at Vancouver City Council Monday night as hundreds rallied to oppose a proposal to build a $450 million casino by BC Place.

At least 200 demonstrators gathered outside of City Hall to protest the casino, some wearing yellow t-shirts reading “save our jobs” and holding signs declaring “Vancouver, not Vegas.”

Sandy Garossino, spokeswoman for the anti-casino coalition, addressed the chanting crowd with a megaphone before the meeting.

“Promises of easy money are the easiest promises in the world to make,” she said.

City Council will consider three main components of the hotel and casino proposal: Rezoning the land to include a casino adjacent to BC Place; relocation of the Edgewater Casino from its current site to the rezoning site; and expansion of the casino.

The land is owned by the provincial Crown corporation PavCo, which also owns BC Place. Paragon Gaming, a Las Vegas company, already owns the Edgewater Casino, presently located on the North East side of False Creek.

David Podmore, Chair of PavCo, said that similar large-scale projects in the past were also met with strong resistance, including Expo ’86 and BC Place itself.

“It’s easy to be the critic,” he said to loud boos from the crowd outside. “It’s a lot tougher to be a proponent.”

A raucous heckler walked into council chambers during Podmore’s speech to interrupt him before returning to the gallery. Interruptions during the meeting were common, prompting warnings from Mayor Gregor Robertson.

BC Lottery Corporation president Michael Graydon said 5,500 jobs would be created during construction of the complex, bringing much-needed stability to the Downtown Eastside.

After the presentation by the applicant team, city councillors were given time to ask questions. Several councillors were concerned that not enough public consultation had been done prior to the proposal to measure the impact of the expansion.

“We were assured [in 2004] that the Edgewater would be the casino… there would be no need to go further,” Coun. Tim Stevenson said. “It almost feels like somehow those promises… have been done away with.”

Coun. Ellen Woodsworth was not convinced a proper impact study had been conducted to assess the risk to young people in the community.

“What does it look like when people between 18 and 34 become problem gamblers?” she asked.

The Social Responsibility Fund Agreement of the proposal offers $200,000 to the city annually to mitigate the possible negative impacts of gambling.

Opponents of the proposal, composed of community groups and prominent citizens, have argued that the casino will hurt the neighbourhood and drain money from other businesses.

In 2009 council approved a plan for North East False Creek that guides future redevelopment of the parcels of land in question. This proposed rezoning would contribute approximately 800,000-square-feet of commercial space towards achieving the target of 1,900 full-time-equivalent jobs.

If approved, the expansion of the Edgewater casino would make it the largest in Western Canada, increasing to 1,500 slot machines and up to 150 gaming tables from 600 slot machines and 75 gaming tables.

A discarded Voice newspaper. Photo by Kyla Jonas.

Although journalism school prepares most students for their first job, likely a small-town community newspaper where the big news is a new hockey arena or a bake sale, for the most part the stories are only interesting if you actually attend the school. Since September I’ve written stories about Langara’s new sports logo, proposed installation of security cameras and a water filtration system in the cafeteria. Not exactly your “hard news”.

And then, two weeks ago a student walked into the newsroom claiming that he and two other candidates had been disqualified from the Langara Students’ Union elections, but that the union couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell them why. The story developed over the course of the week and was published today in the student newspaper. Here is the web version of that story, including a five-minute podcast of the union media liaison, Eli Zbar, who can be heard telling disqualified student Damien Otis:

You offend me to my very core, you pathetic slime… I can see your eyes turning brown, you’re so full of shit.

Well, this morning the controversy went a step farther, when the journalism department got wind that a member of the union was going about stealing newspapers and throwing them in the garbage to hide the story from students. Over 30 enraged journalism students, who had worked hard putting that newspaper together the night before, began the task of hunting down the perpetrators.

Here is the result of that effort.

It’s not deepthroat, but it’s certainly a little bit of drama in our otherwise small-town newspaper.

A Vancouver Province article says that “dozens of angry Asian residents” of an upscale highrise near UBC are going to protest a proposed 15-bed hospice planned next door. According to the residents who are upset, it is a “cultural taboo” to have dying people so close to a residential area (a hospice is a palliative care building for the terminally ill).

One source in the article states 80 per cent of the residents of the 18-storey building are Asian, and are strongly opposed on cultural grounds. But that isn’t the only problem here:

“Units here are worth $1 million,” she added. “We put our life savings into this.”

She said residents are worried the hospice will have a negative impact on their property values.

[...]Qing Lin, who bought a Promontory apartment for $900,000 almost a year ago, said she and her seven year old daughter will have nightmares if the hospice goes ahead.

“We believe that people dying outside will bring us bad luck,” she added. “I’m very angry and upset. If I had known it was going to be a hospice, I wouldn’t buy it for half the price.”

It’s more than a little difficult to accommodate the notion that a hospice is bad luck, even if one were inclined to be sensitive to cultural beliefs. But the idea that it will affect property values is similarly ridiculous. Perhaps the statement should be altered to read that it will affect property values within the superstitious Asian community.

But fear not, overpriced million-dollar condos in Vancouver continue to be unaffected by a proposed hospice. There is certainly no shortage of buyers in this city willing to pay too much for too little.

The article continues:

“It’s very disturbing,” she said. “My kids and I are going to feel so frightened and angry just to think there are dying people so close to us.”

[...]Sharon Wu, chairwoman of the UNA said 60 residents came to a UNA board meeting Tuesday.

“The UNA respects cultural beliefs,” she said. “UBC is planning to address the concerns of the residents. It’s a very emotional and sensitive issue.”

Well, the kids will feel frightened and angry only if the parents happen to pass down this preposterous superstition to the next generation. There is always the option, however, of being more mature about the fact that in a society there are the young and the old, the living and the dying. I’m sure that someone dying next door is a discomforting thought, but I’m also pretty sure it’s a worse situation for the person actually doing the dying.

A little maturity, sensitivity and understanding toward people suffering would seem to me to be the more responsible thing than worrying about the property values of the nearby residents.

[A little birdie told me this story: Blazing Cat Fur]

So if you live in Vancouver you’re probably aware that the “free ride” of being trusted to pay your fare before passing the paid zone is over. The new system will involve fare gates that will open and close based on a new smart card system being developed by Cubic Transportation Systems and IBM Canada.

Here’s the important bits:

Transit users will simply tap the card on special readers to board buses or open fare gates to be installed at SkyTrain and SeaBus stations. The purpose of the fare gates is to reduce fare evasion.

In 2009, transit police issued about 24,000 tickets for fare evasion, and independent audits performed in 2004 and 2008 estimated that the annual loss from unpaid fares at less than three per cent of all trips — between $5 million and $9 million.

A total of $170 million has been allocated for the project. TransLink is contributing $100 million, with $40 million coming from the provincial government and about $30 million being contributed by the federal government for capital costs.

There are numerous logical problems and assumptions being made for this project. Assuming TransLink is losing the higher end of revenues due to fare evasion, $9 million a year, it will take 19 years just to break even on the project. And that’s also assuming that those fare evaders who are costing the system $9 million in lost revenues will now suddenly start being good citizens. Which is sort of like assuming that shoplifters would pay for merchandise just because you add a security guard at the door checking bags.

At the lower end of the estimate, $5 million, it will take TransLink 34 years for this project to break even. And while 19-34 years is certainly a long-term investment with arguable benefits at the end of it, you have to assume that the technology will be obsolete by then. Just look at any 35-year-old technology and ask yourself whether it’s still cost-efficient.

It seems a little inconsistent with TransLink’s stated goal of keeping deficits in check. Perhaps they’re operating under the misapprehension that the kind of ridership they enjoyed during the Olympics will be around to save their budget every year.

An excerpt from a speech by B.C. Conservative M.P. Jim Abbott features prominently at this post today:

The disgraceful failure of our major media’s Afghan mission/Coalition crazy/Bob Rae Update

…Canadian media coverage of Afghanistan for 10 years has been the equivalent of covering news in Canada and Canadian events by having three reporters driving around in a Vancouver police cruiser on Vancouver’s east side. What would that coverage tell Canadians about Canadians’ aspiration or the beauty of our land or our potential?..

But now we can see that Mr Abbott is merely the front-person for Terrible Terry Glavin (of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, amongst other things).  From Mr Glavin at The Tyee, April 15 this year:

…
The way Canadians see Afghanistan is the way Afghans would see Canada if they had three or four reporters here who spent pretty well all their time in the back of a police wagon cruising Vancouver’s downtown east side. That’s not what Canada is about…

Via Terrible Terry.  Somehow I don’t think he’ll be complaining to the estimable M.P. about plagiarism.

Update: Don Martin is a journalist–it’s never quite clear whether he’s a reporter or a columnist–from Alberta who has been to Afstan. He likes to play the role of a hard-bitten, cynical, old-school newsman (but with a sharp sense of humour) who just calls them as he sees them and takes no guff from no-one. Unfortunately his vision is rather limited. He’s basically all hattitude and little cattle. Here he defends the honour of our gallant and intrepid journalists (see my comments, the third and fifth):

Safety = a Canadian MP in Afghanistan

Upperdate: Terry Glavin (yet again), who writes so well (heck, that’s one reason why he’s a real journalist), puts a lot of things Afghan together at this post ending:

…The trouble with Martin’s view is that he is getting pissy and deliberately missing Abbott’s point, which is that any given time there are rarely more than three or four Canadian reporters in Afghanistan and as likely as not they’ll all be embedded with the Canadian Forces in Kandahar, and not embedded with the Afghan people.

Martin doesn’t help his case by bringing the memory of the Calgary Herald’s Michelle Lang into it, either. Michelle had enormous respect for Canadian soldiers but she wanted to write stories about the Afghan people, outside the wire. It was in her memory that the Calgary Herald ran a baker’s dozen of my essays from “outside the wire” (here’s just one), which is a news media euphemism for the entire, heartbreaking, splendid and terrific country we call “Afghanistan.” Some more stories about that country and its people would be a good place for Canada’s journalists to begin to make amends for the distorted picture they’ve given Canadians about that country.

To be comfortably embedded in the Ottawa press gallery and to bitch about politicians who can dish it out as well as take it is churlishness, not journalism. More journalism about Afghanistan, please. That’s the point Abbott was making.

It can be done. It’s not that hard. It’s not even all that dangerous. A young comrade from the Ubyssey, the student newspaper at the University of British Columbia, committed several acts of useful journalism [emphasis added] from Afghanistan, “outside the wire,” all by himself, here.

Another one of those posts that just grew.

Mark
Ottawa

Norman spectates acutely at the Globe and Mail online:

In the House of Commons on Thursday, Conservative MP Jim Abbott had some harsh words for Canadian news organizations:

A few days after returning [from Afghanistan], I was at a social event where MPs, senators and the national news media were mingling, and as I walked by some reporters, one of them asked me about my impressions from the trip. I told him, first, I was blown away with the complete enthusiastic dedication of the Canadian soldiers, aid workers and diplomats in Afghanistan … second, the coverage of Afghanistan by our national news media has been at best inadequate … the news coverage, or lack of it, on Afghanistan has actually distorted the impressions that most Canadians have, or many Canadians anyway. Canadian media coverage of Afghanistan for 10 years has been the equivalent of covering news in Canada and Canadian events by having three reporters driving around in a Vancouver police cruiser on Vancouver’s east side. What would that coverage tell Canadians about Canadians’ aspiration or the beauty of our land or our potential? This parallel is appropriate, because news organizations from Canada have had an average of three people in Kandahar, driving around in LAVs or confined to the air base.

Mr. Abbott, who is a strong supporter of Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, offered these observations during debate of a Bloc motion condemning the Government’s duplicity in extending the mission to 2014. Given the paucity of coverage of that debate today, you’d have to extend his remarks about the media from Kandahar to Ottawa, and include opponents of Canadian participation in Afghanistan as well.

While most of the points raised yesterday by Conservative and Bloc MPs were predictable (and sometimes disingenuous), two interventions stood out and are well worth reading. From the Liberal side, Bob Rae explained why Canada is in Afghanistan – and why we must remain there – with an eloquence and intelligence that we’ve seldom if ever heard from the Conservative Government. Virtually nothing of what he said is reported in today’s papers. On the NDP side, Jack Harris tore through the Conservative and Liberal positions with devastating facts and logic. I could find nothing of what he said in today’s papers…

So first we had that Conservative coalition with the Bloc and now one with the Liberals; the prime minister sure seems to be considering them coalitions a pretty Good Thing after all.

Earlier:

Media out! Of Afghanistan/People’s Daily Online Update

Update: An exception to Mr Spector’s strictures: John Ivison, in the National Post’s “Full Comment”, is also impressed by Bobbety in the Commons:

Why Canada is in Afghanistan, and has to stay

We in the Press Gallery rarely report on parliamentary debates – usually for the very good reason they are so dull that if you don’t knit, you’d be advised to bring a book.

But there are exceptions and Bob Rae’s speech in the House Thursday must rank as one of those. There are no Churchills in the current Canadian parliament — a politician who, according to his friend F.E. Smith “devoted the best years of his life to preparing his impromptu speeches”  — but Mr. Rae has no peers when it comes to eloquence on the floor of the House. During the debate on the future of the Afghan mission Thursday, he explains his own thinking and why he arrived at the conclusion Canada could not simply pull out…

Mark
Ottawa

As you probably already know, I tried to cover an assignment for my college newspaper in downtown Vancouver yesterday. I went with my voice recorder, camera, and notes to see George Galloway speak. I showed my press pass at the front door and the organizer, Derrick O’Keefe (of rabble.ca and stopwar.ca fame), stepped forward and said, “Oh we know you. You’re a rightwing propagandist.”

A case of mistaken identity? O’Keefe insisted I was a writer for Propagandist Magazine and refused to let me in to do an assignment I’d been covered to do. After a bit of a blow up at the front door about freedom of the press and the glowing hypocrisy of lefties crying foul about free speech and then denying select members of the press from reporting about it, I paid my entrance fee and listened to George Galloway.

That night I filed to the Vancouver Sun with a few pictures. They did confirm acceptance of the story and were scheduled to run it, but as other media didn’t really pick up on the Galloway speech last night I guess they dropped it from the queue. Regardless, here was the “propaganda” I submitted to the Vancouver Sun:

George Galloway said he would use “every cent” he receives suing Canada’s immigration minister to fund the anti-war movement in a speech made in Vancouver Monday night.

The former British politician became a controversial figure in Canada after Immigration Minister Jason Kenney barred him from entering the country in March of 2009. Galloway said he doesn’t mind being called controversial if it gets people discussing Palestine, but believes he has been libelled by the Canadian government.

Dressed all in black with a Palestinian-coloured scarf around his neck, Galloway spoke to a packed house of several hundred people at St.Andrews Wesley United Church downtown.

Mocking Kenney and the Harper government, Galloway said he resents being called a member of a terrorist organization and a threat to Canada’s national security.

The crowd gave warm applause to the criticisms of the Harper government, particularly when Galloway said Canada’s reputation has fallen internationally for its support of Israel.

“Harper says it’s a badge of honour,” Galloway said. “Well, it’s a badge of shame!”

Galloway also rejected being labelled as anti-Semitic or a supporter of Hamas. He told the audience that he supports democracy and that only the Palestinian people have the right to choose their government. Palestine elected Hamas to government in January of 2006, the paramilitary wing of which is designated as a terrorist organization by Canada.

In response to the 2008 conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Galloway took humanitarian aid in a convoy and donated it to the Hamas government, along with a personal donation of £25,000 to the prime minister.

Galloway had harsh words for Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan as well. He said the war there is only fueling more terrorism every time a Muslim in killed by foreign forces.

“All that a young Muslim needs to get radicalized is the possession of a television and the ability to watch the news”, he said.

Galloway’s Vancouver visit was organized by the StopWar.ca coalition. He’s in Canada on a 10-city speaking tour, and is scheduled to appear in Yellowknife on Tuesday.

That was my professional, unbiased record of the event. What did I think personally? I thought Galloway relied on the usual specious arguments and half-truths. When an audience member asked how he could work with Iranian Press TV he gave an equivocal answer criticizing the Iranian government for the last elections, but then said that “at least Iran had elections.” He then turned to condemn our “allies” in Saudi Arabia for having unelected leaders. Confusingly, he had earlier in the evening condemned Canada for getting booted from the U.A.E.

I’m not really going to dissect his speech, but I do find one thing confusing. Galloway, and many others like him, seem to genuinely believe that Canada’s post-2011 mission in Kabul would involve combat. I just don’t understand where he’s getting this idea from.

Is there an inherent danger of maintaining Canadian Forces in Afghanistan beyond 2011 behind-the-wire? Yes. About the same level of danger as exists driving on the 401 every day to work. Not to minimize the casualties, but the facts are the facts.

At any rate, perhaps it’s for the best the Sun dropped the story. A lot of Galloway’s remarks are polemic, hyperbolic, and one-sided. As he himself admitted in his speech, he’s only controversial in Canada. Everywhere else in the world he’s a relatively insignificant partisan on the Palestinian side of the Middle Eastern Israeli-Arab stalemate.

Langara student Jayme Strickland in front of San Francouver, Spring by Torrie Groening. Photograph by: Jason Payne, PNG

This might not be very interesting for people outside of Vancouver, but it’s my first freelance news piece for the Vancouver Sun. It began as a student story but quickly evolved into something interesting about art and healing in Vancouver. There’s no politics or opinion to it. Just an example of what I’m in school for:

The institution’s walls are adorned with a colourful array of oil paintings, watercolours and sculptures that would be the envy of any curator in Vancouver. But this is no ordinary art gallery.

The display is housed throughout Vancouver General Hospital, the second-largest acute care facility in the country.

Read the whole thing…

Now I don’t know art, but I know what I like. Here’s my favourite:

This painting was done by a prolific local rock climber who has done hundreds of climbs in Squamish and surrounding areas. I recognized the name despite knowing very little about art.

A Hornet:

Some of what they do:

A commercial passenger jet that was also carrying cargo from Yemen was escorted from the Canadian border to New York City by two military fighter jets, U.S. officials said. The officials said there was no known threat associated with the plane, but it was escorted to John F. Kennedy International Airport as a precaution…

John Cornelia, a spokesman for U.S. [actually Canadian too] North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the airliner was escorted by a Canadian fighter to the U.S. border, where two U.S. fighters took over. U.S. fighter jets routinely escort airliners when there may be a problem in order to observe the aircraft and be prepared to take any action if necessary.”..

The Hornet would be from Bagotville. Our fighters out west performed a similar mission this spring at Vancouver, video here.

More on our fighters’ intercept mission generally:

F-35s: Bilge from Byers

Mark
Ottawa

I wonder if our government will comment (hah!), and whether our opposition or media will notice.  The Norwegian government, quite unlike ours, is actually discussing F-35 program realities seriously.  From a Defense Technology (Aviation Week) blog:

Norway Delays JSF Purchase

Ignoring a stern warning from Joint Strike Fighter program leaders this summer, Norwegian defense minister Grete Faremo announced earlier today that Norway would delay its acquisition of the F-35A to take account of delays in the systems development and demonstration (SDD) program announced in March.

Norway now plans to acquire no more than four aircraft for delivery in 2016 (contract year 2014), for training purposes, but main-force deliveries will not start until 2018. Previous plans called for 20 deliveries in 2016-17.

Faremo says that the most important issue is to make sure that the F-35 is fully operational before it replaces the F-16 and implies that Norway wants to buy more aircraft at multi-year-production prices. Norway is changing its schedule, she says, to “ensure operational maturity and optimum cost of production on the Norwegian aircraft.” (Under previous plans, Norway would be byuing most of its aircraft from low-rate initial production batches.)

The minister also notes that the re-scheduled SDD program “should [put] more emphasis on risk management, cost control, staffing of critical positions, test plans and monitoring by the vendor”, and adds that all additional costs due to the delay will be absorbed by the US.

This is probably not what JSF program leaders have been looking for, given Lockheed Martin executive vice-president Tom Burbage’s warnings at Farnborough that backsliding partners would incur higher prices:  Norway appears to have concluded that the opposite is the case.

Of other early JSF customers, Denmark has deferred its decision and the Netherlands has officially confirmed that cost increases are likely to have a “considerable” effect on its program.  In the FY2011-2015 order years – LRIP batches 4 through 8 – well over one-third of JSFs are destined for non-US customers, and program managers have repeatedly said that disruptions to the ramp-up will cause unit cost targets to move out of reach.

Earlier:

The F-35 and Canadian industry: What does the 2006 MoU say?/US Upperdate–plus Dutch

Pentagon response to Bears over Calgary, Toronto, Montreal/F-35 fact check [Norway] Update

Looks like it will take quite a bit of time before Canadian companies start making much of the big money the government is touting from F-35 international sales:

F-35: Video of Gov’t ministers before Commons’ national defence committee/Real reason for decision Update

Mark
Ottawa