On this edition of Journal, we try to untangle the evermore confusing issues surrounding aboriginal title in British Columbia and what it means for private property owners.

My head is spinning with all the contradictory information that is out there. Private property is not affected, says our premier. Oh, maybe it is, says a judge.

One pattern is emerging – decisions are being made by governments in negotiations with First Nations in private, then grandly announced as a fait accompli to the broader public, businesses, and property owners. That’s no way to build support or buy-in.

To whit, the proposed-then-withdrawn Land Act giving First Nations a 50% say on all the province’s Crown land, the Haida title agreement, the dispute on the Sunshine Coast, the Cowichan court case, and then the federal signing of a deal with the Musqueam claiming vast sections of Metro Vancouver and surrounding municipalities as their hereditary land.

It is a fact that when you lose trust, you lose trust. So now, when any of these players say, “Oh, trust us. We won’t touch private property,” it’s a hard sell, especially since the judge in the Cowichan case said her decision may give rise to some uncertainty for private property owners. Indeed.

A final irony is that some of the agreements are now being challenged by other First Nations: the Musqueam and Tsawwassen First Nations are appealing the Cowichan decision, Squamish First Nation said it wasn’t consulted on the Musqueam decision, and even the Cowichan First Nation is appealing its own successful court case because they only were awarded half of what they asked for!

Thomas Isaac, one of Canada’s top lawyers in the field of aboriginal law, joins us to say what worries him about the BC situation.

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Carole Taylor's Journal is a public affairs dialogue that digs deep into the most pressing issues of our times. For more, see our website at http://www.caroletaylorsjournal.ca.

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On this edition of Journal, a subject that is near and dear to me – governance. I know, I know. Your heart is beating faster at just the thought of this topic, but bear with me.

If you are a government or a nonprofit or a business of any size, if you get the governance right, then you are on your way to success.

Sadly, it is often in government that we find problems. The example that is glaring in its unmanageability is Metro Vancouver.

Imagine: you are the Chair of this organization with 41 members, many mayors sitting around a very large table representing 21 municipalities, Tsawwassen First Nations, and Electoral Area A. Every single one of them has their own priorities and problems they want addressed.

How can you ever make that work?

Importantly, how are decisions made? Like for the overdue, vastly over-budget wastewater project that went from $700 million to $3.6 billion? Is it by consensus or by accepting a staff recommendation?

In part because of this dollar shock for taxpayers, Deloitte was asked to have a look. Their report highlighted many challenges with the Metro Vancouver model, including the obvious fact that the Board is just too large to manage, that directors’ expenses should be trimmed, and perhaps the Chair should not be a politician.

With all these problems, why would anyone willingly take on the near-impossible task of reorganization? Well, fortunately, mayor Mike Hurley of Burnaby has stepped into the fray and is serving as Chair. He calls himself a person of action and warns that possibly big changes are coming.

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Carole Taylor's Journal is a public affairs dialogue that digs deep into the most pressing issues of our times. For more, see our website at http://www.caroletaylorsjournal.ca.

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On this edition of Journal, we join the chorus of voices repudiating British Columbia’s new budget.

To be charitable, Premier Eby is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (to borrow from a children’s book).

Even before the actual numbers were released, one headline from Business in Vancouver magazine stated: “Eby may go down as the worst fiscal manager in BC history.”

Another said, “The stunning deterioration in BC’s fiscal health during Premier Eby’s tenure will not soon be reversed.”

Vaughn Palmer said, “NDP’s fiscal credibility shredded.”

And on and on.

The facts are these – during Premier Eby’s time, the province has gone from a $6-billion surplus to a deficit of $13.3 billion dollars.

Our debt in the 3 year budget will be up 200% since 2021/22 – and the cost of paying interest on that debt will have gone up 220% during that time, making interest charges the fastest-growing line in the budget.

As we all know, money going to the bank to pay for past borrowing excesses means less money for health, seniors, and our kids.

As if that weren’t bad enough, in a time of economic stress for many, taxes are going up on everything from basic cable and land lines to shoe repair, accounting services, and – oh yes – on security costs that many small businesses have been forced to absorb because of retail crime and street disorder.

As columnist Rob Shaw says: all pain, no gain.

To make sense of all this is David Williams, vice-president of policy at the Business Council of BC.

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Carole Taylor's Journal is a public affairs dialogue that digs deep into the most pressing issues of our times. For more, see our website at http://www.caroletaylorsjournal.ca.

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On this edition of Journal, we examine one of the received truths in British Columbia: that one of our economic advantages is that BC offers businesses and industry a plentiful supply of hydroelectric energy at reasonable cost.

What could be a better pitch? It is clean energy to run your enterprise.

In fact, Premier Eby has had press conferences highlighting the government’s demand that new mines, LNG, data centres, will be powered by electricity.

Sounds pretty appealing in a time of climate awareness. But is it the reality?

A couple of hard facts – for the third year in a row, BC has not produced enough electricity to even serve our own current needs, let alone all these new initiatives. That’s right: we import electricity.

And, besides that, according to Energy Futures, BC Hydro has a backlog of demands for more clean energy.

So we already have an electricity deficit in our province, a queue of current requests for more permits while at the same time, we are actively encouraging new businesses to electrify, customers to buy electric cars, and home heating to move away from natural gas to electric heat pumps.

Realizing the impending crisis, the Premier announced this week heavy users such as AI and data centres will have to compete for electricity through a managed process. How will that work? Who decides which businesses win the lottery?

Barry Penner, Chair of the Energy Futures Institute and a former BC cabinet minister calls this “a serious case of policy dissonance.”

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Carole Taylor's Journal is a public affairs dialogue that digs deep into the most pressing issues of our times. For more, see our website at http://www.caroletaylorsjournal.ca.

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On this episode of Journal: an examination of the worrisome new expansion of what it means when we talk about food security.

In the good old days – actually only 9 months ago – when Journal last spoke with Lenore Newman, one of Canada’s top experts in this field, much of the focus was on the effects of climate change: how our supply chains must adjust and how Canada’s own agriculture would be affected.

Who would have believed that Lenore would now pen an op-ed that says, “We are living in a world of sharks who don’t think twice about sacrificing communities to the whim of politics.”

She goes on to say that “an irascible US government could starve us within days and we would have no easy alternatives.”

Wow. This, of course, comes on the heels of our Prime Minister’s remarkable speech at Davos, where he posited that “a country that can’t feed itself, fuel itself, defend itself has few options.”

So, this discussion of food security has become a lot more serious – and fast. What if CUSMA goes away? What if 100% tariffs were put on all food imports – remembering that over half of our agrifood imports come from the United States? What if the border was “temporarily” closed?

So what are we to do? As Prime Minister Carney has said, “Nostalgia is not a strategy.”

To help guide us in this discussion is Dr. Lenore Newman. Besides being the Director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, she also holds a Canada Research Chair in food security.

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Carole Taylor's Journal is a public affairs dialogue that digs deep into the most pressing issues of our times. For more, see our website at http://www.caroletaylorsjournal.ca.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this edition of Journal, we take a closer look at one piece of our health care system that doesn’t usually get much attention, even though we see them working on our streets all the time: paramedics.

We hear about doctor shortages and nurse shortages, but did you know we have a paramedic shortage? In rural and remote areas of the province alone, there are close to 400 vacancies.

The problem is exacerbated when an emergency call comes in but the ER is closed or on diversion. According to Mayor Goetz (of Merritt, British Columbia), a paramedic – if available – must transport and accompany the patient around 100 kilometres to the nearest hospital for emergency care. That takes time, leaving the community vulnerable.

Also, the province does not allow the service to pre-schedule overtime coverage in advance when there are known holes in the schedule – for vacations, as an example. This results in a patchwork system, sometimes covered by firefighters but often resulting in wait times that are too long.

So, a few questions:

What is a day in the life of a paramedic like?

What training is required?

Why aren’t more people applying for these vacant positions?

I can’t help but worry about the constant stress that our overdose crisis has added to the job of being a paramedic. Imagine reviving the same person over and over again with the same result. That must take a toll.

To talk about some of these issues is Ian Tait, spokesperson for the Ambulance Paramedics of BC, who are currently in negotiation with the government. What are the biggest issues and possible solutions?

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Carole Taylor's Journal is a public affairs dialogue that digs deep into the most pressing issues of our times. For more, see our website at http://www.caroletaylorsjournal.ca.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this edition of Journal; an opportunity to look back at British Columbia’s failed experiment of decriminalization – and look forward to what might come next.

Dr. Julian Somers, a clinical psychologist and distinguished professor at Simon Fraser University, was one of the first voices to speak up about the perils of decriminalization and safe supply of drugs when these initiatives were first announced, and the powers-that-be didn’t like that – or him. At one point, he was told to destroy his report and not rock the boat.

Initially, we were all told that the goal of these policies was to destigmatize drug addicts and prevent overdose deaths. But as the Minister of Health, Minister Osborne, has now admitted, it didn’t work. What it did do, however, was lead to increased public use of drugs on our streets and in our neighbourhoods, raising disorder and public safety concerns – an unintended consequence that should have been anticipated.

So, now we are moving on. To what, you might ask? And how?

Is there a consensus on first steps? I would suggest one of the most important changes that must happen is a sea change in attitude away from just supplying drugs to addicts, to the consideration of other strategies for care or recovery.

For sure, it will involve more treatment beds, more available social services for support, and – in some severe cases – involuntary care models. But are we ready to even have this conversation?

Dr. Somers believes that underpinning any future success must be data. “We need to state how our interventions are expected to result in improvements and how we’re going to measure progress.”

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Carole Taylor's Journal is a public affairs dialogue that digs deep into the most pressing issues of our times. For more, see our website at http://www.caroletaylorsjournal.ca.

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On this edition of Journal, we look at the sad Vancouver tale of the rise and fall of Woodward’s on Hastings Street.

Built in 1903, the Woodward’s building was the place to be in Vancouver – a one-stop department store famous for its renowned food floor. Glory days.

But few things stay the same forever. The Woodward's decline began in the 1960s as both shopping patterns and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside began to change. Many shoppers chose the shiny new suburban malls rather than the deteriorating downtown location. The losses at Woodward’s began to mount company-wide until they declared bankruptcy in 1993, 90 years after its much-celebrated opening on Hastings Street.

But that wasn’t the end of the Woodward’s story. The heritage building remained empty until the city bought it in 2001, with grand visions of a revitalized anchor for the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, providing homes and services for the community. This project was controversial from the outset, with some fighting against this so-called gentrification, while others worried that too much social housing in one project would not work.

But reopen it did, in 2009 with much fanfare about the anchor tenants supporting the redevelopment: Nesters Market, TD Bank, London Drugs, J.J. Bean, among others. But that was then and this is now: TD bank has closed its doors, J.J. Bean is gone and now London Drugs has announced its imminent closure.

The reasons are all similar – increased crime and disorder on the streets, worry about safety for staff and customers, and financial losses.

Clint Mahlman, CEO of London Drugs, joins me to talk about this difficult decision.

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