GROUNDWIRE DEC. 16 | JUSTICE FOR SOLI, SHUTDOWNWTO 20TH ANNIVERSARY, HOMELESS MARCH

GroundWire Production — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 18:20:03 +0000

Community radio news from coast to coast to coast

This episode of GroundWire was hosted at CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg on occupied Anishinaabeg Aking, the homeland of the Mètis nation, and the historical territory of the Nehiyawak and the Nakota. Hosted by Michael Welch.

Headlines:

State of the Inner City Report | Michael Welch, Susan Huebert (CKUW),

Divest McGill direct action | Gau Mahadevan, Gwendolyn Schuman (CKUT)

Broadbent Institute releases 2019 Tax Index figures | Catherine Fisher (CJLY)

Features:

Justice for Soli vigil in Montreal | Zo (CKUT), Michael Welch (CKUW)

SHUT DOWN WTO 20th anniversary | Greg Macdoiugal (Equitableeducation.ca), Michael Welch (CKUW)

March for action on Homessness and Housing| Michael Welch (CKUW), Greg Macdougal (Equitableeducation.ca), Leila Attar

Community Radio Report:

CJNU hosts NCRA Station Managers Summit | Michael Welch (CKUW)

Music:

Fear - Begonia
It was a Very Good Year - The Skydiggers

GroundWire Aug 19 | Vancouver renovictions, Manitoba election, vigil for man shot by Montreal

GroundWire Production — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 17:24:42 +0000

GROUNDWIRE NEWS

This episode of GroundWire was produced at CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg on occupied Anishinabeg Akiin, homeland of the Mètis Nation and the historical territory of the Nehiyawak and the Nakota. Produced by Michael Welch and voiced by Susan Huebert.

Headlines:

- Possible September lock-out of Winnipeg Transit workers | Michael Welch, Emily Leedham(CKUW)

- Apartments rentals overpriced for Canada's minimum wage earners, CCPA | Catherine Fisher (CJLY)

Features:

- Developer Purchasing and shutting down artists' spaces in Vancouver | Jesse Wentzloff, Caitlin Van Der Have (CJSF)

- Community members and groups push their issues in Manitoba election campaign | Michael Welch (CKUW)
- Vigil commemorating man shot by SVPM officers in 2018 | CKUT News Collective

Community Radio Report:
- CKUT's radiometers grant to grow Indigenous participation and content | Michael Welch (CKUW)

Music:
Leaf Rapids - Citizen Alien

PSA for Overdose Crisis National Day of Action April 16

waawaaskesh — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 17:57:52 +0000

Unofficial 2min PSA video for Overdose Crisis April 16 Canada National Day of Action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7ZoXQTk9rQ

* DOWNLOAD THE VIDEO to re-post on your social media account(s):

https://archive.org/details/april16psa_medium

National Day of Action coordinated by CAPUD: Canadian Association of People who Use Drugs www.capud.ca

Participating cities:

*BC* Prince George, Quesnel, Powell River, Courtenay, Sechelt, Sunshine Coast, Nanaimo, Vancouver, Abbotsford, Victoria

*ALBERTA* Edmonton, Calgary, Medicine Hat, Lethbridge

*SASKATCHEWAN* Saskatoon

*MANITOBA* Winnipeg

*ONTARIO* Sudbury, Ottawa, Toronto, Kitchener, Windsor

*QUEBEC* Montreal

*NOVA SCOTIA* Halifax

Listings of some event details:

http://capud.ca/events & https://facebook.com/NationalDOA2019/events

FIVE DEMANDS OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

1) Declare a National Public Health Emergency.

2) Make #SafeSupply the Fifth Pillar of the Canadian Drugs and Substances Policy.

3) Make Heroin Accessible: Get Heroin a Drug Identification Number.

4) Decriminalize People Who Use Drugs.

5) Provide Emergency Federal Funding for Overdose Prevention Sites.

CAPTIONS/TRANSCRIPT OF PSA:

(segments of Sarah Blyth interview via EquitableEducation.ca)

"As you use opiates you need more and more over time

When you're getting it from the street, you just don't know what you're taking

With fentanyl being here and it was in Vancouver and now you can see that it's just making it's way all across Canada and it's in the States and everything else

Probably in about 2015 it seemed to be like, "Why are all the...", you know what I mean like, "There's more people dying than usual..." you know, you just couldn't put your finger on it completely but there was just, there was kind of like a slow uptake of overdose deaths and then it was all of a sudden just everywhere

So it's pretty traumatizing, so many people have been lost that you can barely get over, you know, the last person or the last even five people and you've got someone else dying that you have met and known for a long time or whatever and it's just like it's it's so difficult to even have like other people comprehend how it is, it's terrible

I mean I don't know how to make people understand the situation and that it's a crisis and like how many interviews can you do with the media or anyone else for people to actually understand that people are really dying in outrageous amounts and there are things to do about it

I'm not really sure at this point why any level of government would be hesitant to really take on the crisis because I think people are ready for the government to take it on, like to do something serious about it

So I think, I think the government, it just doesn't know what to do, because it's not the health crisis that they ever expected. You'd expect all kinds of different things to to be a health crisis but this isn't what you would think of

The stigma attached to drug use and there's something underlying within humanity where they just aren't taking it seriously enough

I don't know how many more people have to die including young people there's different stories but mostly it's "I never believed that this could possibly happen to my family, and my child, or my family member"

There's an organizations of mothers that have had children that have died and they haven't... It just seems like nobody's having an impact enough. All of the people that are asking to do something about it, the most heartbreaking stories haven't been enough to make it a priority

They [governments] are not treating it as one, a real emergency."

"It's a Class Issue, Folks" –
Vancouver City Council Shudders at Swanson

Joseph Jones — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 21:50:46 +0000

Introduction

The somnolent hours of Vancouver City Council drudgery occasionally erupt into situations that vividly instruct. The recent treatment of a councillor who dared to raise the issue of socio-economic class interests created just such a graphic scene on Wednesday 3 April 2019. For the dramatic script itself, skip straight down to the appended transcript of what three councillors said and did. After all, the main purpose of this essay is to document this one particular nervous crack in Vancouver's faux-civic façade. The rest of the writing that lies in between this and that offers context and annotation and perspective.

Setting and Circumstance

The issue before Council was whether to "refer" Jean Swanson's motion: Re-conceptualizing the City's Rental 100 Program. Before a vote was taken, toward the end of the Wednesday evening, Vancouver city councillors offered up their closing remarks. (The video recording that covers Council's consideration of that one item runs to almost four hours.)

Plot note for persons unacquainted with the arcana of Vancouver City Council: to "refer a motion" is a standard procedural maneuver to inflict bureaucratic pigeonhole death on councillor proposals.

Second backstory note. In a nutshell, "Rental 100" amounts to shoveling millions of public dollars into the pockets of developers as "incentive" to build spiffy expensive new rental buildings for corporatized upmarket renters, like the phalanx of 400 Netflixers soon to inflict themselves on Vancouver. Typically, developers destroy existing more spacious and more affordable apartment buildings to create these new profit opportunities. The initial gift of public money is then followed up with no developer accountability. For ten years now the City of Vancouver has left "incentivized" developers free to charge whatever escalating rents the market will bear.

Rental 100 was initiated as a "short-term" program in 2009 to bail out developers, who were purported to suffer from the 2008 economic downturn. Just as the United States government rewarded rogue financial institutions because they were Too Big To Fail, so did Vancouver City Council seize opportunity to give similar treatment to a developer sector that has mushroomed mightily in the years following. Think of public dollars as manure for noxious asocial weeds.

The Moment

Jean Swanson concluded her remarks with a stark reference to socio-economic class:

So, I'm not going to vote for the referral, and I hope you guys don't too. It depends on who you're sticking up for. It's a class issue, folks, and I'm sticking up for the renters, the lower income renters.

Melissa De Genova immediately whined and pounced, asking meeting chair Adriane Carr to slap down on Jean Swanson. Her cryptic mention of "5.2" is a reference to the "rules of conduct" section of Procedure By-Law No. 9756. Specifically, in this case, 5.2(g) states: "A Council member must not question the motives of a Council member."

Chair Adriane Carr rapidly and nervously obliged complainer De Genova. Nevermind that sticking up for lower income renters was simultaneously being shoved off the table.

Reflections and Perspectives

There is a proverb: A bit dog hollers. It can be paradoxically unbecoming to expose one's motivation by moaning about injured feelings. Here is the big bone of contention that Jean Swanson had just identified as emerging from her motion:

        C. THAT Council instruct the Director of Legal Services to bring
        forward for enactment an amendment to the Vancouver Development Cost
        Levy By-law and the Area Specific Development Cost Levy By-law that
        would suspend, as soon as possible, the development cost levy waiver
        for for-profit rental housing until a thorough review of the Rental 100
        program can be undertaken.

Swanson's notion, that City of Vancouver could briefly hit the pause button on big handouts to developers, incited vociferous sky-is-falling fears and threats, notably from Mayor Kennedy Stewart and City Manager Sadhu Johnston. Rationality would suggest that if corresponding disaster had not already struck repeatedly throughout the many years prior to 2009, a few months of pause-for-review could not wreck anything. The Kennedy-Johnston view seems to be that Vancouver's shaky economy, ever more excessively tied to the churning of concrete into condos, must be stabilized by the urgent installation of every possible construction crane.

Time out here for some linguistic therapy. Call it mental rehabilitation offered to a bunkered-down Vancouver City Council. Lately a strange phrase has emerged at Vancouver City Council: "impugned motivation." This almost meaningless multi-word neologism occurs only five times among the billions of words indexed by Google. Less strange phrases are "imputed motivation" (323) and "inferred motivation" (925). Google's top-of-chart listing for "imputed motivation" points to a book titled The Essential Weber. It seems pretty clear that Council is sociology deficient. Maybe troubled councillors, unconscious to the point of not even being able to see what their problem is, should spend some quality time with Max Weber?

Contrast the "impugned motivation" shtick that turns Vancouver's municipal legislative body into a gong show with the overwhelming concern of judicial bodies to uncover and determine intent. In a court of law, assessment of motivation often seems of paramount concern. What a contradiction.

This looks like the difference between making the law and being subjected to it. If you get to make the law, you start to think of yourself as untouchable dictator, with the arrogant right to deny that you should ever have any accountability for your motives. Pseudoscientifically, you go even further. You pretend that you really have no motivations. You are merely a rational particularity that flits around according to the laws of social physics. There's no controversy about what atoms do. Politicians hate controversy. And their own accountability.

Socio-economic class aligns with interests — whether the interests of the privileged or the interests of the oppressed. To the extent that these interests constitute motivations, Vancouver City Council presumes a social unconscious that should receive no therapy whatsoever. There is something utterly ridiculous about a system where social reality cannot be talked about, so that a reified illusion of objectivity and rationality and equity can be maintained. Thus does solipsistic "procedure" toddle its bureaucratic steps along a neverending Escher stairway.

Meanwhile, Rental 100 remains an accelerant that Vancouver City Council firehoses onto a conflagration of displacement, demoviction, and gentrification.

Transcript

Video Source: 7. Motion B.6 - City's Rental 100 Program - Part 2

3:22:05 — 3:25:17

Jean Swanson:

So this motion is being criticized as not solving problems or issues, and not proposing solutions.

So who is policy for? Who are solutions for? We heard eloquent speakers today. Speakers who are being renovicted. Speakers who are paying too much rent. Speakers who are living in cars. Speakers who are working two jobs so they don't have a life because their rents are so high. So most of my resolution is about a report back — a very mild thing.

The controversial part is about suspending the Rental 100 program — not the applications that are in the pipe, there could be hundreds of those, but new applications that havent been made yet. Not suspending them forever, but until we get a report back, which is probably a few months.

So its about suspending a program for a few months. A program that gives millions in incentives for apartments that have high rents, and apartments that have growing rents. For apartments that can demovict tenants from existing affordable units. For apartments that increase land values and other market rents throughout the whole city.

Uh, one of the speakers here just googled craigslist, and I did too. Uh, apartments in the vancouver area over $2000 a month — there's 3000 of them.

Adriane Carr:

Ah, yes, Councillor De Genova, go ahead.

Melissa De Genova:

I feel that it was implied that anyone who votes for this referral is not sticking up for renters. And I waant to be very clear that that is not the case. Under 5.2 — because I'm not using this as an opportunity to speak — this is actually something that I would like you to rule on, because if you heard it the same way as I did, Chair Carr, that's, uh, that's exactly what I-I understand Councillor Swanson accused anyone who votes for this referral of doing.

Carr:

Actually, uh, uh, I-I will sustain that-that point of order, Councillor Swanson. Um, you know you are impugning motive, um, in the vote on this issue, and, uh, and uh, yeah, I-I would ask you to refrain from doing that.

Beware of State Environmentalism

Guadillen1 — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 03:33:56 +0000

The authentic ecologists are anti-developmentalists.

We live in a dysfunctional world, in clear decline and sinking, as the symptoms of directly verifiable degradation seem to indicate, from climatic disorder to famines and emerging pathologies, from widespread contamination and galloping deforestation to the growing social inequality, from the spread of religious and nationalist emotional plague to the wars for the control of increasingly scarce resources. This is not a mere crisis, but an ecological and social catastrophe that, as it has been in the works for years, it has taken on a semblance of normalcy. Indeed, the global economy, the last stage of capitalist civilization, has shown itself to be a major destructive force, capable of irreversibly altering the vital cycles of nature, of ruining society and of destroying itself with both. An unprecedented historical fact, the economic and technological impact has overflowed the social sphere, taking this devastation geological dimensions. The survival conditions of the human species are being profoundly deteriorated. The novelty is that there is no turning back. In short, capitalism is the catastrophe itself, and the problem is not that it collapses, a good thing by any measure, but that in its demential race towards the abyss it drags us all. The candid souls who won't stop praying for the salvation of the planet Earth, for the preservation of the habitat, against the extinction of the species, would do well to specify that it is of capitalism in all its facets from which it is necessary to save this planet, and that this entails its abolition, which is the abolition of inequalities, of hierarchies, of political apparatus, of the division of labor, of patriarchy, of armies and of states.

Nature has become fully part of the economy; it has ceased to be an immutable environment that supports a society evolving historically. It has been "civilized". Earth, sea, air and living beings are mere market objects. Society, capitalist of course, appropriates Nature, or as they say, the environment, just as it had seized society before. Nature is no longer outside of history, it is not alien to the linear time of mass society, since the catastrophes that affect it have a social origin. They are a consequence of a historical process linked to the rise and consolidation of a class that bases its power on the control of the economy: the bourgeoisie. And that same class, historically transformed, has become aware that the new push of the economy - of a greater advance in the looting of the territory - depends on the administration of the catastrophes that its deployment has provoked. The war against nature continues but disguised under an apparent ecological peace. Catastrophism is now an important part of the dominant ideology - that of the ruling class, until recently optimistic and progressive - since pessimism is more than welcome in a world that is treading water. Disaster can not be denied or redirected. You must admit it. Garbage is at its highest, industrialized leisure is raging, biodiversity is lost, and oppression is multiplied. The current message of power is clear: the catastrophe is real, the threat of collapse is very plausible, but the responsibility belongs to an abstract humanity, eager for riches, very prolific and genetically self-destructive. It turns out that we are all guilty of the catastrophe for being as they say we are, animals that pursue exclusively the private benefit. Only the leaders can free us from it, because only they have the capacity, the knowledge and the necessary means to do it without stopping economic growth or substantially modifying the financial model. In short, faithfully preserving the status quo, not fundamentally affecting political and social structures.

The solution of the leaders lies in a new industrial system of production and services controlling migratory flows and walking hand in hand with "green" technologies, the true protagonists of the "transition" from the old ecocidal world with its "fossil" energy sources to the new sustainable world with its "deposits" of "renewable" energy. The new "low carbon" economy comes to the aid of the old petroleum economy, not to displace it, but to complement it. Both are extractivists and developers. The multinationals direct the whole operation: capitalism is the one who greenens. Thus, the consumption of fossil fuel will not be affected by the production of agrofuels and energy from sources that of "renewable" have only the name. The global consumption of energy that leaders call "green" will never surpass the "fossil": currently it does not reach 14% of the total. Therefore, nuclear power plants, thermal power plants, incinerators, methanizers, hydraulic fractures and reservoirs will increase their presence, this time in the company of wind, photovoltaic, solar thermal and biomass industrial plants. New technologies sustain the exploitative society, depend on it as much or more than the opposite. Growth, development, capital accumulation or whatever you want to call it, is now based on the "green" economy, on "sustainability", on "green" jobs, on eco-technical innovations that concentrate power and reinforce the verticality of decisions. State environmentalism is its new defender, the professional auxiliary vanguard of the political class enlightened by parliamentarism, the voracious consumer of public and private funds destined to finance projects of systemic underpinning and profitability of marginalization.

Such an environmentalism is almost essential as a stabilizing instrument for the labor force that has been definitively expelled from the market, but it is even more important as a weapon for the relocation of polluting activities to poor countries, whose greatest opportunity to be part of the global economy consists of become landfills. State environmentalism is represented first by a range of eco-Stalinist parties, the result of the recycling of residual, classical Stalinism, under the parameters of populist citizenship, such as Podemos, Comunes, IU or Equo. Then come a lot of collectives and reformist associations that do not go beyond the "solidary" market economy, "responsible" consumption, the exploitation of "renewable" energies and "sustainable" development. Greater degree of complicity with the order have the patented environmentalists of the big NGOs such as Green Peace, WWF, Extinction-Rebellion or Green New Deal, which aspire to become lobbies, and above all the "transitional" tertulians, the "collapsologists" and the celebrity vedettes moved by the planetary devastation. However, the hard core of this kind of environmentalism is composed of a considerable fauna of cretinists careerists, upstart climbers and opportunist adventurers distributed throughout the institutions, media, social networks and the leadership of organizations as experts, advisors, directors and managers. You can make an extensive list with their names. The common denominator of all of them is not to constitute a threat to anything or anyone. They do not question the foundational topics of bourgeois rule - "democracy", "progress", "rule of law" - but rather the opposite. They do not really want to end capitalism or deindustrialize the world. Their goals are much less ambitious: most will be satisfied with seeing some of their proposals included in the agendas of the main parties and governments. After all, their vocational work is limited to put pressure on politicians, not to expunge politics. They try to act as intermediaries in the territorial market through conservationist regulations, just as unions do in the labor market.

The State bolsters or hinders society to suit powerful private interests, the interests of industrial domination, and not for the benefit of the administered masses. It is something immovable. The looting of the territory that the economic elites’ practice is being facilitated by the state instances, which feed from it reinforcing its hierarchical structure in passing, consolidating the politico-civil service class and extending the control mechanisms on the population. There is no possible "green" State, because no self-respecting State will act against its interests, which are served by the intensive exploitation of natural resources rather than by it's decrease. Stopping the catastrophe would involve halting development, with fearsome derivations such as the eradication of consumerism, the dismantling of industries, highways and large distribution, the de-urbanization of space, the dissolution of bureaucracy, the total decentralization of energy production and food, the end of the division of labor, etc., all contrary to the character of the State product of industrial civilization. That is why the environmentalism of the State will prefer to distract its public with small superficial gestures of citizen responsibility. It will not go beyond taxes, decrees and follow-up commissions; it will not go beyond the selective collection of garbage, the limitation of the speed to 80 Km/h, the promotion of the bicycle and of organic foods, of low consumption lighting or the prohibition of certain plastic containers, none of which will visibly contribute to ecological change or the democratization of society. The State rests on an infantile population, excluded from the decisions and depoliticized, focused on their private life; The State is nourished by an artificial, stratified, classist, society, in strong imbalance with the environment and therefore unsustainable. If a society like this will never be ecologically viable, neither will a State forged in its midst, no matter how much will one may have. False ecologists worship the State above all causes.

The true environmentalists are elsewhere. The authentic ecologists are anti-developmentalists. Their program rejects the preponderant role of technology in the evolutionary orientation of society, that is, it condemns the idea of "progress" as a pernicious fallacy. Likewise, it criticizes and combats the concentration of the population in conurbations and the proletarization of the lives of its inhabitants, both in its material and moral dimension. It fights against alienation, a necessary consequence of massification. For them the industrial civilization and the State that represents it are irreformable and must be fought by all means, of course, means that do not contradict the ends. Boycotts, marches, occupation, mobilizations, etc. The defense of the territory is anti-statist and anti-capitalist in both form and content. It seeks an exit from capitalism, the demercantilization of territory and human relations, and public management through the agora, that is, the assemblies. The ecological catastrophe can not be conjured except with a drastic change in the way of life, a "de-alienation", which refers us to the restitution of the normal metabolism between the city and the countryside, to the unification of intellectual and physical work, to the suppression of industrial production, the abolition of wage labor, the extinction of statist forms ... The theoretical and practical question that arises is how to develop a realistic mass strategy to carry out the objectives described. The salvation of the planet and of suffering humanity will depend on the ability of the oppressed population to get out of their lethargy and undertake the long road of resistance in order to end an aberrant world and build a truly human society in its place.

Miquel Amorós, February 26, 2019. Arguments for non-participation in collapsist confernces

Secwepemc Media Advisory Regarding Trudeau's visit to Kamloops BC

Billie Pierre — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 21:01:40 +0000

Liberal Party Campaign – Risky Investment

MEDIA ADVISORY

Liberal Party Campaign – Risky Investment

January 8, 2019
CHASE, B.C. - The TransMountain Expansion pipeline, being forcibly imposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canadian government, constitutes the violation of collectively held human and Indigenous rights of the Secwepemc. The Secwepemc stand in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en, who have been forcibly removed from their unceded ancestral lands in opposition to TransCanada Coastal Gas pipeline.

The world is watching as the Prime Minister of a country like Canada, that boasts one of the top highest qualities of living in the world, uses taxpayers money to violate human and Indigenous rights in his failure to obtain Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) from the collectively held rightful title holders. Justin Trudeau and the TransMountain pipeline have used unjust, divisive and socially irresponsible tactics by selectively choosing some elected Chief and Councils who have signed agreements to the pipeline, without the consent of the whole Nation. The criminalization and militarization of our water protectors is a part of historical and ongoing cycle of oppression, and a karmic pattern that ultimately affects people of all creeds and cultures, who are coming to realize more fully the ways that our realities are entangled in the cross cultural narrative that is unfolding.

We invite the Rainbow Peoples (People of all creeds and cultures) to stand in solidarity with us when we demand that Justin Trudeau and the Canadian government end apartheid in Canada, and Stop TransMountain Pipeline by implementing Indigenous rights and FPIC, as a measure of protecting and conserving the bio-diversity and cultural heritage of humanity for the benefit of all.

"We are in a critical state of emergency dealing with the impacts of climate change, social injustices and huge disparity in social determinants of health,” said Secwepemc leader Dawn Morrison, adding “this includes loss of control in decision making in matters impacting our traditional land and food system, as well as social issues such as poverty, increased violence against our women and high rates of death from substance abuse in our communities.”

Morrison, founder of the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty, says “the health of all Peoples downstream relies heavily on our ability to protect clean drinking water, both of which are at risk from both climate change and spills from the TransMountain pipeline that are inevitable.” The Secwepemc’ulecw Assembly is demanding a moratorium on any pipeline proposing to transport crude or diluted bitumen through our vast traditional territory where we are stewards of the forests, fields and waterways that flow from the Rockies on their way to the ocean.

We reaffirm our territorial title and authority. “We have never provided and will never provide our collective free, prior and informed consent - the minimal international standard - to the Trans Mountain Pipeline Project.

“We explicitly and irrevocably refuse its passage through our territory. Investors take note, there is no Secwepemc consent for Kinder Morgan. Kinder Morgan will not pass through Secwepemc Territory.”

The time is now to invest in a more regenerative economy based on renewable energy and divest from the exploitative fossil fuels industry that is driving climate change beyond the 1.5 degree threshold.

To view the Secwepemcul'ecw Assembly Declaration visit: secwepemculecw.org

- 30 -

For interviews contact:

Dawn Morrison, 778.879.5106

Miranda Dick, 778.694.8510

Secwepemc MEDIA ADVISORY: Liberal Party Campaign = Risky Investment

Kerry Coast — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 18:28:44 +0000

The Secwepemc stand in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en as they defend their unceded ancestral lands from gas pipelines.

January 8, 2019

CHASE, B.C. - The TransMountain Expansion pipeline, being forcibly imposed being forcibly imposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canadian government, constitutes the violation of collectively held human and Indigenous rights of the Secwepemc. The Secwepemc stand in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en, who have been forcibly removed from their unceded ancestral lands in opposition to TransCanada Coastal Gas pipeline.

The criminalization and militarization of our water protectors is a part of historical and ongoing cycle of oppression, and a karmic pattern that ultimately affects people of all creeds and cultures, who are coming to realize more fully the ways that our realities are entangled in the cross cultural narrative that is unfolding.

The Secwepemc’ulecw Assembly is demanding a moratorium on any pipeline proposing to transport crude or diluted bitumen through our vast traditional territory where we are stewards of the forests, fields and waterways that flow from the Rockies on their way to the ocean.

The time is now to invest in a more regenerative economy based on renewable energy. We call on all investors to divest from the exploitative fossil fuels industry that is driving climate change beyond the 1.5 degree threshold.

To view the Secwepemcul'ecw Assembly Declaration visit: secwepemculecw.org

For interviews contact:

Dawn Morrison, 778.879.5106

Miranda Dick, 778.694.8510

Dawn Morrison

Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty

C/O 555 East 55th Avenue

Vancouver, B.C, V5X 1N6

Mobile: 778.879.5106
Email: dmo6842@gmail.com
Websites: - www.indigenousfoodsystems.org

https://wildsalmoncaravan.wordpress.com/

Open Public Buildings To Homeless - Surrey Mayor Should Open "People's House" to Homeless People As Temperatures Drop

Roslyn Cassells — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 23:35:50 +0000

Death from exposure, hypothermia constant companions of homelesss people and companion animals

Open public buildings to homeless people and their companion animals, or they might freeze to death on the street, it's that simple.

While Vancouver opens community centers and the library as warming centers, desperate Surrey homeless advocates beg private citizens and businesses for indoor spaces to temporarily house homeless people and their companion animals during the cold and wet weather that characterizes the west coast winters, putting lives of homeless at risk.

Every homeless shelter in Surrey is turning away people every night. BC Housing is not even keeping track of the numbers anymore, which is shameful.

Why doesn't Surrey open City Hall, dubbed as the "People's House" by Mayor Doug McCallum, to those Surrey residents most in need? Why doesn't Surrey open local community centers and libraries as warming centers, as Vancouver has? These are public buildings, they have the necessary amenities for life...heat, hydro, water, washrooms, areas that can be used for food prep and sleeping, for service provision...why not open community centers 24/7 in all corners of the city?

How can Mayor McCallum go home to his warm bed and meal every night while other Surrey residents are literally hungry and out in the cold?! How do the current city councillors sleep while others have not even a bed?! City of Surrey has many buildings which could be put to the use of the people...these are the people's buildings after all.

Since homeless people were moved off 135A St. "Strip" in time to be "out of sight, out of mind" for the 2018 municipal election, the homeless crisis in Surrey has worsened. Threatened with arrest by the police if they returned, and with theft of their camping and cooking equipment by the city bylaw department, those people who did not get into the modular housing due to lack of sufficient units for all, became displaced once again.

Many are living in remote locations, where they are less harassed by authorities, but have less access to much needed services such as medical supports including safe use sites, harm reduction supplies, access to medical staff, meals, clothing, social supports.... How many have died because an ambulance could not get to them in time? How many bodies will we find in the woods in the spring?

When will Surrey stop treating homeless people as if they were the problem? When will the city make a serious effort to offer short and long term help to those most marginalized of our members? When will city council stop ignoring this social crisis in our midst?

Surrey City Council needs to take immediate action. To fail to do so is a dereliction of duty, the lives of our most vulnerable community members depend on us!

OPEN PUBLIC BUILDINGS NOW!

River Otter has right to be in Vancouver Parks

Roslyn Cassells — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 22:02:42 +0000

Native Species should be supported, not evicted!

Nov. 26, 2018. The River Otter currently living in Dr. Sun Yat Sen Garden, a Vancouver Park Board Park, should be left unmolested by humans!

The current plan to trap and relocated a native species from a Vancouver Park Board public park must be stopped. Native wildlife should be supported, not evicted, from our parks and waterways.

The mock concern of Dr. Sun Yat Sen Garden's employees for the koi is hypocritical, given their lack of care for the fish over the decades, resulting in die offs due to preventable habitat conditions, including when I was a park commissioner from 1999-2002. During my term I had to hire an outside company to try to save the resident koi from death because the garden was too cheap to allow greater water flow which was needed to up the oxygen content in the koi ponds at the time.

Given that the larger older koi all died off at the time I would find it improbable that the garden now has a 50 year old koi at this time, unless she was added after the big die off and was already quite old then.

Regardless, native wildlife, given all they have to contend with from humans...habitat destruction and so on, should not take back seat to introduced species, particularly ones placed there by humans deliberately. I would much rather see a native river otter in a Vancouver Park than a fancy goldfish.

As a former park commissioner for the Green Party I find it outrageous that the current board has not put a stop to this violation of a native species' attempt to survive amid the urban infrastructure.

Who are WE to say he or she would be "better off" elsewhere? If the otter is surviving in an urban park, let her stay!

As for the poor koi, they are a food source for all sorts of animals, and the people who put them in the position of being in an unprotected pond are to blame, not the otters or herons, who are only trying to survive.

Long Live River Otter!

Innovative Policies Set Surrey's GreenVote Apart!

Roslyn Cassells — Tue, 16 Oct 2018 02:30:35 +0000

GreenVote Policy Platform Leads in 2018 Municipal Election

Oct. 15, 2018 In a cynical and corrupt political environment, GreenVote, a grassroots Surrey elector organization, is blazing an ethical green trail through what has become known as the City of Parking Lots – Surrey, BC.

Running a zero money, zero waste campaign, council candidate and former Green Party park commissioner Roslyn Cassells is a strong and determined voice for nature and social justice at city hall.

This year Cassells took the City of Surrey to BC Supreme Court to fight the construction of the road through Hawthorne Park, organized a grassroots campaign against mandatory Btk spraying in North Surrey, developed a Coexisting with Peafowl Plan for Sullivan Heights Community, and advocated for underpasses and temporary road closures for the endangered Western Toad in South Surrey. She has many innovative plans and policies which will show our most marginalized residents compassion, and protect our wildlife and wild spaces! That includes our companion animals says Cassells, who plans to introduce a Spay and Neuter Program for low income residents and others struggling to help homeless animals in Surrey, a No Kill Policy at Surrey Animal Resource Center, and a Non-Lethal Wildlife Management Policy too.

Roslyn Cassells plans to bring in a No Net Loss of Green Space Policy, and Develop With Care guidelines to protect the environment during development. She proposes free public transit because, in addition to the health and ecosystem benefits, there is no economic benefit to charging fares. “The cost of instituting a fare system is equal to the amount collected from fares” she stated, “so why then, charge fares, when so many struggle to pay them?” There is less cost for infrastructure like roads and bridges if more people take public transit.

More social housing, including more temporary and permanent modular housing is in order, and opening municipal buildings to homeless people instead of leaving them on the street to freeze to death in the winter and overheat in the summer. Cassells proposes a City Rent Bank, and a new City Homelessness and Housing Outreach Team to assist people with housing and other needs.

“We should have a free recreation pass for all low-income people in Surrey” commented Cassells. “Health is very important and if you are poor it is already difficult to pay for housing, let alone food and recreation. We need to make sure the basics of life are equally provided to all.”

Drop-In Centers for Youth are needed throughout the city, as are Drop-Ins for Adults. We need better park amenities like public toilets that are not only occasionally unlocked, water fountains, comfortable benches, picnic tables, barbeque structures, and so on.

Cyclists need physically separated bike lanes, especially in commuter corridors, and improved cycling infrastructure such as better connectivity in the paths system, bike lock ups, and a public bike system.

“We urgently need an Independent Civilian Police Complaints Body, and if we are going to reconsider our policing contract with the RCMP, we need a thorough public consultation” said Cassells. Putting more police officers on the street is not going to decrease crime or stop gang violence according to social researchers. “We need to empower women and girls and gender equity must underscore everything we do at City Hall”

Cassells proposes municipal broadband to improve accessibility of internet for all, an Ombudsperson for Surrey, progressive green taxation changes, transparency, ecological and social monitoring requirements, and the protection of all that is a social or ecological good in our City. That includes protecting the Agricultural Land Reserve, banning of ecologically damaging practices, and supporting progressive collective projects like maker spaces, free markets, community arts hubs, and farmers markets.

Roslyn Cassells - GreenVote Surrey council candidate

City of Surrey candidate info: https://www.surrey.ca/election/candidates/roslyn-cassells.aspx

Facebook page for Roslyn Cassells for Surrey City Council: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Roslyn-Cassells-for-Surrey-City-Council-1699563733470833/

The complete GreenVote Policy Platform is attached. It is also copied in-line below in case you have problems opening it. Also attached are photos of the candidate and some of her supporters.

GreenVote Municipal Policy – Surrey 2018

Table of Contents:

1 - INTRODUCTION:

Walk This Way: Social and ecological justice

Genuine Consultation

Path Forward: Triple bottom line accounting, Develop With Care, Best Practices

2 - HOUSING PRIORITIES:

Protect Rental Stocks

Social Housing, Modular Housing, Landlord Discrimination, No Pets Policies

Rent Supplements

City Rent Bank

City Housing and Homelessness Outreach Team

Open municipal buildings to homeless people

Incentivize maintenance of existing rental stocks

Legislate for rental only zones, and against vacant properties

3 - SUPPORT SERVICES FOR PEOPLE AND ANIMALS:

Free low-income recreation pass

Spay and Neuter Program

No-Kill Policy at Surrey Animal Resource Center

Non-lethal wildlife management

Ecosystem protections and remediation

No Net Loss of Green Space Policy

Increase green spaces, mini parks, and dog parks

Park amenities: increase public toilet access, water fountain, comfortable benches and tables

Drop-In Centers for Youth

Drop In Centers for Adults

4 - TRANSPORTATION:

Increase bus service, dedicated bus lanes, and 24 hour service

Free Public Transportation

Separated bike lanes and improved cycling and path infrastructure

No Light Rail Transit or antiquated Skytrain technology

Interurban Rail consultation

5 - FOOD SECURITY:

Protect Agricultural Land Reserve

Community gardens, Seeds of Diversity, Master Gardeners

Ban ecologically damaging practices

Support initiatives for positive change: maker spaces, community arts hubs, free markets, farmers markets

Organics and recycling pickup

6 - POLICING AT A CROSSROADS:

Public consultation – municipal vs RCMP

Independent Civilian Police Complaints Body

Healthcare integration and mental health training

Unionize police officers

Zero tolerance of harassment/intolerance

7 - EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN AND GIRLS:

Surrey City workers’ diversity

Mentoring, apprenticeship, coop work-study

Resource Center for Migrant and Temporary Foreign Workers

8 - TRANSPARENCY AT CITY HALL

9 - OFFICE OF OMBUDSPERSON

10 - MONITORING CITY HALL AND CITY OF SURREY

11 - MUNICIPAL BROADBAND

12 - PROGRESSIVE GREEN TAXATION

1 - INTRODUCTION:

WALK THIS WAY

· Govern according to global green principles of social and ecological justice.

GENUINE CONSULTATION

· Direct and ongoing involvement with local communities and First Nations on all projects at the planning stage and beyond, before decisions are taken and commitments are made.

THE PATH FORWARD

· Apply triple bottom line accounting to all city projects, programs, services, and departments so that three aspects 1) society, 2) the ecology, and 3) the economy - are all given equal consideration in planning decisions.

· Adopt as minimum standards Develop With Care guidelines developed by the Environment Ministry to help municipalities protect our wildlife and the ecology in Surrey.

· Maintain Best Practices in all city projects, programs, services, and departments.

· Regularly review programs and services to ensure improvements to Best Practices are implemented without delay.

· Maintain close ties with professional and academic bodies to this end.

· Encourage and fund professional development of staff to maintain high levels of knowledge and capacity.

2 - HOUSING PRIORITIES

· Work with staff, housing providers, non-governmental organizations, landlords, and other levels of government to provide assistance and incentives to maintain existing rental stocks,

· Increase stock of social housing working with funders and providers,

· Increase stock of temporary and permanent modular housing currently being funded by the province, since it is the quickest form of housing to provide for street homeless folks,

· Fight landlord discrimination against government-funded income recipients and other barriers to housing like no pets policies,

· Ensure all low-income renters are provided with rental supplements and other assistance to maintain tenancies, and

· Establish a City Rent Bank for emergency funding of housing for low-income residents.

Create a City Housing and Homelessness Outreach Team to assist people to find permanent or temporary housing, stay in the housing, and thrive in their lives in Surrey.

· Team members will help people meet their basic needs for survival – food, clothing, transportation, health care, employment, education, daycare and household necessities either by direct provision of aid if necessary, and by referral to appropriate community agency or service.

· This team will meet regularly with all city departments to assess changing conditions and needs – do ongoing needs analyses and ongoing short and long term action plans.

· The daily outcome for our city housing and homelessness team is this: EVERYONE SAFELY HOUSED, FED, CLOTHED, AND CARED FOR EVERY DAY.

OPEN MUNICIPAL BUILDINGS TO HOMELESS PEOPLE

· Emergency housing in municipal buildings: buildings which have the necessary amenities, and which are not currently being used, should be turned to the use of the people as need dictates. Instead of leaving people to survive or die outside in the cold, rain, snow, or heat on the streets of our city we should open buildings for use by the public.

· There are numerous city-owned buildings which have heat, light, running water, washrooms, showers, kitchens, rooms for sleeping, rooms for service provision, and so on.

· The city could provide outreach at these locations to connect people with necessary services to meet their needs.

· Companion animals should be welcomed and their needs provided for.

· Couples, friends, and families should be able to remain together. Those who are unable to cope with group situations must also be accommodated.

· Wifi and outreach services from the library can help people re-establish their lives while in temporary digs.

· Homeless people should also be given free access to recreation centers to wash, use the toilet, and enjoy the same amenities as the rest of the population.

HOUSING TOPICS FOR POLICY CHANGE

· We must protect EXISTING rental stocks AT ALL COSTS. We are not going to build our way out of the housing crisis. The purpose built rentals and so-called “affordable housing” projects currently all the rage are only affordable to middle to upper income people.

· In many neighbourhoods the plan is to destroy existing aging rental stocks to replace them with these purpose built rentals and “affordable housing”. The monthly rental cost will increase for the units by between 200-300%.

· Despite the new provincial legislation which requires developers to offer existing tenants first refusal on a unit in the new building, it will be impossible for most of the renters to come up with the new rental rates.

· The vacancy rate in the lower mainland is 0%. Eviction = Homelessness

· The housing allowance for the over 110,000 persons on provincial disability pension in BC and the thousands on social assistance in Surrey has remained frozen at $375 for a single person per month for housing.

· For these reasons any attempt to destroy existing rental stock will render most of the residents homeless.

· The city must incentivize landlords to maintain their existing rental stocks and de-incentivize any redevelopments until such time as the vacancy rate increases to a point where people can find safe affordable housing, and the provincial government increases disability and assistance rates to reflect reality. A vacancy rate of at least 3% is considered essential. The rates of disability pension and social assistance must be raised to meet Basic Living Standards. A raise of 51% is required to meet the inflationary increases since the rates were frozen 14 years ago. City Council must pressure the province to RAISE THE RATES!

· Innovative housing initiatives for those struggling at the low-income end of society are essential to the survival of this demographic.

· We need to be open to Tiny Homes, modular housing, laneway housing, secondary suites, projects such as Dignity Village, and community collective solutions in whatever form they must take to keep people as safe as possible.

· Zone for rental only where needed, with a focus on the most needed stocks of social housing, legislate against empty homes

3 - SUPPORT SERVICES FOR PEOPLE AND ANIMALS

· Low income adults 18-65 should be given the free recreation access currently extended to youth and seniors.

· This demographic faces many barriers to health and community involvement which this access would mitigate.

· Offer free spay and neuter services to all those resident in Surrey who need it, as well as the community volunteers working with homeless animals and feral cats and rabbits in the municipality, regardless of their home residence.

· Free spay and neuter programs improve animal welfare by reducing suffering from homelessness, exposure, and starvation.

· Animal control costs will reduce over time where free spay and neuter programs are available.

· Adopt No-Kill Policy towards animals throughout the City - at the City animal shelter, the Surrey Animal Resource Center, and in our interactions with indigenous and non-indigenous wildlife, and domestic animals.

· Non-lethal wildlife and domestic animal management must be used.

· Innovative adoption programs and other tactics to improve animal welfare and understanding of the needs of animals must become standard practice.

WILDLIFE NEEDS OUR PROTECTION TOO

· Support wildlife protection, reintroduction, and education programs in cooperation with local residents, wildlife rehabilitators, ecological groups, First Nations, other municipalities, districts, and regions, provincial and federal governments, adjacent states and countries, cross-border programs such as the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, and international agreements such as the Migratory Birds Convention Act etc.

ECOSYSTEMS AND BIODIVERSITY

· Reconnect and remediate fragmented ecosystems and ecological communities through wildlife corridors, native plantings, day-lighting historic streams, decommissioning roads and other structures and remediating their sites, and

· Reintroduce extirpated species once viable ecological supports exist.

· Protect all species, most particularly those who have a great ecosystem impact, those provincially and federally listed species, those at risk of local extirpation, and those at risk of extinction

· Incentivize projects, programs, and infrastructure that offer/add/protect ecological and social values within their philosophy, practices, or structures.

· Adopt a NO NET LOSS OF GREENSPACE POLICY, city-wide. The concept of green space is not simply hectare for hectare, but considering ecological values of biodiversity, protection of endangered or uncommon species and ecological communities, the fragmentation of habitats, with the goal of maintaining and improving our local ecologies, reconnecting fragmented habitats, re-establishing native species and ecologies, and supporting and increasing biodiversity.

· Of all the things we leave behind when we leave this world…a healthy, biodiverse planet is the most valuable gift we can leave for future generations, for all our relations.

OUR PARKS AND PLACES

· Increase green spaces in low-income neighbourboods.

· Increase mini-parks and off-leash dog parks.

· All residential areas should be within walking distance of both parks and dog parks. This improves health outcomes, increases foot traffic, increases eyes on the street, increases safety and community connections.

· More benches and covered benches/tables, water fountains, and public toilets are needed in parks and public spaces so people can extend their stay outside and enjoy a break along the way.

· Many seniors, disabled persons, and parents with small children have great need for this and cannot access greenspaces if these amenities are not made available.

· Outreach is needed to low-income and marginalized communities to make them aware of programs and services provided by the city.

· Drop-in centers for youth and others for all-ages throughout the city are essential so kids and marginalized communities have a safe place to go during the day or night, before/after school, on weekends, and holidays…where they can connect with other youth and mentors, peers, and allies. Access to phones, computers, washrooms, showers, laundry, food security and other services as needed, will be made available.

4 - TRANSPORTATION SUPPORT:

· Increase bus services, including expanded hours of service to provide safe, accessible transit for all at all times.

· Advocate for a fare-free service (as the cost for implementing a fare structure and enforcing it is equal to the monies collected from fares), and there would be social and ecological benefits as accessibility would increase, and pollution and congestion would decrease.

· Establish dedicated bus lanes and physically separated commuter bike lanes during peak periods on all routes and all day on high-use routes,

· Commence public consultation on the possibility of rejuvenating the interurban railway, which has established infrastructure and rights of way and therefore less costly and destructive than LRT or the proposed Skytrain extension.

· Improve the paths’ network to address connectivity, safety, and accessibility for cyclists, walkers, and others using transportation other than cars…i.e. wheelchairs, walkers, strollers, motorized scooters, skateboards, rollerblades and so on.

· Separated bike lanes are necessary for bicycle commuters on main routes to provide safe commuting options. Improved cycling infrastructure is essential. We need physically separated bike lanes, in commuter corridors and eventually all roads.

YES TO EXPANDED BUS SERVICE - NO TO LRT AND SKYTRAIN

· GreenVote says No to Light Rail Transit and No to antiquated Skytrain technology, especially any attempt to place structures in Green Timbers.

· The communities most effected by the construction of these mega-projects were ignored, no consent was given at the local level.

· LRT has little local benefit, and has resulted in increased congestion in the North Surrey construction zone, increased pollution, increased road construction.

· The "Early Works SNG LRT" projects include the 105 Ave. Connector from Whalley to Guildford- which bisects an elementary school playground leaving Hjorth Park Elementary School (home to the city’s most vulnerable students) on a traffic island between 104 Ave., 148 St., and the 105 Ave. Connector when the City, ignoring wildlife protections, paved a road through Hawthorne Rotary Park over the opposition of over 12,000 residents, draining a 5,000 year old bog and destroying the habitats of many wild animals and plants including 17 endangered species.

· If elected: Move to stop 105 Avenue connector construction to save Hjorth Park Elementary School playground and re-wild Hawthorne Rotary Park, mitigate damage done to bog, endangered species and others.

· For the $1.6 Billion approved funds by the federal and provincial governments to be spent on Phase 1 SNG-LRT project, we could easily fund an excellent rapid bus system which would be more affordable and accessible, and provide sustainable jobs, as well as improved amenities such as physically separated bike lanes and other cycling infrastructure like bike lockups and improved path connectivity.

5 - FOOD SECURITY:

· Improve food security by protecting existing Agricultural Land Reserve lands in our jurisdiction and encouraging their active use for local agricultural production.

· Encourage property owners to grow food for themselves and for the community on their land.

· Expand community gardens to allow more low-income apartment dwellers to access greenspace to grow their own food.

· Network with master gardeners and seed-sharing projects to enhance crop diversity, and strengthen resilience and cultural survival through mutual aid.

· Ban any ecologically damaging practices in our jurisdiction.

· Support community initiatives to strengthen cooperation, the ecology, and local economy – farmers’ markets, community markets, free markets and stores, maker spaces, and community arts spaces and hubs.

· Increase frequency of pick up of organics and recycled bins and reduce frequency of pickup of garbage.

6 - POLICING AT A CROSSROADS

· The current policing model in Surrey carries with it the systemic strengths and deficiencies of the RCMP.

· Changing over to a municipal force could be considered should public consultation indicate a strong preference.

· Whether municipal or RCMP we need independent civilian oversight and police complaints procedures.

· The police needs to build and develop trust and rapport with our vulnerable populations.

· Comprehensive and ongoing training on mental health issues should be a given. Health care providers, including mental health professionals need to be integrated into the police force.

· Police officers should be allowed to unionize to better address workplace concerns and to better the workplace environment.

· There must be zero tolerance of sexual harassment in the workplace - across the board - civilians and police members. There must be zero tolerance of sexual harassment of the public, racial or gender discrimination. There must be ongoing analyses and evaluation of policing trends, practices, and policies.

7 - EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN AND GIRLS IN SURREY

· The empowerment of women must inform all city practices, policies, and programming.

· The City must regularly assess all programs, projects, services, and City departments for gender equity.

· Access to safe, affordable housing, education and employment make it possible for women to live independent lives, and improves the lives and futures of their dependents.

· The city must strive to support organizations in our community which directly aid women and girls.

· Canada lags far behind when it comes to the participation of women in positions of authority, we must promote qualified candidates

· Our community sorely lacks sufficient basic services for women and children fleeing domestic violence, and the city needs to step up to meet the shortfall or women and children will continue to live in unsafe homes as they have no other option.

· First Nations women and girls, and women and girls from racialized minorities must have available to them culturally appropriate services to meet their needs for safety, safe affordable stable housing, food security, education and employment.

8 - SURREY CITY WORKERS SHOULD REFLECT US ALL

· Every attempt should be made to integrate under - represented demographics into employment with the city.

· The city should make efforts to reach out to under-represented communities such as First Nations people, refugee communities, and transgender and other non-binary identifying persons, to make them aware of employment opportunities that they are qualified for.

· Mentoring projects can also be instituted to provide support, life-skills, and community referrals to at-risk youth and others seeking to enter employment with the City of Surrey with the goal of supporting them to maintain steady employment with the City, and to thrive in their lives here in Surrey.

· Active participation in apprenticeship and coop work-study programs is vital.

· There are many temporary foreign workers, seasonal farm workers, care workers, nannies and other workers in unstable employment in Surrey. They often fall through the cracks regarding their conditions of work, housing, healthcare, and so on. I propose a City funded Surrey Migrant & Temporary Foreign Workers Resource Center to to inform and assist this demographic.

9 - TRANSPARENCY AT CITY HALL

· Surrey needs clear policies and practices around decisions made at council.

· Conflict of Interest rules must be established and followed to avoid the too cosy relationships between elected officials and companies doing business with the City.

· City councillors who receive campaign donations or other considerations from developers and/or related industry and individuals may not serve on the Planning Committee for example, due to conflict of interest.

· Improved public participation processes need to be implemented without delay.

· Meaningful consultation means being open to cancelling or changing projects.

10 - OFFICE OF OMBUDSPERSON FOR SURREY

· Establishment of Office of Ombudsperson in Surrey to address concerns of public on municipal matters when all regular channels have been exhausted.

· The Ombudsperson would have the power to require the City to reconsider decisions, to follow existing laws, policies, protocols and procedures when the City has not done so.

11 - MUNICIPAL BROADBAND for the City of Surrey

· Universal access would increase accessibility to the internet, an important tool to access information and services.

· It would increase social equity and participation in community life.

12 - KNOWING THE FACTS OF THE MATTER AND TAKING ACTION TO REMEDY INSUFFICIENCIES:

· Municipal register of property owners and businesses which operate in Surrey, to ensure transparency in council decisions in any dealings with companies that do business with the City,

· Tracking of City actions/inaction on climate change, and waste policies,

· Keep a regularly updated register of demolitions, demovictions, AirBnB units, secondary suites, empty homes, rental stocks, and shelter beds, and enact legislation to address inequities.

· Track numbers of homeless people, people in core housing need, people in short-term rentals, people in unstable, unsafe housing, and take action to address inequities.

· Monitor pollution, toxins and use the full extent of current laws to mitigate damaging business practices, put in place regulations to monitor any company, organization, or individual who has violated environmental regulations, and provide penalties to eco-offenders, and

· Regularly assess deficiencies and develop short and long-term plans to remedy them using Best Practices.

· Work in cooperation with other jurisdictions on regional issues and to promote equality and equity.

PROGRESSIVE GREEN TAXATION

· Changing the tax regime to reflect green values of taxation.

· Taxation should be based on consumption and waste.

· Provide tax and other incentives to companies, organizations, and individuals whose actions, policies, and practices have a positive social and ecological effect on those who live in Surrey.

Homeless South of the Fraser - compassionate solutions

Roslyn Cassells — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 22:32:26 +0000

GreenVote Housing & Homelessness Policy - municipal election BC 2018

October 12, 2018 Hard times south of the Fraser River…Surrey is the second largest city in the province, with a large homeless population and even bigger population of people in core-housing need…living in housing they cannot afford, for which they are sacrificing other basic needs in order to remain housed.

Tear down the homes, rebuild at over twice the price…Developers plan to tear down the aging rental stocks and replace them with condos and purpose-built rentals. The current population of renters who live in this aging infrastructure would be unable to afford the 200-300% increase in rent which would be demanded by the new landlords.

Renter to homeless person in three months…In the 0% vacancy rate of the lower mainland of BC, this would create a massive population of homeless renters, similar to what happened in Metrotown in Burnaby, commonly referred to as demovictions. Under the current Residential Tenancy Act the landlord only has to give the tenant 3 months notice to vacate.

Housing = Human Right…The City needs to take any means necessary to protect the lives of renters for whom housing means life, and safety. The UN Special Rapporteur on Housing Leila Farha has stated "Housing is the cornerstone to life and human well-being...Housing makes or breaks us. It is the difference between life and death...housing is a fundamental human right."

Stable, safe, accessible housing which costs less than a third of the renter’s income is what is required for people to survive. People who have been traumatized by homelessness and whatever led them to homelessness may need much more support to maintain their housing and lives, which we must provide.

DO THE RIGHT THING…For all the reasons stated above, and many more still…GreenVote proposes the following Policy Platform on Housing and Homelessness:

Work with staff, housing providers, non-governmental organizations, landlords, and other levels of government to provide assistance and incentives to maintain existing rental stocks, increase stock of social housing working with funders and providers, increase stock of temporary and permanent modular housing currently being funded by the province since it is the quickest form of housing to provide for street homeless folks, fight landlord discrimination against government-funded income recipients and other barriers to housing like no pets policies, and ensure all low-income renters are provided with rental supplements and other assistance to maintain tenancies.

Establish a City Rent Bank for emergency funding of housing for low-income residents.
Create a City Housing and Homelessness Outreach Team to assist people to find permanent or temporary housing, stay in the housing, and thrive in their lives in Surrey.
Team members will help people meet their basic needs for survival – food, clothing, transportation, health care, employment, education, daycare and household necessities either by direct provision of aid if necessary, and by referral to appropriate community agency or service.
This team will meet regularly with all city departments to assess changing conditions and needs – do ongoing needs analyses and ongoing short and long term action plans.
The daily outcome for our city housing and homelessness team is this: EVERYONE SAFELY HOUSED, FED, CLOTHED, AND CARED FOR EVERY DAY.
Emergency housing in municipal buildings: buildings which have the necessary amenities, and which are not currently being used, should be turned to the use of the people as need dictates. Instead of leaving people to survive or die outside in the cold, rain, snow, or heat on the streets of our city we should open buildings for use by the public.
There are numerous city-owned buildings which have heat, light, running water, washrooms, showers, kitchens, rooms for sleeping, rooms for service provision, and so on.
The city could provide outreach at these locations to connect people with necessary services to meet their needs.
Companion animals should be welcomed and their needs provided for.
Couples, friends, and families should be able to remain together. Those who are unable to cope with group situations must also be accommodated.
Wifi and outreach services from the library can help people re-establish their lives while in temporary digs.
Homeless people should also be given free access to recreation centers to wash, use the toilet, and enjoy the same amenities as the rest of the population.

HOUSING TOPICS FOR POLICY CHANGE

We must protect EXISTING rental stocks AT ALL COSTS. We are not going to build our way out of the housing crisis. The purpose built rentals and so-called “affordable housing” projects currently all the rage are only affordable to middle to upper income people.

In many neighbourhoods the plan is to destroy existing aging rental stocks to replace them with these purpose built rentals, condos and “affordable housing”. The monthly rental cost will increase for the units by between 200-300%.

So despite the new provincial legislation which requires developers to offer existing tenants first refusal on a unit in the new building, it will be impossible for most of the renters to come up with the new rental rates. The vacancy rate in the lower mainland is 0%. The housing allowance for the over 110,000 persons on provincial disability pension in BC and the thousands on social assistance in Surrey has remained frozen at $375 for a single person per month for housing.

For these reasons any attempt to destroy existing rental stock will render most of the residents homeless. The city must incentivize landlords to maintain their existing rental stocks and de-incentivize any redevelopments until such time as the vacancy rate increases to a point where people can find safe affordable housing, and the provincial government increases disability and assistance rates to reflect reality. Renter advocates suggest a minimum 3% vacancy rate.

New legislation allowing municipalities more leeway in creating rental-only zoning should be used to encourage developers to build what is most needed in our communities first. The focus should be on provision of social housing for those at the lowest income levels who are struggling just to stay housed in an increasingly hostile housing market which allows the wealthy to acquire residential properties and let them lie vacant as investments. Meanwhile local residents freeze and die on the streets for want of basic housing, which is their human right.

Innovative housing initiatives for those struggling at the low-income end of society are essential to the survival of this demographic. We need to be open to Tiny Homes, modular housing, laneway housing, secondary suites, projects such as Dignity Village, and community collective solutions in whatever form they must take to keep people as safe as possible.

Bring in legislation to control the vacancy rate, deincentivize demovictions and redevelopment of existing rental stocks. Introduce rental-only zoning to increase rental construction, with requirements for significant social housing units.

Knowing what’s what…Keep a regularly updated register of demolitions, demovictions, AirBnB units, secondary suites, empty homes, rental stocks, and shelter beds, and take action to rebalance the housing equation.

Track numbers of homeless people, people in core housing need, people in short-term rentals, people in unstable, unsafe housing, people in core-housing need in our communities, and take immediate action to protect lives.

Regularly assess programs and outcomes. Make short and long term action plans to deal with deficiencies.

GreenVote council candidate Roslyn Cassells' profile can be viewed at this link: https://www.surrey.ca/election/candidates/roslyn-cassells.aspx

page on facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Roslyn-Cassells-for-Surrey-City-Council-1699...

email: roslyncassells@yahoo.ca

Endangered Western Toad Count Begins in Township of Langley

Roslyn Cassells — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 22:16:43 +0000

Concerned citizens collect data to support infrastructure upgrade for toad underpass

Monday July 30th 2018. The first toad count of the Western Toad toadlets in the Township of Langley on the southern border of Surrey took place on Saturday evening. A group of concerned citizens and biologists came out to record toads and vehicles in the area.

The toadlets migrate from the wetland area where they are born across the road into the terrestrial habitat where they will spend the rest of the year. Unfortunately, many of them come to grief on the road under vehicle wheels. Roads are one of the greatest threats to our wildlife.

The toad count is part of a research project to assess the impact of the road on toad mortality. Road underpasses are a possible accommodation that could be made to

allow the tiny toads to migrate more safely, as has been done in other municipalities. The data collected during the migration will be used to this end.

The toadlet migration is happening late this year compared to other years. Is it the hot dry weather? Or global warming? Like salmon and other local species the toads are effected by temperature, roads and other human development, as well as other environmental conditions such as drought.

What can we as humans do to help the species survive? What changes can we make in the way we live our lives and the way we plan developments that would reduce our negative impact on this and other species?

The Township of Langley was unwilling to allow a temporary road closure although some signage was provided to inform drivers of the toad migration. More needs to be done to protect this vulnerable provincially and federally listed species.

Concerned citizens can contact the councillors at the Township of

Langley to voice their support for toad underpasses and temporary road closures at mayorcouncil@tol.ca or send a letter to the editor of the Langley Times at newsroom@langleytimes.com or other media. Share information about the toads widely!

The group surveyed a section of the road between the hatching ponds and the terrestrial habitat for dead and live toads, as well as counting vehicles. The sharp-eyed young toad counters were great at spotting the tiny creatures. In fact, tree frogs and other wildlife were also spotted by the amphibian enthusiasts.

It's not glamorous...dead toads were collected and removed from the road. Counts were done every 50 meters in the research area. Unfortunately we found a very high percentage of dead toads on the road, as well as other unfortunate wildlife. A few live toads were seen who made it to the other side.

The toad counts will continue every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evening until the end of the annual migration. Anyone interested in taking part should contact christy.juteau@arocha.ca who is one of the organizers of the project.

The City of Chilliwack is an excellent example of what can be done to help the migrating toads. Road closures and underpasses and other initiatives are employed to protect this fragile disappearing species. The increase in development in the lower mainland and elsewhere, in particular the draining of wetlands for development, road construction, and other projects which cause habitat fragmentation are having a devastating effect on local wildlife populations. Local populations are becoming extirpated in many areas due to development which does not take into account the best management practices developed by the province and federal government.

In the upcoming civic elections, BC residents need to make wildlife an election issue...where do your local candidates stand on protecting our precious wildlife and wild places...are we willing to learn how to coexist with our animal relations? Or will we continue on down the path to extinction?

Surrey residents can email their mayor and council as well, since part of the toad migration is in Surrey's jurisdiction and nothing has been done by Surrey to date. Email mayor@surrey.ca and councillors@surrey.ca as well as the local paper at edit@surreynowleader.com and other media to demand road closures and toad underpasses to save this vulnerable species.

Roslyn Cassells

www.roslyncassells.ca

Feathers Fly at "public" meeting for Surrey Peacocks

Roslyn Cassells — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 19:55:18 +0000

Council and Bylaw on the back foot as residents decry undemocratic inhumane plan!

PEOPLE WANT COEXISTENCE - CITY WANTS ERADICATION July 19, 2018. Despite all attempts at dissuading peacock advocates from attending the July 17 meeting, including threats of arrest and removal of any persons deemed unacceptable by Surrey Bylaw head Jas Rehal, many concerned for the welfare of the peacocks did attend. Media attending was hand-picked and approved by Rehal, while others were told they were not allowed to attend, including a well-respected reporter covering this issue - Rafferty Baker from CBC's The Current - a serious and well-respected investigative journalism program. The "in crowd" of media invited by Rehal included Sameer Kaushal of Red FM of the South Asian Broadcasting Corporation and an OMNI cameraman/interviewer from Breakfast TV/Punjabi and Cantonese programs.

Feathers were flying as Surrey bylaw head Jas Rehal was called on the carpet numerous times by local residents annoyed at the lack of public consultation prior to council's vote on a peafowl eradiction plan in June. Others disputed Rehal's contention that the birds suddenly appeared in Sullivan Heights in 2006 (listed in the city report authored by Rehal)...saying the birds had been there over 40 years. Other misinformation in the council report written by Rehal included a population estimate approximately 3 times greater than current numbers. The birds have been reliably documented to have been living in the community since 1976, with adult populations varying between 30-40. At this point in time the number of adults is in the low 30s. The peaceful peacocks have been deemed to be a public security threat by Rehal, a laughable idea for a bird who despite the fancy feathers, is more or less just a fancy chicken...hardly a species we could classify as dangerous wildlife. In fact, the truth of the matter is that humans pose a threat to the peacocks, not vice-versa. Despite having been publicly corrected numerous times by longtime local residents, the City and Rehal continue to circulate the misinformation about the peacocks, for their own purposes.

Members of the public tried to give input on the city's eradication plan, by Rehal refused to accept their input - saying it was a "done deal" and the people could ask "his" staff about the plan, but there would be no modifications or changes. Those attending the meeting were required to have a letter of invitation from Rehal, which they had to produce at the entrance to the building. To enter the meeting room, each person had to provide their home address and phone number. The meeting was bristling with RCMP and bylaw officers, who moved quickly to flank members of the public speaking to Rehal. Rehal's officers went around taking pictures of all the attendees, without asking permission. They were also documenting licence plates of vehicles of attendees. Bylaw has been notoriously heavy handed in their treatment of the public on this issue, bullying their way onto private property, and in a recent incident involving an 80+ year old local resident bylaw refused to leave the property when asked, roughed up the man, and called out the emergency RCMP team which attended with 5 cars and a helicopter...all the better

The meeting was also staffed by those hired/engaged to "deal with" the "peacock problem" including a biologist and "zoological consultant" Myles Lamont, two veterinarians one a "poultry" vet Gigi Wing Chi Lin the other identified himself as a vet called Dr. McQuisten, (whose name was not searchable on the BC College of Veterinarians) as well as the public relations person for a local zoo. It seems the city plans to trap the wild peacocks and put them in a zoo which will then profit from their capture and captivity. The city also says it will give the birds to "fanciers" which is also a concern as the birds will then be on private property and it will be impossible to check on their welfare, whether or not they have been sold on to canned hunts or game parks or other exploitative situations.

In a presentation prepared by the biologist Lamont there was a photo of a male peacock in a raccoon sized live trap, with his body in the trap and his tail and back end hanging out the end. In the photo the trap door was open, but had the trap snapped closed it would have slammed down on his tail, causing bleeding, shock and possibly death. This size and kind of trap is not recommended for trapping peafowl and could in fact be very dangerous to them. Lamont asked when questioned about his experience dealing with peafowl that he had once worked in a breeding operation for "similar type" birds. He was asked about asking the city to alter the plan to use better more effective methods which would not endanger the welfare of the animals, however he said he was just there to administer the city's plan, not try to improve it. This is very disappointing and raises the concern over the city once again hiring "tame" consultants who will provide the outcome the city wants, even if their professional opinion is different. The biologist hired to assess Hawthorne Park for example only did a cursory walk round the park and based his lame conclusions on an online survey of research of the area, then he didn't even suggest the best management practices for the species at risk in Hawthorne Park, merely identifying the 17 endangered species as being present or likely present... Will this biologist also sell out for financial gain?...it remains to be seen but initial impressions are not good if one values professional ethics, best practices, and transparency.

Regarding transparency, when various city staff at the "consultation" were questioned about whether or not the city had already begun trapping, and what had become of the birds...their response was a bit shifty...."not that Iam aware of..." and "ask so-and-so..." (eyes shifting away uncomfortably). It would seem there have been peafowl processed at Surrey Animal Resource Center (the Surrey pound) but details were not shared. So it is hard to know exactly WHAT the city is getting up to now. When questioned directly Jas Rehal told me it was "none of your business". This despite the fact I am a Surrey resident and frequent visitor to friends at Sullivan Heights.

Concerns about the viability of the city's plan remain. HSUS Senior Wildlife Policy and Response Dave Pauli, who reviewed the city report commented "Definitely a flawed plan...wrong time of year and individual trapping is doomed to short and long term failure!" The HSUS is the largest animal welfare organization in North America. Trapping during the summer breeding season will cause suffering and death of the chicks left behind to die if a female is trapped. The trapping of part of the colony will result in biological rebound, in which stable populations have larger broods the following season to make up for the loss of their members. The city's plan as it stands will actually increase the local population. There is no way the city will be able to capture all of the birds, they are wild birds and can fly up very high in the old trees...good luck with that. Three things are necessary for a successful coexistence or management plan: community commitment, educational plan, and habitat modification (if necessary). One should always ask "Is it NECESSARY to catch the birds to solve the conflict?" In the case of the Sullivan Heights peafowl, there is no doubt that a good education plan combined with targeted habitat modification would resolve the majority of conflicts once properly implemented. BC residents will recognize other successful coexistence programs such as Bear Aware, and Coexisting with Coyotes.

Those wishing to exclude peacocks from their property are advised to remove food and water sources, keep grass short, keep pet food and water inside, remove standing water, cover/contain compost, remove ground cover plants or cut back, protect garden beds containing attractant plants with wire fencing. Other techniques include placing bright shiny moving things where the peafowl roost (such as bird tape or strips of foil/streamers), use predator decoys (raptors/dogs), and gentle hazing of visiting peafowl (shooing them out, bouncing tennis ball near them). Volunteers are willing to come out to assess yards for peacock attractants and help residents peacock-proof their properties.

A resource website has been set up at Welcome to Surrey Peacocks and people can access information there including a coexistence plan and brochure, updated information. The email for more info is surreypeacocks@hotmail.com

The Plight of the Western Toad - 2 municipalities - 3 levels of government responsible

Roslyn Cassells — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 22:04:25 +0000

Indifference and dereliction of duty all round

July 16, 2018. Concerned citizens in BC are trying to protect the endangered Western Toad. Activists are encouraging the Township of Langley to impose a 2 week temporary road closure on a stretch of 20th Ave., originally constructed for local traffic, but now used as a busy shortcut by rushing commuters. The township has refused to act, instead deciding to place signage about the toads, which will only inform motorists of the damage they will inflict and not save a single toad. Others recommended placing passages under the road in the migration route so that the newly hatched dime-sized toadlets can pass under the road safely. This has not happened either. Letters from concerned residents to mayor and council go unanswered. The City of Surrey, on the border of the migration route, and under whose jurisdiction part of the road falls, has also neglected to take any action to protect the toads.

The Western Toad is listed provincially and federally, and both levels of government have neglected to enforce their own laws to protect this species - the provincial Wildlife Act, and the federal Species At Risk Act.

Volunteers are meeting for live and dead toad counts along the stretch of road they must cross between their hatching place and their terrestrial habitat. For the next 4 weeks local residents will document the annual carnage of these precious little amphibians and help them across the road if possible. Unfortunately, due to the callous stance of the Township of Langley, there will be thousands to tens of thousands of dead toads along this stretch of road...a sad indictment on the complete absence of compassion and sense of duty of local elected officials towards our vulnerable animal relations.

The lives of animals, those who cannot speak for themselves, should be a primary concern for all decent people...just as the neglect and abuse of children should be. In fact, the laws require adults to report child abuse or face sanction. One day there will also be a law protecting animals similarly, and one day we will look back on our treatment of them as we now look back on our treatment of slaves from Africa, the Jews in the Holocaust, and so on.

Candidates for the upcoming municipal elections in both jurisdictions trumpet their concern for the environment, but not a single currently elected official has made a move to take a concrete action to save the toads. Words will not save the toads,and they will die horrible deaths on these roads unless there is IMMEDIATE ACTION permitting TEMPORARY ROAD CLOSURE.

Those of us who love all of creation, all of our relations, will bear witness to their lives, deaths, and suffering...and continue to fight for their right to exist.

Biodiversity is the most precious gift we can leave for future generations!

Those wanting to help can email mayorcouncil@tol.ca and mayor@surrey.ca to demand a temporary road closure during the two week toadlet migration. Letters to the editor to newsroom@langleytimes.com or your fav rag.

Surrey Peacock Educational Campaign Begins!

Roslyn Cassells — Thu, 05 Jul 2018 03:40:00 +0000

Coexistence over killing...

"Understand, educate, coexist!" is the mantra of wildlife experts when it comes to human-wildlife conflicts. Local residents concerned about the city's lethal plan to trap peafowl in breeding season have started on a plan of their own...one which resonates with wildlife biologists and educators alike.

The city of Surrey has not stepped up to the plate to educate its own citizens about the birds, and how to live with them (or without)...so we will.

A new website is up to help people learn about the issue and community events and so on at Welcome to Surrey Peacocks

Welcome to Surrey Peacocks

A feather hunt is also under way as the males are now dropping their long tail feathers during breeding season. People are encouraged to drop by to try and find a feather of their own.

Dave Pauli of Humane Society of the United States, Senior Wildlife Advisor for Wildlife Response and Policy said about the city's plan: "Definitely a flawed plan...wrong time of year and individual trapping is doomed to short and long term failure. An educational plan, community commitment, and habitat modification if necessary would be the appropriate response for this small, stable flock - resident in Sullivan Heights since 1976.

If a resident wants to discourage peafowl from their property they can take a few simple steps: remove food and water sources on their property, keep the grass short, keep pet food and water inside, remove standing water, keep compost contained, remove ground cover plants or cut them back, and protect garden beds with wire fencing. Peafowl do not like bright shiny moving objects so attaching strips of aluminum foil or shiny streamers around will help keep the birds from specific areas. Predator decoys such as owls, hawks, and dogs are also a deterrent.

A Peacock Party is being planned....stay tuned!

Wildlife expert criticizes Surrey's plan to destroy peacock flock

Roslyn Cassells — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:38:32 +0000

Definitely a flawed plan...

"Definitely a flawed plan...wrong time of year and individual trapping is doomed to short and long term failure!" Dave Pauli - Humane Society of the United States - Senior Advisor for Wildlife Response and Policy - on Surrey's plan to eradicate peacocks during breeding season using what could only be described as worst practices in every respect!

Peacock hens have large broods at this time of year - trapping a hen dooms her chicks to a cruel death. This population, stable and resident since 1976, is beloved by 95% of their neighbours.

Trapping out individuals causes extreme stress, injury, and death, and results in what biologists call the "rebound effect" while means the birds produce even more chicks in future seasons to compensate for their flock's losses.

Email council@surrey.ca to voice your disapproval of this cruel plan!

Contact Ministry of Environment at 1-877-952-7277 to report cruel trapping and nest and egg seizures and threat to other wildlife from traps.

Call BCSPCA at 1-855-622-7722 to report any birds in distress in traps, being chased or otherwise harmed. Please circulate this post widely!

Surrey's breeding season trapping leads to Ministry of Environment and BCSPCA investigations

Roslyn Cassells — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 22:49:12 +0000

Poorly thought out plan will injure and kill the Sullivan peacocks

June 26, 2018. Surrey City Council last night forceably removed residents hoping to speak to council about the report on the peacock eradication plan the city approved in last night's council meeting. The citizens, who had been in contact with council and bylaw (who are charged with dealing with the situation) to no avail, are concerned the plan is fundamentally flawed in that it doesn't even consider the option of coexistence and employs cruel and ineffective techniques which will harm the animals.

The city report approves trapping starting immediately, during the peacock breeding season. Peahens have fairly large broods and the chicks will die if their mother hen is trapped and removed. Concerned residents and animal advocates consider this to be cruel. The removal plan is doomed to failure as the city is only permitted to trap on city owned property and the birds are located in some private properties. Some local residents will be given traps to catch the birds themselves, which is dangerous to the birds, their chicks, and other wildlife and pets. Inexperienced trappers can easily harm or kill an animal. Wild animals can become injured or killed during trapping. Following trapping the birds can die of thirst, hunger, heat, or stress if their fear-cries attract predators. Other wildlife and pets can easily get caught and harmed in the traps.

The city says the birds will be transported to the city pound "immediately" but anyone who has ever dealt with bylaw will know they are only available during office hours, and take their sweet time about responding to outcalls. The concern is that the birds will be unduly stressed by remaining in the trap for any period of time. Bylaw is closed evenings, nights, weekends, holidays, and so on. What about the people who set the traps and forget all about them while they are away for the weekend or whatever. Traps must be continuously monitored, not just tossed out to all comers in the community. People with experience handling wildlife should be engaged if the city is to do any trapping, and the trapping should obviously not take place when there are babies about. The pound is not set up to manage large birds like peacocks. Pound staff are not trained to care for such animals, and there is concern their needs will not be met there.

The city report is full of inaccuracies...reminiscent of a Trump tweet...for example Bylaw head Jas Rehal said the birds have been in the neighbourhood since 2006, when in fact there has been a stable colony there since 1976. Rehal also states the neighbours are split 50/50 on the issue, while local residents and an independent community audit showed the numbers to be more like 5% opposed/95% in favour of the peacocks. Rehal's plan to capture all of the peacocks is something that has not been successfully accomplished in other jurisdictions, not without using lethal means that is. Any biologist will tell you that if you remove a percentage of a stable wildlife population from an area there will be a rebound effect with increased fertility in future seasons to make up for the losses. So the city's plan will in fact increase the future numbers of peacocks.

A best practices approach would involve an educational campaign, and use deterrent methods for those property owners who want to discourage birds from their properties. Wildlife experts suggest all kinds of things including physical barriers, tree wrapping, sonic areas, light features, reducing food and roost areas, and so on.... There is no need to go killing these beautiful, peaceful community members who are by and large welcome in Sullivan Heights. What is needed is a shift in public thinking in our relationships towards animals. You cannot move into an area full of animals and immediately expect the local authorities to destroy them.

Reports have begun to be filed with those who are responsible for the welfare of the animals. Members of the public concerned with the welfare of our feathered friends are encouraged to call the BCSPCA cruelty line at 1-855-622-7722 and insist they take action against trapping during breeding season, and the Ministry of Environment at 1-877-952-7277 to report the trapping methods which interfere with breeding birds with active nests, and impact other wildlife in the area. Contact your local media to encourage them to tell the story from the birds' point of view! (edit@surreynowleader.com, cbcnewsvancouver@cbc.ca, bcassign@ctv.ca, sunnewstips@postmedia.ca, tabtips@theprovince.com, globalbc.newstips@globaltv.com, c_smith@straight.com and so on...)

We can easily coexist with these fascinating creatures, as societies all over the world do...and to our mutual benefit! Come down to 62 Ave and 150 St. in Surrey and meet some of our most outstanding residents.

Write in to council to tell them to stand up for nature, not against her - let the Sullivan peacocks be! Council email is council@surrey.ca

link to council report:

https://www.surrey.ca/bylawsandcouncillibrary/CR_2018-R148.pdf

GroundWire June 4 | Resistance to pipeline purchase, Grassy Narrows study, anti-gentrification in St-Henri, Montreal

GroundWire Production — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 15:09:05 +0000

Community Radio News from Coast to Coast to Coast

Headlines

Ontario gets ready for provincial elections on June 7th | Omme-Salma Rahemtullah, GroundWire

Winnipeg Pride Parade | Michael Welch, CKUW

Features

Protests in Victoria, BC in opposition to Canada's purchasing of the Transmountain Pipeline | Chris Cook, CFUV

Comprehensive survey results of community members in Grassy Narrows | Michael Welch, CKUW

Anti-gentrification demonstrations in historically working class neighbourhood of St-Henri, Montreal | Gau Mahadevan

Community Radio Report

Preview of the upcoming annual National Campus and Community Radio Conference being hosted by CHSR in Fredericton, New Brunswick | Omme-Salma Rahemtullah, GroundWire

We thank all of our contributors as well as Mick Sweetman and Gretchen King

Music this week was "Mister Ty" by the Black Bear Singers from the album Notcimik

SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State

Kerry Coast — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 15:16:06 +0000

New book batters Canadian denial, launches in Vancouver this week

Suffer the Little Children – Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State
By Tamara Starblanket

Clarity Press, 2018
Foreword by Ward Churchill
Afterword by Sharon H. Venne

Official launch this Thursday, June 7, 6pm at the Vancouver Native Education Center.

This much-anticipated book places Canada’s Indian Residential School programme among the world’s leading crimes against humanity: genocide. From the Introduction: This book is meant to serve as a battering ram to hammer through the wall of denial.

Advance remarks on this book by Noam Chomsky, Steven Newcomb and Irene Watson indicate its importance to leading thinkers today. The Foreword by Ward Churchill and Afterword by Sharon Venne, an international legal expert on the rights of INdigenous Peoples, lend even more credibility to the work. It’s a subject of pivotal importance in Canada, and yet few have had the fortitude to approach it. Far fewer have had the endurance to complete such a painful analysis.

One of the most important things about this book is its refusal to allow Canada to be considered a “post-colonial” state. The evidence against Canada’s genocidal “forcible removal of children” during the Indian Residential School era is connected to the present-day foster care system, which targets young Aboriginal families in particular: still forcibly removing children from the genocidally-targeted group and placing them with members of another group. With the colonizing group: be they white, yellow, beige, or brown families. And still removing those Indigenous children with the same genocidal objective of “bringing about the destruction of the group, in whole or in part,” in order to continue colonizing and absorbing the yet-unceded Indigenous homelands.

Starblanket’s thesis, on which the book is based, was argued successfully for a Master of Laws degree from the University of Saskatchewan.

Another of the book’s most important accomplishments is Starblanket’s assessment of Canada’s official federal treatment of the Indian Residential School fallout as having only to do with individuals. Individual survivors were compensated under the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Survivors’ Settlement Agreement. In fact, the intended and effective result of the “schools” was a series of national crises among the Indigenous Nations whose lands Canada tries to claim. With their children gone, and their languages and systems of culture and governance uncertain, the crime was against nations – not individuals. Starblanket breaks down the very different legal implications.

The crime of removing the children was against nations and peoples with the right to self-determination, land, language, history and future: individuals do not have such rights.

But it is Canada’s special reservation to deny the nationhood and national characters of some fifty nations. This is in keeping with Canada’s posture that the state has the ability to absorb various Indigenous “minorities” within its stolen borders, and award them various “Aboriginal rights” in place of their internationally-recognized rights as nations and peoples.

Canada’s assault on these nations is justiciable – for all the reasons Starblanket puts forward - under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969; under the Geneva Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948; and, in some ways, under more recent international norms, such as the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. These latter two are equipped by the United Nations with Treaty Bodies – with Committees which have repeatedly reviewed and severely criticized Canada for its denial of the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples. Starblanket concludes that self-determination is the answer. Not “reconciliation,” which she debunks as a public relations scam.

Information does not make change, however. There is no Committee to receive reports on, or review violations of the Geneva or the Vienna Conventions. Only states can take other states to the International Court of Justice for that. And, so far, no other state has been willing to intervene in what is known as the “domestic judicial complicity in genocide,” such as it is within Canada. This book may help with that.

If there must be a shortcoming in Suffer the Little Children, it is the absence of international legal prescriptions for justice. Genocide is not a crime which a state can be allowed to rule on domestically when its own government is one of the parties to the crime. There is an important precedent. In 2007, Menchu v. Montt was heard by the Constitutional Court of Spain. That case concerned Guatemala’s genocide against the Mayan people, and it found General Rios Montt guilty of genocide. Unfortunately, the presiding Spanish judge, Justice Garçon, died suddenly and unexpectedly shortly thereafter. And the ruling was reversed.

The importance of this book is that it makes available, to the people of Canada and to the people of the world, the trial of Canada – if not the actual court room. These things take time, and this book keeps the clock ticking.

If the empires and invading nations cannot be relied on to deliver justice, even when their Constitutional Courts decide a fairly obvious matter, perhaps the people of the world can do better. If not the colonizing people of Canada, who have a vested interest in the displacement, denial and dispossession of the original nations; then perhaps the people of the world – as the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa was achieved, in part, by outside groups.

And if the example of Menchu v. Montt could be brought to bear in the case of Canada, might we get the next chapter of this story? Something like Starblanket v. The Director of Child and Family Services? The case has certainly been laid out: the Ministry has been advised, time and again, over decades, of the effects its actions are having – and it keeps doing them.

The book will be officially launched this Thursday, June 7, at the Vancouver Native Education Center. Event starts at 6pm.

Follow this link to the Book: Suffer the Little Children

Quotes from the book:

“While other aspects of Canada’s “Indian policies” can be seen to fit the definition of genocide, specifically at issue in this book is its century-long program of forcibly removing indigenous children from their families, communities, societies—in sum, from their Nations—and placing them for sustained periods in “residential schools” where the stated goal was to strip them of their cultural identities and “remake” them into “end products” deemed useful to Canada’s colonizing and ever-growing settler population.”

“I am the sole member of my birth family still alive. My grandparents, maternal and paternal, as well as my late mother and her siblings, were all forced to spend their formative years in the schools, an experience from which none of them would ever recover.”

About TamaraStarblanket:

Tamara Starblanket is Spider Woman, a Nehiyaw iskwew (Cree Woman) from Ahtahkakoop First Nation in Treaty Six Territory. Tamara holds an LLM (Master of Laws) from the University of Saskatchewan, and an LLB from the University of British Columbia. She is the Co-Chair of the North American Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus (NAIPC) at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She presently coordinates and teaches in the criminology program at Native Education College in Vancouver, BC.

Early Reviews:

"Settler-colonialism reveals the brutal face of imperialism in
some of its most vicious forms. This carefully researched and
penetrating study focuses on one of its ugliest manifestations,
the forcible transferring of indigenous children, and makes a
strong case for Canadian complicity in a form of 'cultural
genocide' – with implications that reach to the Anglosphere
generally, and to some of the worst crimes of the 'civilized
world' in the modern era."
Noam Chomsky

"Tamara Starblanket's work is confident, clear and succinct;
her work is ground-breaking and provides us with new ways of
looking at how the states treatment of First Nations Peoples
has gone unrecognised for its genocidal affect. This work
provides an excellent critique on the exclusion of cultural
genocide from how genocide is defined in international law."
Professor Irene Watson,
Research Professor of Law, University of South Australia

"Tamara Starblanket's book provides a much needed
examination and critique of the 'residential school' system that
forcibly transferred Indigenous children from their families,
communities, and nations into institutions run by the colonizer
state—in this case, Canada. Despite the fact that the United
Nations 1948 Convention on Genocide explicitly includes
'forcibly transferring children of the group to another group' in
its definition of 'genocide,' there are those who deny that the
colonial 'civilizing' project amounted to genocide. Starblanket
demonstrates that the residential schools in fact aimed at
destroying the most intimate level of Indigenous life—the child-
parent relation—employing brutal beatings, solitary
confinement and other horrible punishments, often resulting in
children's deaths. The goal of the schools was to prevent
Indigenous societies from perpetuating themselves. Though
officially repudiated, the residential schools produced a
continuing social and institutional legacy. Starblanket's work
brings this history and its legacy effects to our awareness and
shows that 'the road home' requires an emphasis on
Indigenous self-determination."
Peter d’Errico,
Professor of Law, University of Massachusetts

“Tamara Starblanket has skillfully taken on one of the most
difficult and contentious issues, genocide. With intellectual
courage and determination, she has approached the issue
from the perspective of a Cree woman, scholar, and attorney
who has first-hand knowledge of the deadly and destructive
intergenerational impacts of Canada’s domination and
dehumanization of Original Nations and Peoples.”
Steven T. Newcomb (Shawnee, Lenape),
author, Pagans in the Promised Land Decoding the
Christian Doctrine of Discovery

"This is heavy stuff, about which much more should be said,
and Starblanket is unsparing in saying it...I am proud to call
her sister, and to thank her."
from the Preface by Ward Churchill,
author, A Little Matter of Genocide

Surrey Peacocks Should Stay! Sullivan Heights residents declare war on relocation!

Roslyn Cassells — Sun, 06 May 2018 03:28:01 +0000

"Listen to the other 95% - HANDS OFF OUR BIRDS!"

May 5, 2018. "It's their home...it's the last paradise...you have to fight tooth and nail to keep it" said Lance The Champ, a longtime local resident in Sullivan Heights community and peacock advocate. Lance is concerned for the welfare of the local birds who have resided in the neighborhood since 1976. "95% of my neighbours love the birds" he confirms...a fact confirmed by surveying local residents in the area. The Champ advocates for wildlife crossing signs and speed bump installations to help reduce mortality of chicks and adult birds on busy through roads. "2/3 of the birds die on the road when fast drivers don't slow down to let them and their babies cross" he said.

Local Surrey politicians and other institutions are talking about relocating the birds but The Champ and other residents are categorically opposed - a shocked Munazza Raisuddin, whose property often has around 20 birds meeting there in the mornings, was unaware plans were afoot to take the birds away - "I want the peacocks to stay here. They're adding to the beauty of the area! There is plenty of land and trees, the birds don't need to go anywhere." Brianna Deacon commented "Peacocks should be allowed to stay, not put in a zoo. It's nice to know they're out here...they're chilling...it's their home."

Terry Atwal loves the birds too, commenting "In India it's very common to see them around, just wild...they should stay." Stephen James said local decision-makers should "listen to the 95% who love the birds and live in harmony with them." Kim Waite concurred "there's a harmonic coexistence occurring in the neighborhood despite media claims to the contrary." Waite noted that "most local residents are enjoying living peacefully with these majestic birds who are doing no harm to anyone."

There are approximately 40 adult peacocks in the Sullivan Heights area according to local residents who know the birds and can tell them apart. "That guy hangs out in this yard, and roosts up in that tree" said The Champ about a gorgeous male peacock wandering some distance from his usual digs. "These birds belong here, this is there home." Local residents vow to oppose any attempt to take their avian neighbors away.

Any relocation attempt is risky, there is always mortality. Trapping can cause extreme stress in any wild animal. Relocation can result in territorial issues and elevated levels of predation. Placements can be fraught with other problems such as birds being sold at auction or online, birds being used for canned hunts, and birds being used as zoo exhibits. The Sullivan Heights peacocks deserve better. The birds are doing well in their current home, although the City of Surrey should consider placing speed bumps and wildlife crossing signs in busy streets. Slowing down just a little, and having some consideration for the other beings we share this earth with is all the peacocks need.

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