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Bob Mackin The son of a former BC

Business, News, Opinion, Sports

thePodcast: The future is Sphere – U2’s “Achtung Baby” rebirth at revolutionary Las Vegas concert venue

For the week of Oct. 8, 2023:

It’s no secret, thePodcast host Bob Mackin’s favourite album is 1991’s Achtung Baby by U2 and favourite concert tour U2’s ZOO TV. He saw it four times in 1992.

U2 debut “Atomic City” at Sphere in Las Vegas on Sept. 29, 2023 (Mackin)

Lady Luck helped win the ticket lottery for U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere, the world’s most-talked about concert venue in the world’s biggest spherical building.

On this edition, hear sounds of music and technology history from the Sept. 29 grand opening of Madison Square Garden’s $2.3 billion Las Vegas bet that is revolutionizing the concert experience.

Plus, headlines from the Pacific Rim and the Pacific Northwest.

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

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theBreaker.news Podcast

thePodcast: The future is Sphere - U2's "Achtung Baby" rebirth at revolutionary Las Vegas concert venue

00:00 / 00:23:11

October 8, 2023

For the week of Oct. 8, 2023: It’s

Vancouver’s park and beach smoking ban a taste of what’s to come under the NDP’s public drug use restrictions

Bob Mackin

One of the leading voices of the 2010 campaign against cigarette smoking at Vancouver parks and beaches does not expect many people will be caught breaking the province’s ban on illegal drug use in certain public places.

On Oct. 5, the NDP government tabled Bill 34, the Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act, which is aimed at moving use of fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and MDMA away from the public eye and into local overdose prevention sites. In January, B.C. decriminalized possession of 2.5 grams of hard drugs for personal use under a federally approved, three-year project.

(CDC)

The proposed law covers playgrounds, pools, parks, beaches, sports fields, bus stops and entrances to business and residential buildings. It would empower police to direct a person to stop the drug use, order the person to move elsewhere or arrest the person and seize the substance.

Jack Boomer, director of the Clean Air Coalition of B.C., said enforcement of the anti-smoking bylaw is passive and complaint-driven, which means signage will be key in helping slowly change behaviour under the new law.

“Will it make a difference over time?” Boomer said. “People become aware that this is just the thing that you don’t do.”

Despite the proliferation of vaping and legal marijuana, not a single person was cited over at least four-and-a-half years for violating Vancouver’s Parks Smoking Regulation Bylaw. Freedom of information requests about enforcement between Jan. 1, 2019 to Aug. 2, 2023 came up empty.

“Park Board staff have confirmed there are no responsive records as no tickets were issued under the specified bylaw,” said the response.

The 2010 staff report said outdoor smoke could be just as harmful as indoor and the vast majority of park users polled were in favour of a no-smoking policy. The initial bylaw implementation focused on education and awareness.

“Staff further advised the board that many jurisdictions across North America have successfully implemented similar policies with high levels of compliance and the few cases of non-compliance that is anticipated can be addressed by park rangers and bylaw officers,” said the report.

Sarah Blyth, executive director of the Vancity Overdose Prevention Society (OPS), was vice-chair of the Park Board in April 2010 and part of the unanimous vote for the anti-smoking bylaw. She said her main concern at the time was garbage and the risk of wildfire.

The province declared a public health emergency in April 2016 due to the rise in fentanyl-related deaths. An October 2022 report from the B.C. Coroners Service said that between 2016 and 2021, smoking opioids became the leading mode of consumption province-wide, increasing from 29% to 56%. Meanwhile, injection fell from 39% to 20% during the first five years of the crisis.

“People will need a place to go, we need solutions, we need outdoors, the safe, clean outdoor spaces,” Blyth said. “We need to continue to connect people to resources. So if they’re asked to leave a space, getting them to come to an office is important. But we don’t have really enough outdoor spaces for people.”

After her 2008 election to Park Board, Blyth advocated for safe places to skateboard after numerous complaints about skateboarders on streets, sidewalks, plazas and outside businesses. The city now now has nine dedicated outdoor facilities. She said the same thinking is needed to accommodate drug users when Bill 34 is passed.

“You need to build something for people to go to that they can connect to recovery and resources,” Blyth said, adding that OPS sees up to 900 people a day.

At least 12,929 British Columbians have died from opioid use since April 2016, making it the leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 59. Almost two-thirds of those who have died in 2023 consumed drugs via smoking.

The City of Vancouver and Park Board communications departments said in a statement that they are “closely monitoring changes in provincial regulations and taking the time to consider next steps.”

As for the lack of tickets for smokers at parks and beaches, if education fails and escalation is needed, the city said Park Rangers may seek help from the Vancouver Police Department or Conservation Officer Service as needed.

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Bob Mackin One of the leading voices of

Judge dismisses two jurors from trial of former BC Liberal MLA’s son

Bob Mackin

The Powell River sexual interference trial of the son of a former BC Liberal MLA paused Oct. 6 when two jurors were sent home for disobeying the judge’s instructions.

The case will continue Oct. 10 with 10 jurors.

Peter Edelmann (Edelmann law)

Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana, 35, was scheduled to continue testifying in his own defence before B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Edelmann and the jury. The son of former Okanagan East MLA Judi Tyabji is accused of committing sexual interference of a person under 16 and invitation to sexual touching of a person under 16 during the second half of 2016.

The two jurors, whose names were not disclosed, conducted what Edelmann described as “independent research” about the case.

“One of the pieces of information that was shared to some of you was that a Canada-wide warrant was issued for Mr. Tyabji-Sandana,” Edelmann said after the jury was recalled at 3:49 p.m. “This is a good illustration of the dangers of information being presented outside the courtroom and its potential for misuse.”

Edelmann called the issuance of a warrant and laying of charges routine and not unusual for such a warrant to be executed in another province. Tyabji-Sandana was the subject of a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest in 2020.

“While it might make for an interesting headline, to an informed observer, the information about the issuance of a warrant adds nothing to the information about the laying of the charges,” he said.

Powell River courthouse (Provincial Court of B.C.)

Edelmann proceeded to tell the remaining 10 members of the jury that their duty is to decide whether Tyabji-Sandana is guilty or not of the charges before the court. That there is a charge is not evidence, nor is it a relevant factor to consider when they decide the outcome.

“All persons charged with an offense are presumed to be innocent under our law. This means that they do not have to prove their innocence,” the judge said. “In my final instructions, I will remind you that you should disregard anything you have read or heard in the media or any other source outside the courtroom in coming to your decision in this case.”

Edelmann reminded the jury to not use the Internet or any electronic device about the trial in any way, not talk about the case with any friends or relatives, and not communicate with anyone involved in the case.

“You may, of course, give a polite greeting to somebody you see around the courthouse, but do not talk about the case with anyone except your fellow jurors.”

Edelmann reiterated that he is the sole judge of the law in the trial and that they are the judges of the facts.

“Therefore, it is important that you accept the law from me without question. You must not use your own ideas about what the law is.”

On Oct. 5, Tyabji-Sandana testified that he did not know the girl he had sex with in September 2016 was 15-years-old, because he was under the belief that she had turned 16 earlier in the year. The alleged victim had testified Wednesday that she told Tyabji-Sandana she was 15 when they kissed for the first time.

Tyabji-Sandana originally met her in January 2016 when she volunteered to work on the farm co-owned by Tyabji and then-husband Gordon Wilson, the former Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA who led the BC Liberal Party from 1987 to 1993.

Tyabji testified that she did not ask the girl for her age, but assumed she was in senior high school because she had arrived with forms to gain volunteer work credits toward graduation.

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Bob Mackin The Powell River sexual interference trial

Son of former BC Liberal MLA testifies in his own defence at sexual interference trial

Bob Mackin

Former BC Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji admitted at her son’s Powell River sexual interference trial that she did not check the ages of two high school girls that volunteered to work on the family sheep farm in January 2016.

Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana and Judi Tyabji (Instagram)

One of them was 14 at the time and her complaint to police resulted in Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana being charged in 2020 with sexual interference of a person under 16 and invitation to sexual touching of a person under 16.

Tyabji-Sandana, 35, pleaded not guilty in B.C. Supreme Court to the allegations, which date back to the second half of 2016. The maximum penalty for conviction is 14 years in jail.

Tyabji testified Oct. 5 before Justice Peter Edelmann and a jury that she only recently discovered the girl’s age from Tyabji-Sandana’s defence lawyer. She assumed that the girl was a senior in high school because she arrived with a clipboard and forms to be signed to confirm hours worked.

“If we knew the age of the person, then we would not let them work under age of 16,” Tyabji told the court.

“The only reason that we let these girls on the farm is we were helping them get credits for graduation.”

The girl eventually found a paying job at a grocery store in April of 2016. Tyabji-Sandana contacted her by email and they sparked a relationship that summer.

In his opening statements, defence lawyer David Tarnow emphasized to the jury that his client was not charged with sexual assault and that consent was not an issue for the trial. Instead, it was the age of the alleged victim.

Tarnow asked Tyabji-Sandana, who testified in his own defence, what he would have done had he learned the girl was 14 when she began volunteering on the farm.

“She seemed nothing like a 14-year-old that I’d known at any point in my life. I guess I would’ve told my parents that she was 14,” Tyabji-Sandana said.

“My dad [former BC Liberal leader Gordon Wilson] would’ve been pretty upset, because he doesn’t want people that young working or volunteering on the farm. It’s the rule that he has, he’s really stodgy about it.”

Tyabji-Sandana said that he was under the impression at the farm that she was “like 15-ish, 16-ish” because she was well-spoken, ambitious and “had seemed grown.”

“Between the time that her volunteering on the farm had happened and when we linked up again, her birthday had happened.”

Later in the summer, anticipating that their relationship was turning sexual, Tyabji-Sandana decided to confirm the minimum legal age for sex by Googling “age of consent B.C.” Instead of the assumed 18-years-old, the Justice Canada website said it was 16.

“I thought that was good news, because I thought [she] was 16,” said Tyabji-Sandana, who was 28 at the time.

He testified that he asked her in-person if she had seen his email about the law. “I don’t remember her exact words, but it was discussed and there was no problem.”

Tarnow said people might wonder why he did not also check her identification.

“I had no reason to think she was young. I don’t know why I would have ‘carded her,’ because I’m not a bouncer at a bar,” answered Tyabji-Sandana.

They had sexual encounters at his apartment in September 2016, but he said their relationship eventually fizzled out.

Under cross-examination, the alleged victim, now 22, was adamant that she told Tyabji-Sandana that she was 15 after they first kissed, though she admitted they later discussed advancing their relationship. While Tyabji-Sandana wanted to have sex with her, she said she did not want to have sex with him.

Tarnow suggested it was “incongruent” for her to have not explicitly told Tyabji-Sandana that they should not have sex after he sent her the link to the Justice Canada website about age of consent.

“A lot of my life I have suffered from depression, anxiety and it was a time in my life where I did not feel as though people cared about me,” she said. “And Mr. Tyabji-Sandana fostered the friendship and made it seem as though he did care about me and he was the only one that cared about me.”

The trial continues.

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Bob Mackin Former BC Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji

Business, Miscellany, News

Review: The future is Sphere — biggest bet in Vegas revolutionizes the concert experience, with help from Canadians

Bob Mackin

Still haven’t seen the Sistine Chapel, but staring at other, modern ceilings has brought me great wonder and joy.

As a schoolchild, it was the Planetarium’s Star Theatre, with robotic projector Harold, under the ceiling of the venerable H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vanier Park. Field trips about the solar system and space travel, the Pink Floyd laser light show and even a 54-40 record release concert left me speechless.

U2 surrounded by Nevada Ark inside Sphere on Sept. 29 (Mackin)

Omnimax, a Canadian innovation, was a teenage mindblower that I discovered on a family trip to the giant “golf ball” at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. When Vancouver got its shiny silver geodesic dome in 1985, I was among hundreds of high schoolers who volunteered to wave flags for the one-year countdown to Expo 86 at what is now Science World.

Even when the newly lit roof is fixed and the theatre reopens in East False Creek, it won’t hold a candle to the biggest new bauble on the Las Vegas skyline, which I experienced on opening night on Sept. 29.

A band from Dublin that once called itself The Hype came to celebrate 47 years together by creating more hype. U2, even with drummer Larry Mullen Jr.’s temporary replacement Bram van den Berg, and the band’s home for at least 25 “Atomic City” shows lived up to the hype. And then some.

I’ve attended hundreds of concerts, indoors and outdoors. In bars, theatres, hockey rinks, football stadiums, parks, beaches, mountaintops and valley floors. But Las Vegas’s newest “showroom,” the $2.3 billion, 18,000-seat Sphere, redefines concerts.

The experience began next door in the Venetian Resort, at the two-floor Zoo Station: A U2:UV Experience museum, theatre, lounge and gift shop celebrating U2’s pioneering 1992 and 1993 ZOO TV tour that, oddly, didn’t sell out its stop at the Silver Bowl stadium.

“The future of live entertainment, or at least a portion of it, will be more and more immersive. Fans are looking for more backstory, more engagement and beyond just sitting in the seat and attending the show,” said Andrew Luft, vice-president of partnerships at Vibee, the Live Nation-founded destination experience company. “They want to be consumed by everything they can.”

Sphere is all-consuming. The world’s biggest spherical building, at 111 metres tall and 157 metres at its widest. You could hypothetically squeeze the Hotel Vancouver inside. The Exosphere, as the exterior is called, was designed and manufactured with Montreal’s SACO Technologies. It’s covered by 1.2 million LED “pucks” capable of displaying 256 million colours. Ad space sells for $450,000-a-day. On the eve of Friday’s concert, between acting as a giant pumpkin or the full moon (under the real harvest moon), ads were already in rotation for ABC’s Dancing With the Stars and the new Trolls movie.

Las Vegas Sphere, Sept. 29, 2023 (Mackin)

Inside, the 160,000 square foot, 180-degree wraparound screen with 16K x 16K resolution pairs with a 170,000-speaker, 3-D audio system designed by Berlin, Germany’s Holoplot.

A prototype opened last year in Burbank, Calif. A second Sphere is planned for London. If smaller ones don’t mushroom like the Omnimaxes and Imaxes did in the ‘80s and ‘90s, then copycats are inevitable. Venues, promoters and ambitious artists will be under pressure to meet the Sphere-driven demand for optimal audio and video. Expect the concert-going experience to be vastly different by the end of the decade. A rising tide lifts all boats, as they say.

When the venue opened after 6 p.m. — two hours before scheduled showtime — ticketholders roamed the atrium and rode the escalators, bathed in the cool blue and violet hues of spherical light fixtures, soothed by ambient sound textures from U2’s 1991 “Achtung Baby” sessions. In the centre, a rotating “U2:UV Achtung Baby” light sculpture became a selfie pit stop.

Inside the amphitheatre, a sense of awe and anticipation for the new take on U2’s avant-garde tour.

Thirty yeas ago, cubic video walls and TV screens of multiple sizes flanked the stage, backlit by the headlights of suspended East German Trabant cars. This time, deceptive minimalism. The stage was a giant turntable at the foot of the 76 metre screen that appeared like the walls of a subway tunnel until the light broke through early in the opener, “Zoo Station.”

Industrial Light and Magic, which counts Vancouver among its six studios, helped bring the spectacle to life. During “Even Better than the Real Thing,” the screen became the canvas for Toronto-raised Marco Brambilla’s kinetic, kaleidoscopic tribute to Elvis Presley, “King Size.” Later, it was Es Devlin’s “Nevada Ark,” a collage of dozens of the state’s endangered species in all their glory, that appeared covered every inch of the screen during the climactic “Beautiful Day.”

U2 debut “Atomic City” at Sphere in Las Vegas on Sept. 29, 2023 (Mackin)

For the two hours in between, the screen displayed flickering embers, a flag of fire in the night sky, a flag of smoke during a daytime scene, a multitude of insects at dusk and aurora borealis. The Las Vegas skyline from the perspective of Sphere looked deceptively live.

As an usher asked fans to sit amid the “Rattle and Hum” acoustic interlude, a technician strolled the aisle past my upper level seat eyeing a diagnostics dashboard on his open laptop, ensuring everything was just right.

Ironically, one of the most-stunning scenes didn’t involve the screen at all. It was the projection of the band, including close-ups of instruments, onto the turntable stage during “Acrobat,” the penultimate song on “Achtung Baby,” and 15th of the night’s 22-song setlist. “You can dream, so dream out loud…” Bono sang over the Edge’s caterwauling guitar.

As the historic opening night wound down, Bono gave special praise to James Dolan, the Madison Square Garden Entertainment boss behind the Sphere dream. One of the biggest bets ever made in Vegas.

“You’re one mad bastard,” he said. “Thank-you for this wondrous place.”

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Bob Mackin Still haven’t seen the Sistine Chapel,

Sexual interference trial for son of former BC Liberal MLA underway in Powell River

Bob Mackin

The son of a former BC Liberal MLA went on trial Oct. 4 in Powell River, accused of sexual interference of a person under 16 and invitation to sexual touching of a person under 16.

Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana (left) and Judi Tyabji (Instagram)

In B.C. Supreme Court, Kasimir Tyabji-Sandana, 35, pleaded not guilty to both offences, which the Crown alleges took place between July 1, 2016 and Dec. 31, 2016. Tyabji-Sandana was charged in 2020 and arrested after a Canada-wide warrant. Under the Criminal Code, the maximum sentence for conviction is 14 years in jail.

During opening statements before Justice Peter Edelmann and a jury, Crown counsel Jeffrey Young said that email, social media direct messages and text messages will form much of the evidence about the interactions between Tyabji-Sandana and the alleged victim. Young said that Tyabji-Sandana met her when she was a 14-year-old living in Powell River with her family in early 2016. She volunteered on weekends at the sheep farm operated by his mother Judi Tyabji and then-husband Gordon Wilson, but stopped volunteering after she got a paying job in April 2016.

Around the same time, Tyabji-Sandana obtained the girl’s email address and they began emailing back and forth. They eventually spent time together during the summer, at a local festival, on a logging road and at Tyabji-Sandana’s apartment. They watched movies on Friday nights and eventually had intercourse.

“I expect [the alleged victim] will tell you that she does not necessarily recall all of these specific dates of the incidents she’s going to be testifying to, but rather will be giving estimates or ranges,” Young told the jury.

Young said that at the end of July in 2016 they were spending time together and went to Tyabji-Sandana’s residence. It was during this time that they first kissed.

“You will hear that after that kiss, [she] responded to Mr. Tyabji-Sandana by telling him that she was 15-years-old,” Young said.

“I expect one of the potential issues this trial will be Mr. Tyabji-Sandana’s knowledge of [her] age at the time, as well as the steps he took to determine that age. You will hear [her] in her testimony say that she told Mr. Tyabji-Sandana that she was 15 years old throughout 2016.”

Young said he expected her to testify to various accusations she made about Tyabji-Sandana, how what happened between them has affected her and what Tyabji-Sandana’s response was to her.

When the alleged victim, now 22, took the witness stand, she testified that they first met in January 2016, when she was still 14, looking ahead to her 15th birthday in April of that year.

She described the farm where she volunteered, with 45 sheep, and that she would typically clean the stalls, help feed the sheep and take care of newborn lambs. She also described some of the incidents where they kissed, including when Tyabji-Sandana lifted her bra and fondled her breasts.

Young asked her about discussions she had with Tyabji-Sandana about her 16th birthday upcoming in April 2017.

“I believe some of the discussion was had over Facebook Messenger or text, some of the discussion would have been in-person,” she testified. “That it was coming soon within the near future. I remember specifically one time he had mentioned that, for my 16th birthday, he was going to get me a box of condoms.”

Young asked her when the conversation took place, to which she answered “not exactly.” Later she agreed that it happened after she had stopped volunteering at the farm.

The trial is scheduled for another six days.

Judi Tyabji won the Okanagan-East riding in the October 1991 provincial election when the Wilson-led BC Liberals became the official opposition to Mike Harcourt’s NDP government.

Wilson, who won the Powell River-Sunshine Coast MLA, named Tyabji the opposition house leader, but he eventually lost the leadership over their affair. They married in 1994 and formed the Progressive Democratic Alliance. After the 1996 election, Wilson joined the NDP and held a succession of portfolios in Premier Glen Clark’s cabinet, including aboriginal affairs, BC Ferries, finance and education.

Wilson and Tyabji returned to the BC Liberals during the 2013 election when they endorsed Premier Christy Clark, who upset the Adrian Dix-led NDP and remained in power until 2017.

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October 6, 2023

Bob Mackin The son of a former BC

Surrey Police Service hires the province’s ex-top policing bureaucrat to aid transition

Bob Mackin

The Surrey Police Service (SPS) has hired Wayne Rideout, the province’s former head of police services, to help it take over the duties of the Surrey RCMP.

Wayne Rideout (LinkedIn)

Ian MacDonald, the media liaison for the SPS, said Oct. 5 that Rideout was contracted for three months at $175 per hour to assist with the continuation of the policing transition.

“We believe that Mr. Rideout’s experience as the former assistant deputy minister and director of police services for B.C.’s Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General in addition to his 34-year policing career will assist us greatly,” MacDonald said. “Given Minister [Mike] Farnworth’s July 19 decision on policing in Surrey, we believe Mr. Rideout will provide meaningful contributions to the important next steps.”

Rideout spent more than six years in the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General. From December 2020 to January 2023, he was the top bureaucrat overseeing policing in the province, reporting to Farnworth.

“I was responsible for the superintendence of policing in the province as well as the development and implementation of policy, legislation and the alignment of the RCMP and the province’s independent police agencies to address public safety challenges and crisis,” said Rideout’s LinkedIn profile. “I worked to ensue public confidence in law enforcement and to modernize policing to meet evolving performance and accountability expectations.”

In addition to managing the province’s RCMP contracts, Rideout also played a role in reversing a Vancouver Police Department budget freeze in early 2022 after an appeal from the police board. Rideout’s decision restored $5.7 million in funding after the December 2020 city council decision amid the “defund the police” movement.

Keep the RCMP in Surrey campaigning with Surrey mayoral candidate Brenda Locke (Twitter)

More than two months ago, Farnworth directed City of Surrey to replace the RCMP detachment with the municipal force. Farnworth reiterated the NDP government’s pledge to pay the estimated $30 million increased annual cost of the SPS for the first five years.

Farnworth cited section 2 of the Police Act, which requires adequate and effective law enforcement be maintained throughout the province, and claimed that stopping the transition would leave other communities understaffed.

He also announced the hiring of Jessica McDonald as “strategic implementation advisor” to facilitate the transition.

Despite Farnworth’s order, Mayor Brenda Locke said in a recent interview that there is no detailed plan to proceed with the SPS. She said she told Premier David Eby at the recent Union of B.C. Municipalities convention that the city is in an “untenable position.”

Surrey’s 2018-elected city council under Mayor Doug McCallum decided to switch police forces, but 2022 successor Locke’s majority council voted to keep the RCMP.

Rideout began his policing career with the RCMP in 1982 and one of his first stops as a general duty officer was Surrey. He reached the level of assistant commissioner in 2012 in charge of criminal operations, investigative services and organized crime.

During his tenure as the officer in charge of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team from 2003 to 2008, Rideout refused to let the public information officer correct the record when an eyewitness video emerged of the taser death of Polish tourist Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport. A coroner’s court heard in 2018 that the decision sent Sgt. Pierre Lemaitre into a tailspin and he eventually died in 2013 of suicide.

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October 5, 2023

Bob Mackin The Surrey Police Service (SPS) has

Judge dismisses challenge to city hall’s secretive Senakw services deal

Bob Mackin

The Kits Point Residents Association (KPRA) is pondering whether to appeal the B.C. Supreme Court’s Sept. 29 dismissal of its challenge to Vancouver city hall’s agreement for servicing the Squamish Nation’s Senakw towers.

Section of Lanier Park excavated for Senakw towers (Mackin)

“Clearly we are disappointed with the result,” said KPRA president Eve Munro by email. “We are in the process of reviewing the decision and considering our options. In view of this I am not able to offer any further comment at this time.”

Justice Carla Forth’s 73-page written verdict, given to the parties the day before the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, said city council was justified in holding meetings in private and not consulting the public about the commercial agreement with the landowner.

KPRA wanted a judge to quash the services agreement due to its secrecy, but Forth concluded the 120-year pact was valid, the city acted within the law and that no civic official acted in bad faith.

“As such, the process used was not unreasonable nor arbitrary,” Forth wrote.

Forth presided over hearings from April 18-21 about the city’s only role in the development on 10.5 acres of irregularly shaped Squamish Nation reserve land beside and under the Burrard Bridge. The Squamish Nation’s Nch’kay Development company is partnered with Westbank Development under the umbrella of Nch’kay West to build 11 towers in four phases. Phase one is expected to be ready for occupancy in November 2025. The federally approved project is slated to contain 6,000 residential units by 2030.

In July 2021, city council passed a resolution behind closed doors to authorize and execute a services agreement. The agreement was signed in public by Mayor Kennedy Stewart and Squamish Nation council chair Dustin Rivers, aka Khelsilem, on May 25, 2022, but not published until just before B.C. Day weekend. Forth noted that he Squamish Nation originally wanted the agreement to remain confidential, but the city insisted it be disclosed.

Staff considered whether there should be any type of consultation, concluding that to do so would imply the city had regulatory control over the nation’s land use decision.

KPRA argued in court that the city should have used its ability to refuse services as a bargaining tool to exert control over the density and composition. Forth said the law is clear that municipalities are not required to consult the public prior to entering a commercial agreement and the city was correct to not regulate or influence an Indigenous government’s development.

Senakw (Westbank/Nch’kay)

“The decision made by the city that it would not use the negotiation of the services agreement as a means to force the nation to change the density of the development was based on the city’s view of whether this was an appropriate strategy in all of the circumstances,” Forth wrote. “After fully considering the issues, the city concluded it was not.”

Forth noted that the city decided in 2014 to become a “City of Reconciliation” and that policy should shape its negotiations over Senakw. While the Vancouver Charter contains clauses about when meetings must be open, Forth found that it was appropriate to hold a July 2021 meeting behind closed doors because the agreement was still under negotiation and publicity could have disadvantaged the city’s bargaining position.

“The petitioners submit that the 2021 report ought to have been considered in an open council meeting. A review of that report supports that it contains sensitive information about land rights issues, issues relating to the Bridge and the competing claims to the land on which it stands, the use of Vanier Park, and the confidentiality of the terms of the services agreement,” Forth wrote.

As the losing party, KPRA is liable to pay the city’s costs. But Forth acknowledged going to court was a last resort for the frustrated petitioners. They had legitimate concerns about the impacts of Senakw, given the size, scale and unprecedented nature of the development and its traffic and transportation ramifications.

“They were provided with no public forum to bring forward their concerns and have them heard. In my view, although the city was successful in defending this petition, it should consider whether costs should be pursued,” Forth concluded.

At the groundbreaking ceremony in September 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a $1.4 billion loan through Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to finance half the units in Senakw’s first two phases.

A 2019 expert report for Squamish Nation members estimated the project could bring as much as $12.7 billion cashflow for the band and developer.

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October 4, 2023

Bob Mackin The Kits Point Residents Association (KPRA)

Chinese government official planning sister-city trip to Vancouver in October

Bob Mackin

The mayor of Vancouver’s sister city in China is scheduled to visit in less than a month.

But Vancouver city hall had little to say about plans for Guangzhou’s Guo Yonghang and his entourage.

“The City of Vancouver is aware of the upcoming visit of the delegation from Guangzhou, China. At this time, the city has not confirmed any sister-city events,” said a statement delivered by Johann Chang of city hall’s communications department.

Guangzhou Mayor Guo Yonghang (GZ government)

Vancouver twinned with Guangzhou, the capital of China’s most-populous province Guangdong, in 1985. The cities marked the 30th anniversary of the relationship in 2015 when Guangzhou Mayor Chen Jianhua and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson unveiled a sculpture outside 12th and Cambie and appeared at an economic and finance forum at the Four Seasons Hotel. Guangdong is the ancestral home to many British Columbians of Chinese descent and known as the manufacturing and high-tech heartland of China.

Guo is expected to arrive in Vancouver Oct. 18 and spend Oct. 19-21 at events and meetings with business and consular officials. His itinerary has not been announced, but a person familiar with the trip, but not authorized to comment, said the delegation will number six or seven people.

The Consulate-General of the People’s Republic of China in Vancouver did not respond for comment.

Guo was vice-governor of Guangdong when he was named Guangzhou’s acting mayor in 2021. He also occupies senior civic and provincial posts in the Chinese Communist Party. In China, mayors and governors are not elected. They are appointed by the state council, the Chinese government’s cabinet.

Guangzhou, with more than 18.7 million residents, is one of Vancouver’s five sister cities, but Guangzhou has 64 “friendly cities” and 38 “friendship cities” of its own. Vancouver is number four on the latter, more-prestigious list.

Guangzhou also has official friendship city alliances with two Russian cities, Kazan and Yekaterinburg. Guo marked the 10th anniversary of the Kazan relationship in September 2022 with a visit to its Mayor, Ilsur Metshin, “to discuss further deepening cooperation between the two cities in areas such as trade, tourism, sports, and culture,” according to a Guangzhou government website.

Horgan and Chinese Politburo member Wang Chen (Rich Lam/BC Gov)

Vancouver’s first sister city in 1944 was Odesa, the Ukrainian port city under Russian attack for the last year and a half.

Charles Burton, a senior fellow with the Macdonald Laurier Institute think-tank, said it is an awkward time for Guo to visit Vancouver. He wondered what the benefit is for Canada while so many questions remain unanswered about China’s interference in Canadian affairs, including the last federal election and illegal police stations.

“It’s puzzling why we would give a visa for an official Chinese government-associated delegation that appears to have no reason to come to Canada except to engage in activities which don’t seem to be in the interests of Canada’s development or security,” said Burton, a former diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing. “In other words, you’d expect that the mayor of Guangzhou to be having some program with his counterparts in the municipal government, but evidently, there isn’t anything to do with them. Obviously, we’re not going to be arranging celebratory activities between Vancouver and Guangzhou.”

The visit is scheduled just after the anniversary of ABC Vancouver leader Ken Sim’s landslide election as the first Vancouver mayor of Chinese descent. Sim defeated Kennedy Stewart on Oct. 15, 2022, a year after the NDP-aligned incumbent raised the ire of Chinese diplomats when he proposed forging a friendship city alliance with the Taiwanese city Kaohsiung. China has threatened to invade Taiwan, the self-governing, democratic island.

The last, big Chinese government mission to Vancouver was June 2018 when Premier John Horgan hosted a 24-person entourage led by Wang Chen, a member of dictator Xi Jinping’s Politburo and vice-chair of the National People’s Congress standing committee.

Horgan and Wang officially discussed trade, tourism, education and climate change.

Wang’s visit came the week after local demonstrations marked he 29th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and two weeks after the Vancouver Convention Centre staged the 9th Conference of the World Guangdong Community Federation.

In May 2016, Premier Christy Clark hosted the CCP’s Guangdong secretary Hu Chunhua and 200 other business and political officials.

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October 4, 2023