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Bob Mackin

BC United leader Kevin Falcon promised alumni of China’s flagship university that he would forge closer ties with China if he becomes premier after the next election. 

Falcon told an Aug. 27 meeting at the University of B.C., hosted by the Guanghua Vancouver Alumni Association of Peking University, that he would restore the standalone trade offices the NDP government closed in late 2019, according to a summary by the event’s host.

BC United leader Kevin Falcon (right) with Richmond-Centre candidate Wendy Yuan (Kevin Falcon/Twitter)

“He strongly praised the outstanding contributions made by Chinese in Canadian history, focusing on the Asia-Pacific Portal and Corridor Program he participated in, and was committed to maintaining and expanding Canada’s trade with the Asia-Pacific region, including China,” said a translation of Zhang Jiawei’s WeChat post. “At the same time, it regrets that the current British Columbia government has closed 13 offices in the Asia-Pacific region, including four Chinese offices, and promised that if BC United is in power, it will resume the establishment of these offices and play their due positive role.”

Zhang is a co-founder of the 1029 Cafe crowdfunding club in Richmond and the Chinese Canadian Heritage and Future Foundation.

Macdonald-Laurier Institute senior fellow Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing, said Falcon’s speech was notable for two reasons: the audience and the message. 

“This kind of venue is designed to expand China’s influence in Canada through rallying alumni of Chinese institutions, of which I’m one myself, Fudan University,” Burton said. “This speech has been given to a certain audience and he did not suggest that, under his government, that B.C. would follow the Canadian government policy of expanding into the Trans-Pacific Partnership and following the Indo-Pacific policy of trying to diversify our trade exposure, away from possible Chinese economic coercion or monopoly of certain key elements in high tech.”

Falcon, Burton said, would have been more consistent with federal policy had he suggested that B.C. retain officers inside Canadian diplomatic missions in China and expand operations in other markets, “to try and prevent B.C. from becoming too beholden to [People’s Republic of China] political interests. So, I’m puzzled by by his assertion.”

Neither Falcon nor BC United caucus press secretary Andrew Reeve responded to interview requests. 

At the end of 2019, then-NDP Jobs, Trade and Technology Minister Bruce Ralston announced closure of B.C.’s contracted offices in 13 cities across Asia, in favour of embedding staff in Canadian embassies and consulates. 

B.C. now has four trade offices at diplomatic missions in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing), four in India (Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Bangaluru), Tokyo, Seoul, Manila, Jakarta, Singapore, Ho Chih Minh City and Taipei.

When the BC Liberal Party, the predecessor of BC United, was in power, the government spent $8.4 million over three years to rent and resource an office in Beijing’s Kerry Centre. That was according to a 2017 paper by entrepreneur and podcaster Andrew Johns, based on freedom of information disclosures. From 2013 to 2016, Ben Stewart served as B.C.’s Beijing-based, special trade representative to Asia. Premier Christy Clark gave Stewart the $150,000-a-year salary plus expenses after he stepped aside so she could win the West Kelowna by-election and return to the Legislature after losing Vancouver-Point Grey to Eby in 2013.

During those three years, the B.C. government helped broker a research and development deal between Telus and Huawei, signed a memorandum of understanding to enable a Surrey logistics warehouse under Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative and lured an arm of state-owned conglomerate China Poly Group to open a Richmond office and Vancouver gallery. 

Poly Culture quietly closed its doors early this year and Telus’s Huawei partnership dissolved due to national security concerns in the wake of the Meng Wenzhou extradition saga. 

Analysis by the University of Alberta’s China Institute showed B.C. exports to China fell 4.53% to $8.66 billion last year, but imports grew 20.59% to $21.65 billion. The report noted the economic and geopolitical impacts of the Chinese Communist Party government’s “zero COVID” lockdowns until late November protests, Xi’s refusal to condemn ally Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and ongoing threats to forcefully invade and annex Taiwan. 

In August, China left Canada off its latest list of approved destinations for tour groups. 

Aug. 27 event headliner Prof. Li Qi from Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, gave a two-hour speech on “Global Change and China’s Development” to the 350 attendees. Falcon was not the only politician there. His Aug. 25-announced BC United candidate for Richmond-Centre, Wendy Yuan, and Burnaby Coun. James Wang, a former NDP candidate, were also in attendance. 

When Yuan’s candidacy was announced in Richmond, the crowd included James Wu Jiaming of the Canada-China City Friendship Association and Dawa News publisher Zaixin Ma, both frequent attendees of Chinese consulate events. 

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Bob Mackin BC United leader Kevin Falcon promised

Business, News

Bob Mackin

The Broadway Subway project continues to forecast that it will stay within the $2.83 billion budget, but the revised completion and service dates were quietly omitted from monthly reports. 

In the June project status report from the Transportation Investment Corporation, schedule topped the list of five “yellow light” items on the project delivery dashboard, requiring near-term action. The extension of SkyTrain’s Millennium Line already announced a delay last November from late 2025 to early 2026.

Arbutus Station construction site (Broadway Subway)

“The start of piling activities was delayed at some construction locations. Recovery measures have been implemented by Broadway Subway Project Corporation (BSPC) and are being monitored closely,” said the most-recently released report. “A five-week concrete supplier strike in June 2022 delayed the completion of the base slab at Great Northern Way, which impacted the start of tunnel boring. As a result, project completion has moved from late 2025 to early 2026.”

The report for last October included the previous schedule, which targeted substantial completion for Nov. 27, 2025, service commencement on Dec. 27, 2025 and total completion Feb. 28, 2026. The reports from November through February showed the target for substantial completion had been postponed until Jan. 8, 2026, service commencement to Feb. 7, 2026 and total completion to March 30, 2026.

Beginning with the April status report, the dates were omitted and the red flag project schedule icons moved slightly to the right.

The project reported spending $32.5 million in June for a total to date of $1.18 billion, including $382.7 million from the federal government so far and $100.3 million from the City of Vancouver. 

The 5 kilometre subway and 700 metre elevated guideway will connect six underground stations from Great Northern Way-Emily Carr to Arbutus. 

The report said there were six non-conformity reports in June about health and safety issues and construction quality processes. Of the 319 such reports during the project, 291 files were closed and 28 remained open. 

The project reported a lost time injury frequency rate of 0.21 to date, less than the 2021 WorkSafeBC rate of 0.90 for heavy construction.

Broadway Subway timeline excerpts (Broadway Subway)

Schedule was one of the five project dashboard items assigned a yellow light ranking. The remaining six were all green lights. None was red, which would have denoted requiring immediate action to resolve. 

Notes within the dashboard said discussions were progressing with B.C. Infrastructure Benefits, the Crown corporation in charge of hiring and supplying unionized workers, about workforce and permitting requirements. Discussions were also ongoing with TransLink and Canada Line about integration with their systems and developer PCI. Targets had been achieved for Indigenous contracting, but discussions continued about project agreements and Indigenous art and cultural recognition at stations. 

The second tunnel boring machine, nicknamed Phyllis, for Girl Guides of B.C. founder Phyllis Munday, broke through at Broadway-City Hall Station in late May. The June report said both tunnel boring machines were at the site under Cambie and Broadway. 

BSPC is the design/build joint venture between Acciona of Spain and Ghella of Italy. Acciona is also working on the Site C dam and Pattullo Bridge projects.

In early 2022, Metro Vancouver fired Acciona from the $1.058 billion North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant in North Vancouver over project delays, sparking duelling lawsuits filed in B.C. Supreme Court. 

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Bob Mackin The Broadway Subway project continues to

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For the week of Sept. 3, 2023: 

Jack Nicklaus famously said that golf is 90% mental and 10% physical.

Sport psychologist Dr. Saul Miller, author of Winning Golf (Mackin)

North Vancouver sport psychologist Dr. Saul Miller agrees. Miller is the author of the new book “Winning Golf: The Mental Game” from ECW Press. 

“Golf is such a mental game,” Miller tells thePodcast host Bob Mackin. “Learning to manage your emotions, learning to manage your thought process, that applies to everything in life. So if you work on these techniques that I described, which is right focus, right feeling, and right attitude, if you work on that, to really improve your golf game, it translates into everything in life.”

Listen to Mackin’s full interview with Miller, who has counselled teams and players from across the professional and amateur sports world for over more than four decades.

Plus Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

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For the week of Sept. 3, 2023:  Jack

Business, News

Bob Mackin 

A developer who is a former District of Sooke councillor is questioning district hall’s relationship with a consultancy that was paid more than $600,000 for projects in the past five years.

Sooke district hall (Sooke.ca)

At their June 12 meeting, Sooke councillors chose Urban Systems Ltd. for a contract funded out of a $494,270 grant through the Union of B.C. Municipalities. The staff report said Urban Systems was hired to review “development approval processes, including the use of digital management software and web-based application submissions.”

Urban Systems, a municipal planning consultancy with 600 employees across Western Canada (including Victoria and Courtenay offices), proposed a $219,570 budget, the second-highest bid.

Three others were shortlisted: Channel Consulting and Spur Communications ($99,199), KPMG ($214,280) and J.R. Huggett and MABRI ($235,000). Urban Systems scored highest on the staff evaluation, followed by runner-up KPMG.

Haldane Homes owner Herb Haldane, who served on Sooke council from 2008 to 2014, said documents he received show that Urban Systems’ successful spring proposal may have benefitted from a smaller fall 2022 assignment for Sooke’s development office. 

The documents, released under freedom of information, include a Nov. 23 proposal from Urban Systems for a development approvals framework review contract under $40,000. 

“This initial phase will allow us to explore and identify key priorities to build a solid foundation for tackling other key tasks identified in your funding application,” said the email from Shaun Heffernan, Urban Systems principal and senior planner, to Sooke director of planning and development Matthew Pawlow.

Neither Heffernan nor Mayor Maja Tait responded for comment. Tait’s assistant said she is out of the office until Sept. 6. However, Tait spent Aug. 31 at a series of photo ops with federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh in advance of her evening acclamation as the party’s candidate for Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke. 

“Urban Systems submitted a proposal but staff did not enter into a contract with them for that work and instead completed the work with in-house resources,” said interim chief administrative officer Raechel Gray by email. 

“How did this happen?” Haldane asked. “They’re denying that there was even a paid contract to Urban Systems to build the referral process for the last contract that they got. They’re trying to say that was done in-house, and I’ve gotten numerous emails back saying, yep, we assure you it was done in-house done by our own staff. Well, I know, through the FOI process, that that’s not the case.”

One of the documents is Urban Systems’ Dec. 9 invoice to Sooke for $5,699.44 for “as and when planning services” rendered through the end of November. That work included a draft planning review of 13 building permits, and correspondence and bi-weekly team calls, involving a local government advisor, planning technician and two planners from Urban Systems. The invoice said billings-to-date totalled $48,017.49. 

Urban Systems worked on 17 Sooke projects between 2018 and 2022, worth $602,705.11. The as and when planning services project was its second biggest task of 2022, after the $124,268.67 for asset management plan.

Meanwhile, the contract for Paul Murray, who was hired to search for Sooke’s new chief administrative officer, was also released under freedom of information. 

In July, a majority of councillors accepted Murray’s recommendation to hire Jeremy Denegar, the chief administrative officer for District of Lillooet since December 2019. 

Murray’s proposal for the $16,900 contract included advertising the job, screening and shortlisting applicants, interviews, reference checks and optional “fit panels” and psychological assessments.

Murray has more than 35 years experience as a senior bureaucrat across municipal governments in the Capital Regional District, including chief administrative officer positions in Saanich and Central Saanich.  

The documents released included an email confirmation from Murray that he did not declare to Sooke that he had any personal or professional relationships with any candidates for the job, nor did Sooke ask for a declaration.

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Bob Mackin  A developer who is a former

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Bob Mackin

A judge has agreed to expand the class action lawsuit against Gymnastics Canada, Gymnastics B.C. and five other provincial member associations. 

On Aug. 21, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Carla Forth allowed representative plaintiff Amelia Cline to amend the claim to include the associations in the four Atlantic provinces, plus the Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories.

Gymnastics Canada

In the original May 2022 filing, Cline named Gymnastics Canada and its subsidiaries in Alberta, B.C., Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. She alleged gymnasts, including herself, had suffered physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse while under the care and control of the provincial organization in their jurisdiction and Gymnastics Canada.

Gymnastics Canada, according to Cline, created a culture and environment where abuse could occur and the organization also failed to take appropriate steps to protect the athletes, many of whom were children when the abuse took place.

“The perpetrators of the abuse were often coaches, but in some instances also included staff, administrators, physiotherapists and other employees, agents or servants  of  Gymnastics  Canada,  [provincial member organizations],  and/or  member clubs  under  the jurisdiction and oversight of Gymnastics Canada and its PMOs,” said Cline’s filing.

The lawsuit proposes the class represent all gymnasts in Canada who claim they were abused while participating in a Gymnastics Canada, provincial member organization or member club program or event since 1978. In Cline’s case, she alleged suffering abuse, including training-induced physical and mental injuries, beginning in 2000 at the Omega Gymnastics Sports Centre in Coquitlam.

Cline and her parents complained to Gymnastics B.C. in March 2003 after coach Vladimir Lashin demanded Cline perform while she was rehabilitating a torn hamstring. Their complaint also alleged that Lashin screamed at Cline, brought her into his office, forced her to weigh herself and blamed her injury on being overweight. The lawsuit said Cline, then 14, weighed 80 pounds and that Lashin’s treatment caused her to immediately leave Omega and end her gymnastics career.

Vladimir and Svetlana Lashin were not reprimanded, but instead received awards and promotions within the sport. Vladimir Lashin eventually became Canada’s head coach at the Athens 2004 Olympics. 

Law Courts Vancouver (Joe Mabel)

Cline, who is now a lawyer, is represented by Camp Fiorante Matthews Mogerman in Vancouver and Howie Sacks and Henry in Toronto. 

None of the allegations has been proven in court. The online court file does not include a statement of defence. Hearings are scheduled for next February for defendants to argue that the matter should be heard in another jurisdiction outside B.C.  

In January, Gymnastics Canada released a report it commissioned by McLaren Global Sport Solutions. While most gymnasts reported positive experiences, “toxic examples of abuse and maltreatment persist at all levels; coaches, judges and staff have also reported maltreatment,” the McLaren report said. 

“Abuse and maltreatment of gymnasts appears most pronounced in women’s artistic gymnastics and women’s rhythmic gymnastics.”

Interim chair Bernard Petiot said at the time that Gymnastics Canada “heard loud and clear the cultural and behavioural wrongdoings that have hurt individuals and our sport. We acknowledge and respect the ripple effect of these wrongdoings and we are moving ahead — today.”

Cline is one of many athletes past and present who have campaigned unsuccessfully for the federal government to call a judicial public inquiry into abuse and corruption in the Canadian sport system.

Under Sport Minister Pascal St-Onge, the government introduced new checks and balances for federally funded sport organizations, including the new Office of the Sport Integrity Commissioner.

But St-Onge was transferred to Canadian Heritage in the late July cabinet shuffle. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned the sport portfolio to Delta MP Carla Qualtrough, who held the post from 2015 to 2017.

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Bob Mackin A judge has agreed to expand

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Bob Mackin 

A Vancouver Island retiree is asking the B.C. Supreme Court to overturn a judge’s order that he remove an accommodation barge from the sea floor off Quadra Island by Aug. 31. 

Douglas Rodgers of Black Creek and his formerly operating company Quadra Management Ltd. face the deadline set June 14 by Justice Gordon Weatherill.

Floating fishing lodge in Gowlland Harbour, before it sunk in September 2021 (supplied)

In the provincial government’s May 29 filing, it alleged that the barge was moored without authorization at Gowlland Harbour, the defendants ignored four trespass notices in 2021 before it sunk in September of that year and the partially submerged barge remains both a hazard and a nuisance. 

“The respondents have allowed the barge to trespass on the Crown foreshore for

approximately two years, interfering with, endangering, or damaging: Crown land, the use of the land by the We Wai Kai First Nation and the We Wai Kum First Nation, important archaeological sites including shell midden sites, many campers at Camp Homewood, and local businesses,” said the province’s May 29 action, filed in the Nanaimo registry. 

In his Aug. 18 affidavit, Rodgers explained that he did not initially respond to the lawsuit “due to my belief that I was not a proper defendant in this matter.” The province consented for him to file a late statement of defence on July 12.

Rodgers alleged that the actual ownership of the barge remained with Point Roberts Resorts LP. He explained that the barge was in transit and in the care and control of West Coast Tug and Barge of Campbell River, until delivered to Gowlland Harbour. 

Once there, the floating lodge came under the care and control of Seascape Resort and its owner, Wesley Kinsley, which had an option to buy the barge.

“The Seascape property by way of foreclosure then came under the control of Irene Wenngatz and her company who appointed Matthew Liang as receiver manager of the resort,” said the Rodgers’ affidavit. “As a result of the neglect of Matthew Liang to properly manage the property, bilge pumps that had kept the barge afloat were turned off, resulting in the sinking of the barge.”

Kinsley, Liang and Wenngatz are the other individual defendants named by the province. 

The Rodgers affidavit said that the raising of the sunken barge was “rendered unworkable” due to currents and water flow in the harbour, so it needs to be dismantled, rather than raised. 

Justice Gordon Weatherill (LinkedIn)

The province’s application said the Ministry of Forests sent a letter of non-conformance in March 2019 to then-Seascape owner Wenngatz. Wenngatz applied to the Ministry to amend the licence of occupation, but failed to meet the requirement to move the barge by the end of March 2021. 

Between May 2019 and June 2021, the barge was arrested under a federal court order, related to Point Roberts Resort LP’s breach of contract lawsuit against Rodgers and Quadra Management.

The petition by Rodgers said the matter should be handled in the Campbell River court because that is nearest his residence, and that neither he nor Quadra Management are the proper defendants. 

“Had these facts been before the Honourable Justice Weatherill, he would not have made the order that he did,” Rodgers claimed in the filing made by his lawyer, Tom Finkelstein.

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Bob Mackin  A Vancouver Island retiree is asking

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Bob Mackin

Mayor Ken Sim said Vancouver city council will not follow the lead of Seattle city council, which released its contracts for the FIFA 26 World Cup.

Ken Sim at the Qatar 2022 World Cup (Ken Sim/Twitter)

Speaking Aug. 28 at a provincial housing announcement in South Vancouver, Sim said city council has discussed, during closed-door meetings, what it can and cannot release to the public. When it comes to the most-important documents, which define the duties of the event host and the event owner, “we are bound by confidentiality agreements.”

“Some things can be disclosed, some can’t,” Sim said. “But let’s be very, very clear. The City of Vancouver would not enter into something that we believe would be detrimental to the taxpayers, the residents, not only of Vancouver, but the province as well.”

Vancouver and Seattle are among 16 cities in Canada, U.S. and Mexico for the 48-nation, 104-match tournament in less than three years. On Aug. 8, Seattle officials released the host city and stadium agreements when city council formally delegated responsibilities to the Seattle International Soccer Local Organizing Committee (LOC). 

The host city contract said Seattle’s host city authority is responsible for supporting the government to provide safety, security, fire protection and medical services at no cost to FIFA, plus free public transportation to ticketholders on match days, and to anyone accredited by FIFA throughout the competition period. Unless otherwise explicitly stated, the host city authority shall be responsible to bear all the costs of hosting and waive all claims of liability against FIFA, its officials and related entities.

“I can’t comment as to what’s happened at Seattle because I don’t know what’s happened,” Sim said. “I don’t know if they’ve breached one of their agreements or if they have a different agreement. But I can tell you, at the City of Vancouver, everything that we can disclose we enthusiastically disclose, and we’re looking at this from a lens of fiscal responsibility and what’s best for the residents of B.C.”

B.C.’s Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner has repeatedly ruled in favour of releasing contracts between public bodies and private entities under the freedom of information law. In 2021, an adjudicator ordered Canadian Soccer Association Inc. (CSA), on behalf of FIFA, to release the contract with B.C. Place Stadium for the Canada 2015 Women’s World Cup. CSA dropped its court challenge in February 2022. The document showed the maximum payment for exclusive use of BC Place for almost six weeks was just under the $2 million subsidy provided by the BC Liberal government. 

Meanwhile, short-term rentals through Airbnb and Vrbo could ease the hotel room shortage on the road to 2026, but the NDP government’s housing minister acknowledged the struggle with high rents and low vacancy rates for long-term rentals.  

Ravi Kahlon said the government needs to “find that balance” between the hotel industry and “short term rentals that are bypassing local government rules, not paying their fair share, and displacing local residents.”

Ravi Kahlon (left) and David Eby in December 2022 (Flickr/BCGov)

“We’ll have to more to say on that in the coming weeks,” Kahlon said.

Sim said the World Cup offers opportunities to “look at things differently,” with the expedited development permitting and the possibility of cruise ships to augment hotels in June 2026. 

“We’re taking a very empathetic and human lens to it as well, to make sure that our people don’t get displaced.” Sim said.

Vancouver is expecting to host five matches in early June 2026, while Seattle’s LOC estimates it could get up to eight at Lumen Field. The LOC co-chair revealed at an Aug. 3 city council committee meeting that between 400,000 and 750,000 unique visitors are expected to descend on Seattle for two-to-three days each, with 50% to 70% from other countries. Maya Mendoza-Exstrom, who is also the Seattle Sounders’ chief operating officer, estimates all accommodation between Bellingham and Portland will be full. 

“We really do expect 100 per cent of hotel nights, border-to-border, I mean it is going to take everything on that transportation corridor, I-5, on our rail system, using our extended regional network to access the hotels between Bellingham and Portland and then east along I-90, as well,” Mendoza-Exstrom said.

The Destination BC Crown corporation estimated B.C. could draw 269,000 World Cup visitors, approximately half from outside Canada and the U.S.

The B.C. government announced in June 2022 that B.C. taxpayers could expect a bill of $240 million to $260 million to subsidize FIFA. But, in January of this year, the province said the city is now responsible for $230 million in costs. To help raise money for the tournament, the provincial government gave Vancouver special power to levy a 2.5% accommodation tax through 2030. 

The province has not elaborated on cost estimates for BC Place, such as installation of a temporary natural grass pitch and interior renovations to transform part of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame into additional luxury suites.

A study on local, regional and national economic impacts of mega events by Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, found that many large sporting events “simply supplant, rather than supplement the regular tourist economy.”

“In other words, the economic impact of a mega-event may be large in a gross sense but the net impact may be small,” Matheson concluded.

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Bob Mackin Mayor Ken Sim said Vancouver city

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For the week of Aug. 27, 2023: 

Another long, hot, record, costly summer of wildfires around British Columbia. 

In some places, like around Kelowna, firefighters got the upper hand. But more than 200 houses are gone.

Conservative Party of B.C. leader John Rustad (Facebook)

The Forest Practices Board’s June report said B.C. needs to move toward landscape fire management, to co-exist with fire, but take steps to contain it. More than 96 million acres of public land are at high or extreme risk of wildfire in B.C., but only 1% of the wildland urban interface has been treated since 2018 at a cost of $72 million. Meanwhile, B.C. spends more than $200 million every year to fight fires. 

On thePodcast, host Bob Mackin welcomes Conservative Party of B.C. leader John Rustad, who was a forests minister and aboriginal relations minister in the previous BC Liberal government. He said the NDP government needs to rethink the way it fights fires and rethink the way it manages forests in an era with longer, hotter, drier summers. 

“I don’t want to take away from the fact that there are tens of thousands of people that have been significantly impacted by these fires, right?” Rustad said. “I mean, it’s just, it’s tragic, when you think about it. We need to make sure we get everything we can in there to support these people to get them so they can get their lives back together, to be able to rebuild. But long term, yes, we need to think about changing how we manage on the landscape.”

Plus Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

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For the week of Aug. 27, 2023:  Another

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Bob Mackin

Vancouver city hall is keeping citizens in the dark about how traffic to and from the Senakw towers will affect area streets, says the president of the Kits Point Residents Association (KPRA).

Section of Lanier Park excavated for Senakw towers (Mackin)

Eve Munro filed a freedom of information request in August 2022 for traffic impact studies about the federally approved, 11-tower project, under construction beside the Burrard Bridge since last summer. Almost a year later, Munro received 179 pages, all but six were censored in their entirety. The city invoked exceptions to the law for fear that disclosure would harm intergovernmental relations and reveal Indigenous cultural heritage and traditional knowledge.

“The decision to withhold these traffic studies is consistent with the city’s approach of keeping everything about the development secret, and away from public scrutiny,” said Munro, who is planning an appeal to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner. “It also seems to me that it’s pretty much the antithesis of transparency and accountability in government.”

The only record provided was a May 2020 memo from City of Vancouver transportation and parking management engineer Lynn Morishita to a manager at Westbank Development, the Squamish Nation’s development partner, about “person trip generation.” 

The memo references studies by consultant Bunt and Associates and mentions roadway connections to the site proposed from Chestnut Street north of Greer Avenue and an extension of Fir Street north of West First Avenue and Creekside Drive. The towers, when fully built by 2030, are expected to be home for 10,000 to 12,000 people, but with fewer than 1,000 parking spots. That means demand for buses will skyrocket. 

“The Senakw Lands are anticipated to generate 4,900 person trips during the AM peak hour. Transit trips could be between 1,200 and 1,700 during the peak hour, which equates to 10 to 14 additional articulated buses,” Morishita’s letter said. 

“Existing routes which run close to the site are already very busy. All rank in the top 20 that generate the most passenger-hours of delay. Consideration is needed on how to support these prospective new transit trips by providing adequate service to the Senakw Lands.” 

The letter cites TransLink’s 2019 Bus Speed and Reliability Report, which pinpointed the four nearby transit corridors — Burrard Street, Granville Street, West 4th Avenue, and Broadway — that rank in the top 20 for most passenger-hours of delay in the region. Some of the demand may ease with the 2026 opening of the Broadway Subway. 

The memo emphasizes a key challenge for transportation planners, based on economic and transportation trends sparked by the pandemic: What about traffic from Uber, Evo, Amazon and Skip the Dishes vehicles to and from Senakw? It is the great unknown. 

“Ride-hailing, taxis, and deliveries will also occur irrespective of the parking supply and may therefore be higher than would normally be expected for such a development in this location,” Morishita wrote.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau breaks ground under the Burrard Bridge for Westbank’s development on the Squamish Nation’s Senakw reserve (pm.gc.ca)

“It’s a very large development, it’s beyond the question of density,” Munro said. “It’s a very large number of people that will be accessing and egressing that parcel, and they’re going to be doing it through residential streets. So we have a pretty keen interest in what that’s going to look like for our community.”

Neither Morishita nor the Squamish Nation’s Nch’kay Development responded for comment. 

KPRA is waiting for a B.C. Supreme Court judge to rule on its legal challenge to city hall’s 120-year deal to service the cluster of residential towers. Kitsilano Point residents say the 2022-signed agreement with the Squamish Nation is one-sided and should be quashed because it was negotiated and passed in secret. The city maintains it acted properly under both the Indian Self-government Enabling Act and the Vancouver Charter.

KPRA’s concerns about lack of public consultation were also conveyed to the B.C. Utilities Commission via the Residential Consumer Intervener Association. The regulator is conducting a written inquiry into the application to build a district energy plant for the towers. 

Westbank is also the parent of Creative Energy, whose Creative Energy Senakw LP (CESLP) filed the application last year for a certificate of public convenience and necessity to heat and cool the seven buildings in the first two phases. Phase one of the towers is expected to be complete in 2025.

When he appeared for a groundbreaking ceremony at the Squamish Nation reserve on Sept. 6, 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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