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Bob Mackin 

A misaligned gearbox led to malfunction of a Granville SkyTrain station escalator last fall, according to a Technical Safety BC report released Feb. 15 

The safety braking system on escalator number 3 failed to hold the steps and protect riders during the uncontrolled descent — or runaway incident — on Sept. 29, 2023. Passengers piled up at the bottom and three were injured, including a 71-year-old woman taken by ambulance to hospital with head, shoulder and knee injuries.

cutline: Pileup of riders at the bottom of escalator #3 on Sept. 29, 2023 at Granville Stadion, during the final runaway event after the escalator had been stopped with the emergency stop switch (Technical Safety BC/TransLink).

The investigation by the province’s technology regulator found that an alignment flange on the three-year-old escalator pushed out and the gearbox shifted approximately one centimetre. That was just enough to cause a rotating flange to contact the inside of a shaft cover, resulting in fine metal dust and shavings that plugged an oiling port. 

“The lack of lubrication and misaligned contact of the step-drive main-shaft created wear to the point of failure and allowed the shaft to rotate independently of the drive motor and braking system when loaded [with passengers],” said the incident summary. 

The report said that the 11 riders who boarded the down escalator at 2:57 p.m. were enough to “overcome the worn mechanical connection between the drive motor and the step-drive shaft.”

The steps sped up slightly, independent of the handrail, for 14 seconds. 

Three minutes later, at 3 p.m., 14 people boarded, causing a 15-second runaway. Riders stumbled and one person fell. A bystander pressed the emergency stop button and pedestrians accumulated at the top of the escalator. No immediate warning was issued nor was a barricade erected.

At 3:02 p.m., riders began to walk down the steps, which began to move with 16 people aboard. The escalator accelerated for 18 seconds while the handrail remained stopped. Riders stumbled, fell and piled up at the bottom. 

“Ten of them fell to the ground and two others jumped off the side, over the handrails,” the report said. 

The report said the escalator code prohibits public use of a stopped escalator. Escalator steps do not comply with the building code, due to the risks of tripping and passenger load-related rollaway. 

Under the freedom of information law, TransLink released a two-minute video shot by a surveillance camera at the top of the escalator that the shows the moving stairs in runaway condition. 

But the Technical Safety BC report includes a dramatic still image from a surveillance camera at the bottom of the escalator, capturing people in various stages of collapse. 

At 3:04 p.m., passengers placed a sandwich board at the top of the escalator to prevent others from loading. Four minutes later, a SkyTrain worker erected a “do not enter” barricade. 

Technical Safety BC investigators found the escalator had undergone all regular scheduled maintenance by qualified technicians, but it had not reached the 25,000-hour threshold for an oil change. 

“The equipment failure was due to the disengagement between the gearbox and the step-drive main-shaft as a result of misalignment and oil starvation,” the report said. “These were caused by the alignment plate movement on the step-drive main-shaft and debris from the wear of the step-drive main-shaft creating metal dust and shavings that plugged the oil passages to the shaft splines.”

TransLink said that repair costs were covered by manufacturer Kone. The escalator was out of service for almost a month, until Oct. 27. The agency did not immediately respond to questions about the report. 

When originally installed in 1984, the escalators were Western Canada’s longest at 35 metres. 

Under a $14.52 million replacement, Kone EcoMod Transit units were installed by July 2020. The Kone model uses a direct drive system connected to two electric motors through a series of gears without the use of a drive chain. 

The report said the escalators carry an average 30,000 passengers on an average weekday and each escalator travels 12,744 kilometres annually, which is roughly the distance between Vancouver and Mumbai, India.

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Bob Mackin  A misaligned gearbox led to malfunction

Business, News

Bob Mackin 

B.C. NDP Solicitor General Mike Farnworth welcomed the Feb. 8 move by the RCMP to share information and intelligence with police in three provinces investigating a wave of extortions, shootings and arsons. 

The RCMP’s Federal Serious and Organized Crime section said Thursday that it had started the National Coordination and Support Team (NCST) to deal with the incidents targeting South Asian communities in B.C., Alberta and Ontario.

Mike Farnworth (BC Gov)

“Violence, intimidation and extortion have no place in British Columbia or anywhere across the country,” Farnworth said in a prepared statement. 

“I am pleased to be working with Mike Ellis, Deputy Premier and Minister of Public Safety of Alberta, and Michael Kerzner, Solicitor General of Ontario, to ensure police have the resources and tools they need to target criminals and dismantle organized crime.”

The RCMP said NCST will not take over investigations underway, but will provide “national coordination, tools and support to help advance the investigations.” It will work with the Surrey RCMP, Abbotsford Police Department, Edmonton Police Service and the Peel Regional Police. 

Late last fall, police in Abbotsford and Surrey issued warnings after a letter circulated that purported to be from an Indian gang. The letter demanded $2 million in protection money and warned recipients: “We have links all over. Do not ignore us. It will effect you real bad.”

On Jan. 6, Surrey held a community meeting about the extortions after the Dec. 27 shooting at the house of the son of the head of the Vedic Hindu Cultural Society of B.C. 

Surrey RCMP Officer in Charge Brian Edwards said incidents in White Rock and West Vancouver were also connected to the crime spree. He also said 200 officers were on the case and they had logged more than 200,000 hours since October.

Global News reported last year on a leaked Abbotsford PD memo that said suspects were linked to associates of Indian gangster Lawrence Bishnoi. 

On Jan. 18, the Edmonton Police Service announced it was investigating 27 incidents since October, including five extortions, 15 arsons and seven firearms offences. On Thursday, S. Sgt. Dave Paton said its “Project Gaslight” is now investigating 34 incidents, but they are not believed to be directly connected to events elsewhere in Canada. 

Peel Regional Police’s Extortion Investigation Task Force announced 24 charges Feb. 7 against five people for mischief to property, threats and firearms-related offences in the Greater Toronto Area.

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Bob Mackin  B.C. NDP Solicitor General Mike Farnworth

Business, News

Bob Mackin

Lions Gate Hospital (LGH) staff and patients had to wait an extra day to resume normal operations after a power outage last June, because technicians were unavailable on a Sunday. 

When balloons got hung up in electrical wires behind an apartment building south of the hospital on June 17, the North Vancouver hospital’s emergency department and operating rooms lost power for five minutes at 2:45 p.m. and then for another 20 minutes at 4:30 p.m.

Lions Gate Hospital (LGH Foundation)

Internal email said an unspecified operation was taking place when the lights went out, but it was eventually completed.

Full power was restored after the second outage, but an immediate decision was made to temporarily divert all trauma and perinatal patients due to fears of a third outage. 

“Patients presenting in labour, who are deemed to be safe for transfer, will be transferred to another hospital as quickly as possible,” patient care supervisor Hailey Dodge wrote at 5:54 p.m. on June 17. “Alternative plans may need to be made for those patients currently labouring in the community who are expected to present to the department.”

The next morning, Leanne Porter, the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) director of facilities maintenance and operations (FMO), contacted a BC Hydro account manager. 

“Vital power did not automatically transfer to the generator, causing us to lose vital power for 20 minutes until the vital distribution could be transferred manually,” Porter explained. 

Also on June 18, 2023, Nicole Adams from the communications department emailed VCH vice-president Darlene MacKinnon. 

“FMO worked to identify the cause of the [censored] but a fix requires support from the vendors/suppliers — the suppliers — [whose names were censored] – have said they are unable to visit LGH to work on the issue until Monday,” said the email from Adams.

Vancouver Coastal Health

VCH requested extra staff for backup and warned staff to be prepared in case of another outage. They were asked to charge their phones and electronic devices, including ceiling lifts, beds, intravenous pumps, workstations on wheels, glucose meters, vital sign machines and tube feed pumps. 

“If power does go out, the Code Blue buttons in the patient rooms may not work, so call 7111 in the event of any codes,” said the memo. 

Battery packs were distributed to critical areas of the hospital. Flashlights were tested and prepared. Glow sticks were also available. Surgical appointments were cancelled, affecting orthopaedic, neurology, urology, gynaecology and head and neck specialists and their patients. 

“I spoke to all patients myself and involved all affected surgeons in the decision as to who would be cancelled,” wrote VCH program manager Kelly-Anne Karse. 

A total 23 surgeries were postponed, but 16 had been rescheduled or completed by June 27.

By the morning of June 19, generator technicians were on-site and testing underway, but intermittent power issues continued for another day. 

“At 12:30 it was determined that all elective surgeries would be cancelled for the day and only emergency surgeries would be done,” said the June 19 update of the situation report.

“Four power bump tests completed to ensure issues had been resolved. All clear issued following resolution of issues and subsequent testing just after 13:00. Services that were temporarily paused resumed. Following all clear the [emergency operations centre] was stood down at 13:15.”

Porter declined to comment and referred a reporter to the VCH media office, which did not respond by deadline. 

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Bob Mackin Lions Gate Hospital (LGH) staff and

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Bob Mackin 

More than 30 people who sued Richmond condo developer Anderson Square Holdings Ltd. and two directors over the cancellation of their presale contracts were awarded $13.1 million in damages by a B.C. Supreme Court judge. 

Justice Linda Loo’s Feb. 9 ruling, however, dismissed the personal liability action against the two directors, Keung Sun (Sunny) Ho and Jia An (Jeremy) Liang.

The plaintiffs signed contracts in 2015 and 2016 for condos in the Alfa tower at 6833 Buswell St., with an outside completion date of Sept. 30, 2019, but were notified their contracts were terminated in July 2019. Two years later, the project, now called Prima, was completed and the units sold to others for higher prices.

Anderson Square’s Alfa, now called Prima, in Richmond (Anderson Square)

Anderson Square made a $37.8 million fixed price contract in January 2017 with Scott Construction and a building permit was issued a year later. But a dispute over delay costs mounted until Ho and Liang cancelled the presale contracts and Scott issued termination notice the following month. 

At the end of 2019, Anderson Square retained a different construction company, Valley West Construction Ltd., to complete the project. Scott sued Anderson Square in February 2020. In August 2021, deposits were returned to the plaintiffs. 

Loo noted that the plaintiffs did not plead deceit or fraudulent or negligent misrepresentation. She considered whether Anderson Square had the right to terminate the contracts in 2019 and if the directors breached a duty of honest performance to the plaintiffs.

The case centred around two clauses in the presale contract about payment of purchase price and completion date and major outside event.

Loo found that a lack of financing “did not render performance impossible.” 

“Although Mr. Ho and Mr. Liang testified that overseas financing was not Anderson Square’s first choice, there was no evidence that this funding source was exhausted by July 2019,” Loo wrote. “On July 25, 2019, Anderson Square had more than $9 million in its bank account. Mr. Liang testified that between September 2019 and the end of 2020, the Hong Kong lenders advanced at least another $11 million to the project.”

Loo said that Anderson had sufficient financing to hire Valley West in December 2019 — only five months after delivering the termination notices.

“Anderson Square was not contractually entitled to terminate the contracts under either clause 2 or clause 21 in July 2019,” Loo wrote. “Further, I find that the personal defendants knew that the reasons they gave in the termination notices in support of their reliance on clause 21 were false or misleading, or that they were reckless as to whether this was so.”

But Loo stopped short of assigning personal liability, deciding the plaintiffs did not prove Ho and Liang induced breach of contract, dishonest performance or unjust enrichment. 

Loo called Liang “very inexperienced in business and real estate matters,” but said his testimony was delivered in a straightforward manner. The same could not be said about Ho, whose “evidence was successfully challenged in a number of ways which raised doubts about his reliability and credibility.”

“Mr. Ho said that the money for the construction of the project came from Anderson Square’s shareholders, and not from ‘private lenders’,” Loo wrote. “When confronted with the fact that much of the funds used for construction came from companies and an individual in Hong Kong, he testified that he believed private lenders meant ‘loan sharks’ and that the Hong Kong lenders were not private lenders.”

Loo said all plaintiffs were called to give evidence and their testimony was straightforward, reliable and credible. But most of the evidence they gave was not legally relevant to the action. There was what she called “an unusual situation” involving one of the plaintiffs. Qing Wei Li’s son had impersonated his father during examination for discovery, misleading the opposing lawyer, court reporter and his own lawyer. 

“This conduct was unacceptable and an affront to the court’s process. That said, it did not affect the defendants’ ability to defend the claim in any substantive way, and the defendants declined to conduct a proper examination for discovery of Mr. Li prior to his trial testimony.”

As a consequence, Loo ruled that Li will not receive any costs from the defendants, “on account of his conduct and that of his son in relation to his examination for discovery.”

Collection of the damages award may be complicated by a separate, but related, action. 

On Feb. 7, Justice Michael Stephens extended court protection for Anderson Square Holdings Ltd. until March 26, the deadline for its restructuring proposal. 

A report to the court said that the company’s one known potential secured creditor is Anderson Plaza Holdings Inc., which demanded repayment of $64.1 million in loans last Nov. 20. 

Forty-eight of the one-to-three bedroom condos remain listed for sale through Re/Max WestCoast Realty for a combined total of $51.28 million.

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Bob Mackin  More than 30 people who sued

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Bob Mackin

Top bureaucrats inside Vancouver city hall secretly approved spending $2.1 million last summer to remove tens of thousands of Stanley Park trees due to the Hemlock looper moth outbreak.

Crews load logged Stanley Park trees at a makeshift yard in the Prospect Point Picnic Area (Bob Mackin photo)

Deputy city manager Karen Levitt rubber stamped the emergency request on Aug. 8 from Colin Knight in the finance department, according to email released under the freedom of information law. 

In the absence of city manager Paul Mochrie, Levitt consented to awarding a no-bid contract and overspending the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation budget. 

“The over budget spending will be funded by revenue surplus in the Parks and Recreation revenue budget,” said Knight’s email. 

Knight estimated $2.02 million for euphemistic “operational treatments” between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31 on 39 hectares around the Stanley Park Causeway and Stanley Park Railway. During the same time period, “prescriptions” on 55 hectares around the railway, Prospect Point, Brockton Point, Vancouver Aquarium and the steep area above the seawall, for $55,000.

The title page of the contract with managing contractor B.A. Blackwell and Associates Ltd. is dated Sept. 11, but the body of the agreement used Sept. 29. The agreement identified the Causeway, Railway and Pipeline Road as key areas for removal of “dead and declining hazardous trees,” between October and March in order “to minimize conflict with the breeding bird season, winter weather including high winds and busy visitor seasons.”

“It is the goal of this project to maximize the number of removals as part of this initial phase of a multi-year program to reduce the risk to public safety and potential for forest fires,” it said. “Any changes to the project phases, timelines and deliverables may be amended with prior Park Board approval.”

The contract was initially for $1.58 million plus $320,000 contingency, through the end of December with an option to extend until June 30. Blackwell was required to provide a detailed project plan, with clear milestones through the end of March, and report progress monthly to the Park Board. 

“This includes removal and dispatch to MST (Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations), removal and dispatch all merchantable timber to appropriate site, obtain required permits for transportation and safe disposal of waste from site. Removals must be recorded and logged, and shared with Park Board project team staff as part of a summary report.”

The supplier “shall have the least possible adverse effect on the natural environment and in compliance with all environmental laws and consents, all at the supplier’s expense.” Blackwell agreed to take out insurance policies to cover a combined total of at least $19 million in claims for general, professional, pollution and automobile liability.

Thirteen Blackwell personnel are listed in an appendix, along with services from subcontractors. The subcontractors’ rates were withheld because they are considered trade secrets, but they are entitled to charge standard overtime rates of time-and-a-half after eight hours and double time after 10 hours. Subcontractors include Edith Lake Falling Ltd. and SkyTech Yarding Ltd. of Squamish and Swatez Forestry of Nanaimo. 

Among the city’s responsibilities is coordination with the city’s communications team to “lead public engagement as needed.”

The city has not held a media briefing about the project and has refused to arrange an interview with city arborist Joe McLeod. On Nov. 29, it announced by news release a road closure schedule so that 160,000 trees could be removed. 

City council spent five minutes on Jan. 24 to approve an urgent, $4.9 million one-time draw from the $80 million stabilization fund to carry on work already started. Jan. 24 is also the date of Blackwell’s “Stanley Park Hemlock Looper Moth Impact and Wildfire Risk Assessment” report, which the city kept secret until Feb. 9. 

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Bob Mackin Top bureaucrats inside Vancouver city hall

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Bob Mackin 

The Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation says it has not accounted for thousands of trees cut down in Stanley Park. 

A Feb. 9 letter from freedom of information manager Kevin Tuerlings said “our office has confirmed with Park Board staff that there are no records responsive to your request for an inventory of trees designated for removal and trees that have been removed.”

Stanley Park trees logged in October 2023 (Mackin)

On Nov. 29, the Park Board announced in a news release that 160,000 trees would be chopped because of the Hemlock looper moth infestation and fears of a wildfire. In September, it secretly hired forestry consultancy B.A. Blackwell and Associates Ltd. of North Vancouver on an emergency, no-bid contract to manage the operation, estimated at almost $7 million. 

Norm Oberson, owner of Arbutus Tree Service and a member of the Trees of Vancouver Society board, said it is standard to take inventory of trees needing removal or pruning. 

”You don’t cut a tree down in a park unless it’s been assessed by a risk assessor, a provincially certified risk assessor or an [International Society of Arboriculture] tree risks qualified tree risk assessor,” Oberson said. “It sounds like they really haven’t followed the due process.”

A reporter applied Nov. 22 for the tree inventory, tree removal plan and arborist’s report, but the city sent a $450 invoice almost a month later, claiming it needed 18 hours for “locating, retrieving and producing records, and preparing them for disclosure.” The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner notified the city’s FOI office On Feb. 8 that it had assigned an investigator. At almost 5 p.m. on Feb. 9, Tuerlings notified a reporter by email that the Blackwell report had been published on the city’s website. 

Titled “Stanley Park Hemlock Looper Impact and Wildfire Risk Assessment,” the 37-page report directed to Joe McLeod, the manager of urban forestry, is dated Jan. 24 — almost two months after the Park Board announced the operation to cut a quarter of Stanley Park’s trees. 

Blackwell reported that pest infestation killed or severely defoliated 20,300 trees with a diameter greater than 20 centimetres and 166,000 trees that are 20 cm or less in diameter. A majority of trees affected were western hemlock, but Douglas firs and western red cedars had been impacted to a lesser extent. 

Mitigation or management of at least 90 percent of the park’s forest areas “is critical in the short term,” so Blackwell recommended work between October and March because of decreased public use and to avoid bird-breeding season. Mitigation efforts must also coordinate with digging for the Metro Vancouver Capilano 5 water main, expected to begin later this year.

The report said risk to human safety would increase over the next three to 10 years. As trees die, branches, tops and whole trees fail, the amount of dry woody surface fuel would build up, increasing the risk of a wildfire and jeopardizing the vision of Stanley Park as “a resilient and diverse coastal forest.”

“Wherever possible, larger trees and forest stands will be retained and only removed if they pose a risk to public safety,” saiid the Blackwell report. “Generally, the larger trees throughout the Park have not been as heavily impacted by the looper and do not contribute significantly to wildfire risk. Trees that have been only lightly or moderately defoliated and have a higher likelihood of survival should be monitored.”

Three-quarters of the park — 263 hectares — is forested, but was affected by 1962’s Typhoon Freda and the 2006 Hanukkah Eve windstorm. The report rated 24 percent of the park as high or extreme wildfire risk and 60 percent moderate, with concern elevated due to the recent trend of hot, dry summers, high numbers of park visitors and unauthorized/illegal campers. 

“Areas of high wildfire risk are concentrated around Stanley Park Drive, Prospect Point and high-use areas at the south end of the Park,” the report said. “Areas of very high risk are found between Prospect Point and Third Beach, north of Lost Lagoon, and near Pipeline Drive, due in part to the history of frequent human caused fire ignitions.”

Though the report is dated Jan. 24, certain content strongly suggests it was drafted ahead of last summer’s closed-door decision by bureaucrats to green light the project. 

Field work was undertaken “on multiple days between March 7 and April 5, 2023.” As of last April, 30 percent of trees greater than 20 cm in diameter had been killed or severely defoliated and an additional 36 percent had been moderately defoliated.

The section on Wildfire Response said “No data is available for July and August 2023, but in June alone, City of Vancouver Fire and Rescue responded to (approximately) 39 human-caused fire ignitions in Stanley Park.” 

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Bob Mackin  The Vancouver Board of Parks and

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For the week of Feb. 11, 2024:

What a difference a week makes in British Columbia politics. The first poll of the election year, by ResearchCo, found that Premier David Eby and the NDP are poised for re-election because of splitting on the right. 

But, the following week, major discord within the left-wing governing party after Advanced Education Minister Selina Robinson’s “crappy piece of land” comments to a B’nai Brith online forum.

It sparked a successful campaign by Muslim community leaders, anti-Israel activists and allies of disqualified 2022 NDP leadership hopeful Anjali Appadurai to drive B.C.’s most-prominent Jewish politician out of cabinet. 

RCMP is investigating a death threat against Robinson, whose riding office was vandalized. What’s more, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group celebrated Robinson’s demise and called it a turning point in Canadian opposition to the Israel-Hamas war. 

This week’s guest is Sarah Teich, a Toronto human rights lawyer, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and legal advisor to Secure Canada. Teich said Canadians should be concerned about how the controversy unfolded.  

Plus, a cameo appearance by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre and Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

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

Have you missed an edition of theBreaker.news Podcast? Go to the archive.

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For the week of Feb. 11, 2024: What

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Bob Mackin

A group on the Canadian government’s terrorist list has celebrated Selina Robinson’s resignation from the NDP cabinet. 

“The downfall of a minister biased towards the zionist entity in Canada is an important precedent,” reads the headline of a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Central Media Office statement on Feb. 7. It appears on a Telegram channel that carries live updates from groups fighting against the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), but does not mention Robinson by name.

PFLP logo

PFLP said it “salutes” those who helped oust Robinson from her post as the Minister of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills on Feb. 5 for comments that critics deemed Islamophobic and racist.

“This resounding fall of one of the Canadian ministers, biased towards zionism, and the shift in the official Canadian stance on the aggression against the [Gaza] Strip confirms that the Palestinian cause is present in the conscience of the majority of the Canadian people, and that it means a lot to them, and is even inspiring to the indigenous people in their just struggle to reclaim their rights in Canada,” reads the PFLP statement, which runs 352 words. 

The message was posted after Robinson’s Maillardville riding office was vandalized Feb. 6 and before Premier David Eby’s X account revealed Feb. 8 that she had been targeted with a death threat. There is no evidence that these incidents are connected. 

“Hatred and violence are completely unacceptable in B.C. There is no excuse, ever,” Eby’s message read. 

“We can confirm that an investigation is underway, but we are not in a position at this time to discuss any specifics or provide any other details,” B.C. RCMP public information officer S. Sgt. Kris Clark said about the alleged threats against Robinson.

A human rights lawyer in Toronto said Canadians should be alarmed by the PFLP wading into British Columbia politics. 

“The PFLP is a listed terrorist organization, plain and simple, this is not a governance group, this is not an innocent human rights body,” said Sarah Teich, a legal advisor to Secure Canada and senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. “This is a group that supports and engages in acts of terrorism overseas and they have a presence in multiple other countries and they’ve been designated and banned in multiple other countries.”

Canada banned PFLP in 2003. The Public Safety Canada profile said it formed in 1967 with the goal of “destruction of the State of Israel and the establishment of a communist government in Palestine.”

PFLP has a history of guerrilla warfare, suicide bombings and hijacking civilian airliners. It was responsible for the 2001 assassination of Israel’s Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi and attacked a Jerusalem synagogue in 2014, killing six. 

Ahmad Sa’adat, PFLP leader since 2001, was sentenced in 2008 to 30 years in jail by Israel for masterminding the Ze’evi assassination. 

Selina Robinson (B’nai Brith Canada)

A Vancouver group has campaigned for Sa’adat to be released. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Group is also a co-organizer of many of the Lower Mainland’s anti-Israel protests since Oct. 7. 

On Feb. 2, during a Workers World Party livestream called “How to Defend Palestinian Resistance,” Samidoun international coordinator Charlotte Kates called Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel “a fantastic military operation that kind of showcased the power of the Palestinian resistance to take an unexpected action.”

Her husband, Khaled Barakat, was identified on the webcast as a member of the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path. Barakat reiterated the far left movement’s goal is to end Israel. 

“The two state solution is just a Zionist, capitalist plot to liquidate the Palestinian people… no one should adopt a two state solution,” Barakat said. 

Samidoun registered as a not-for-profit in Canada in 2021, shortly after it was banned in Israel. Last fall, the German government followed.

350 Canada protest organizer Atiya Jaffar (YFPVancouver/Horizontal Deer/Instagram)

“If you have these groups that are supporting what Hamas did on Oct. 7 —and before and afterwards as well — celebrating the death of innocent civilians, supporting it, I don’t think those organizations have any business being registered charities in Canada,” Teich said. 

Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7 — the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust — and took 240 hostages. While 105 were freed during a November ceasefire with Hamas, Israel reportedly believes 32 of the remaining hostages are dead.

The Hamas health ministry says more than 27,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the IDF retaliated, but it does not distinguish between civilian and military fatalities. 

On a Jan. 30 B’nai Brith Canada online forum, Robinson said that before Israel was founded, “it was a crappy piece of land with nothing on it, there were several hundred thousand people, but other than that, it didn’t produce an economy.” It sparked complaints from mosque leaders and anti-Israel protesters, who protested at the NDP caucus retreat in Surrey. 

Robinson, an MLA since 2013, issued two written apologies and vowed to take anti-Islamophobia training, but was absent from Eby’s Feb. 5 announcement. Robinson simultaneously announced in another written statement that she would not run for re-election. 

Coincidentally, the controversy happened the week after the United Kingdom’s Minister of Justice, Conservative Mike Freer, said he would not run for re-election. Freer’s office in a riding with a large Jewish community suffered arson in December and he had been targeted in 2021 by an Islamic radical who later murdered another Conservative MP, David Amess.

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Bob Mackin A group on the Canadian government’s

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Bob Mackin 

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to fix the access to information system, which the federal watchdog has described as broken, if he wins the next election.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on Feb. 8 in Vancouver (Mackin)

“We’ll speed up response times, we’ll release more information, we’ll give the [information] commissioner more power to override the gatekeepers within government and favour transparency over secrecy,” Poilievre said Feb. 8 at a Vancouver news conference after unveiling a proposal for First Nations resource tax reform. 

When he was elected in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to transform the 1983-launched Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) law, so that disclosure would be “by default.” His only major reform measure was to eliminate additional fees for searching and copying. He kept the $5 per request application fee. 

Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard told a House of Commons committee last June that the system has suffered a steady decline “to the point where it no longer serves its intended purpose.”

Maynard said that 30 percent of access requests were not answered within the legislated timelines and that there exists a culture of secrecy in government, “in the sense that when staff receive an access to information request, they think about what information to delete and not what information to disclose.”

Last year’s annual Treasury Board report on ATIP, released in December, said the government spent $95.7 million processing requests and deciding what can and cannot be released.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada missed deadlines 79 percent of the time, followed by Library and Archives Canada (76%), Department of Finance (60%) and RCMP (58%). The agencies with the worst rates for full disclosure were the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (0%), Department of Finance (2%) and Environment and Climate Change (3%).

Even with delays, ATIP can help keep leaders accountable. 

Poilievre pointed to recent revelations about Liberal government spending on the pandemic era customs app and the truth behind the Prime Minister’s Office’s guest list that included a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran who fought with the Nazis in the Second World War. 

“We saw he lied about his involvement inviting a Nazi to the president of Ukraine’s visit,” Poilievre said. “We’ve seen the government cover up his spending decisions, we see them try to cover up what they did with the ArriveCan app, $54 million spent, 76 percent of the contractors did no work whatsoever. Just yesterday they shut down a committee hearing into that very scandal.”

But Poilievre said there are limits to ATIP reform. He does not favour expanding the law to include administration of the House of Commons and Senate. 

“I think we need more automatic disclosure form the House of Commons and the Senate rather than ATIP,” Poilievre said. “ATIP is a very bureaucratic system. If you applied ATIP itself to Parliament, what you’ll end up doing is adding a massive new bureaucracy that has the same obstacles.”

Instead, Poilievre proposed more proactive disclosure of expenses and decisions. 

In a 2016 review, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics recommended recommended the law be extended to include the Board of Internal Economy, the all-party committee that manages Parliament.

The next federal election is scheduled for no later than Oct. 20, 2025. 

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Bob Mackin  Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has promised

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