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11Bob Mackin

The Canadian Forces jet that brought Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Vancouver for the Chinatown Lunar New Year parade needed more than 13,000 litres of aviation fuel.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Vancouver’s 2023 Chinatown Parade (PMO/Twitter)

The itinerary shows Trudeau was on the ground in Vancouver for only four hours on a trip that cost taxpayers an estimated $58,000. 

Receipts released via access to information by the Department of National Defence show 6,400.3 litres of aviation fuel were pumped into the Bombardier CC-144D Challenger jet, which is called Can Force 1 when Trudeau is aboard, on Jan. 21 at the Ottawa Shell Aerocentre. The cost was not shown on the receipt. 

The itinerary showed a 7:48 a.m. departure from Ottawa Jan. 22 and the breakfast menu included crepes, espresso, overnight oats and fresh fruit. Light snacks were served closer to the end of the flight. A receipt showed ingredients were sourced on a $425.97 shopping trip to a Loblaws grocery store in Ottawa. 

After the plane’s Vancouver International Airport arrival at 9:46 a.m., a motorcade whisked Trudeau to Chinatown, where he met with Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim before marching in the Lunar New Year parade with Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, B.C. Premier David Eby, Chinese consul-general Yang Shu and other local politicians. 

After his parade appearance, Trudeau returned to the airport, where the jet was waiting. Signature Flight Support had replenished its tank with 6,735 litres of aviation fuel. 

The itinerary listed a 2:05 p.m. departure and 9:54 p.m. landing in Toronto. Trudeau had a photo op scheduled the next morning before beginning the Liberal caucus retreat in Hamilton. The passenger report showed only one seat occupied for the return leg to Ottawa late Jan. 22, Trudeau advance travel aide Benjamin Sparkes.

The entourage for the Vancouver trip also included executive assistant James Armbruster, press secretary Alison Murphy and four other PMO staffers, including a videographer, photographer and digital media specialist. 

Inside a Bombardier Challenger jet.

Because of the quick turnaround, the jet left Vancouver with three new Canadian Forces crewmembers who had traveled to Vancouver by a commercial flight a day earlier. 

The itinerary showed a total flight time for the jet’s mission of 10.4 hours, but the documents did not include the total cost to fuel, staff and operate the flight. 

Before the pandemic, records released under access to information about trips in July and August 2019 showed that the average hourly cost to operate Trudeau’s flights on the Challenger jet was $5,636. 

Based on that figure, the Ottawa to Vancouver to Toronto trip’s cost would have been around $58,614. 

Carson Binda, the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation B.C. director, called it “incredibly hypocritical for the Prime Minister to be telling the rest of us to tighten our belts” when it comes to spending on fossil fuels.

“It really speaks to the culture of wasting taxpayers money that exists in the Prime Minister’s Office,” Binda said. “We’ve seen it with him spending $6,000-a-night on a hotel room in London, we saw it with him blowing tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on a trip to Jamaica.”

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11Bob Mackin The Canadian Forces jet that brought

Business, News, Opinion

For the week of April 23, 2023:

Fourteen months since Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. No end in sight.

Marcus Kolga (MLI)

The biggest war in Europe since the Second World War is also being fought globally, online. Russian cybercriminals and social media disinformation networks are creating havoc in countries that are supporting the defence of Ukraine. In Canada, DisInfoWatch.org founder and Macdonald-Laurier Institute senior fellow Marcus Kolga has faced threats and is one of more than 300 Canadians sanctioned by Russia. 

“The Russian efforts to silence analysts, journalists, activists in the West, this isn’t a new phenomenon, it didn’t start 14 months ago with this invasion,” Kolga tells thePodcast host Bob Mackin. “It’s been really ongoing, there’s been a slow escalation, going back to already around 2007, 2008, when Vladimir Putin sort of recycled the Soviet-era, active measures, the use of disinformation, influence operations.”

Russian disinformation, like Chinese disinformation, aims to sow division, distrust and danger. Kolga said the war has brought Western political extremists together. 

“These old labels and our sort of the political compass that we’ve been using for the past several decades, I think it’s sort of outdated,” Kolga said.

“In the context of Russian influence operations and amplification of some of these state narratives, when I say the far right, I don’t mean conservatives. The far right, when I speak about the far right, it’s more of an anti-democratic, illiberal, anti-NATO, anti-elitist group. They don’t have much in common, if anything at all, with traditional conservatives. And I’d say much the same, with the left. When I’m talking about the far left, I’m not talking about, mostly not supporters of the NDP, or traditional socialists. These are people that might be identified as sort of anarcho-communists, also very illiberal.” 

Listen to the full interview. Plus Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim headlines.

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For the week of April 23, 2023:

Business, News

Bob Mackin

A lawyer for Vancouver city hall told B.C. Supreme Court on April 20 that a public hearing was not necessary for city council to approve the Senakw services agreement.

“The council may authorize those transactions, in camera, without the scrutiny of the public, where disclosure could reasonably be expected to harm the interests of the city,” Iain Dixon said before Justice Carla Forth at the Law Courts.

Law Courts Vancouver (Joe Mabel)

The Kits Point Residents Association is contesting the legality of the 120-year agreement between city hall and the Squamish Nation’s Nch’kay Development Corp. KPRA and two of its directors filed a petition last October for a judicial review because the city made the deal behind closed doors and never gave citizens a say. They want the judge to quash the agreement to service the cluster of residential towers to be built on the Squamish Nation reserve around the Burrard Bridge’s south side.  

The city maintains it acted properly under both the Indian Self-government Enabling Act and the Vancouver Charter.

Dixon called it a “highly unusual situation of a development on land within the geographic boundaries of the municipality, but not within the jurisdiction of the municipality.”

Dixon said the judge does not have to decide if closed meetings for this agreement were correct, but that they were reasonable.

“The decision as to whether to close the meeting, to consider the in camera report, was that a reasonable decision? And the reasonableness goes to both to the interpretation and application of the facts, to the legislation that was required,” Dixon said. 

The Supreme Court of Canada has held that a reasonable decision has to make sense in light of the law and facts, while a correct decision Is the only right answer.

Dixon said that city council and staff reasonably feared that the glare of publicity would undermine business planning, negotiating and dealmaking. 

He said the substantive resolution involved council considering whether to enter into a contractual relationship with the Squamish Nation, to provide the services to a proposed development on land that is not subject to regulation by the City of Vancouver. 

“In arriving at this decision, council must consider the authority to enter into the agreement along with the potential impacts on the city of both entering into the proposed agreement and of not entering,” Dixon said.

He said the decision was made by elected councillors who are subject to elections periodically. It was also a decision that was not adjudicative or quasi-judicial. 

“This is a policy-based decision that has effects on the entirety of the City of Vancouver, not just the Kits Point community,” he said. 

Nch’kay is partnered with developer Westbank Projects Corp. on the federally approved project. 

The 250-page agreement spells out how Senakw will connect to the city’s water and storm sewers, sidewalks, roads, bike lanes and public transit, and who pays for what. An appendix lists $48.43 million of costs estimated for 15 street, bike lane, sewer and seawall projects, mostly paid by the Squamish Nation. Of that, $15 million is the estimate to build a transit hub on the bridge.

Last May 25, then-Mayor Kennedy Stewart and Squamish Nation council chair Dustin Rivers, aka Khelsilem, signed the agreement at an on-site photo op. But the city and Squamish Nation law firm McCarthy Tetrault agreed a day earlier to keep the document secret until at least June 3 while it underwent further review and negotiation. The city’s court filings said negotiations on final terms continued until July 19. The agreement was quietly added to the city website on the eve of B.C. Day long weekend. No public announcement was made.

Westbank began work last summer on the first phase of the four-phase project. At the Sept. 6 groundbreaking, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a $1.4 billion loan through Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to finance half the units in the 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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Bob Mackin A lawyer for Vancouver city hall

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Bob Mackin

The leader of the BC Greens wants an overhaul of the province’s conflict of interest law after former Premier John Horgan announced on his last day as an MLA that he would join the board of a Teck spinoff. 

Sonia Furstenau’s April 20-tabled bill would make B.C.’s Members’ Conflict of Interest Act similar to the federal law, which bans a former public officer holder from entering a contract of service with, or accepting an appointment to a board of directors of, an entity which they had direct and significant dealings.

Green leader Sonia Furstenau (CPAC)

For MLAs, the cooling-off period would be one year, for ministers, two years. The bill would include an allowance for a former member to apply to the conflict of interest commissioner for a public interest exemption to the prohibited period. 

Despite updates to the lobbyist legislation and bans on corporate and union donations since 2017, Furstenau said other loopholes remain. 

The bill also proposes raising the $5,000 fine to $50,000, in line with Alberta’s Conflicts of Interest Act.

“Our provincial act is sorely out of line with jurisdictions across the country,” Furstenau said. “We have seen the consequences, as the relationships between large corporations and this assembly are perceived by the public to have overruled the public interest. To be frank, that perception is not unfounded.”

On April 10, 2022, Teck lobbied officials, including Horgan’s chief of staff Geoff Meggs, about provincial/U.S. transboundary matters.

Teck lobbyists held a virtual meeting with Horgan on Oct. 11, five weeks before he left the Office of the Premier and David Eby was sworn-in. The meeting about mine operations and project development also included Meggs, environment minister George Heyman and mining and energy minister Bruce Ralston.

Horgan revealed on March 31 that he had agreed to join the board overseeing Teck’s metallurgical coal division and had been talking with the company about the appointment since December. 

“I don’t have a lot of time any more, none in fact, for public comment on my world view, or what I am doing with my time,” Horgan told the Globe and Mail. “I don’t want to be snippy about it, but there are others that are making policy decisions.”

Horgan’s board appointment awaits the formal split of Teck into two companies, Teck Metals and Elk Valley Resources. The Vancouver-based mining giant is resisting a hostile takeover by Swiss-headquarted Glencore. Shareholders are expected to vote on the board’s recommended split on April 26. 

In Question Period, Furstenau asked whether Horgan, while premier, had discussed referring Teck’s pollution of the Elk Valley to the International Joint Commission (IJC). The B.C. government sent a letter to the federal government asking for the selenium pollution issue not be referred to the IJC. 

“There are very few issues, if any, with respect to the environment, with respect to international obligations relating to the environment, with respect to impacts of mining or work in which my ministry is engaged about which I have not had numerous discussions and meetings,” Heyman said in Question Period. “However, to the best of my recollection, I never had a discussion about the IJC with the former Premier.”

Private member’s bills rarely pass in B.C. Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said Horgan’s rapid rise to the corporate world shows just how weak B.C.’s political ethics rules are and suggested B.C. adopt federal language. 

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Bob Mackin The leader of the BC Greens

Business, News

Bob Mackin

More than six weeks after tabling the 2023 budget, the B.C. NDP government spent almost $80,000 for an Ontario company to stage a pair of budget-themed telephone town halls on April 17-18.

Incoming Premier David Eby (left) and chief of staff Matt Smith (BC Gov)

But the discussion went beyond the annual financial blueprint and could be another sign the party is testing the waters for a potential early election, despite Premier David Eby frequently stating he would stick to the scheduled fall 2024 vote. 

On the Monday edition, Eby was joined by Finance Minister Katrine Conroy and Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon, who acted as emcee.

“Thirty thousand people — obviously, our numbers were helped a little bit by the Canucks not making the playoffs, so maybe that’s a silver lining for everybody,” Eby mused at the end of the call.

Government Communications and Public Engagement said 150,000 phone numbers were texted or voice mailed at random two days before the event. Those that didn’t opt-out received a call at the event time. Others registered online, submitted questions and listened. 

Eby’s chief of staff, Matt Smith, is former president of robocall and telephone town hall specialist Strategic Communications, aka Stratcom. GCPE hired Stratcom for six telephone town halls in early summer 2020 under the banner of “COVID-19 Recovery Ideas” and paired cabinet minsters with MLAs from swing ridings. In hindsight, it was part of the road to the snap election that resulted in the party winning its biggest majority under Premier John Horgan. 

This week’s pair, however, was conducted by PrimeContact Group, hired for $37,795 each telephone town hall. According to its Facebook page, Hamilton, Ont.-based PrimeContact has experience working with the federal Liberal Party, the former BC Liberal Party and Liberal parties in Ontario and Nova Scotia. The company’s website says it even worked to help elect “Canada’s most-infamous mayor,” Toronto’s late Rob Ford. 

“This is a chance to make your voice heard and share your ideas, all from the comfort and convenience of your own home,” said the event website.

“Reducing the cost of living. Getting more affordable homes built, faster. Ensuring everyone has access to a family doctor. Creating jobs and opportunities in a clean economy.”

Eby came prepared with memorized answers and written talking points. Except, none of the questions was about the clean economy or environment. 

Topics included housing supply and affordability, help for the homeless and Indigenous reconciliation, the doctor shortage, mental health and addiction services, and repeat violent offenders. One caller, introduced as “Jake from Vancouver,” asked: “Why the gas prices in Vancouver are the highest in the world, when Canada has so much natural resource in crude oil?”

Eby mentioned subsidies for electric vehicles and said “using BC Hydro instead of gas” creates jobs and reduces pollution. 

“But we know that that’s not an option for everybody,” he said. “Although we do have high gas prices, the climate action tax credit, which is funded in part by taxes on gasoline, are refunded back to families, with a focus on higher refunds going to lower-income families.”

Asked about bringing down the cost of living. Eby mentioned the $100 credit on BC Hydro bills and flattening ICBC rates for the next two years, plus daycare subsidies, as well as efforts to encourage the replacement of single-family housing with four-plexes. 

Government telephone townhalls showcased NDP MLAs and test marketed messaging (BC Gov)

“Rambir from Surrey” said there aren’t enough medical facilities in Surrey, causing long wait times for people needing treatment. Eby couldn’t resist the chance to poke Kevin Falcon’s party, but not by its new B.C. United name.

“I don’t want to get too political, frankly,” Eby said. “The difference between us and the opposition BC Liberal Party is that when they were in government they sold the land the hospital was supposed to be on. So, if we had that land we would have been starting construction on this hospital much sooner. As it is, we got the land, construction is starting in July.”

When politicians wanted to speak to tens of thousands of British Columbians in the past, they went on a daily radio or TV talk show. For many years, Jack Webster was the go-to host on the West Coast, on CJOR and CKNW and later BCTV. 

Technology, demographics and the media industry all changed, as filmmaker George Orr explored in his documentary, Talk! Vancouver’s Fascination with Grand Journalism and Instant Democracy. About the time that CKNW talkshow host Christy Clark returned to politics to become Premier Christy Clark in 2011, telephone town halls were already gaining popularity among political operatives. On telephone town halls, the politicians control the message and the audience. 

Ohio State University political science professor William Minozzi and several colleagues explored the trend in the 2019 paper, “Constituent Communication Through Telephone Town Halls: A Field Experiment Involving Members of Congress.” 

“Telephone town halls increasingly dominate the conversations that representatives have with their constituents, and, in retrospect at least, it is easy to see why,” said the study.

The interactive conference calls are a low-cost exercise, attracting more constituents than could attend an in-person event.

“Constituents who currently select into telephone town halls find them to be a useful communication platform, and they develop more positive evaluations of their representatives after participating,” the researchers found. “These results suggest why telephone town halls are so popular among Members of Congress; they are an effective platform for MCs to reach many constituents at once and cultivate trust, approval, and positive impressions of MCs among participants.”

The study also cited New York contributor Charles Bethea’s 2017 critique of telephone town halls, that constituents listen to talking points recited from a Washington, D.C. office “in response to a small number of accepted, pre-screened questions. Many of these are softballs.” 

The Indivisible Project went so far as to dismiss telephone town halls as “sham” events.

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Bob Mackin More than six weeks after tabling

Business, News

Bob Mackin 

Seven current and former NPA board members have appealed a B.C. Supreme Court judge’s order to pay more than $100,000 of ex-Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s legal costs.

On April 18, lawyer Karol Suprynowicz filed papers in the B.C. Court of Appeal on behalf of David Mawhinney, Christopher Wilson, David Pasin, Phyllis Tang, Angelo Isidorou, Federico Fuoco and Wesley Mussio.

Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together campaign promo (Forward Together)

Stewart used the Protection of Public Participation Act to quash the defamation lawsuit stemming from his early 2021 news release that claimed the NPA board included right-wing extremists. 

Justice Wendy Baker threw out the defamation lawsuit when she ruled Stewart acted in the public interest and without malice. Both sides made submissions on the issue of costs last fall. 

In her March 20 ruling, Baker wrote that the defamation claim had substantial merit, but the plaintiffs did not prove they were harmed. Stewart alleged their action was brought in bad faith or for an improper purpose.

Baker awarded full costs in favour of Stewart, but not damages. In October’s civic election, Stewart lost the mayoralty to 2018 runner-up Ken Sim of ABC Vancouver. None of Stewart’s Forward Together candidates won a seat on city council. Similarly, all NPA candidates under Beijing-based leader Fred Harding were shut-out at the ballot box. 

The appeal notice claims that Baker erred in the application of the test for full indemnity costs and provided insufficient reasons for her findings. It also claims that Baker’s findings of fact were inconsistent with last July’s judgment and that she misconstrued the facts of the case in making her decision, while relying on facts that were not before the court or misstating the facts that were before the court.

The form says that Stewart has 10 days to respond to the appeal notice. Stewart declined to comment. 

Mussio said it is important to have appeal judges determine what is reasonable and justified. 

NPA logo

“Speaking for myself, I’m struggling with the fact that an individual like the ex-mayor, in his position of power, can cast aspersions on another individual that are not true and then run up legal costs expecting the person he deliberated attacked in public to pay his exorbitant legal fees,” Mussio said. “To me, that doesn’t sound like justice in a free and democratic society. It sounds like the attacker is given a large legal sword to cause even more damage to the person he is attacking.”

Meanwhile, Stewart’s political party, Forward Together, is facing a $59,000 lawsuit from ad agency Point Blank Creative for unpaid bills from the campaign. Forward Together’s Elections BC disclosure reported $618,081.90 income and almost $1.1 million expenses.

Political scientist Stewart resumed his academic career in January at Simon Fraser University as the director of the Centre for Public Policy Research. He also authored the forthcoming book called “Decrim: How We Decriminalized Drugs in British Columbia.”

A month ago, Stewart was the subject of a Globe and Mail story about foreign interference in the 2022 civic election campaign. The story quoted from a leaked report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that alleged China’s consul general, Tong Xiaoling, was working in early 2022 to defeat Stewart. Tong, whose term ended last summer, was irked after Stewart suggested Vancouver forge closer ties with Taiwan. China considers the democratic, self-governing island a rebel province and leader Xi Jinping has threatened to send the Chinese military to take over. 

In 2021, Stewart cut-off meetings with Chinese government officials after several Canadian members of parliament were sanctioned for voting to declare China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims a genocide. 

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Bob Mackin  Seven current and former NPA board

Business, News

Bob Mackin

When the annual TED Conference returned a year ago, after a two-year pandemic pause, the Vancouver Convention Centre charged $118,000 for more than two weeks use.

Heavily censored invoices, under the heading “CONFIDENTIAL Conference 2022, March 31-April 16,” show the biggest cost was rigging and lighting at $58,824.95, followed by client services ($28,376) and food and beverage ($7,448).

Inside TED at the Vancouver Convention Centre (North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce TED/YouTube)

B.C. Pavilion Corporation (PavCo) received two payments, totalling $117,798.05, last May and June. 

The invoices, obtained under freedom of information, also show a $3,600 charge for carpet replacement, $500 for sliding door damage in Ballroom D and $300 for a damaged bollard on the plaza.

The detailed costs under “charges by department, day and time” were censored. PavCo invoked exceptions to the law for fear that disclosure may harm the Crown corporation’s finances and the business interests of its tenant, TED. 

Last year, co-headliner Elon Musk used his time at TED to outline his plans to take over Twitter. This year’s technology, entertainment and design gabfest, which began April 17 and runs through April 21, features the CEO of controversial Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok. Shou Zi Chew is scheduled to speak on Thursday, almost a month after testifying before U.S. lawmakers who are concerned about data privacy and national security. 

The US$5,000 to US$25,000 conference passes are all sold out, according to the TED website. Organizers offer a US$250,000, five-year “patron” package, which includes a concierge, opportunities to meet speakers and a tax receipt for US$235,000. For those who want the talks without the travel, there is a US$500 pass to watch the live stream online this week or US$150 to watch on-demand afterward. 

The schedule also includes themed field trips, officially called “discovery sessions,” under titles such as: rainforest bathing: nurture in nature; really gay Vancouver history tour; circus skills for serious conversations; TED curling club; and translating whale-speak. 

TED is back at the Vancouver Convention Centre (PavCo/Twitter)

The original contract for use of the convention centre for 11 days in March 2014 contained a negotiated charge to rent the entire west building for $224,000 including taxes. Jack Poole Plaza and the West Pacific Terrace were available for no additional cost.

The contract also included tax relief clauses. If 75% or more delegates are non-residents of Canada, then 100% of taxes on eligible convention-related goods and services booked through the convention centre would be fully rebated. A similar clause offered a 50% tax rebate for convention-related food and beverage expenses booked through the convention centre.

In 2014, Tourism Vancouver estimated the meeting of 1,200 to 1,500 delegates would translate to $2.2 million in direct visitor spending, or an overall impact of $4.5 million. 

By comparison, before the pandemic, Port of Vancouver estimated each cruise ship calling at the Canada Place terminal would leave a $3.17 million impact. 

A record 1.2 million passengers are forecast and a total 331 cruise ship visits are scheduled through October.

TED moved north from Long Beach, Calif. in 2014, but it took nearly eight years for the November 2013-signed contract to be released under B.C.’s freedom of information law. 

An adjudicator with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner ordered the contract be handed over by February 2017, but TED resisted and PavCo’s in-house lawyer also acted as the lawyer for TED. 

TED producers claimed disclosure would cause them to move the conference elsewhere. PavCo applied for a B.C. Supreme Court judicial review, but the court action was dropped in May 2021 and the conference has stayed put.   

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Bob Mackin When the annual TED Conference returned

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Bob Mackin

A lawyer for Vanier Park neighbours contesting City of Vancouver’s agreement to service the Senakw towers said April 18 that the previous city council held illegal meetings behind closed doors. 

“At a certain point of discussions, in the negotiations, what we’ll see is the city was actually required under the legislation to be in public meeting, it couldn’t be a closed meeting,” Nathalie Baker, who represents the Kits Point Residents Association (KPRA), said in B.C. Supreme Court at the start of a four-day hearing. “Under the Vancouver Charter, only preliminary negotiations and discussions relating to proposed works and services are allowed to be held in camera. The city, however, held everything, from the preliminary negotiations all the way to final execution, in closed sessions with no public consultation or just even public oversight.”

Senakw (Westbank/Nch’kay)

KPRA and two of its directors filed last October for a judicial review because the city made the deal behind closed doors and never gave citizens a say. They want a judge to quash the 120-year agreement to service the cluster of residential towers to be built on the Squamish Nation reserve around the Burrard Bridge’s south side.  

The city maintains it acted properly under both the Indian Self-government Enabling Act and the Vancouver Charter and will argue that council has authority to pass resolutions behind closed doors. 

Baker said in camera meetings are properly held for preliminary discussions of matters like land disposals and acquisitions and labour relations. In this case, she argued that the city breached its duty of fairness owed to the residents and acted in bad faith.

“The city remains a creature of statute, and its powers are neither restricted nor expanded based on the city’s goals and objectives, no matter how worthy they may be, whether it be reconciliation or anything else,” Baker said. 

Baker emphasized to Justice Carla Forth that her clients do not dispute the Squamish Nation’s right to build on its reserve land or that it is exempt from city rules and regulations. But they were not consulted on a development that is totally out of context with the surrounding neighbourhood and would not normally be permitted under the city’s bylaws. 

Baker called the services agreement a misnomer, because it is much more than connecting to civic utilities.

“For the nation to build at its desired scale and density, 11 towers on 10 acres, it actually needed, required the city to not only allow the nation to connect to the city services, but to do things like expropriate land to build those services, and to give up parts of Vanier Park so that the nation could build something it otherwise could not build on its own land,” Baker said. “Not because it doesn’t have the money — it’s a sophisticated, powerful band, they partnered with a very powerful developer — but because the development is so dense.”

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

Baker said that there was nothing prohibiting the city from consulting with citizens, and that reconciliation does not mean that “local governments must cede to every single request, no matter the consequences, or the impacts on the residents and municipalities.”

The federally approved project is a partnership between the Squamish Nation’s Nch’kay Development Corp. and Westbank Projects Corp. 

Last May 25, then-Mayor Kennedy Stewart and Squamish Nation council chair Dustin Rivers, aka Khelsilem, signed the agreement at an on-site photo op. But the city and Squamish Nation law firm McCarthy Tetrault agreed a day earlier to keep the document secret until at least June 3 while it underwent further review and negotiation. The city’s court filings said negotiations on final terms continued until July 19. The agreement was quietly added to the city website on the eve of B.C. Day long weekend. No public announcement was made.

The 250-page agreement spells out how Senakw will connect to the city’s water and storm sewers, sidewalks, roads, bike lanes and public transit, and who pays for what. An appendix lists $48.43 million of costs estimated for 15 street, bike lane, sewer and seawall projects, mostly paid by the Squamish Nation. Of that, $15 million is the estimate to build a transit hub on the bridge.

Westbank began work last summer on the first phase of an envisioned four-phase complex. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a $1.4 billion loan at the Sept. 6 groundbreaking ceremony through Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to finance half the units in the first two phases.

Before Squamish Nation members voted in 2019 in favour of the 50-50 partnership with Westbank, they received an expert report that estimated the project could generate as much as $12.7 billion in cashflow for the band and developer. 

In 1913, the province removed Kitsilano reserve inhabitants by barge, after offering the 20 family heads $11,250 each, contrary to the Indian Act. Eighty-seven years later, in 2000, Squamish Nation ceded 60 acres of Kitsilano Point to the federal government in a $92.5 million land claims settlement. 

Five B.C. Court of Appeal judges unanimously agreed in 2002 to return 10.5 acres of land to the Squamish Nation that had been expropriated for the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886 and 1902. 

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Bob Mackin A lawyer for Vanier Park neighbours

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For the week of April 16, 2023:

Taiwan and Ireland, two islands thriving in the face of challenges.

thePodcast host Bob Mackin welcomes Taipei Economic and Cultural Office director general Angel Liu and Louise O’Reilly, a member of the Irish parliament for Sinn Fein in the Dublin Fingal riding.

Angel Liu on the Canadian MPs touring Taiwan. What can Canada learn about dealing with China and its interference and propaganda program? 

Louise O’Reilly on the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. What can Canada learn about the peace and prosperity deal between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland? Could a unity referendum be next?

Plus Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim headlines.

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For the week of April 16, 2023:

Business, News

Bob Mackin

If a B.C. Supreme Court judge rules in favour of a First Nation that is challenging B.C.’s online mining claims program, a lawyer for the provincial government says the court should order the two sides to negotiate a new system.

Justice Alan Ross (AHBL)

The Gitxaala Nation, based in Kitkatla, wants the court to overturn mineral claims the province granted between 2018 and 2020 on Banks Island because it says there was no consultation. Gitxaala lawyers say that breached the Crown’s constitutional duty to First Nations and was contrary to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which B.C. adopted in 2019. 

Crown lawyer Leah Greathead told Justice Alan Ross during the judicial review hearing on April 12 that if the court sides with the Gitxaala, it could apply to all First Nations in the province. Although the province wants the petition dismissed, she proposed a remedy. 

“We’re asking for 18 months for the province, in consultation and cooperation with Indigenous people, to design a system that meets the province’s consultation obligations, while balancing a wide range of other interests,” Greathead said.

Under the current system, anyone as young as age 18 who is allowed to work in Canada can pay $25 for a “free miner certificate” and then file a mineral claim online for as little as $1.75 per hectare. But Greathead said exercising and developing a claim is more complex, including adhering to provincial regulation through multiple instruments, beyond the Mining Tenure Act (MTA) and the Mining Act. 

“The closer you get to building an operating mine, that more pieces of legislation may be relevant,” she said. “For example, the Environmental Assessment Act or other pieces of legislation may also be relevant to the development of the project.”

Greathead said the MTA does not impact the future exercise of aboriginal title. Limited work on the ground can be undertaken by a free miner without affecting aboriginal title or other aboriginal rights.

“We do consult in the context of mining exploration, we don’t consult prior to the issuing of the mineral tenure under the Mineral Tenure Act,” Greathead said. “Have we initiated consultation, have we drawn the correct line as to when consultation should start? And we say we have.”

Greathead acknowledged that section 35 of the constitution did not create aboriginal rights, because the rights had always existed, based on the fact that Indigenous people were here before Europeans arrived. 

“The [2019 enacted] Declaration Act affirms the application of the U.N. declaration to the laws of B.C., but does not incorporate the declaration into the laws of British Columbia. So essentially, what the Declaration Act is, is an interpretive tool, which is confirmed by the interpretation,” she said.

“The province and Indigenous peoples have begun the process of reconciling provincial laws with the U.N. declaration and that includes the Mineral Act.”

Gitxaala Nation not only wants the court to declare unconstitutional the B.C. online mineral titles registry, but it also wants a judge to decide that the MTA is inconsistent with UNDRIP.

Lisa Fong, a lawyer for Gitxaala, told the court April 3 that the Gold Rush-era MTA is outdated because legal and church principles once used to justify colonization no longer have any moral or legal effect. 

The hearing continues.

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Bob Mackin If a B.C. Supreme Court judge

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