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For the week of Nov. 19, 2023:

Part 2 of Bob Mackin’s interview with Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, where he has founded the new Centre for Heterodox Social Science. 

Kaufmann, who was raised in Vancouver, specializes in cultural politics, ethnicity, national identity, left-wing ideology and religion. Touchy topics in the age of cancel culture.

In the new year, he is launching a first of its kind course, called “Woke: the Origins, Dynamics and Implications of an Elite Ideology.”

From the “Left Coast” of Canada to the halls of academia in London, Eric Kaufmann.

If you missed part 1, click here.

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

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 Nov. 19, 2023: Part

Business, News

Bob Mackin

The lawyer for the Abbotsford man who was once the RCMP’s top civilian intelligence officer told a jury in Ottawa Nov. 16 that his client was neither an enemy of the RCMP nor of Canada.

Cameron Ortis

Cameron Ortis, accused of leaking top secret information, pleaded not guilty in Ontario Superior Court to four counts under the Security of Information Act and breach of trust and misuse of a computer under the Criminal Code. 

“Why would Cameron Ortis, a dedicated, hardworking, intelligent and devoted employee of the RCMP, decide to send special operational information to members of organized crime? What reasons could there be?” Jon Doody asked during his closing arguments for the trial, which began Oct. 3.

Doody said Ortis had been mischaracterized and that the Crown did not prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. 

Even though Ortis was restricted for national security reasons in what he could tell the court, even during closed-door sessions, Doody said he chose to testify anyway in his own defence in order to explain the motive for the 2015 operation. Doody said Ortis intended to “fulfill his role in the RCMP to carry out the mission and to protect Canada and citizens like you and me.”

“We heard that there was no evidence of any communication to anyone other than the four named individuals on the indictment. We heard that there was no evidence Cam received any financial payments from anyone,” Doody said. “There’s no evidence of other information being stored away, breaching use. Finally, there was no evidence of an attempt to continue communicating with any of the targets beyond what’s disclosed in this binder.”

Ortis testified that, under his so-called “Operation Nudge,” he lured four targets onto the Tutanota encrypted email system in order to gather evidence against them for an international investigation. Three of the persons of interest were involved in transnational money laundering. Another was Richmond’s Vincent Ramos, who ran Phantom Secure, an encrypted smartphone supplier whose clients included the Hells Angels and Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel. 

But a Crown prosecutor said Ortis put forward a fatally flawed defence. 

Phantom Secure mastermind Vincent Ramos

Judy Kliewer said witnesses testified that Ortis was primarily a manager who had no authority to communicate the type of information he provided the targets.

“The very, very, very narrow issue that you need to decide in this case is whether Mr. Ortis acted with authority,” Kliewer told the 12-member jury. 

Kliewer recounted how the RCMP and international law enforcement partners in the Five Eyes Alliance, from the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand, decided to crack down on Canadian companies providing encrypted smartphones to organized crime.

“In July 2013, the RCMP National Intelligence Coordination Centre, the NICC, initiated Project Saturation to provide an intelligence assessment of these Canadian companies, including the British Columbia-based company Phantom Secure Communications,” Kliewer said. “Vincent Ramos was the Phantom Secure chief executive officer, Kapil Judge was Phantom Secure’s technical manager and Jean-Francois Eap was a known associate of Ramos.”

Ramos was arrested in 2018, convicted in 2019 and sentenced to nine years in a U.S. prison. U.S. authorities in San Diego charged West Vancouverite Eap in 2021 with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act for selling encrypted phones to criminals from his Vancouver company, Sky Global. Sky Global was shut down, but the case against Eap has yet to proceed.

Jean-François Eap (Facebook)

Kliewer said that Ortis informed Ramos that Phantom Secure was under investigation and that a person who had approacehed Judge at the Vancouver International Airport was really an undercover operative. She said Ortis also told him that police identified locations of his Phantom Secure servers and that they were also observing Ramos’s travel habits.

“[Ortis] told Mr. Ramos that he could use this information to thwart investigative efforts against him, suggesting that he move his servers, that he adjust his financial transactions so they wouldn’t attract attention,” Kliewer said. 

On Nov. 17, Kliewer concluded her closing arguments by saying that Ortis was working contrary to the public good, noting that he asked Ramos for $20,000 and kept his actions hidden from 2015 until the time of his arrest in 2019. 

“He was a civilian member in charge of Operations Research, with no responsibility, no duties, no involvement in police operations whatsoever. He was not a trained undercover operator, he was not a trained member,” Kliewer said. “His only responsibility was to advise senior decision makers of the intelligence that he was able to gather. There was no record found of any such operation. No policy allowed for communication of this information.”

Justice Robert Maranger will continue his charge to the jury on Nov. 20.

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Bob Mackin The lawyer for the Abbotsford man

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Bob Mackin

The 27-year-old Coquitlam man accused of assaulting a Vancouver Police officer at a protest against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared in Downtown Community Court on Nov. 15. 

Jakub Jerzy Markiewicz is facing charges of assault of a peace officer, assault causing bodily harm and wilfully resisting or obstructing a peace officer. His next court appearance is Dec. 6.

Jakub Markiewicz (The Gray/Tumblr)

VPD said they arrested a man after an officer was punched in the face and had her eyes gouged while dispersing the protest in Chinatown on Nov. 14. 

Nearly 100 officers were called to Bagheera cocktail bar on Main and Kiefer to deal with an estimated 250 protesters demanding Trudeau support a ceasefire in Israel’s war on the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza.

Sgt. Steve Addison said at a Nov. 15 news conference that 150 of the protesters had stood at the front and 100 in the alley. 

“We believe the protesters took some specific actions that cause concerns, things like moving barricades to block a part of the lane that would have blocked vehicle access in the need of a quick response,” Addison said. “The protesters also took steps such as linking arms to create a line or a barricade.”

Protesters had earlier chased Trudeau out of Vij’s restaurant on Cambie and 15th. 

Addison said that VPD often works with protest groups to share information so that the police can determine staffing. 

“In this case, we did not have advanced warning of this protest. It was a spontaneous protest or a pop-up protest,” Addison said. “And we responded quickly deploying approximately 100 officers from various parts of the city.”

However, the group gave advance notice to its followers last weekend on open source channels that they were planning to target Members of Parliament throughout this week.

Last weekend, the same group that had occupied offices of select Members of Parliament on Oct. 30 used the @PalSolidaritySitIn Instagram account to promote so-called “bird-dogging” tactics to ambush MPs between Nov. 13-19. It also published a “Free Palestine Direct Action Toolkit” containing instructions. 

“Bird-dogging shows MPs that they can’t hide and holds them directly responsible,” said the Instagram post. “With an election coming, it tells them that their voters care and they must act.”

The sit-in organizers include environmental charity employees who co-ordinated illegal roadblocks across the country during the early 2020 “Shut Down Canada” campaign against the Coastal GasLink pipeline. 

Earlier Nov. 14, during a news conference in Maple Ridge, Trudeau had called for Israel to “exercise maximum restraint” in Gaza. That drew criticism from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who publicly reminded Trudeau of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in which more than 1,400 people were killed and 240 kidnapped in Israel. Last week, the United Nations, quoting figures from the Hamas-controlled health ministry, claimed 10,000 people had been killed in Gaza. 

On Nov. 15 , VPD Chief Adam Palmer posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that VPD is “happy to professionally facilitate lawful, peaceful protests in Canada. If someone assaults one of our officers they will be arrested, taken to jail, (finger)printed/photo(graphed) and criminally charged.

Markewicz is well-known in local radical environmental protest circles. In August 2016, he was found guilty in B.C. Provincial Court of assault and assault with a weapon for incidents during protests on Burnaby Mountain against the Trans Mountain pipeline construction project. 

During his time on Burnaby Mountain, Markiewicz also chained himself underneath a Kinder Morgan vehicle.

Court files show that Markiewicz was in court on Oct. 17 where a prosecutor stayed a charge of mischief to property over $5,000. There is also a March 2022 entry for a municipal ticket for placing or causing graffiti on a structure in public. That case did not proceed. 

In 2012, he was arrested, but not charged, after photographing security guards arrest a suspect in Burnaby’s Metrotown mall. 

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Bob Mackin The 27-year-old Coquitlam man accused of

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Bob Mackin

City of Vancouver’s inside workers are meeting Nov. 17 to ratify a new two-year agreement. 

Negotiators for the 3,500 CUPE Local 15 members at city hall, parks board, Britannia Community Services Centre and Ray-Cam Co-operative Centre reached a tentative new contract on Oct. 16.

Vancouver city hall (Mackin)

A leaked copy of the memorandum of settlement shows that they are scheduled to receive a 4.5 per cent pay raise retroactive to last Jan. 1 and get another 4 per cent on the first day of 2024.

The members of the Vancouver Municipal, Education and Community Workers union will also get a one-time lump sum retention payment of 3.5 per cent after Jan. 11 on all regular, non-overtime wages earned in 2022. 

It doesn’t stop there. 

“One-time lump sum recognition payment of 1 percent to all active employees payable after Nov. 16, 2023 on all straight time wages earned in 2023 up to and including Nov. 16, 2023 (at the updated 2023 wage rate).”

Under the expired contract, hourly wages ranged from $21.27 to $69.48. 

Vacant positions will now be posted for seven days on the employer’s website. “Where a position is posted and there are subsequent positions in the same class, within 90 days the employer may offer the position to the highest ranked qualified applicant without posting͘.”

The deal also includes a change to language allowing the city to offer more vacation to new employees upon hire and increases limits to the extended health plan. For instance, the limit for clinical psychology is more than doubled from $600 to $1,350 and there is a new $3,000 coverage for in vitro fertilization. A letter of understanding commits to exploring an affordable long term disability plan. 

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is added to the statutory holidays list and the parties agreed to “canvass options for cost neutral approach to reflect different cultural and/or religious beliefs in relation to public holidays.”

Indigenous workers will be allowed three separate leaves per year to attend spiritual or ceremonial events. The first day of each of the three leaves will be paid leave. 

The city has committed to creating an Indigenous hiring process to prioritize First Nations, Inuit and Metis people for certain jobs. Criteria for determining if a job is suitable for the new Indigenous hiring process includes whether traditional knowledge is beneficial or job duties relate to Indigenous identity; whether Indigenous peoples have been underrepresented in a certain area or business unit; and if the conditions of a grant or subsidy include creating a position for an Indigenous person. 

“The postings under the Indigenous hiring (IH) process will indicate that applicants must self-identify as an Indigenous people to be eligible to qualify for the position,” the memorandum of settlement said. “Applicants under the IH process may be required to verify that they are Indigenous people.”

Employees running for public office at any level will still be granted leave of absence, without pay, so that they can campaign. But a new clause governs what happens should they win.

“When an employee is elected to a government public office outside the City of Vancouver or Vancouver Park Board, the employee may be granted leave of absence without pay for a period of up to one year, and such leave may be extended each year on request during the employee’s first term of office,” the clause said. “If the employee is elected to office with the City of Vancouver or Vancouver Park Board, the employee will resign.”

At least three city hall workers on leave of absence unsuccessfully ran in the 2022 city council election: Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s press secretary Alvin Singh for Forward Together and, for the OneCity party, Coun. Christine Boyle’s assistant Matthew Norris and transportation planner Iona Bonamis.  

The notice for the Nov. 17 ratification meeting includes four information sessions at the Maritime Labour Centre Auditorium.

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Bob Mackin City of Vancouver’s inside workers are

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A two-day B.C. Supreme Court extradition hearing for a former Mexican general, who is wanted for alleged theft of hydrocarbons, was suddenly adjourned Nov. 14 before it could start.

B.C.-arrested Eduardo Leon Trauwitz

“There were some developments that transpired late last week,” federal prosecutor Amanjyot Sanghera explained to Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes.

Sanghera revealed that a new supplemental record of the case against Eduardo Leon Trauwitz arrived via diplomatic channels from the Mexican government. He said he sent it immediately to Trauwitz’s lawyers on Thursday.  

“It’s not a pithy document, it contains approximately 15 pages of evidence,” Sanghera said. “Some of that evidence is from new witnesses, other portions of the evidence are from witnesses that have been previously named in the records of the case that have been disclosed so far, and provides further evidence. Some of it duplicative, but some of it new as well.”

The Mexican government wants Canada to return Trauwitz, 56, to face trial on organized crime and fuel theft charges. It alleges that Trauwitz, while working as head of security for state oil company Pemex, facilitated theft of 1.87 billion litres of hydrocarbons from clandestine taps in Pemex pipelines. 

In May 2019, Trauwitz fled to B.C., instead of appearing in a Mexican court, and applied for Canadian refugee status. He was arrested in December 2021 and freed on bail conditions in March 2022. 

Holmes adjourned the extradition hearing until Feb. 21 and it could last more than two days. 

“Given the volume of this information, which is actually lengthier than the original, in my view, it might be advisable to have an extra day,” Trauwitz’s lawyer, Tom Arbogast, suggested to Holmes.

The new evidence against Trauwitz arrived almost a month after Holmes allowed Trauwitz’s lawyers to present new evidence that could cast doubt on the Mexican government’s case. 

The new defence evidence included a notarized statement from August of this year by a former Pemex worker concerned that his version of events had been distorted and words put in his mouth. Moises Angel Merlin Sibaja originally told prosecutors in 2017 and 2019 that he was threatened with firing if he did not follow orders from Trauwtiz and four others. 

Holmes deemed some, but not all, of Sibaja’s statement admissible to the extradition hearing.

Arbogast told the court in December 2021 that his client had been the victim of a politically motivated prosecution by Mexican authorities. Instead of being a thief, he claimed that Trauwitz worked to stop thieves. 

Last May, the court approved Trauwitz’s move from Surrey to the Burquitlam area of Coquitlam. 

Trauwitz’s original bail conditions included a $20,000 surety, requirement to live with his daughter, an 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, around the clock wearing of an electronic monitoring device and regular reporting to a probation officer.

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Bob Mackin  A two-day B.C. Supreme Court extradition

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Bob Mackin 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first family vacation after announcing separation from Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau included a round trip aboard a Royal Canadian Air Force jet that cost $74,178 to operate.

Inside a Bombardier Challenger jet.

Documents released by the Department of National Defence, under the access to information law, show the Aug. 10-19 itinerary for the Bombardier CC-144D Challenger and its 11.7 hours of flight time. 

The former couple and their three children flew from Ottawa to Tofino on the jet, which then spent eight days waiting with its crew in Victoria. The return flight from Tofino to Ottawa included a stopover in Edmonton, where the Prime Minister met with Yellowknife wildfire evacuees. 

Five others were on the passenger manifest, but their names were censored for security reasons. 

The cost to operate the Challenger is $6,340 per hour. Canadian Forces Base Trenton, home of the fleet used by top officials, invoiced Trudeau on Aug. 24 for $6,708.45, or $1,341.69 per passenger, based on the government policy on personal trips to charge the lowest price, commercial equivalent airfare.  

Trudeau’s Aug. 28 payment covered just over one hour of the jet’s flight time. 

The documents included a pre-trip email from someone whose name and title were censored, pressing a Trenton official to provide the airfare cost estimate.

“I work with (censored) and I’m following up with you in regards to the quote we have been awaiting for the family’s vacation to Tofino,” the Aug. 1 email said. 

“As you can imagine like in any other family, they are budgeting every time and getting the quote in advance allows them to better manage and plan finances. This invoice will need to be paid in August. I would like a conversation with you as to how we can facilitate this process together.”

The quote was provided two days later. 

Even at a net cost to taxpayers of $67,469.55 for the flights, the Tofino trip cost was too expensive at a time when many Canadians are struggling with higher fuel and food costs, said the B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for the Prime Minister’s exorbitant vacations, especially when we already paid for a private vacation retreat of Harrington Lake for him,” Binda said.

The National Capital Commission maintains the PM’s official summer residence at Harrington Lake in Gatineau Park near Ottawa. Its website calls the 13 acres a “tranquil place to rest, reflect and confer in a secure, secluded and informal setting.”

Justin Trudeau (Mackin)

The Tofino trip was one of Trudeau’s five aboard a Challenger in August, costing taxpayers a total $197,174 for 31.1 hours of flight time. 

One of those trips was Aug. 24-26 when the 11.9 hours of flight time cost $75,446. Trudeau spoke at a Vancouver environmental conference, visited wildfire ravaged West Kelowna, met with the Premier of Northwest Territories and Mayor of Edmonton and headlined Liberal Party fundraisers in Vancouver and Edmonton.

“That’s a slap in the face,” Binda said. “That’s clearly using taxpayer funds for partisan purposes, which is wholly inappropriate.”

The August flight tab was $10,000 less than April, when Trudeau rode on flights that cost $207,000 and included an Easter weekend family trip to a Montana ski and snowboard resort.

Before the pandemic, records about Trudeau’s flights in July and August 2019 showed that the average hourly cost was $5,636 — meaning the cost to operate the jets has increased 12.5%. He flies aboard military jets for security reasons.

According to the SherpaReport, which follows the private jet industry, the Bombardier Challenger CC-144 jet uses 340 gallons per hour of fuel. That means jets burned 10,574 gallons, or more than 40,000 litres, of jet fuel to carry Trudeau and others in August. 

Trudeau arrived in Vancouver on Nov. 14 aboard a Challenger jet for a funding announcement at the Taiwanese-owned Molicel in Maple Ridge and a photo op at a grocery store. He is scheduled to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco from Nov. 15-17. 

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Bob Mackin  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first family

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For the week of Nov. 12, 2023:

From the “Left Coast” of Canada to the halls of academia in London, Eric Kaufmann is a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, where he has founded the new Centre for Heterodox Social Science. 

Kaufmann, who was raised in Vancouver, specializes in cultural politics, ethnicity, national identity, left-wing ideology and religion. Touchy topics in the age of cancel culture.

In the new year, he is launching a first of its kind course, called “Woke: the Origins, Dynamics and Implications of an Elite Ideology.”

He is Bob Mackin’s guest on this edition of thePodcast, in the first part of a two-part feature.

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

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.

Support theBreaker.news for as low as $2 a month on Patreon. Find out how. Click here.

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For the week of Nov. 12, 2023:

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Vancouver city hall took its time to ban the WeChat app from civic devices.

WeChat/Tencent

Associate director of communications Angela MacKenzie said Nov. 8 that a review of the Technology Acceptable Use policy was over and “we will follow the lead of the Government of Canada regarding WeChat and Kaspersky apps for city-issued mobile devices. This will take effect as of next week.”

Pressed further, MacKenzie said the deadline was Nov. 15 — more than two weeks after Treasury Board president Anita Anand’s Oct. 30 order to delete the Chinese social media, messaging and payment app and Russian anti-virus programs from federal devices over privacy and security concerns. 

“Our analysis has shown that we have approximately 40 installs of WeChat and zero installs of Kaspersky app,” MacKenzie said. She refused to explain why it is taking so long to deal with so few devices.  

This is not the first time that Vancouver city hall has taken its time to follow the lead of the federal government on a cybersecurity issue. 

After Anand’s predecessor, Mona Fortier, announced a ban on the TikTok video app on Feb. 27, Vancouver City hall took more than two weeks to do the same. Of the 2,700 devices in its fleet, city hall counted 132 iPhones that contained TikTok. 

The city’s chief technology officer Tadhg Healy initially expressed reluctance, even after the NDP’s. Citizens’ Services minister Lisa Beare quickly followed the federal lead. The city’s decision to remove TikTok and block further downloads was finally announced March 14. 

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Citizens’ Services said that Kaspersky is not on any B.C. government-managed device and that WeChat has not been permitted on such devices for nearly four years. 

Vancouver city hall (CoV)

A reporter asked for a copy of the directive to delete WeChat. But a prepared statement, sent by public affairs officer Farah Tarannum, said employees were told verbally how to delete the app after a the chief information security officer hosted a March 16, 2020 conference call for security leads.

“The decision to ban the application was made out of an abundance of caution as an operational security decision. It was not the result of an actual or suspected privacy breach,”according to the ministry statement, which said there was a “low number” of devices containing WeChat. 

One of Canada’s top professors on datamining and cybersecurity said the federal ban was overdue. Benjamin Fung of McGill University’s School of Information Studies said WeChat is prone to Chinese Communist Party censorship and propaganda. The risk to users is threefold: privacy, security and trust. The app requests access to all files on a device, the camera and microphone, and nearby devices. 

“No matter if it is within China or outside of China, it is clear that the Chinese government and the Tencent company are monitoring all the communications,” Fung said. 

The Communications Security Establishment’s 2023-2024 National Cyber Threat Assessment warned that WeChat “has been used to spread misinformation, disinformation and malinformation and propaganda specific to the Chinese diaspora.” WeChat has figured in recent Global Affairs Canada warnings about foreign interference and targeting of politicians. It was also used during the 2021 federal election to spread disinformation to help defeat Steveston-Richmond East Conservative Kenny Chiu.

The B.C. government’s WeChat account was originally registered for personal use by Bruce Ralston when he was Minister of Jobs, Trade and Technology in 2018, the same year that Premier John Horgan led a trade mission to China. Horgan announced a tourism promotion agreement with WeChat when he met with executives from its parent company Tencent. 

Ralston, the NDP government’s liaison to the B.C. diplomatic corps, transferred the account to the government in 2020 and it is managed by contractor Fan Rong Marketing Ltd.

Despite banning WeChat on government devices, the ministry considers WeChat to be “an important tool to share information about government programs, services, and information with people in their preferred language.” 

In mid-August, the B.C. government announced it had opened an account on the Weibo platform, to post messages in Chinese about public safety, emergency preparedness, cost of living, housing, education, health care and justice services. Third-party contractor Catalyst Agents was hired for the job. 

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Bob Mackin Vancouver city hall took its time

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Municipal government watchdog Randy Helten thinks the NDP government’s so-called “naughty list” should not refer to the cities under pressure to build more housing, but for the NDP because it is keeping the methodology secret.

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

On May 31, Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon announced Abbotsford, Delta, Kamloops, District of North Vancouver, Oak Bay, Port Moody, District of Saanich, Vancouver, Victoria and West Vancouver would be required to increase housing supply. The five-year completion targets announced Sept. 26 range from 664 units for Oak Bay to 28,900 units for Vancouver. 

The original government news release claimed that economists and experts developed an “empirical index” for setting the density targets and they chose the 10 municipalities by “using an objective and data-based process.” A total 47 municipalities were considered. 

So CityHallWatch founder Helten started asking questions about the how and the who. When he didn’t get straight answers from the ministry’s communications office, he paid $10 to file an application under the freedom of information law and another $180 when bureaucrats estimated it would take an extra six hours to process. 

Helten held his nose and paid. The government missed the late August deadline. Finally, on Nov. 1, the same day the latest housing supply amendments were announced, Helten said he received two pages and a refund, because the government realized it didn’t need to charge so much. 

Helten was frustrated to receive a chart under the headline “Selection Index Weights and Scores – Cohort 1” that had been censored. The 10 municipalities had been chosen based on availability, affordability, urgent housing need and location. But their scores were all withheld under a section of the law that protects information about the substance of deliberations of cabinet, including advice, recommendations, policy considerations or draft legislation. 

The section, however, should not apply when a decision has been made public and the decision has been implemented.

“The fact that they delayed so long, I often ask myself, is it incompetence or intentional that they’re unable to give this information? In my mind, the conclusion is completely intentional, violating the FOI legislation,” Helten said. “The fact that they didn’t provide information I asked for just undermines the entire justification for both pieces of legislation.”

Helten did, however, learn who got a sneak peek of the top 10 list.

The other document shows that the week before the announcement, on May 25, staff from Kahlon’s office and officials in the ministry held a “stakeholder technical briefing” on the municipal selection index with representatives of the Homebuilders Association of Vancouver, Small Housing B.C., Canadian Homebuilders Association, Urban Development Institute and a vice-president with condo specialist Rennie Group.

Peter Waldkirch (LinkedIn)

They were joined by politically connected, pro-density activists aligned with the NDP and/or Abundant Housing Vancouver (AHV), including: 

  • Tom Davidoff, the University of B.C. real estate economist. His wife, Dulcy Anderson, ran unsuccessfully for city council with Kennedy Stewart and was Premier David Eby’s constituency assistant until becoming an aide to NDP education minister Rachna Singh; 
  • Danny Oleksiuk, a co-founder of AHV. The lawyer formerly with the B.C. General Employees’ Union endorsed Environment Minister George Heyman’s 2020 re-election campaign; 
  • Peter Waldkirch, an AHV activist who worked on the OneCity civic campaign last fall and lobbied the city and province to do away with public hearings for zoning applications; 
  • AHV member Jens Von Bergmann of the Mountain Math data consultancy; and 
  • Alex Hemingway, policy analyst with the left-wing Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives think tank.

The ministry’s communications office said that the ministry developed the index and Davidoff provided input. 

“What I was looking for was to be assured that policy is based on very solid, broad consultation with respected experts in their field,” Helten said. “I’m looking for people who are experts and all of these people are political and supply-side, industry-associated activists, basically.”

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Bob Mackin  Municipal government watchdog Randy Helten thinks

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A man originally from Abbotsford, who made national news in 2018 for beating up an autistic man, was murdered Nov. 8 in Toronto. 

Toronto Police Service (TPS) announced Nov. 9 that Parmvir Singh Chahil, 27, was shot in a parking garage and pronounced dead on the scene. A suspect fled in a newer model sport utility vehicle.

Parmvir Singh Chahil

Chahil’s most-recent residence was Windsor, Ont., according to TPS. 

Three years ago, Chahil and another man from B.C., Jaspaul Uppal, were sent to jail for nine months, ordered to be on probation for a year and banned from owning weapons for 10 years. They pleaded guilty in February 2020 to aggravated assault of an autistic man at a Mississauga, Ont. shopping centre in 2018. 

Ronjot Singh Dhami of Surrey also pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. He was sentenced to time served and two years probation.

The trio was caught on surveillance video in Mississauga, Ont., in March 2018 kicking and punching a 29-year-old man who was seated at the bottom of stairs while he put on rollerblades. The victim suffered a broken nose and facial cuts in the vicious, six-second attack. 

In September 2015, Chahil was a resident of a house on Abbotsford’s Promontory Drive when innocent neighbour Ping Shun Ao, 75, was killed in a drive-by shooting. Police believed Chahil was the intended target.

A Twitter account, @Parmchahil, was active in July 2014 with two Tweets that taunted an Abbotsford Police Department constable, under the image of blood-spattered guns.

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Bob Mackin  A man originally from Abbotsford, who

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