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Bob Mackin The leader of the BC Greens

NDP tries telephone town halls again

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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April 21, 2023

Bob Mackin More than six weeks after tabling

Current, former NPA directors appeal judge’s ruling to pay ex-Mayor’s $100,000 legal bill

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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April 20, 2023

Bob Mackin Seven current and former NPA board

Vancouver TED Conference payments revealed

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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April 19, 2023

Bob Mackin When the annual TED Conference returned

Kits Point Residents’ bid to overturn secretive Senakw services agreement in court

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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April 19, 2023

Now on Google Podcasts!

Bob Mackin A lawyer for Vanier Park neighbours

Business, News, Opinion

thePodcast: What Canada can learn from Taiwan and Ireland

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.

CLICK BELOW to listen or go to TuneIn or Apple Podcasts.

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

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theBreaker.news Podcast

thePodcast: What Canada can learn from Taiwan and Ireland

00:00 / 00:39:17

April 16, 2023

For the week of April 16, 2023:

Crown lawyer suggests negotiations with First Nations if province loses mining claims challenge

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

Trudeau chief of staff stonewalls MP asking about China meddling in Richmond ridings

Bob Mackin

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff refused to answer questions April 14 about a leaked report from Canada’s spy agency that said a Chinese diplomat worked to flip Richmond’s two ridings from Conservative to Liberal in 2021.

Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford (ParlVu)

Katie Telford appeared before the House of Commons Procedure and House Affairs Committee, which is studying foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections.

During the two-and-a-half-hour hearing, Conservative Larry Brock (Brantford—Brant) asked Telford if she believed the report in the Globe and Mail, about Beijing’s goal of helping the Liberals secure a minority government.

“My experience going into both of the last two elections was that our relations with China were at their lowest point, where I was working day and night alongside many, many, many other incredible Canadians to try to bring home the Two Michaels, who it was just amazing to see in Parliament, when President Biden was here,” Telford said.

Brock mentioned China’s then-Vancouver Consul General, Tong Xiaoling, who, according to a leaked report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, bragged about her role in defeating Conservative incumbents Kenny Chiu (Steveston-Richmond East) and Alice Wong (Richmond Centre) in favour of Liberal rookies Parm Bains and Wilson Miao.

“You are aware of that, is that inaccurate?” Brock asked.

“I’m aware of the reporting on this matter, and I can’t speak to what different countries’ ambassadors and consul generals have said,” Telford replied.

Bardish Chaggar (Waterloo), the Liberal who chairs the committee, intervened twice as Brock and Telford spoke over each other. Chaggar complimented Telford on her short answers before allowing Brock to resume his questions.

“For clarification, Madam Chair, the question was premised with yes or no, I didn’t get a yes or no, and that’s why I referred to it as a simple question,” Brock said.

“CSIS reported a month after the ’21 election, it was well-known within the Chinese-Canadian community of British Columbia, that Miss Tong wanted the Liberal Party to win the ’21 election. Is that false?”

Telford replied: “I think, Madam Chair, you’ll know my answer on this, which is that I can’t speak to specifics.”

Tong Xiaoling (standing) with NDP Minister George Chow (right) and Liberal MP Wilson Miao (left) during her last-known public appearance in Vancouver on July 10. (PRC Consulate)

Brock tried again. “CSIS reports reveal that Miss Tong and former consul Wang Jin made discreet and subtle efforts to encourage members of Chinese-Canadian organizations to rally votes for the Liberals and defeat Conservatives. Is that false?”

Telford: “Madam Chair, I think what I would just remind the member is something I said in the opening and that’s come up throughout this committee actually. Which is that interference in elections has an impact on all political parties.”

Brock pressed further. “In November ’21, CSIS reported that Miss Tong described former MP Kenny Chiu as a vocal distractor when discussing his defeat in the ’21 election. She also was reported to have said that Mr. Chiu’s loss proved that their strategy and tactics were good and contributed to achieving their goals. Is that false? Is that inaccurate?”

Telford: “Madam Chair, I’m going to have to give a similar answer. But I would say that it’s important to remind people, because of the insinuations I think coming through from the member, that the election has been examined by experts, and they have deemed it as one that was free and fair.”

Telford had previously appeared before House of Commons committees investigating the WE Charity scandal and sexual harassment in the Canadian Forces. Liberal committee members had filibustered in early March in an attempt to save her from questioning by opposition MPs on China’s meddling in elections.

On March 21, Trudeau pre-empted a House of Commons vote to order Telford’s testimony by announcing she would appear before the committee.

Trudeau rejected calls for a public inquiry on Chinese government interference and instead appointed former Governor-General David Johnston on March 15 as a “special rapporteur” on the issue. Johnston is being paid at least $1,400-per-day, according to a cabinet order, until mid-December. His interim recommendations are due by May 23 and a final report at the end of October.

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Bob Mackin Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief of

Irish politician looks back at peace deal, looks forward to potential for unity

Bob Mackin

A touring Irish politician said the sudden benefit of the landmark peace and power-sharing agreement 25 years ago this week was the world seeing images of co-operation instead of conflict.

Irish politician Louise O’Reilly (left) with Michael Murphy, president of the Ireland-Canada Chamber of Commerce Vancouver. (@LoreillySF/Twitter)

The Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998 between politicians in Northern Ireland and the leaders of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom helped end a period of more than 30 years of sectarian violence that took 3,700 lives. Voters in the mainly Catholic republic and mainly Protestant north ratified the agreement six weeks later, on May 22, 1998.

“People turned all of their eyes to Dublin and Belfast in a really positive way,” Louise O’Reilly, a Sinn Fein member of the Irish parliament, said during an interview April 11. “And it was like, ‘look what the Irish are doing there, look how they are building peace.’ It showcased the island of Ireland in a fantastic and positive way.”

O’Reilly, twice elected in the Dublin Fingal riding, is her party’s critic for workers’ rights, enterprise, trade, and employment. She appeared at a forum in New Westminster, with Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley, during her tour to celebrate the agreement’s 25th anniversary. Sinn Fein is the left-wing republican party once considered the political wing of the Irish Republican Army. The IRA’s 1997 ceasefire opened the door for then-Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams to join peace talks.

In April 1998, O’Reilly was living in Dublin’s inner city with her husband and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. She remembers the tense final days of talks.

“When [American envoy] George Mitchell said, ‘I’m going home for Easter lads, this is either getting done, or we lose this momentum’,” she said. “Just to see them seize the momentum and get it over the line at the last minute.”

O’Reilly grew up in Dundalk, the Irish town halfway between Dublin and Belfast that U.S. President Joe Biden visited on April 12. The daughter of a union organizer who became a union organizer herself, O’Reilly remembers enduring 90-minute long lineups at the border, seven kilometres from Dundalk, just to go swimming in Northern Ireland.

“That’s not there anymore, there’s seamless travel, and seamless trade across the border and it has benefited the north,” she said.

Despite skeptics, the deal has endured and paid dividends, including for the so-called “Good Friday generation,” those born 1998 onward, who only hear of the conflict from their parents and grandparents. “They get to live their life in peace. That, you can’t put a price on that.”

Hurley, who hails from Magherafelt in Northern Ireland, agrees. He moved to Canada in 1983 as a musician and later became a firefighter. He was a 10-year-old in 1969 and remembers his aunt in Belfast being burned out of her home.

“Through the eyes of the child at that time, it was terrifying,” Hurley said. “Because you didn’t know what was coming next.”

Since 1998, Belfast has spawned an international film industry, driven by the success of Game of Thrones, and realized tourism spinoffs. Foreign direct investment and post-secondary education have boomed on both sides. Since Brexit, Ireland is the only primarily English-speaking state in the European Union and Northern Ireland has been able to negotiate a special status to avoid the return of a hard border.

Sinn Fein has proposed the Dublin government set-up a citizens’ assembly to study unifying the 26 counties in the republic with the six in the north. Hurley called the 1998 agreement the first big step toward real democracy on the island of Ireland and unity would be the next logical step, if done right.

“The economics as they are right now don’t make any sense at all, for such a small island,” he said.

In “Modelling Irish Unification,” University of B.C. political science professor Kurt Huebner analyzed a scenario whereby the tax system is harmonized, trade barriers reduced, government duplication eliminated, the north adopts the Euro and the republic assumes the north’s deficit. Huebner estimated in 2015 that uniting Ireland would grow its GDP by €32.5 billion (or $48 billion) eight years after unification.

Hurley points to the establishment of the Ireland-Canada Chamber of Commerce Vancouver in 2017 and Irish Consulate in 2018 as local legacies of the 1998 deal.

The 2021 census estimated 627,000 British Columbians have Irish background. Before the pandemic, B.C. exported $19.3 million of goods annually to Ireland, almost half of which were measuring or checking instruments, appliances and machines. Dublin was the first stop of then-Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation Minister Ravi Kahlon’s European trade mission in May 2022. He met with government and industry officials about food and horticulture, biotech and mass timber.

Just like B.C., however, O’Reilly said housing affordability is a crisis in Ireland, a significant impediment to trade and retaining the young, educated workforce.

“We can’t simply go, ‘we’ve made it to 25 years now, pat on the back, didn’t we do well?’” she said. “It’s about looking forward, and for us, we’re looking forward to the prospect of a unity referendum, north and south, in the next 10 years.”

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Bob Mackin A touring Irish politician said the

Diplomat says Taiwan has a lot to offer Canada in combatting China’s interference

Bob Mackin

Taiwan’s top diplomat in Vancouver said the 10 Members of Parliament touring the island nation this week are not only talking trade, but learning about advanced efforts to counter interference by the People’s Republic of China.

Lihsin Angel Liu (TECO/Twitter)

The self-governing democracy is preparing to elect a new president next January, as President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party completes her second term. Lihsin Angel Liu, director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO), Taiwan’s de facto consulate in Vancouver, said Taiwanese are expecting the Chinese Communist Party and its proxies to meddle in the election again.

“We are facing more-aggressive cognitive warfare from the PRC,” Liu said.

The government has co-operated with a variety of civil society organizations to monitor, fact-check and debunk any kind of fake news that could disrupt the Taiwanese population.

“So there is a whole-of-the-government approach to fight against the Chinese cognitive warfare against Taiwan,” Liu said.

The most-prominent group is called the Doublethink Lab, but there are others providing similar services, with names like Cofacts, MyGoPen, Taiwan FactCheck Center and Fake News Cleaner.

Doublethink’s 2021 report on the 2020 presidential election, called Deafening Whispers, found countless disseminators of political and financial disinformation in both China and Taiwan, whose goal was to disrupt the election and influence its outcome. Many pushed a narrative that “democracy is a failure” in order to cast China in a favourable light and belittle both Taiwan and Hong Kong. Tsai won in a landslide, but Doublethink warned against complacency.

“Unlike the previous view that China’s cyber army is only ‘cheerleading’, China’s information operations are also negative and aggressive. They amplify discord, harshly criticize certain ideologies, and fabricate conspiracies,” said the report.

Liu said it wasn’t the first time Taiwanese resisted Mainland China propaganda. In 2014, the Sunflower Movement stopped the ruling Kuomintang government’s trade agreement with China, amid a media campaign to convince Taiwanese to develop closer ties with China.

The MPs from four parties, led by National Defence Committee chair John McKay (Liberal), and including Surrey Liberal MPs Ken Hardie and Randeep Sarai, arrived in Taipei as China’s military was wrapping up three days of war games to intimidate Taiwan after Tsai returned from a trip that included a Los Angeles meeting with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Xi Jinping has made annexing the nation of 23 million, roughly the size of Vancouver Island, a priority for China and has threatened to use force. The U.S. has promised to defend Taiwan if China attacks. China and Taiwan are separated by the 180-kilometre Taiwan Strait, but Taiwan’s territory also includes the the Kinmen Islands, just 10 km from Xiamen in China’s Fujian province.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and the Canadian MPs on tour. (President.Gov.TW)

When the delegation met with Tsai on April 12, she said that it is critical for democracies to stand together, in the face of authoritarian expansionism.

“Canada is a very important democratic partner to Taiwan. We will do our utmost to jointly safeguard the values of freedom and democracy with Canada and other like-minded international partners,” Tsai said.

According to a transcript on Tsai’s website, McKay said the group was eager to learn how Taiwan has strengthened its democracy and prosperity amid the challenges of its bigger, hostile neighbour across the Taiwan Strait.

“I’m sure you’ve been briefed on the interference and influence operations carried on by the government of China in Canada,” McKay said. “And that has heightened our awareness of these times and brought us together as nations – democratic nations who are facing this menace.”

Liu said the trip to Taiwan also includes meetings about Indigenous relations. Like Canada, Taiwan is also embracing reconciliation with Indigenous people.

“Transformative justice, as we call in Taiwan, is what President Tsai since her election, as President of Taiwan, she has vowed to do something for the Indigenous community,” she said.

Taiwan’s Indigenous affairs ministry has endeavoured to spur economic and education opportunities for Indigenous people. Indigenous groups have also traveled to B.C. to collaborate with First Nations here.

“To talk about cultural and language revitalization for both countries, to learn from each other. I think this means a lot,” Liu said.

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