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Bob Mackin

Three months after losing the Vancouver mayoralty to Ken Sim, Kennedy Stewart said he is excited to be back at Simon Fraser University with a promotion.

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

Stewart announced Jan. 16 that he is the new director of the Centre for Public Policy Research, almost a dozen years after he put his career as a political science professor on hold to become the NDP MP for Burnaby-Douglas. He also has a book manuscript due at month-end.

“It was nice to just catch my breath after such a busy time in my life,” Stewart said of the last few months of 2022. “I love writing. It’s kind of something I really missed.”

When Stewart missed out on a second term in the Oct. 15 civic election, he became the first incumbent to lose since one of his mentors, Mike Harcourt, defeated Jack Volrich in 1980. Despite Sim and his ABC Vancouver landslide, Stewart won’t say no to another run at public office. 

“What I’ve learned over the years, is that you really have to have a window to walk through and right now I don’t see — there’s not a window that’s open for me, and that’s fine,” Stewart said. “There may never be another window that’s open for me. But, you always, always keep your eye open.”

The book he’s working on is called “Decrim: How We Decriminalized Drugs in British Columbia,” through Douglas and McIntyre. The Jan. 31 deadline coincides with the beginning of Health Canada’s three-year pilot project to decriminalize possession of up to 2.5 grams of hard drugs. When the book hits the shelves in spring, Stewart said readers won’t get an academic or health-flavoured tome. Instead, an insider’s lesson on how to make tough policy changes that will include the perspective of a mayor during two deadly public health crises.

Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart (Twitter)

“It’s hard to disentangle the two because they’re so connected,” Stewart said.

Looking back at his four years at 12th and Cambie, and the 2022 campaign, Stewart said he has no regret. He came as advertised.

“I was arrested and tried to stop the pipeline, six months before I took over the mayor’s position, so people knew what they were getting was a very progressive mayor. And so, you know, the shingle that I hung out in both elections was exactly that. I was going to do everything I could on the drug issue, tried to push transit forward, especially the SkyTrain to UBC, and to build as much housing as possible.”

Stewart also became known as a critic of the Vancouver Police Department, after the December 2019 public handcuffing of a Bella Bella Indigenous man and his granddaughter who were trying to open a bank account at a downtown BMO branch. 

“I think as a mayor, you have a duty to call that out,” he said. 

Stewart didn’t stop there. He voted in 2020 to cut the VPD budget by 1%. In early 2022, with a highly publicized spike in repeat offenders assaulting strangers, he gave opponents a gift by calling the city safe. The Vancouver Police Union registered as a third-party for the first time and endorsed Sim for mayor. 

“My opponents tagged me with that, fairly or unfairly, and you know what’s remarkable is, the city’s exactly the same as it was on October 15, it’s exactly the same as it was on October 16,” he said. “But you’re not seeing the same level of kind of outcry about this, and that, to me, shows you how much of that was just part of a political campaign.”

Voters got their wish, he said, electing a centre-right mayor who wants to be tough on crime. “All evidence shows that that approach won’t do anything, but I guess time will tell.”

Dustin Rivers (aka Khelsilem), Mayor Kennedy Stewart and Coun. Christine Boyle (Twitter)

A bigger factor in his defeat, Stewart believes, was his aggressive support for the Broadway Plan, which got Westside homeowners “pretty angry at me.”

“If you look at some of those public hearings, you’re trying to put in a six-storey rental building in Kits and you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Westside residents coming out and fighting it. You know, that went all the way through the four years of my mayoralty.”

Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents paid Stewart a visit at the end of last May, warning that the government of China could meddle in his bid for a second term. In early 2021, Stewart had sworn-off meetings with Chinese officials after Beijing sanctioned Conservative MP Michael Chong, his collaborator on a political science volume, after the vote to declare China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims as genocide. Stewart was also keen on exploring closer trade with Taiwan through a friendship city arrangement with Kaohsiung, and expressed support for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last summer in an interview with a Chinese-language newspaper.

“We did pick up on the ground through the campaign a couple of instances where [foreign interference] may have been the case, but it’s it’s hard to prove that,” Stewart said.

“For me, I’ll always land on the side of democracies. I am very worried about the Taiwan situation. I think you look at what’s happening in Ukraine now and how that affects both local people and the world economy, I think we have we have a high risk of that happening in Taiwan as well.”

What was the biggest lesson Stewart learned in office, that he will convey to students in the classroom? The pace of policymaking. Such as when he successfully urged health officials to close bars and restaurants early in the pandemic, effectively cancelling St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. 

“If you screw up, you totally wear it and it is hard to shake, and if you do get it right, you may not succeed in getting the change you need. So that’s it, it’s the speed, it was quite astounding of how fast you had to pick the course that you were going to follow.”

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Bob Mackin Three months after losing the Vancouver

Bob Mackin

The 28-year-old North Vancouver man guilty of one count of conveying a false message with intent to alarm a seniors’ care home actually made 63 malicious crank calls to four managers, six nurses and two administrators early in the pandemic.

Lynn Valley Care Centre (Mackin)

Crown prosecutor Lara Sarbit told a Provincial Court sentencing hearing on Jan. 16 that Taymour Aghtai was motivated by “his own entertainment” March 7-8, 2020, after public health officials declared a COVID-19 outbreak at Lynn Valley Care Centre. Aghtai pleaded guilty in December 2021 for pretending to be a B.C. Centre for Disease Control employee who ordered the facility to lock down and send staff home. Sarbit said Aghtai even falsely told at least one employee that she had contracted the virus. 

Sarbit said that staff were already afraid to work because of the outbreak and uneasy about the mixed messages they received during the night Aghtai spread disinformation. Some areas of the facility missed more than 80% of staff on the morning of March 8, 2020. Night shift staff worked overtime, managers less familiar with residents reported to work and some family members even stepped in to assist their relatives. 

One of the elderly residents became the first-known victim of the disease in Canada later on March 8, 2020.

“[Aghtai] put people’s lives at risk,” Sarbit said. “I certainly cannot say that the male who passed away that evening wouldn’t have passed away but for Mr. Aghtai’s actions. It may well have been that he passed away regardless, but, certainly Mr. Aghtai’s actions would have impacted on the amount of care and attention he was able to receive in his final hours.”

The calls were reported to the RCMP on March 9, 2020. 

Three months later, by the time the outbreak was declared over, 76 residents and staff had caught the virus and 20 residents had died. 

North Vancouver Provincial Court (B.C. Courthouse Libraries)

Aghtai also pleaded guilty to public mischief and conveying a false message with intent to alarm after a swatting incident that targeted the Fields store in Parksville on Nov. 15, 2019. Sarbit told court that Aghtai called the Oceanside RCMP detachment, pretending to be a store employee hiding in a store bathroom, claiming that a black man wearing body armour was randomly shooting people in the store. 

Ten police officers rushed to the store on high alert, but found no shooter and no victims. Aghtai also called the store manager at her home the next day, pretending to be a police officer.

“It’s clear from Mr. Aghtai’s history that he knew his false call prompt a large police response.

In doing so, he was placing any black males who may have been in the vicinity at risk of harm,” she said. “His choice to impersonate a police officer when calling the manager the next day on your private number of causes for loss of fear and sorry a sense of fear and a loss of trust.”

The mobile phone that Aghtai used for both crimes was in his name, but paid for by his mother. 

Sarbit said Aghtai comes from a family with significant wealth, but his employment history is limited —he has worked as a computer technician for his father’s construction company and as a security guard in a brothel.

“He would have what I would describe as an entitled upbringing, where his parents continue to support him financially.”

Sarbit said that Aghtai had a criminal history dating back to 2008 for making hoax phone calls that falsely alleged heinous crimes or impersonated police officers. Sometimes he made calls to seek revenge against enemies, other times to coax recipients to inadvertently cause damage. He also has a record of assault, robbery, break and enter, confinement and weapons offences, and violating court orders. Also in 2020, he stole personal protective equipment from a seniors care home and escaped lawful custody at Richmond Hospital where he assaulted two corrections officers by threatening them with a contaminated syringe. 

Sarbit said a 2014 psychological assessment concluded that Aghtai was a narcissistic, anti-social alcohol abuser with psychopathic tendencies. 

Sarbit recommended a sentence of two years less a day plus three years probation. Aghtai’s defence lawyer, Josh Oppal, asked for a 16-to 18-month sentence. 

A judge reserved decision. Since Aghtai has remained in custody since September 2020, and is eligible for a time-served credit, he is unlikely to serve more time for the Parksville and North Vancouver crimes. 

Oppal said his client should receive a shorter sentence because his guilty plea cancelled the trial and that his time behind bars happened during the pandemic when there were limited visitation opportunities and frequent lockdowns. 

“Clearly serious offences, clearly a related record, it’s not denied these are offences that had some impact,” Oppal said. 

When Aghtai addressed the court Jan. 16, he expressed remorse for the crimes and apologized to everyone at the Lynn Valley Care Centre, the Fields store and his family. 

“I want to apologize to the families of the people at the Lynn Valley Care at the time, I didn’t think it would have as much of an impact as it did, I was really looking at it as tunnel vision I was under the influence,” he said.

Aghtai vowed not to repeat the behaviour and said his goal is to become a law-abiding, respectful member of society.

“I have to think of the words to describe it, but I find it disgusting and sad that I’ve wasted so much. It’s my actions that have resulted in loss of so much time,” he said.

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Bob Mackin The 28-year-old North Vancouver man guilty

For the week of Jan. 15, 2023:

Why did December’s snowstorm paralyze Vancouver International Airport operations? That’s what a House of Commons committee wanted to know Jan. 12, when the airport authority’s chief executive testified.

YVR CEO Tamara Vrooman (House of Commons)

It was the worst December dump since 2008, when the countdown to the 2010 Winter Olympics forced YVR to buy new snowplows. Since then, the airport authority has boasted it has what it takes to beat old man winter. 

On this edition of theBreaker.news Podcast, hear highlights of Vrooman’s testimony. 

Plus a commentary and Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

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For the week of Jan. 15, 2023: Why

Bob Mackin

The detainee found dead in the Surrey immigration holding centre on Christmas Day was a Taiwanese national described in media reports there as a cryptocurrency marijuana ring mastermind. 

Pan Yuan, 25, had fled to Canada in 2022 and been arrested last October, according to the English language Taiwan News, which said the cause of death was suicide.

Pan Yuan of Taiwan, who died in a Canadian immigration jail (ETtoday)

Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) had announced the death on Dec. 27, but did not release the cause or identity, citing privacy laws. CBSA said the detainee was found unresponsive and all revival efforts were unsuccessful before first responders declared the person dead.

Taiwan News reported that Internet influencer Pan was arrested in a September 2021 police raid on her home in New Taipei City. She was charged for importing more than 8 kilograms of marijuana from the U.S. hidden in small packages of tea and biscuits that were paid with bitcoin, ethereum and tether. A warrant had been issued for her arrest last spring after she did not complete court-ordered community service.

Pan’s two-year jail sentence in 2018 for buying marijuana was converted to five-years probation and 240 hours community service. At the time, she claimed she needed pot for medical reasons.

Unlike Canada, the manufacture, transport, sale and possession of marijuana remains illegal in Taiwan, where it is punishable with jail sentences and fines. 

Pan Yuan of Taiwan, who died in a Canadian immigration jail (ETtoday)

“This kind of cross border crime has happened more frequently in recent years between Taiwan and Canada,” said a statement by email from Lihsin Angel Liu, director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vancouver. “Thus we found it necessary for Canada to form a formal channel of judicial cooperation with Taiwan as soon as possible, such as Mutual Legal Assistance Framework or Agreement. As to this individual case, we have no comment on it as it is the privacy of Ms. Pan’s family. We have done our best to provide necessary assistance to the family.”

CBSA said Surrey RCMP and the B.C. Coroner were investigating the in-custody death and CBSA would conduct its own incident review. 

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have campaigned for immigration detention reform in Canada, where 94% of detainees are held for administrative reasons. Last July, NDP Solicitor General Mike Farnworth said B.C. Corrections would end its arrangement with CBSA to hold immigration detainees. At the time, there were 15 people on immigration detention in provincial correctional facilities. 

  • If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call 1-800-784-2433 (1-800-SUICIDE), or call your local crisis centre.

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Bob Mackin The detainee found dead in the

Bob Mackin 

An NDP cabinet minister attended one of the Lower Mainland’s first major Lunar New Year banquets since the pandemic began, where guests included a Chinese military veteran and the president of a society under an RCMP national security investigation.

NDP MLAs Henry Yao (left), George Chow and Anna Kang on Jan. 7 at River Rock casino (Henry Yao/Twitter)

The Canadian Community Service Association (CCSA) celebrated the upcoming end of the Year of the Tiger and beginning of the Year of the Rabbit at River Rock Casino Resort’s show theatre on Jan. 7.

The head table for the gala featured CCSA president Harris Niu, Consul General Yang Shu and two other local People’s Republic of China diplomats, Richmond’s two Liberal MPs, Wilson Miao and Parm Bains, Mayor Malcolm Brodie and Senator Yuen Pau Woo.

NDP Minister of Municipal Affairs Anne Kang and Richmond South Centre MLA Henry Yao, who both hail from Taiwan, and former Minister of State for Trade George Chow were seated across from Rongxiang “Tiger” Yuan. 

Yuan, dressed casually in red from head to toe, served in the People’s Liberation Army, is president of the Canada-China Friendship Promotion Association and a former owner of the Tiger Arms firearms store in Port Coquitlam. 

An English-speaking host introduced Yuan simply as “a representative of the Chinese community in Canada” before he stepped on stage to briefly address the crowd in Mandarin.

“Hello everyone, it is a great honour to participate in the Spring Festival Gala,” said Yuan, according to a translation. “The Spring Festival is the most important festival in China. I hope that the traditional Chinese culture can be carried forward. We are a minority here, we have to remember our traditional culture, but also dedicate our second home Canada. Canada is a great country with inclusive culture and the coexistence of all ethnic groups, with stable and progressive social development. As ethnic minorities, we must also actively participate in and discuss state affairs, we must obey the law and pay taxes according to regulations.”

Yuan’s name appeared in a February 2016 Gaming Policy Enforcement Branch compliance division analysis of cash buy-ins conducted at the River Rock casino cages. Yuan, whose occupation was listed as “real estate company owner,” bought-in for a total $4.19 million in cash during the 2015 calendar year. Eight of the 18 high rollers on the list were in real estate, property development or construction. 

Rongxiang “Tiger” Yuan on Jan. 7 (CCSA/FX186)

Yuan dined with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a Liberal fundraiser and made three July-dated donations to the party, including one to Trudeau’s Montreal-area riding association, totalling $4,300. 

Another of the event’s hosts announced the long list of attendees, which included Zhu Jianguo, president of the Richmond-based Wenzhou Friendship Society.

A Dec. 5 report from China-focused human rights organization Safeguard Defenders said that the Wenzhou Public Security Bureau set up a police station in Vancouver. The following week, the RCMP confirmed that a national security investigation was underway. Officers interviewed neighbours of the society’s clubhouse across from Aberdeen Centre. 

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs forwarded a request to interview Kang to Cailin Tyrrell, a research and communications officer in the NDP government caucus. 

Tyrrell said Kang attended in her role as a Burnaby-Deer Lake MLA and that neither Kang nor Yao would be available for an interview.

In a November interview, Richmond Coun. Kash Heed, a former B.C. Solicitor General, said elected officials should conduct due diligence before attending events “to ensure they’re not caught up in any other foreign influence political moves.”

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Bob Mackin  An NDP cabinet minister attended one

Bob Mackin

Salvatore Vetro said he worked through the Christmas holidays preparing a petition aimed at recalling Premier David Eby as the member for Vancouver-Point Grey.

The actor and former bus driver opposed the NDP government’s vaccine mandate and said the last straw was Bill 36. The NDP majority rammed the Health Professions and Occupations Act through the Legislature in the fall, giving the government more power over a streamlined set of healthcare regulatory colleges.

Salvatore Vetro

“Where was the constituency town hall meeting, or is it only held when an election is held, you know, when they want your vote?” Vetro said.

He submitted his application to Elections BC on Dec. 19 and got the go-ahead Jan. 10. 

To unseat Eby and force a by-election, Vetro’s campaign must sign-up at least 16,449 people between Jan. 17 and March 20. 

But there’s a catch: Every one of those petition signatories must also have been registered to vote in Vancouver-Point Grey at the last election in 2020. 

There’s another catch: They must also be currently registered to vote in B.C.

“We have a good team in place, we know the threshold, we’re going to go above and beyond that,” said Vetro.

It won’t be easy. Eby has won three elections in a row, most recently with 12,602 votes in 2020, a 51.3% share.

Vetro was involved in the Social Credit Party during the 1980s when Bill Vander Zalm was premier. Vander Zalm’s successor, Rita Johnston, set the wheels in motion for recall with a referendum held simultaneously with the 1991 provincial election. Instead of a step forward for democracy, critics called it a gimmick from a defeat-fearing, scandal-plagued party. 

The Mike Harcourt-led NDP beat the Socreds and the BC Liberals became the opposition party. But 81% voted yes to the idea of allowing removal of an MLA between elections. 

David Eby’s swearing-in on Nov. 18, 2022 (BC Gov)

In February 1995, Harcourt’s government made it law. Prince George North NDP MLA Paul Ramsey, the Minister of Education, Skills and Training, was the first recall target in 1997. The petition fell 585 signatures shy of forcing Ramsey out of of office and triggering a by-election. 

Petition organizer Pertti Harkonen cried foul after forensic accountant Ron Parks delivered a report that found Ramsey’s anti-recall campaign overspent by $3,288 and benefitted from union-funded phone canvassers. 

Since then, citizens have tried 26 more times to recall MLAs. On five other occasions, petitioners have returned signatures to Elections BC. Only once did a petition garner the necessary numbers. 

Parksville-Qualicum voters went beyond the 17,020 threshold in 1998 in their bid to get rid of BC Liberal MLA Paul Reitsma. 

Reitsma had been ridiculed after the Parksvillle Qualicum Beach News caught him writing letters to the editor in praise of himself, under the pseudonym “Warren Betanko.” The “throw the bum out” sentiment was a great motivator: 24,530 people signed the recall Reitsma petition, but the official count was never completed. 

Elections BC officially considers it a failure, though Reitsma opponents were satisfied. He resigned rather than face the humiliation of becoming the answer to the trivia question “who was the first MLA recalled in B.C. history?”

Vetro’s will be the third time in Vancouver-Point Grey. The attempt to unseat BC Liberal opposition leader Gordon Campbell failed in 1998. As did one five years later in 2003 when Campbell was premier.

Elections BC imposed a $33,902.72 spending cap on Vetro and Eby, should the premier want to mount a counter-campaign. The expenses limit for recall advertising sponsors is $5,839.16. 

If Vetro can deliver a petition with enough support, Elections BC would have 42 days in which to verify the signatures. 

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Bob Mackin Salvatore Vetro said he worked through

Bob Mackin 

Something was up the day before Mexican forces arrested alleged fentanyl and methamphetamine boss Ovidio Guzman, son of the notorious drug lord known as “El Chapo.”

A Vancouver couple was on the beach near their Mazatlan hotel Jan. 4 and captured video of a dozen soldiers in commando gear emerging from the waves with rifles drawn.

Mexican military commandos on a beach in Mazatlan, the day before a major takedown of a cartel boss. (Dee Douglas)

“I tell you, this could have been a sheer coincidence, I don’t know,” said Greg Douglas, a veteran Vancouver sports media figure and 2010 B.C. Sports Hall of Fame inductee. “But the day before the arrest, we saw armed marine troops patrolling the streets here in Mazatlan. They were in vans, and there were helicopters flying overhead.”

A smartphone clip shot by Douglas’s wife Dee shows one soldier with right knee on the beach, waving comrades to join. They slowly emerge from the waves with rifles drawn and assume a similar kneeling position. A few moments go by and they slowly advance up the beach and kneel again, facing an officer observing the drill. The Douglases observed a similar drill from their eighth floor hotel room a day earlier. 

Guzman’s arrest the next day sparked a fierce battle between soldiers and Sinaloa drug cartel gangsters, mainly centred around state capital Culiacan, which Greg Douglas said is a 90-minute drive from Mazatlan. Mexican media reported 19 cartel gunmen and 10 soldiers died in the battle. Mazatlan’s airport closed and Global Affairs Canada warned Canadians in the region to shelter-in-place.

(DEA)

“Everything, literally, everything shut down. Not a soul on the beach. No automobile traffic at all. Restaurants were closed after the after the word got out about the arrest,” Greg Douglas said. “Normally this area is just spilling over with locals and tourists, and everything went dead quiet.”

The city reopened Jan. 6 and everything was back to normal by Jan. 7. They were not in danger, but had to negotiate an extension at the hotel and re-book their flight to Vancouver with WestJet. 

“Outside of a little added expenses here with the hotel and whatnot, it’s an extended vacation by a week,” Greg Douglas said.

In 2019, a New York judge sent Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to jail for life after a jury convicted him on a laundry list of drug trafficking, murder, firearms and money laundering conspiracy charges. Ovidio Gomez was originally arrested in October 2019 but freed. He remains in custody, facing possible extradition to the U.S. 

The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada’s 2019 public report on organized crime in Canada pointed to Mexican cartels as a major source of cocaine and synthetic drugs, like fentanyl. 

“At least four [high level threats] are linked to money launderers for large international organized crime networks, providing laundering services for domestic and international drug traffickers,” the report said. “Many of these groups have links to Mexican cartels, are suspected of importing synthetic drugs and cocaine and of being involved in illegal gaming, and are involved in the international movement of bulk cash and in loan sharking.”

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Bob Mackin  Something was up the day before

For the week of Jan. 8, 2023:

Supply chain chaos remains, but West Coast ports are experiencing container relief. COVID-19 is raging in China. Russia’s losing war on Ukraine drags on. High inflation is running rampant and a recession looms. 

Supply chain consultant and newsletter publisher Glenn Ross of ACC Group in Surrey, B.C. joins host Bob Mackin to analyze the trends affecting Wall Street and Main Street in 2023. 

Plus Pacific Rim and Pacific Northwest headlines. 

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

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For the week of Jan. 8, 2023: Supply

Bob Mackin

A B.C. Supreme Court justice scolded China Southern Airlines (CSA) for the way it treated a fired manager and behaved in legal proceedings when he ordered the Chinese government-controlled carrier pay $208,000 in damages.

China Southern Airlines flies Guangzhou to Vancouver (CS Air)

Paul Chu sued the Guanghzhou-based company in September 2019 for wrongful dismissal after working for the airline from 2008 to 2018.

Justice Frits Verhoeven’s Jan. 5 verdict said Vancouver general manager Shaohong “Kitty” Chen approached Chu, a former manager and board member of Harmony Airways, to ask for his help in setting up Vancouver operations for CSA in 2008. He eventually was named marketing and business development manager. 

At the start of 2018, Rui “Jocelyn” Zhang replaced Chen, demoted Chu in March 2018 to customer service at the reception desk in the downtown Vancouver office and cut his pay 25%. 

Chu alleged that CSA embarked on a campaign of insincere warnings, unfair discipline and public embarrassment against him. 

“CSA had no complaints about the plaintiff’s work prior to the arrival of Ms. Zhang in January 2018,” Verhoeven wrote. “However, beginning in February 2018, CSA began criticizing the plaintiff’s work, issuing reprimands accompanied by threats of dismissal, and carefully documenting disciplinary measures with self-serving records”

Chu was demoted again and assigned to work at Vancouver International Airport before he was fired Feb. 1, 2019 for alleged incompetence and time theft — despite the airline’s commitment to provide more training. 

After Chu filed his lawsuit, CSA countered with a statement of defence that contained 17 allegations. All were baseless according to Verhoeven, except for Chu’s inability to perform as a frontline airport services worker. The judge noted that prior to the two-day November summary hearing, CSA abandoned the most-serious allegations of fraud, theft of model airplanes and sexual harassment in the workplace. 

“The defendant has singularly failed to establish just cause for dismissal without notice,” Verhoeven wrote. “All of its allegations are either entirely unsupported by evidence or lacking in any merit. Accordingly, the plaintiff is entitled to damages for wrongful dismissal.”

Chu, a Canadian citizen since 1979, was 68 when fired. Since then, the pandemic hit and he unsuccessfully applied for jobs with aviation and tourism-related businesses. His application to work at McDonald’s was rejected, but now works as a DoorDash meal delivery driver.  

Vancouver International Airport control tower (YVR)

Verhoeven ordered CSA to pay Chu $100,000 in punitive damages, $58,053 for wrongful dismissal and $50,000 for mental distress. 

Verhoeven noted CSA is a “very large corporation” which reported the equivalent of $590 million in 2019 profits and rebuked CSA for responding to Chu’s lawsuit with “vicious, vindictive, and unfounded allegations that it knew or ought to have known could not be supported.”

Verhoeven said CSA failed to provide documents from its list of documents, was uncooperative in scheduling the examination for discovery, caused delays in trial scheduling, and failed to pay costs.

“The record shows a pattern of conduct on the part of the defendant designed to stall and frustrate the prosecution by the plaintiff of his claims in this litigation, in circumstances where CSA must be taken to know that the plaintiff’s financial claims were modest, especially in relation to the high costs of litigation and his limited resources,” the judge wrote. “The description ‘hardball tactics’ easily applies to the defendant’s behaviour both before and after his termination.”

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Bob Mackin A B.C. Supreme Court justice scolded

Bob Mackin

A bomb hoax forced evacuation of the GCT Deltaport container terminal on Jan. 5. 

Marko Dekovic, the vice-president of public affairs for GCT Global Container Terminals, said the security incident around 2 p.m. required evacuation and notification of authorities, including the Delta Police Department.

Scene outside Deltaport on Jan. 5 after a bomb threat (Dave Pasin)

Transport Canada said that it closely monitored the situation for the duration of the event. 

“Out of an abundance of caution, a full terminal evacuation was ordered by [GCT],” said spokesperson San Sau Liu. “After the evacuation, the threat was deemed to be non-credible by the Delta Police Department.”

Dekovic said after the all-clear was given, operations resumed for the 1 a.m. shift. 

“Making a bomb threat is a criminal offence and Transport Canada takes every threat seriously,” Liu said. “Any actual, attempted, threatened or suspected unlawful act, which would cause an interference, breach or malfunction of the maritime transportation system is immediately investigated further.”

A contractor on-site at the time noticed traffic backed up quickly, but sympathized with the facility’s staff.

“The sense of urgency was palpable, they were getting everybody out of there as fast as they could,” said Dave Pasin. “I was quite impressed with the way they did it. It was clear the welfare of their employees was paramount.” 

The semi-automated Deltaport terminal is 85 hectares on Tsawwassen’s Roberts Bank with access to the CN and CP rail networks and highways. GCT is proposing a fourth berth on the east side of the Roberts Bank Causeway in order to handle 2 million more containers per year.

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Bob Mackin A bomb hoax forced evacuation of