Posts from — March 2011

Despite the controversies, New York’s aggressive expansion of bike lanes is winning the battle of public opinion. I suspect similar results will obtain here in Vancouver.

Will Wisconsin’s war on public sector unions move north, as speculated in today’s Globe by Konrad Yakabuski?

It already has, in the case of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who is driving ahead with his commitment to privatize garbage collection.

But why is public sector compensation ahead of pay rates for comparable private sector jobs? At least part of the reason, according to labour economist Andrew Jackson, is the existence of pay equity for women in the public sector. Another is the much smaller pay gap in the public sector between visible minority workers and their white workmates.

British Columbia, of course, has already had at least two rounds of the Wisconsin syndrome. In 1983, then Premier Bill Bennett brought in a “restraint” program that attacked a wide range of union conditions and social benefits, including human rights protection. The resulting general strike brought the province to a standstill and Bennett’s career never recovered, despite the concessions he made in the “Kelowna Accord” to end the strife.

Then there was Premier Gordon Campbell’s massive legislated 15 percent wage rollback targetting the Hospital Employees’ Union in 2002. Although Campbell’s bills purported to leave pay equity intact, the result was drastic wage cuts for tens of thousands of women workers they have yet to recover. Health care services formerly delivered by health authorities were contracted out.

The legislation triggered years of turmoil, including illegal strikes. The Supreme Court of Canada later ruled Campbell’s Bill 29 violated HEU members’ right to freedom of association under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

So will Wisconsin come to BC? It may come down to what lessons incoming Premier Christy Clark has drawn from our own province’s history.

Debate about the future of Vancouver’s Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts should intensify next month as the city’s engineering staff reaches the half-way point of a consultant’s study on the options to remove all or part of the city’s abandoned freeway project.

Gordon Price has confirmed April 7 as the date for a Simon Fraser University public forum on the issue that will include former city planner Larry Beasley a lead member of the city’s consulting team. Details will be available here next week. Soon after, the phase 1 report on the Viaducts will go to council.

That’s just a week after the Vancouver visit of Kee Yeon Hwang, the Seoul engineer who removed an entire expressway to daylight the city’s ancient and sacred stream.

On Saturday, I’ll be doing my sixth community meeting on the Viaducts with a group of Chinatown community leaders, the second discussion in that neighbourhood. Earlier meetings occurred in Grandview, Strathcona and Citygate.

Meanwhile, Moshe Safdie, the globally-renowned architect who designed the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library, has urged Toronto to consider tearing down the Gardiner Expressway, the decrepit freeway that slices the waterfront away from the city core.

Safdie’s latest project on the waterfront backs up to the Gardiner, which is more often a parking lot than a thoroughfare. The Gardiner will eventually come down, he says, because “it’s too divisive.” This paradigm shift, however, will not occur during Mayor Rob Ford’s term, which is intended to see the end of the “war on the car.”

What’s the next step in the City of Vancouver’s fight against poverty and addiction? That question was very much in the air this morning at a meeting of the Four Pillars Coalition convened by Mayor Gregor Robertson.

It’s been almost 10 years since NPA Mayor Phillip Owen was forced out by his own party for championing the Four Pillars Strategy and a supervised injection site as the answer to Vancouver’s crisis of addiction and HIV infection.

The fate of Insite, opened in 2003 thanks to the leadership of Mayor Larry Campbell, will be settled once and for all May 12 by the Supreme Court of Canada. That’s the day the court will release its decision on an appeal, launched by the Harper Conservatives, of a BC Supreme Court ruling that blocked Ottawa’s attempts to shut the site down.

These days, Insite is turning away potential clients, particularly on welfare cheque days when the line-ups virtually stretch out the door.

The scientific analysis is clear: Insite has reduced HIV infection rates, overdose deaths, street disorder and drug crime. Now the Urban Health Research Initiative has concluded the site is also helping addicts obtain treatment and get clear of their addiction.

Dr. Julio Montaner, executive director of the Centre of Excellence for HIV/AIDS, told this morning’s meeting that the success of harm reduction strategies and HAART — highly active anti-retroviral therapy — have combined to produce dramatic drops in HIV infection rates. In effect, HAART treatment  is also preventing new infections.

But Ottawa, far from heeding the science, remains focussed on failed strategies and even seeks to shut Insite down. [Read more →]