Category — Environment and Sustainability

The University of BC says the province’s decision to take over the development affairs of UBC, set out in a bill now before the Legislature, will make the campus a “living lab for sustainability” as population at Point Grey surges as high as 50,000 in the coming years.

But Metro Vancouver directors yesterday told Dale Wall, deputy minister of municipal affairs, that the new plan is more like a “benevolent dictatorship” that leaves a huge area of the region without public oversight of development.

Wall told directors the new legislation was designed to end conflict between Metro and UBC over land use on the University Endowment Lands by putting the province in the driver’s seat with the “democratically elected” minister the final authority on zoning.

Since there is no local government at UBC, not a single resident will have voted for the effective mayor. But the province, always slow to respond to Metro concerns, executed its takeover just months after a recent warning to UBC from Metro that the University would have to bring its plans into alignment with regional objectives.

That triggered a charge from UBC president Stephen Toope that Metro’s attitude was an assault on academic freedom, a bizarre claim that found a receptive audience in Victoria.

So from hereon in, Metro planning processes will have the province as a rogue element, with the Minister as land use authority and developer at the same time. Will development revenues flow to improve regional infrastructure? Or will they pay for post-secondary education? Or will they go somewhere else altogether? There will be no elections, so local ratepayers will just have to hope for the best.

Wall did confirm that the minister, effective “Mayor of UBC,” will not sit on the Translink Council of Mayors, despite UBC’s interest in a Skytrain connection to Point Grey. Why bother? He’ll have all the access to information and power he or she needs at the cabinet table.

The Olympic Village Neighbourhood Energy Utility stacks in action.

The Olympic Village’s Neighbourhood Energy Utility,  scheduled to open officially tomorrow, is receiving a final touch-up under the Cambie Bridge, but it is already driving energy, generated from waste heat in the sewer system, to the Olympic Village.

In the long run, this demonstration project may be one of the most important legacies of the Games, a green energy generator that may later be expanded to East False Creek Flats and beyond.

Why five stacks? Each has a role. Today’s steam is a from the system’s boiler.  Others serve other purposes, venting scrubbers and even the emergency diesel back-up generator.

The city’s new procurement policy, the lengthy document that is last but not least on this year’s final regular council agenda, not only tightens oversight over the purchase of goods and services, it will save money and help the city secure environmental and social sustainability from its suppliers. (It’s policy report 6 on this massive council agenda.)

Example: instead of three city purchases seeking office suppliers independently, a single buying system will call on suppliers to compete on price and how green their products from the forest, through the pulp mill and right to the loading dock. Five “category managers” in the new system will each be responsible for finding the best price and value in a particular area of purchasing.

A product of the Vancouver Services Review, the new system streamlines purchasing into a single system to increase buying power and consistency. It implements corporate best practices to ensure more competitive bidding and closer oversight of contracts.

Perhaps most importantly, it allows the city to drive its sustainability agenda with its own purchasing power, encouraging more suppliers to verify they are green and doing everything possible to support the city’s objectives for environmental and social sustainability.

Bridge to a Cool Planet marchers occupy hill at Science World as MLA Spencer Herbert checks messages.

Vancouver’s 1980s peace movement had a decided green tinge to begin with, a No Nukes flavour that morphed quickly into a mass peace movement called End the Arms Race, so broad that both Mike Harcourt and Gordon Campbell marched in the front row with labour, community, religious and peace activists.

Today’s movement to control climate change is back to the future. While the 1980s marches may have helped avert the planet’s end in a series of hot, bright flashes, we’re now in the industrial age’s slow cooker, and all powers, not just superpowers, must be part of the solution.

So it seemed fitting that Cambie Bridge was closed at noon for thousands to seek a Bridge to a Cool Planet, and a hour later a much smaller gathering stood at the south end of Seaforth Park, near the city’s peace flame, where Park Commissioner Stuart MacKinnon helped Vancouver and District Labour Council president Bill Saunders unveil a monument to Kinuko Laskey.

A survivor of Hiroshima, Laskey emigrated to Vancouver, where she refused to talk about her experiences for many years. Ultimately, however, she felt inspired to speak out and became a powerful voice in the city’s mobilization against nuclear war.

The Kinuko Laskey monument unveiled today at Seaforth Park by the Vancouver and District Labour Council.