Redeye

This week, Vancouver City Council heard directly from sex trade advocates about service cutbacks, a questionable unity agreement crafted by the three progressive parties, lifeguards, community centre renewals, baseball and lots more. Ian Mass joins us today with his City Beat report.

African American sculptor Selma Burke chronicled many of the events of the last century in her art: lynchings, the Harlem Renaissance, the Holocaust, and the assassination of Martin Luther King. Two Calgary playwrights have created an award winning play based on her life. The manuscript is now a book, Selma Burke: Carving a Sculptor's life.   We speak with one of the authors, Caroline Russell-King.

Paloma Housing Co-op was founded in 1983 by a group of people in Vancouver. This year marks the coop’s 40th anniversary and there’s a film to celebrate that milestone. It’s called In It Together: Stories from Paloma Housing Coop. We speak with producer Pat McClain, an original member of the coop, and director Ben Walsh, who is currently the president of the board.

In Alberta, Danielle Smith's government is putting nine questions to a province-wide referendum in October. These include proposals to restrict social services for some immigrants. In a recent article, Esri Ari and Bronwyn Bragg say that these questions fuel an ‘us versus them’ divide in Alberta. We speak with Esri Ari.

In 2019, BC premier John Horgan and his government passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act or DRIPA. Now current premier David Eby says DRIPA poses “legal liabilities” for the government and was intending to introduce a bill to pause sections of the Act but withdrew it when it became clear that the government didn’t have enough votes to make it pass. Terry Teegee is Regional Chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations and a member of The First Nations Leadership Council.

Paueru Gai is the Japanese name for the Powell Street neighbourhood in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It was a place of early settlement for Japanese Canadians and of their forced removal during the years of internment in World War II. It’s also been a site of regeneration for the community since 1977 when the first Powell Street Festival took place. Emiko Morita was the executive director of the festival from 2015 to 2024 and is editor of the new book, Return to Paueru Gai, published this month by Arsenal Pulp Press. Emiko Morita joins us in this episode.

The BC government is currently reviewing the effectiveness of Bill 48 brought in two years ago. It established precedent-setting protections for platform workers. Platform workers are predominantly racialized, migrant and new immigrant workers. BC Policy Solutions advocates for closing the worker protection gap between gig workers and other employees. We speak with Véronique Sioufi.

If you have never been homeless, you probably have a lot of misconceptions about what it means to live on the street. Street Medicine 101 is a series of short videos that aims to dispel them. It features Dr Jill Wiwcharuk, known to her patients as Street Doctor Jill. She is a Victoria-based family and ER physician, specializing in addictions, inner city family medicine and emergency medicine. We speak with Street Doctor Jill in today’s episode.

At the end of March, the BC government quietly eliminated its Climate Action Secretariat. This is the long-running agency that produced and implemented climate policy across government ministries. The Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions says that although the Secretariat is gone, the cuts as a “reconfiguration.” To find out what’s going on with BC’s climate policy, we’ve contacted Sven Biggs, Canadian oil and gas campaign director for Stand.earth.

Next week, Vancouver City Council will be talking about the 2025 homeless count, a big money ask from the Park Board to deal with the poor condition of our recreation facilities and parks, and lots more. Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.