The Runner Volume 10, Issue 8

december 12, 2017 VOLUME 10 // ISSUE 8 kpu’s student newspaper

FIXING AN UNAFFORDABLE CITY As residents are priced out of Vancouver, experts debate how to address issues of housing supply

News

Culture

Opinions

KSA Prepares 2018 Budget for Final Approval

Visit Cuba and Earn Credits as Part of a KPU Field School

Net Neutrality in Canada Isn’t as Safe as You Might Think

2 table of contents

staff 06

News|KSA prepares 2018 Budget for Final Approval

Coordinating Editor Alyssa Laube editor@runnermag.ca

Managing Editor

Connor Doyle managing@runnermag.ca

Production Manager

Melanie Tan production@runnermag.ca

Art Director

Nicola Kwit art@runnermag.ca

Photo Editor

Braden Klassen photos@runnermag.ca

KSA Vice President Finance & Operations Rawan Ramini says that the 2018 budget represents a significant overhaul for the society—one that future VPs in her position can use as a model for years to come.

10

features|fixing an unaffordable city

Imagine paying $700 per month to sleep in the living room of someone else’s home. It sounds absurd, but it’s becoming an increasingly common practice in Vancouver, where the price of renting or owning a place to live has been on the rise over the past 12 years.

12

culture| Visit Cuba and Earn Credits as part of a KPU field school

“The theme of the Cuba field school is music and culture, and we use that as a window to investigating broader aspects of Cuban society,” says Daniel Tones, the leader of the trip and teacher of the accompanying ARTS 3100 course.

17

opinions|Net Neutrality in Canada is Not as Safe as You Might Think

The death of net neutrality in the U.S. will embolden telecom companies and other corporate interests to push their advantage and put pressure on governments around the world to kill consumer protections.

Staff Writer

Joseph Keller staff@runnermag.ca

#FeatureTweets Web Editor

Mel Pomerleau web@runnermag.ca

Use #kpu or #runnermag in your tweet, and you could be featured in the next issue!

Community Reporter

Ashley Hyshka community@runnermag.ca

Operations Manager Scott Boux office@runnermag.ca 778-565-3801

contributors Epifania Alarcón Daniella Javier Tristan Johnston Gabrielle Lakusta Nat Mussell Jesse Pottinger @RESLUS Lincoln Saugstad

Cover by Braden Klassen

Arbutus 3710/3720 12666 72 Ave. Surrey, B.C, V3W 2M8 778.565.3801 www.runnermag.ca Vol. 10, Issue no. 8 December 12 // 2017 ISSN# 1916 8241

The Runner is student-owned and operated by Kwantlen Polytechnic University students, published under the Polytechnic Ink Publishing Society. The Runner recognises that our work, both in and out of the office, takes place on unceded Coast and Strait Salish territories, specifically the shared traditional territories of the Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Sto:lo and Tsawwassen First Nations. Our name is inspired by the hun’qumi’num meaning of Kwantlen, which is tireless hunters or tireless runners. Just as Kwantlen is adaptable and changing so is The Runner.

editorial 3

From The Editor

Universities must differentiate between free speech and hate speech

(Nicola Kwit)

alyssa laube | Coordinating Editor

News Brief

Wilfrid Laurier University was right to apologize to Lindsay Shepherd, a teaching assistant who was chastised for showing her students a controversial video about using gender neutral pronouns in academic writing. The video demonstrated the thoughts and opinions of an outspoken advocate named Jordan Peterson who disagrees with using the gender neutral “they” as a singular pronoun.

The CBC covered this issue on Nov. 24 and posted the audio from

the meeting held between university administration and Shepherd to discuss a complaint filed by a student about the video that was shown.

“Can you shield people from those ideas? Am I supposed to comfort them and make sure that they are insulated from this? Is that what the point of this is? Because to me that is so against what a university is about,” she says through tears in the recording. “I was not taking sides. I was presenting both arguments.”

The university responded by saying that the arguments she presented

were “counter to the Canadian human rights code,” calling her teaching method “discriminatory” and refusing to acknowledge that Shepherd simply intended to incite a debate by showing the video. She was not approached or criticized by any of the students in her class that day.

Presenting ideas that are hateful, unpopular, and unfounded but still held and promoted is crucial to developing individual ideas. If someone isn’t aware of what they disagree with, it becomes impossible to have a reasonably firm stance on current

issues and events. Understanding that members of the LGBTQ+ community are harmed by dialogues such as those seen in the video allows those who are opposed to those dialogues to form their own opinions about what should be said instead and what they can do in response.

By keeping students in a bubble where they aren’t exposed to shocking and potentially offensive ideas, post-secondary institutions are preventing them from growing personally and intellectually—the very aspect of university that makes it an exciting opportunity for self-improvement.

Shepherd’s argument is that, “in university, all perspectives are valid.”

There is an obvious distinction between acknowledging an idea as existing and acting as a proponent of an idea, and Wilfrid Laurier University’s claim that starting a conversation about pronoun usage is “gender violence” is offensive to the individuals genuinely suffering from gender violence—those being physically, emotionally, and psychologically harmed by bigots who either intentionally discriminate against them or unintentionally inflict damage without being self-critical.

Fortunately, many members of the public have spoken in defence of Shepherd’s methods. Since the audio from the meeting was released and the media began covering the development of the problem, Wilfred

Laurier University has apologized to Shepherd multiple times. However, she believes that the apology is not genuine and was made purely because the institution was being pressured to do so. A task force and third-party investigation has also been launched to address why Shepherd was treated unfairly and what the university ought to do in similar situations in the future.

This is all well and good, and perhaps it will make a difference to how WLU deals with student complaints, but this kind of thing will likely continue to happen around the country as a result of the too-extreme ideologies on social justice that have become increasingly prevalent over the years.

The response to this is simple: a distinction must be made between free speech and hate speech, especially in schools.

The place of a university in protecting students is to ensure that professors are not genuinely harassing, assaulting, threatening, or mistreating them. A professor standing in front of a room of people and telling them that using gender neutral pronouns is wrong and must be prohibited in class would be hate speech, but what Shepherd did was create an opportunity for a balanced conversation. She had a right to know about the complaint, but not to be blindly belittled and reprimanded by her superiors under the guise of fighting discrimination.

Saskatchewan Center for Science and Religion Discusses Spirituality & A.I. at Conference Mel Pomerleau | web editor The Saskatchewan Center for Science and Religion hosted its first international conference at the Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel on Dec. 1 and 2.

Throughout the two-day event, a number of high-profile speakers took to the stage to discuss various aspects of artificial intelligence and how scientific enhancements may impact the human experience. Executive Director for The Saskatchewan Center for Science and Religion, Hongming Cheng, focused specifically on innovations in robotics. “[Robots] can do calculations.

They can even become a professor and do sociology. They can do quantitative or qualitative research,”

says Cheng. “But [machines] are programmed. If they have consciousness in the future, with technological advancements, then how would you come back to define human beings?”

Spirituality—traditionally a human notion—encompasses a broad range of ideas, experiences, and literal thinking, something not yet attainable for robots.

“But now, with technological advancements, we are interested [in] whether or not artificial intelligence can also have the similar sense of spiritualities,” says Cheng.

Keynote speaker Tracey Trothen, a professor at Queen’s University in the School of Religion and the School of Rehabilitation Therapy, discussed the connection between spirituality, sports, and human enhancement.

Trothen examined how therapy relates to human enhancement by citing the famous “Tommy John” surgery. The surgery was once done only to repair torn or stretched ligaments in a player’s throwing arm, but is now a largely elective surgery that some pitchers believe will help them throw faster.

Trothen posed the question, “What does it mean to ‘enhance’ and how is that different than some types of therapy?”

Questions asked of Trothen focused on how and when technological enhancements may be used to improve the human experience.

“It’s probably more important for us to define intelligence because, in the past, a calculator would be considered ‘smart’ because it could actu-

ally calculate large numbers for us,” says Cheng.

The ideas put forth during the conference encouraged attendees to examine human values and consider how technology, science, and human enhancement may alter human lives in the near future.

“We make decisions around what enhancement technologies to pursue and to use, and we’re making [those decisions] based on implicit values that we hold,” says Trothen. “If we believe that spirituality makes us better and is a valuable part of being human, then we’re going to be considering that in our enhancement technology.”

Hongming Cheng, Executive Director for the Saskatchewan Centre for Science and Religion and sociology professor at the Univeristy of Saskatchewan. (Submitted)

4 news

MacMillan House Offers A Place for Recovery amid Vancouver’s Opioid and Housing Crises

Social housing is essential to the city’s most vulnerable residents, now more than ever joseph keller | staff writer Rick Vickers has been in and out of recovery for most of his life. He says that he can’t stay clean without a safe place to live, but believes that he has now found that safe place at Surrey’s MacMillan House.

MacMillan House is run by the Lookout Society which operates shelters, psychiatric facilities, safe consumption sites, and social housing in 11 communities across the Lower Mainland and beyond. The society provides 900 units of social housing.

As the housing affordability crisis in Metro Vancouver makes finding and securing stable housing increasingly difficult for low-income people, it also puts enormous strain on theorganizations responsible for providing help to the homeless and the working poor.

More and more people are finding themselves in need of help in Vancouver, and social housing programs are now more essential than ever for sustaining healthy communities and lowering the number of individuals living on the street.

Vickers moved to Vancouver from a small town out east and discovered heroin not long after. He came to MacMillan House several months ago, following some time in a detox program.

Tucked away in a sleepy, North Surrey neighbourhood, MacMillan House shows that social housing has already saved lives. The duplex house is home to 20 men, many of whom are older, in various stages of addiction recovery. The place has a calm, “homey” atmosphere. The two housing units there each have fridges that are kept well-stocked with a variety of fresh food. It’s a far cry from the life that its residents were living before they arrived there.

“I’ve been in and out of recovery for a long time—mostly in. And I have a lot of support here. I have to stay here. I have to get some clean time, go to meetings,” says Vickers.

“I personally cannot stay clean when

I’m out there [on the street], and I’ve tried. If you have nowhere to go, it’s very depressing. You’re in shelters with people all around you using.”

Vickers can personally attest to the benefits that social housing programs like MacMillan house bring, not just to homeless people suffering from mental health and disabilities, but also to the community at large.

“I’ve committed crimes all my life.

I don’t do crimes when I’m sober,” he says. “I won’t steal anything. I won’t steal bubblegum—but when I’m using, I’ll do armed robbery. I get to that point where I’m just focused on doing drugs.”

Supportive social housing programs like MacMillan House do a lot more than simply give people suffering from addiction a safe place to stay. They provide them with the tools necessary for rebuilding their lives.

“It’s helping people and it’s getting people into recovery that need it, and it’s getting people off the streets. It’s helping people who are going through divorces and they need a place to go.

It’s helping people with mental disabilities, people with no mental disabilities,” says Vickers. “I think it’s a positive [project for the community] one hundred-and-ten per cent.”

He adds, “If there wasn’t places like this, I’d be dead. There’s no way I’d live this long with the way I’ve lived, not a chance.”

Robert Toovey is one of the organizers at MacMillan House. He lives in the building full-time to keep things running smoothly and to provide guidance. He has also spent 25 years recovering from addiction.

“We’ve endeavored to make this a home environment. Most of these people are coming from rehab, sometimes detox, sometimes right out of the shelters,” says Toovey. “By giving them a place where they can feel they’re at home, they can not worry about the incidentals in life …. We can teach them about physical cleanliness, keeping your house clean, just basic things that we take for granted.”

Robert Toovey stands outside MacMillan House. The social housing duplex has enough space for 20 men to live together. (Joseph Keller) People at MacMillan House are able to stay there for up to two years.

While living in the house, residents also take part in group meetings and trauma counseling. When they’re ready, the staff at MacMillan House will help them build a resume and find employment.

Residents are given a certain amount of freedom to go to external recovery meetings, religious services, and other engagements. However, they are expected to show that they are serious about recovery if they are to stay. Obviously, drug use is strictly forbidden, and residents are not allowed to have any contact with people who are actively using.

“You start to actually live a regular life again and your focus becomes completely different. There’s one thing you need to change and that’s everything,” says Toovey. “One of the best things that you can do [for these people is get] one addict helping another.”

Toovey grew up in an abusive home—an experience that he says almost all of the residents of MacMillan House can relate to—and was living on the street by the time he was 13 years old. He was involved in a biker gang before getting a job as a

long-haul trucker at the age of 20.

“I made a damn good living out of it, but most of that ended up going up my nose or in a pipe,” says Toovey.

At 37 years old, it took a punch to the head from a friend to get Toovey on his road to recovery. He was able to get clean through a recovery program in Ontario, and took his job at MacMillan House as a way of helping others get to the place where he is today.

Supportive recovery homes such as MacMillan House provide a vital service, but they are far from the only model of social housing necessary for the Metro Vancouver community.

By nature, social housing needs to take a variety of forms to serve a variety of needs. Supportive home programs where people with addiction and mental health issues live together and support each other differ from simple low-income housing options for the working poor. The concept behind all forms of social housing is providing people with a stable quality of life so that they can transition to once again supporting themselves.

“We’ve been focusing on trying to provide more opportunities to people who are incredibly disenfranchised and incredibly vulnerable, that don’t

The inside of MacMillan House, where Toovey, Vickers, and others in recovery call home. (Joseph Keller)

typically get a choice in terms of what to do next to meet their basic needs,” says Shayne Williams, executive director of the Lookout Society.

Williams says that communities with more low-income housing are more capable of coping with the housing crisis.

“We’re really seeing a time when municipalities have to be zoning,” he says. “They have to be identifying land that they’re willing to put forward for that investment to provide affordable housing in their communities.”

According to the 2017 Homeless Count, the number of homeless people in Metro Vancouver has risen by 30 per cent since 2014. This is putting an intense strain on organizations like Lookout Society. In addition to the “traditional” demographic of people coming to Lookout for services, Williams says there is also a cohort of impoverished working folks who are finding themselves priced out of housing or displaced due to renoviction or demoviction.

The good news, he adds, is that people in this demographic typically don’t need help for very long, and can usually be helped out of the system faster the those who traditionally use Lookout services. Still, the increased number of people in need is incredibly taxing.

“The longer the crisis goes, the more people that get disenfranchised, the more people that live with this challenge of housing, the more that get entrenched in this lifestyle of homelessness, the more difficult it gets to attach themselves back to the community or the systems that they feel have failed them,” says Williams.

“It’s a lot more competitive than it was, and that is obviously making our jobs a lot more difficult, but it also decreases people’s self esteem, their optimism, their hope. It impairs their ability to be well connected to their communities.”

News 5

student Delegate Reports Harassment at CFS Meeting Two members of the KSA and one of RSU say that inappropriate behaviour towards delegates there has gone unaddressed by the Federation alyssa laube | Coordinating Editor Lauren Emberson, Vice-President Student Life and Events for the Ryerson Student Union, has filed an official complaint to harassment officers with the Canadian Federation of Students for how she was treated at the organization’s most recent general meeting.

According to her reports, Emberson experienced what she believed to be targeted discrimination and exclusion at the event, and she wasn’t the only one to feel that way.

Both Tanvir Singh and Jay Reedy, President and VP Student Life of the Kwantlen Student Association respectively, testify that Emberson was treated unfairly, and that they too felt hostility directed towards them from the CFS national executives at the meeting.

“I reached out to an anti-harassment officer at the last meeting [in June] without any follow-up or anything taken. The person who harassed me was still welcome in the space, at the mic, and absolutely no action was taken by the CFS, which was disappointing,” says Emberson. “And then at the most recent meeting as well, they were there again. I filled out a form for two separate incidents, sent it in, and heard nothing back.”

She says that, until other delegates told her, she wasn’t aware that it is possible to submit an official harassment complaint against people from

the Federation. When she filed the report, even after following up with the national executive and chairperson, harassment officers told her that there was nothing that they could do to help. She received a response from the chairperson confirming that the email was received, but so far, no other action has been taken.

Emberson feels that it was inappropriate for the person she complained about in June to be invited back to the November meeting and made a panelist. She says that, during that panel, she was made uncomfortable by that individual, and that, in her opinion, their behaviour was “very intentional.”

“Often the people who use harassment to control the spaces are people who have been going to these spaces for 10 years,” she says.

According to Emberson and Singh, after an apology for this behaviour was requested at the meeting, one of the accused took the mic to admit that they said what Emberson claimed they had said, but did not apologize.

The November CFS annual meeting is the last that Emberson will be able to attend before her term ends. In her incident report, she asked for the issue to be reconciled and for harassment to be taken more seriously at meetings in the future.

Singh and Reedy attended the November meeting together and also felt prejudice there.

At the opening plenary of the

For years, the Canadian Federation of Students has been the target of complaints over instances of harassment at their annual general meetings. (File Photo) meeting, it was mentioned that a delegate had a severe chocolate allergy, but because Reedy’s CFS-booked flight arrived in Quebec after that announcement was made, he wasn’t aware of the risks. When he started eating M&Ms in a meeting the next day, Singh and Reedy say that the Chair of the CFS responded by telling him to stand and leave.

“I had to very meekly pick up my M&Ms, go, ‘Sorry,’ and walk out of the room. I was not aware of this accessibility need whatsoever. No one told me. This was the first time I had heard of it, so I had to sit there afterwards and apologize for igno-

rance that they bred,” says Reedy. “If anyone had approached me on a oneon-one basis and just let me know, I absolutely would have complied.”

Although Reedy doesn’t feel that he was harassed during this incident, he did feel ostracized as a member of a historically anti-CFS student association and believes that “it was very indicative of their culture of public shaming and exclusion.”

“When you’re at the CFS to affect some sort of positive change it’s very demoralizing,” he says.

The next CFS general meeting will be taking place in June. Singh hopes that, over the summer, the Federation

will discuss issues of harassment at its events. He also wants to send more delegates from the Kwantlen Student Association to the next meeting.

“As long as the KSA is a member of the CFS, we should send members to conferences so that we’re able to have our voices heard,” he says.

“When we only send one or two people, we don’t really get the opportunities that we need to and we’re spread way too thin.”

Note: The CFS did not respond to interview requests for this article by press time.

CASA Tackles Problems Felt by Canadian University Students During Advocacy Week

Student representatives, including the KSA’s Caitlin McCutchen, met with government officials in Ottawa Ashley Hyshka | community reporter The goal of the Canadian Alliance of Student Association’s annual Advocacy Week is to “talk about how the government can reduce barriers to post-secondary education,” according to Caitlin McCutchen, VP External Affairs for the Kwantlen Student Association.

McCutchen was in attendance for this year’s Advocacy Week, which was held jointly by CASA and the Quebec Student Union. It took place from Nov. 26 to Dec. 1 in Ottawa.

“Given that the KSA is an observer to CASA and has been for a number of years, they’re always super welcoming,” says McCutchen. “The MPs are always excited to talk to students…[and] I find CASA’s really well organized.”

Over a period of three days, the organizers of the event facilitated a total of 150 meetings, during which students met with MPs, senators, and other stakeholders. McCutchen personally attended eight of those meetings.

CASA prioritized six subjects to discuss with the federal government, accompanying each with a recommendation aimed at improving the quality of education across Canada. The first four recommendations focused on supporting students with disabilities, graduate students, international students, and Indigenous students by providing additional government grants and dismantling traditional barriers to education.

The fifth recommendation involved “Fair Dealing”, a clause of the Copyright Act which allows professors to use excerpts from copyrighted works in an academic setting. The clause is currently up for review in court, and CASA recommends preserving it.

The final recommendation was for the government to develop additional open educational resources, such as free textbooks available online.

CASA wants Canada to invest $8 million annually into creating a national database of OERs, similar to KPU’s existing “Zed Cred” program.

“B.C. is … the leader amongst OERs, and KPU is even more of a

leader,” says McCutchen.

Michael McDonald, CASA Executive Director, says that the organization was pleased with this year’s Advocacy Week.

“We received what I would say is pretty strong support for a number of our requests,” says McDonald, citing the open educational resources, international students, and students with disabilities recommendations as being particularly well-received by government officials.

At its core, McDonald says that CASA “fundamentally believes and advocates … for a post-secondary education system that is affordable, accessible, innovative, and at the highest quality for all students.”

The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations represents approximately 250,000 students across Canada, excluding observers like the members of the Kwantlen Student Association.

McCutchen celebrates the group as “democratic and transparent,” and notes that—unlike the Canadian Federation of Students, of which the KSA is currently a member—CASA

does not require its members to hold a student referendum in order to leave. She adds that no student union will pay more than $50,000 in fees to the Alliance, whereas other organizations charge much more.

At the next KSA Council meeting on Dec. 15, McCutchen will present a report highlighting her experience at Advocacy Week. She plans to recommend that those who occupy her

role in the future continue attending CASA events.

McCutchen says she would like to see the KSA become a full member of CASA, but due to ongoing legal trouble with the B.C. Federation of Students, and the high fees that KPU students already pay to the Alliance of B.C. Students and the Canadian Federation of Students, it’s currently impractical to do so.

The KSA’s VP External Life, Caitlin McCutchen, attended this year’s Advocacy Week event in Ottawa. (Ashley Hyshka)

6 news

KPU to Admit Six New Students Based on Portfolios, Not Grades

Pilot program aims to prove that letter grades aren’t the best way to measure student potential joseph keller | staff writer The days of provincial exams and GPAs may be coming to an end in B.C. thanks in part to a project by Kwantlen Polytechnic University Educational Studies professor David Burns and his team.

Burns, who is the primary investigator for the Kwantlen Educational Policy Incubator (KEPI), believes that a letter grade is not the best indicator of a student’s potential. Instead, he argues that it’s the competency of a student’s work that acts as the best way for universities to tell what that student is capable of.

In September, Burns and KEPI hope to prove this by admitting six students to KPU based on their portfolios alone, regardless of the letters on their high school transcripts.

“In the early years of K-12 education you have basically only competency-based assessment,” says Burns. “It’s only in the high school and university years that we have this momentary obsession with summarizing you in this very, very small number of letters, and it never comes up again in your life.”

Burns says that, in the context of

the pilot program, ‘portfolio’ is the term used to describe a student’s collection of work which, through a competency-based assessment, shows what they know and are capable of.

KEPI is a research team consisting of Burns and a group of carefully selected KPU students. Over the past several months, the team has been collecting portfolios from Surrey high schools and removing their identifying information so that the evaluations remain anonymous. Burns calls the results “extraordinary”.

For instance, he read an impressive student proposal for offering humanitarian aid in Turkey to help cope with the Syrian refugee crisis. Burns says that this particular portfolio piece demonstrated the students’ potential for a number of KPU programs, including political science, geography, and sociology.

The next step for KEPI is to develop a policy system that would allow students to apply to university with their portfolios instead of just their grades. Burns hopes to come back— not just to KPU, but to post-secondary institutions across the province—with confirmation that this is a

practical method of assessment.

Through a partnership with the Surrey School District called the Surrey Portfolio Pathways Partnership, KEPI has received permission from KPU to admit six students on the basis of their portfolios next September.

The students will likely be selected in January, and during the six months leading up to their first semester at KPU, they will work with KEPI to help develop policies regarding what should be looked for in student portfolios. They will also create exemplar portfolios to be used as models by future students and admissions departments.

This project is an effort to shift university admissions away from the traditional assessment that is already taking place in K-12 schools. The transition from focusing on “content to competency” means that students will be judged less on their ability to memorize and recite information.

“The question now becomes, ‘What happens when you finish grade 12?’” asks Burns. “Because that whole [competency] system is … a good way to conduct education, but the universities, at the end of the day,

KPU Educational Studies professor Dr. David Burns is the lead investigator for the Kwantlen Educational Policy Incubator. (kpu.ca) need a pretty small range of data to determine if you can go to university, and if so, to what program.”

He says that research shows that GPA is not a strong indicator of what people have actually achieved in their lives.

“It’s kind of the dirty secret of public education that most of the grades that you’re assessed going through K-12 don’t say a great deal about your future success, and we pretend like they do,” says Burns. “The thing that I’m really passionate about is the way that we use those grades to either

open or close doors for people.”

If we see a phase-out of traditional acceptance criteria at universities, Burns believes that most universities will have trouble adjusting. He’s hoping to help bring KPU ahead of the curve.

“I think, as [KPU] itself matures— and we’re still young in the sense that we’re developing a lot of our values and a lot of our direction as we go—I see us moving further and further towards what people need rather than setting bars to make sure people come in with certain things,” he says.

Kwantlen Student Association Prepares 2018 Budget for Final Approval

Here’s how the KSA is likely to be using your student fees next year joseph keller | staff writer The Kwantlen Student Association’s 2018 budget has been drafted by its finance committee and is scheduled to receive final approval at the next KSA Council meeting on Dec. 15.

Toward the end of each year, the KSA Finance & Operations Committee works to create a plan for how the association will use the money entrusted to it by KPU students over the following year. The KSA manages millions of dollars, and the allocation of these funds is not a job they take lightly.

KSA Vice President Finance & Operations Rawan Ramini says that the 2018 budget represents a significant overhaul for the society—one that future VPs in her position can use as a model for years to come.

“This is my last year as a VP ... and I wanted the last year to count. I wanted to create a budget that future VP Finances don’t need to worry about too much,” says Ramini. “I’ve worked very hard on creating a very sustainable, tight budget that will be nice to work with.”

The process of creating the yearly budget begins with the VP Finance looking over the society’s operations over the past three years. By comparing spending trends during that time,

they are able to see which line items are likely to need more funding and which ones can safely be cut down.

The object is to have as few cases as possible of additional funding needing to be allocated throughout the year.

Next, the VP Finance meets with KSA staff to discuss what needs to be seen in the budget to accommodate the projects that the association will be working on that year. After gathering and assessing the projected costs, the finance committee convenes to decide what is feasible, what isn’t, and how much can be allocated to each project. The budget is revised three times before it’s sent to Council.

One of the most interesting changes in the 2018 budget is the dedication of $162,684 towards student awards and bursaries—an increase of nearly $100,000 as compared to last year. Some of this cash is being used to top up existing endowed awards, but most of it is being used to create new ones. The KSA has yet to decide what the criteria for these new awards will be.

“We looked at the reserves this year and it doesn’t make sense to have all this money just sitting there when we can use it for awards, topping up our endowment awards and creating new awards,” says Ramini.

The new budget will also change the way that clubs and events are funded. Support funding for clubs has been decreased from $50,000 to $35,000 because, according to Ramini, these funds were not being used in full. In addition, the $15,000 fund specifically for multicultural events has been merged into the amount allocated to general event funding.

The finance committee has created several new line items for the clubs and events worksheet: $8,000 for club expenses up to $300, $25,000 for KSA-led events, and $5,000 for student-led events. The student-led events funding was added so that students who are not affiliated with a club but want to hold an event on campus will have money available to do so.

“I’m very proud of [the changes to clubs and events funding], and we didn’t have to pull any money from reserves. We stuck with what we have,” says Ramini.

Other changes include an additional $15,000 for Active KSA events, $5,000 for the newly introduced healthy living workshops, and a $10,000 cut towards funding for the planned student union building.

The finance committee has also introduced spending authorities in

this budget. This means that certain KSA staff members will be able to use funds for line items applicable to their position without having to wait for the expense to be approved at an executive meeting. Staff with spending authorities will still need to

submit expense reports for all funds used.

The KSA’s budget for 2018 will be available on their website once approved by Council.

KSA VP Finance & Operations Rawan Ramini. (Braden Klassen)

news 7

Surrey May Soon Be Home to a Pro Sports Stadium Councillor Bruce Hayne believes it will be a great opportunity to bring new entertainment options to Surrey

Ashley Hyshka | community reporter Surrey residents soon might not have to travel far to see professional sports teams in action. According to City Councillor Bruce Hayne, the creation of a professional sports stadium has been in the works for the last six months.

Hayne says that a group approached the city with a concept for a project which government officials found very interesting. However, they were unable to source only one organization for the project, so the city government sent out requests to the local business community for expressions of interest in building a spectator facility.

“We’ve made it pretty clear that the city is open for business when it comes to proposals from the private sector,” says Hayne.

He explains that all financial responsibility for the stadium and its operations would rest solely on the proponents of the project, and that the city’s only requirement would be supplying the land to build the stadium on.

Because he is limited by confidentiality agreements, Hayne can neither confirm nor deny rumors about which sport will be played in the arena, but says that local media has widely

reported that it’s likely to be home to a professional soccer team, possibly one in the Canadian Premier League.

The application process closed in mid-November and the city has now begun evaluating the applicants. Surrey officials will take about six weeks to evaluate proposals, after which a report will be filed to closed Council.

Surrey City Council will then decide whether or not to initiate a more detailed discussion with their chosen applicant.

“If there is a proposal in our evaluation that meets our criteria and that we’re interested in, then that report will come to Council, and recommendations will be to either go ahead and start to negotiate with a preferred proponent, or to stop right there and not go any further,” says Hayne.

Three potential construction sites have been put forth by the city, including the Bridgeview area near the Scott Road SkyTrain Station, Surrey City Centre in Whalley, or the Cloverdale Fairgrounds. Hayne notes, however, that the choice of construction site will ultimately be up to the proponent.

According to Hayne, the main benefit of having a professional sports stadium in Surrey would be creating “another option [that] residents have to see a higher-level caliber of sport

Though City Councilor Bruce Hayne cannot confirm which sport will be played in the stadium, local media has widely reported that it will be soccer. (Flickr/DenisenFamily) without having to leave the community.” He also believes that having the stadium and team operate in the local area could inspire young athletes to “strive further in their athletic careers.”

It will also provide a multi-purpose venue that will host not only its chosen sport, but also a variety of other events such as concerts, which the city currently doesn’t have the capac-

ity to host.

Hayne adds that, in situations such as this, a potential drawback is that it is uncertain how this project will be funded. He cites the Abbottsford Arena, which was paid for by the city with the promise of a hosting a professional sports team, as a recent case study that has similarities to Surrey’s future sports stadium. Unfortunately, that was a dream which never fully

materialized, and Abbottsford residents were then on the hook for paying operational expenses.

Actualizing that kind of scenario, Hayne says, “is not something [the city is] hoping to entertain.”

Policy Studies Students at KPU Offer Input for the Future of Newton Sustainability Students in POST 4900 took part in public forums about environmentalism with the city government

Lincoln Saugstad | Contributor After receiving funding from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the City of Surrey recently began implementing the Newton Sustainability in Action Plan to make the Newton area more environmentally friendly.

Newton was chosen for its strong community and lack of pre-existing eco-friendly infrastructure. As part of the action plan, the city will be reaching out to Newton residents to help identify ways of making the area “a more thriving, green and inclusive community,” according to the city’s website.

Since the creation of Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Policy Studies degree in 2011, students from the university—primarily those from the Surrey campus, located in Newton— have provided the city with researchbased input on sustainability related efforts. Students in courses such as POST 3110 and 4900 gain experience solving real-world problems and working for professional clientele in their field.

This year’s students have focused their efforts on contributing to the Newton Sustainability in Action Plan.

In October, POST 4900 students held an event at Strawberry Hill to get

feedback from citizens about which improvements could be made to the area. They also held an on-campus sustainability workshop on Nov. 21.

According to the students’ PowerPoint presentation, the goal of the workshop was to “gain perspective of what students and guests feel are Newton’s assets and needs” in regards to sustainability. The students also hoped to start a dialogue with the workshop’s attendees about what can be done to address the needs as they were identified.

Russell Liu, a Policy Studies student who helped organize the workshop, said that “the event went well when it comes to the structure and execution, but that it definitely could have had a better turn out.”

He notes that, while their intention was to reach out to a broad section of the community, the workshop was primarily attended by other students in the Policy Studies department.

Nevertheless, they were able to hear from a variety of students majoring in Archaeology, Sustainable Agriculture, and Urban Ecosystems.

“It’s good for anyone who is interested in improving their community and has ideas,” says Lincey Amora, a KPU Geography student who attended the workshop and a director with the Kwantlen Public Interest

POST 4900 students held an on-campus sustainability workshop with instructor Ellen Pond on Nov. 21. (Lincoln Saugstad) Research Group. “I feel if more people knew about this it could definitely be more popular.”

The students’ findings were presented at City Hall on Nov. 26. What they learned about Newton’s assets and needs will add to the overall responses received by the city and inform their priorities with the project in the future.

“Having the students assist with

the engagement on the Newton Sustainability Plan this fall has been great,” says Anna Mathewson, Surrey’s Sustainability Manager. “I think it has helped the students build skills and get experience, but it’s also helping us do our work. To me, it’s probably the most successful one so far.”

Next semester, POST 4900 and 4110 students will be looking at Community Benefits Agreements—

provincial agreements with local communities that are made when completing large-scale, public infrastructure projects. The details are still in the works, but Ellen Pond, Chair of the Policy Studies department, says that she is in contact with someone from the provincial government to lay out the groundwork for the course.

Drug Checking Saves Lives at Music Festivals Harm prevention methods used at Shambhala could help lessen the devastation of Canada’s fentanyl crisis Gabrielle Lakusta After five different tests were done to detect dangerous substances in his sugar cube—supposed to contain LSD—Marc Andrews knew to take the experience seriously.

This was the 30-year-old’s first time at Shambhala Music Festival and his first time trying LSD, so he decided to take advantage of the drug checking that was offered there. As he sat in the warm harm reduction tent, he thought about who he had purchased the sugar cubes from. The dealer had assured him that he purchased LSD in liquid form and put it in sugar cubes himself, adding that he was a regular user.

“Did he lie?” Andrews asked himself.

Saving Lives at Shambhala As attendance to music festivals around the world climbs, so does the risk of overdoses—especially with fentanyl contamination becoming increasingly prevalent in Canada. Drugs like LSD, MDMA, and cocaine have become readily available in the party scene, and because those drugs are illegal, Shambhala is one of the only music festivals in Canada that allows drug checking.

Thanks to the drug-checking service, more than nine lives may have been saved at the event this year when AIDS Network Kootenay Outreach and Support Society (ANKORS) staff identified nine cases of drugs containing accidental traces of fentanyl. Someone who has never tried fentanyl can overdose more easily than someone who’s a regular user, and it doesn’t take much to kill someone who is unknowingly taking the drug.

Canada doesn’t provide serious drug education, leading to widespread misuse of illicit substances when teens attending all-age events choose to take drugs. Negative effects can range from a bad experience to an overdose. Offering drug education in combination with drug checking at music events could prevent these risks.

Shambhala Music Festival works with ANKORS to provide harm reduction services such as optional drug checking, which uses chemical reagents and fentanyl test strips to determine the main ingredients in each substance.

At the festival, an ANKORS drug-checking volunteer suggested one more test to Andrews as he

wondered whether his drug dealer was honest with him. He scraped off more shards of sugar into the small dish and the volunteer dropped in more reagents, waiting for a colour to determine the substance.

“There we go; looks like this is 25I-NBOMe,” the volunteer said.

Although Andrews had no idea what this was, NBOMe is often substituted as LSD because it has similar effects, but the wrong dose can result in death. The drug was discovered around 2013 and has led to many overdoses, but little research on it has been conducted. With LSD alone there have never been any recorded deaths, but this year at a music festival in Melbourne three people died from taking NBOMe. The volunteer explained to Andrews that it’s not always the dealer who is responsible for dealing the wrong drug—sometimes it is done by those higher up in the system. Either way, if Andrews didn’t get his substance tested, he could have died by consuming it.

Harm reduction has been one of Shambhala’s core values for over 15 years, according to Britz Robins, the head of the festival’s public relations and communications department.

“Our main priority is keeping people safe, and harm reduction is a proven effective tactic,” she says.

Shambhala uses the world’s longest-running harm reduction program to empower people to make safer and more informed decisions about how they party. Robins says that the festival is able to provide the service because the volunteers don’t directly handle illegal substances—the attendees do. Under the direction of the volunteers, they open pills or scrape apart substances and drop it in the testing dishes. They also use an “amnesty bin,” meaning that any substance which the user doesn’t want, usually after a test produces worrying results, goes in the bin.

“The substances surrendered to the amnesty bin are then handed over to RCMP for study and analysis,” says Robins.

A document published in 2015 by the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse recommended that music festivals give “consideration and investigation of the impact of drug checking” to promote health and reduce harm. The report came after five adults died and many more were treated on-site or admitted to the hospital while attending music festivals

within a span of three months. It’s suspected that drugs and alcohol were contributing factors in these deaths and illnesses.

Shambhala and ANKORS have been drug checking at the festival for 17 years, so why are they still one of the only festivals to offer this service in Canada?

“A huge concern is the property where the festival takes place and who it belongs to,” says Chloe Sage, who works with ANKORS. “In the case of Shambhala, it’s private property owned by the festival organizers.”

She explained that other music festivals have tried to offer drug checking but, by doing so, risk losing their insurance or the land they lease for the event. It’s still unconventional for landowners to allow drug checking on their property.

Instead, Sage suggests that events don’t provide harm reduction on their own. Bringing in a company like ANKORS with their own insurance means less risks are taken by the music festival organizers. ANKORS has also provided harm reduction for a couple of smaller festivals, but the largest is Shambhala, which has an accumulated total of 67,000 weekend attendees.

The most common overdose this year at Shambhala was from GHB, a downer substance which is usually mixed in water and consumed orally. Many users overdose on GHB because they don’t measure the right amount before they consume it—the amount that allows users to have a euphoric experience and the amount that puts them in a coma are very similar.

Sage brought syringes for measuring liquid to the harm reduction tent at Shambhala so that attendees could regulate how much GHB was put into a bottle of water. She also brought food colouring so that the bottle could be easily identified to reduce the risk of the wrong person consuming it. As she puts it, “No one wants to drink a bottle of blue water.”

She adds that festivals offering drug checking can work together by sending out early alerts to one another about drug contamination, but because setting up harm reduction for a multi-day music festival is a huge operation, ANKORS needs at least six months notice in order to provide its services. Sage co-wrote Drug Checking at Music Festivals: A HowTo Guide, and feels that drug check-

ing should never be the only harm reduction service offered at music festivals.

“It should be accompanied with condoms and other harm reduction supplies,” she says.

Harm Reduction in Canada and Beyond Andrews, whose sugar cube could have been deadly, grew up in the Netherlands, where drug education is supported by the government. There, an organization educates high school students about substances by explaining what an overdose looks like, what different substances do, how they’re consumed, and more. He says that, after many people died from overdoses at music festivals in the 90s, the government decided to combat it by offering drug checking at major festivals and in most big cities.

“That’s when they saw good results,” he says. “It was also a turning point for when they began educating people on how to use drugs.”

Andrews says that more teenagers use substances in Canada than in the Netherlands—something he noticed at all-age music events. He believes that that’s because it’s easier to take substances than it is to drink when you are underage in Canada.

Andrews never tried any illegal substances until going to a music event here, where all of his friends were using MDMA. He was excited to attend Shambhala because it’s a 19-plus event, and has what he describes as a “really open policy about drugs.”

When the drug checking showed that a dangerous substance was in his sugar cube, Andrews says he learned a lesson about taking drugs, and he’s happy that he was prevented from having a bad experience.

For the last year-and-a-half, Vancouver Coastal Health has been offering a pilot program in Vancouver to check substances with fentanyl test strips. This was limiting because it couldn’t identify if anything other than fentanyl was in the substance, or even what the substance was. However, from the positive effects of VCH’s fentanyl testing, the B.C. Centre on Substance Use was able to implement a new program.

The organization teamed up with the City of Vancouver to purchase a machine called the Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectrometer to check a range of substances. The machine

works by taking a small sample of a user’s drug and, within minutes, showing the major substances that it contains. This machine is being paired with the use of fentanyl test strips, as fentanyl is often hidden in doses too small for the machine to detect, but which can still be fatal for the user.

Because the fentanyl crisis in B.C. is the first of its kind, there’s no proven method for how to combat it, but there is evidence that drug checking has worked.

This evidence originates mainly from Europe, says Dr. Kenneth Tupper, the Director of Implementation and Strategic Partnerships at BCCSU, who is leading the drug-checking pilot.

“What we’re doing now will hopefully apply to more clients, ideally the party community and the people using drugs at home,” he says. “People want to know what’s in their substance.”

Tupper previously volunteered with Party Safe, an organization focusing on harm reduction at music events. Later, when working with the Ministry of Health, he tried implementing harm reduction, but there wasn’t a place for it until the fentanyl crisis began. The drug checking— along with education and other harm reduction techniques—is now available four days a week.

“It’s an opportunity to talk to people and build trust and have them deal with other potential health issues,” he says.

Organizers pushed for Shambhala to be a 19-plus event, but by doing so, people who are underage may go into isolated areas where there’s no cell phone service to have parties, Sage says. That can be risky. When there’s no support available for youth, and “when we push people underground, it gets dangerous,” she explains.

“If we say nothing, people will know nothing about the risks,” she says. “We always need to accept people as autonomous beings that will make up their own decisions.”

Sage believes in giving information about substances to all kinds of people, from daily users to those practicing abstinence because, as she says, “there will always be people making the decision to take drugs.”

Note: Andrews’ real name has been omitted for privacy reasons.

features 9

Some music festivals like Shambhala have taken steps to make the experience safer for attendees by providing free drug tests that can detect dangerous substances like fentanyl. (Flickr/Thomas_H_Photo)

(Flickr/Thomas_H_Photo)

The Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectrometer works by taking a small sample of a user’s substance and within minutes shows the major substances it contains.

(Submitted by BC Centre on Substance Use)

10 features

Fixing an unaffordable city As residents are priced out of Vancouver, experts debate how to address issues of housing supply braden klassen | photo editor Imagine paying $700 per month to sleep in the living room of someone else’s home. It sounds absurd, but it’s becoming an increasingly common practice in Vancouver, where the price of renting or owning a place to live has been on the rise over the past 12 years.

According to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, the average Multiple Listing Sales price index of all types of residential units has risen by 317.4 per cent when compared to the average sale prices in January 2005. The current benchmark price for homes in Vancouver, including detached homes, townhouses, and apartments, is $1,083,900. In the last five years alone, the average price of detached homes—the most sought-after kind of housing on the market—has increased by 86.2 per cent.

Residents know that the province is in the middle of a housing crisis.

For several years in a row, election polls have stated that housing affordability has been the number one issue concerning British Columbians.

Governments on municipal and provincial levels have promised to take action on mitigating the decline in B.C’s affordability, especially in and around Vancouver. But despite various attempts to alleviate the problem, housing affordability continues to shrink as the market and prices grow.

Affording a Life in the City Lincoln Saugstad, a third-year KPU student, says that his search for a place to live in Metro Vancouver has been made much more difficult by the affordability issues in the housing market.

“It was difficult getting responses and setting up an appointment to see a room that I wanted,” he says. “In the beginning, I sent out 10 emails to rooms that were for rent in Surrey, and maybe I would get one or two responses.”

Saugstad was surprised by the lack of contact he had with his potential landlords, as most of the advertisements that he had replied to had been posted only a few hours before he had sent his inquiry.

“I wanted to be closer to the city and there were a lot of rooms—for example, in Vancouver apartments— where people were living in their own living room, and were offering their room for people to stay for like $700.”

He says that he even saw an ad for renting out individual rooms, like a glass-enclosed sunroom, in a home.

The stiff competition between renters adds to the challenge of finding somewhere to live, which

puts pressure on them to lower their expectations and settle for apartments that they may have otherwise turned down.

“There was no room for deliberation, and I got the impression that this happens a lot,” says Saugstad.

“If you’re not able to make a decision on the spot, it turns into this juggling game where you’re like, ‘Should I take this place or should I wait until I find a better one?’”

His situation is becoming the norm for young people looking to buy or rent a home in the Greater Vancouver Area. The market disproportionately excludes younger people in the lower and middle classes, which has led to speculation that we are beginning to see signs of a “mass exodus” of these demographics from the region that will continue over the next decade.

“It gives you a sense of insecurity,” says Saugstad. “Especially when you need to move and you’re not sure if you’re going to find a place.”

Mapping the Cost of Living Jens von Bergmann, a Vancouver-based data analyst, published an interactive map that tracks the affordability range of residential spaces in Vancouver neighbourhoods. His findings paint a picture of a city in a unique housing market situation.

“61,950 households in the City of Vancouver make at least $125,000— that’s almost as many as we have single family homes,” he notes in the blog post written under the online map. “The 43,945 households the census found that make over $150,000 have slightly more choices, although still almost nothing is available at $150k sharp without engaging in ‘artisanal landlording.’”

“Artisanal landlording” is a tongue-in-cheek term for illegal space rental or dedicated Airbnb units that landlords hide from the government in order to avoid paying taxes.

“Honestly, I don’t know who we zone [single family] land for,” von Bergmann continues. “The 23,310 households with income over $200,000? I don’t think people in that income group need special protection for their housing. They will be able to afford a place to live irrespective of zoning.”

“At this point, incremental changes aren’t enough to ensure that this land serves the needs of Vancouverites,” he says.

The changes he is referring to include an increase in dedicated social housing, a 15 per cent provincial tax on foreign homebuyers, and “smart” municipal zoning that prioritizes density in residential areas. While these efforts have been shown to incrementally slow the rise of unaffordability,

there is a growing consensus among critics that more should be done.

For years, critics and commentators on this issue have pointed out that Vancouver’s geography has limited space left for residential expansion, which they say has restricted the housing market’s supply, leading to higher demand and higher prices.

Not everyone agrees with this theory, though.

The Myth of Housing Supply Dr. John Rose, a professor of Human Geography at KPU and a Vancouver homeowner, recently presented the results of a year-long research project he conducted which looks at how the housing market supply affects affordability.

“I did a very small study of some select U.S. cities sort of comparing the housing supply in the most expensive markets to housing supply in the less expensive market to test the theory that it was a supply issue,” he says.

“My initial research suggested that it wasn’t really the case. There wasn’t a lot of difference in terms of supply relative to population.”

His findings indicate that the City of Vancouver added roughly 1.2 dwellings per resident population over the last decade or so, but that the ratio of price to income continued to increase, now sitting around 11:8.

Rose thinks that there are a number of unique factors that contribute to Vancouver’s housing bubble. He points out that the sustained low interest rates on mortgages in Vancouver makes housing a much more attractive option for speculation. People who are borrowing money to purchase a house or a condo can do so at a decreased cost.

“So I have a mortgage and I’m going to pay for the outstanding balance for this property that I’m going to buy,” he says. “The rate’s like 3.5 per cent, but that’s just the price of doing business if I’m going to have a return of 100 per cent in a year or two. So that seems to be something kind of special.”

Rose is planning on continuing his research into different types of housing supply. He is also planning to study how different numbers of apartments, single family homes, social housing units, condos, and co-ops may affect the availability of affordable housing for Vancouver residents.

Unlike Rose, recently-elected Vancouver City Councillor Hector Bremner believes that a lack of housing supply is a critical factor in the rising cost of residences in and around Vancouver. As part of his election platform, he wants to approach the supply issue by expediting building permits and increasing the area of

residential rezoning which he calls “piecemeal, building-by-building, lot-by-lot and project-by-project rezoning.”

He also criticized the city’s apparent lack of a long-term plan for controlling and increasing the supply during a podcast interview conducted

by Ian Bushfield of Politicoast.

Bremner says that the city needs to find ways around the supply issue, citing the example of one of his close friends who recently inherited a single-family detached house in Vancouver and is planning to subdivide it into three units: a basement suite, a main floor, and a top floor.

“These are the kinds of flexible options that we can integrate into neighbourhoods,” he says. “You haven’t even changed the house. You’ve just changed the flexibility of living within it.”

Though Bremner asserts that the affordability issue is mainly rooted in supply, he also acknowledges, like Rose, that it is only one aspect of many that currently affects housing affordability.

Foreign Investors and the Market Rose agrees with the argument behind the BC Liberals’ 15 per cent foreign buyer’s tax established in 2016, which noticeably slowed the rate of unaffordability in the Greater Vancouver Area.

“The problem here is that, in a speculative market, we can make a non-commercial argument that says that the housing stock serves the resident population and the purpose of housing is to provide shelter for people who live here,” says Rose. “But the reality, of course, is that it does that, but it also provides a source of investment income for speculators.”

He continues, “I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that some of the market activity isn’t just domestic speculation. People have pointed the finger towards offshore speculation, and I think the scale of that is unique.”

According to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, however, it only took until May 2017 for housing prices to climb back up and surpass the July 2016 median house price of $1,620,000 after the Liberals’ tax was introduced. The rate of foreign property transfers also sharply decreased from 10.9 per cent in July 2016 to just 2.7 per cent in May 2017. Like the market price, though, that number has also increased, and by September it had almost doubled to 5 per cent.

“In terms of demand, there are all kinds of conversations you can get into as to whether or not our immigration system—the investor-immigrant thing—works,” says Bremner. “It’s

still a really small part of the market.

You can twist yourself into a pretzel trying to find a solution by just telling people, ‘Don’t come to Vancouver anymore,’ and prevent people from coming to Vancouver. I’m sorry, but you can’t build that wall.”

The City’s Plans for the Future On Nov. 29, Vancouver City Council voted to approve a new 10-year housing strategy. The report that accompanies the strategy contains a wide array of initiatives and ideas for how the city plans to deal with the affordability issue, like adding 72,000 new housing units over the next decade—at least two-thirds of which would be for rental—and the rezoning of single-dwelling house neighbourhoods into medium density residential areas. The plan also addresses developing areas along the Broadway corridor and around SkyTrain stations like Olympic Village.

“People will have to look at a lot of this stuff all at once, and it’s going to be hard to immediately say, ‘Oh, this is a giant success,’ or ‘This is a huge failure,’ because it’s so multi-faceted,” says Justin McElroy, the CBC’s reporter on municipal affairs in Vancouver.

Vancouver City Council also wants to reach out to the provincial government for help in increasing affordability.

“A lot of times, it’s about the provincial government either providing more money to municipal governments or changing the community charter or the Vancouver charter, in this case to give them different powers to do things, such as [the legal ability to create] rental-only zoning,” McElroy says.

Nevertheless, Dr. Rose’s research points to a sustained decrease in housing affordability for the foreseeable future, which is having an impact on the psyche of Vancouver residents who may not be able to afford to stay.

“We are awash with the numbers just going up and up and up so much that sometimes we can lose context,” says McElroy.

On Nov. 28, he posted a statistic on his Twitter feed that showed how, since 2005, housing prices in Vancouver had increased by 350 per cent, while the average income only grew by 22 per cent.

“The fundamental dynamics of the market are such that, in the absence of some sort of radical intervention, it’s probable that this will continue,” says Rose.

Note: One of the people interviewed for this article, Lincoln Saugstad, is an occasional contributor to The Runner.

Vancouver City Council says it will invest in rezoning neighbourhoods for higher density to keep up with the increasing need for housing. (Braden Klassen)

12 culture

Friendship After Murder: How Margot Van Sluytman Befriended the Man Who Killed Her Father Van Sluytman and Glen Flett recounted their decades-long journey during a KPU Restorative Justice event

Ashley Hyshka | community reporter On Easter Day in 1978, Glen Flett murdered Theodore Van Sluytman during an armed robbery in Scarborough, Ontario.

39 years later, on Nov. 24, Van Sluytman’s daughter Margot shared how she dealt with the loss of her father while sitting next to Flett at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s first Restorative Justice Week event.

The discussion was facilitated by KPU Criminology professor Alana Abramson, who has been a restorative justice advocate for 20 years.

At its core, restorative justice focuses on healing rather than harm, and aims to mend fractured relationships by engaging both criminal offenders and victims in the judicial system.

“It’s a way of looking at the world that we can use to respond to our problems in ways that are more healthy, and set us up for more longterm … peaceful relationships,” says Abramson.

Restorative justice often includes offenders, victims, and the community coming together and collaborating, but it can also be an intimate process according to Abramson. She believes that Van Sluytman and Flett have a remarkable story, and wanted to showcase what is possible when two people come together “with an open heart” and go through that process together.

Through laughter, tears, and the occasional F-bomb, Van Sluytman and Flett recounted their story.

“It started off as a fun day,” Van Sluytman recalls. Her father had left that morning to run some errands and to prepare for a “Bay Day” sale at the Scarborough Hudson’s Bay, where he worked as a salesman. Margot, who was 16 at the time, asked her father if she could go with him, to which he jokingly responded with, “Oh, you little pest, I’m coming back in two hours.”

Later that day, Margot answered a knock at the door and was met by two police officers who told her the

news: her father had been killed in a robbery, a fact which Margot found “utterly, utterly devastating.”

Theodore Van Sluytman was dead at the age of 40, leaving behind his four children and wife.

Flett says that he remembers “everything about that day.”

Flett, 27 at the time, had been participating in a series of armed robberies. That day, several of his accomplices and he followed a Brinks guard to the Hudson’s Bay main office where he retrieved a cash deposit. Afterwards, Flett’s co-accused smashed the worker in the head with a hammer, knocking him unconscious, while Flett grabbed the money.

As they fled through the department store, they stumbled upon Theodore. Flett recalled how Theodore grabbed hold of his lapels and said, “Son, give it up. It’s not worth it.”

Describing it as “an adrenaline rush,” Flett shot Theodore in the shoulder, and his co-accused shot him in the back. He only learned about Theodore’s death from a special news bulletin about the robbery which aired later that day.

“We weren’t planning on killing anybody,” he says.

He described his reaction to the news as “cold and callous,” saying, “I wasn’t sorry-sorry. Like, I didn’t think, ‘Oh gee, I just killed somebody who’s got four kids and a wife.’

I thought more like, ‘Gee, I’ve just killed somebody, and we can’t pull robberies here anymore.’”

He continues, “Now that I’m 67, what was I thinking? You can’t run around with loaded guns and not think somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Flett was found guilty of second degree murder and served 14 years in prison. Three months after the murder, Van Sluytman moved out of her home, as the pain of living there without her father was unbearable.

“There was too much sadness,” she says. “Half of me died, like my dad died. Half of me was black.”

Van Sluytman found solace through writing and poetry. She owns

a small poetry publisher called Palabras Press and went on to win an award from the National Association for Poetry Therapy.

“I wrote to save my life,” she says.

“Writing is healing.”

While Van Sluytman was finding peace through writing, Flett was trying to make amends in his own way.

Upon his release from prison, he founded an organization called The LINC Society, which provides support for offenders, their families, and their victims. He also started a farm in Mission, B.C. called Emma’s Acres in which both offenders and victims tend to a vegetable garden.

Since 1983, Flett says that he had dreamt of reconciling with his victims. He was encouraged to reach out to a member of the Van Sluytman family, but never made contact. He says he didn’t merely want to assuage his guilt, but to genuinely let them know that he was sorry and tell them what he was doing with his life.

In 2007, a chance email from Flett changed everything. He and his wife Sherry decided to make a $100 donation to Palabras. Unbeknownst to them, the donation was not anonymous. Van Sluytman saw the donation from a Sherry Edmunds Flett and realized that it was from Flett’s wife.

The Flett family didn’t intend to cause Van Sluytman harm, but wanted to support her writing. She decided to email Sherry back and ask for an apology from Flett. The next morning, she received a heartfelt apology from him.

Following a slew of emails back and forth, the two finally met face-toface on July 14.

“It was cathartic,” says Van Sluytman. “It was very beautiful.”

Now, they have been close friends for the last 10 years. They work together and separately to make a difference in the justice system. Van Sluytman says that one fault with system is that society doesn’t want to affiliate with offenders and victims because they’re viewed as pariahs.

She adds that people don’t know how

to speak to victims, and that people tell her she must choose the side of either victims or offenders, which she refuses to do.

To Van Sluytman, restorative justice must be viewed through a “sawbonna lens” which she describes as a sense of “shared humanity,” or empathy. It doesn’t mean that people have to like one another, but they cannot harm one another.

“Sawbonna means, ‘I see you—I see our shared humanity,’” she says.

Flett adds that restorative justice is about community efforts to repair harm. He describes forgiveness as an ongoing process—he doesn’t expect Van Sluytman to ever fully forgive him for her father’s murder, nor can they reconcile the murder, but they do talk about moving forward together.

By giving back to the community, he

hopes that he is honouring Theodore.

While Van Sluytman viewed her father in his casket, she thought, “I promise your death will not be for nothing,” but didn’t know what it meant at the time. Hearing Flett speak about his wish to honour Theodore’s life years later, they realized that they have unknowingly been on the same path for years.

“I adored my father,” Van Sluytman says. “And to have the opportunity to meet—to look someone in the eyes and know that he cares about what he did, that it matters, [and] does concrete things to make a difference in people’s lives is exquisite.”

“It’s so nice to hear Margot talk about how it’s affected her,” says Flett. “I can’t tell you how gratifying that is to me. It’s like … more than a dream come true.”

Restorative justice advocates Margot Van Sluytman and Glen Flett hold hands on KPU’s Surrey campus. Flett spent years in prison for the murder of Van Sluytman’s father in 1978. (Braden Klassen)

Fir 128 was packed with people listening to Margot Van Sluytman, KPU instructor Alana Abramson, and Glenn Flett speak about restorative justice. (Braden Klassen)

culture 13

Upcoming KPU Course encourages students to find beauty in mathematics MATH 1216 will illustrate abstract mathematics visually Tristan Johnston | contributor A quantitative course that will be offered at Kwantlen Polytechnic University this spring, MATH 1216, aims to encourage more students outside the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to take an interest in math.

“In the math you normally take in school, they have you doing trigonometry and algebra—basically marching you towards calculus—and honestly, it’s kind of boring,” says Allyson Rozell, Chair of the Mathematics Department at KPU. “Calculus is a highly useful, but in my opinion, not a terribly interesting part of mathematics. There’s so much more mathematics that most people never see.”

Students in the course will focus on mathematical concepts that can be expressed visually, many of which are naturally occurring in the world around us, such as the way leaves arrange themselves on plant stems.

“With visual objects, you can introduce people to it in a slightly less abstract way and they can see some of the different areas of mathematics,” says Rozell.

Due to the visual nature of the course, many concepts will focus on geometric applicability, such as with

fractals, Fibonacci sequences, and the golden ratio. Students may discover that while “math” indeed encapsulates the thought processes you use to compare values while shopping, it can also be thought of as a language that describes the natural world and the patterns found within it.

The course covers a breadth of mathematical subjects that typically wouldn’t be encountered by students outside the STEM fields. For instance, an understanding of symmetry groups, a highly abstract geometric concept, would likely only be taught to a math major.

That doesn’t mean that the concepts are difficult to grasp, however.

Fibonacci sequences might sound daunting, but they’re made quite simply by the addition of the last two numbers in a series to produce a third number. When expressed graphically, these figures can be depicted in the form of something like a blooming flower.

“To me, there are no numbers involved at all,” says Rozell in regards to some of the more abstract concepts. “I did my graduate work in model theory, which is a branch of mathematical logic, and really, there’s almost no numbers at all. It’s completely abstract. Applied mathematics tends to have a lot more calcu-

(Nicola Kwit) lation and stuff, and that’s where the numbers are, whereas abstract mathematics doesn’t.”

Rozell hopes that students who take the course come away with a deeper appreciation for mathematics, even if they decide not to go any further with math. She wants her class to

understand not only that math “can be seen in art, but [also] that there’s an art to mathematics itself.”

“Anyone can do mathematics,” she says. “There are no ‘math people’ and ‘non-math people.’ Anybody can do it. They just need it presented in an approachable way.”

She hopes that KPU will introduce a similar quantitative course that looks at the math in music in the future.

A Pantomime Twist on The Little Mermaid

Fraser Valley Gilbert and Sullivan Society gave new life to an old classic from Nov. 23 to Dec. 3 Daniella Javier | contributor If you were fortunate enough to see The Little Mermaid - The Panto by the Fraser Valley Gilbert and Sullivan Society (FVGSS), you managed to be part of their world of pantomime humour.

The performance, based off of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale about a mermaid named Ariel, was showing from Nov. 23 to Dec. 3 at the Surrey Arts Centre. FVGSS President Barbara Warwick and co-directors Mike Balser and Jeff Christensen adapted the script from an original work by Peter Zednik and, in order to avoid confusion with Disney’s version of the protagonist, changed the mermaid’s name to Calypso.

The FVGSS’s version of the story revolves around Young Calypso (Yasmin Pena) who is obsessed with the world above the waves. Her desire to be a part of human society causes issues with the sea witch named Dame Ursula (Drew Hart). To make matters worse, Calypso falls in love with a human prince, Prince Airwick the Solid (Jenn Tiles) whom she rescues from a storm. Calypso will do anything to be with her love, even if she has to make a regrettable deal with Ursula.

Walking into the Surrey Civic The-

atre at the Surrey Arts Centre for a showing of The Little Mermaid - The Panto felt like being under the sea.

The stage was beautifully decorated with a big, glittery clam shell, a calming blue sea backdrop, and an open reef for the band to play in. There was even a fake shark that swam around in front of the audience.

One of the traditions with pantomime is that some actors play characters of the opposite gender. The principal boy or prince is always played by a young woman, while the dame role, typically a woman in a leadership position, is always played by a man. Dame Ursula, Prince Airwick, and Queen Hypochondria (Christopher Hall) all practiced this tradition.

“It’s not [meant] to make political statements, it’s just fun,” says Warwick.

Queen Hypochondria and Dame Ursula delivered the two standout performances of the night. Queen Hypochondria was the stereotypical, overbearing mother, but the exaggerated expressions that she wore worked to her advantage. It’s not common to cheer on a villian, but Hart made the character likeable, delivering witty lines like, “You’d think I was a monster, like a Kardashian.”

Another panto tradition is making jokes about current events. One might not anticipate hearing about the housing crisis or the NDP-Green Party alliance during a play—let

alone a fairy-tale—but such topics were snappily incorporated into the performance.

“We just love being silly,” says Warwick.

Every character managed to bring music to the stage despite some technical difficulties with the actors’ microphones and loudness of the band. The musical numbers “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana and “Evil Woman” were performed particularly well.

Hearing more contemporary songs like “Good Feeling” by Flo Rida during the play was refreshing.

Tamara Jaune and Elisabeth “Bizzy” Lay’s choreography shone during the performance of the song, with actors

tap dancing on stage to the excitement of their audience.

For Warwick, being a part of FVGSS and the Surrey arts community is a passion, and this project was a result of that love for theatre.

“One of the biggest treats for me is that I work [at the theatre],” Warwick says. “It’s fun to show off your project to your friends.”

If you loved The Little Mermaid The Panto or would like to see another FVGSS show, its spring production, Iolanthe, will run from May 16 to 20 at the Anvil Centre Theatre in New Westminster.

The cast of The Little Mermaid - The Panto at the end of a performance. The play ran at the Surrey Arts Centre from Nov. 23 to Dec.3.

(Jim Nelson)

14 culture

Next Year KPU Students Can Visit Havana and Earn arts Credits with the Cuba Field School

The field school, which will take place from May 29 to June 12, focuses on themes of music and culture Jesse Pottinger | contributor If you’ve ever thought about taking a summer course but hate the idea of staring at the sunshine from behind a classroom window, there’s an exciting opportunity for you next year.

From May 29 to June 12, Kwantlen Polytechnic University will be taking students to Cuba as part of an interdisciplinary field school. This is a chance for students to salsa dance, soak up the sun, and immerse themselves in Cuban culture and history while earning six credits towards their degree.

“The theme of the Cuba field school is music and culture, and we use that as a window to investigating broader aspects of Cuban society,” says Daniel Tones, the leader of the trip and teacher of the accompanying ARTS 3100 course.

Most of the field school will be spent in Havana, with an additional two days in Cienfuegos and one day in Trinidad. Students will attend multiple concerts, lectures from prominent Cuban academics, explore a number of significant historical and cultural sites, and visit two smallscale craft agriculture operations.

There will also be music, dance, and singing workshops throughout the trip, all of which will be geared towards beginners.

“We need a way to make contact with people to begin understanding how Cuban society is structured [and] what are some of the passions of its people, and music and culture are good ways to do that,” says Tones.

Most of the days will be filled with scheduled activities, but students will have evenings free to do their own exploring as well.

As a trained percussionist who teaches in the music department at KPU, Tones has long been interested in the music and culture of Cuba.

“Cuba has a very, very vibrant music culture and particularly one that embraces percussion quite strongly,” he says. “So that was one of the cultures that I was drawn to as an undergraduate student.”

Tones says he has been toying with the idea of an educational trip to Cuba for nearly seven years, the last two of which were spent organizing the field school. After the first trip to Cuba is done, he hopes to run the program every two years, with specialized cohorts of 8 to 10 students from par-

Students interested in taking part in the Cuba Feild School have until January 31 to submit their applications to KPU International. (Submitted) ticular departments attending subsequent trips.

The in-class component of the field school, ARTS 3100, will begin three weeks prior to the trip’s beginning.

Students will trace the history of the African diaspora within Cuba, learn about European colonial influence, and study the political and economic climate in the country through the 20th and 21st centuries. They will then form groups that will present a research proposal and —once they return—a “capstone project” in which they will present their findings to the class in a creative form of their

choosing.

“The interdisciplinary nature of the field school invites investigation from a number of different vantage points,” says Tones.

The trip costs $3,450 including round trip flights, 14 nights of accommodation, transportation, daily breakfast and dinner, tourist visas, airport taxes, and participation fees for all scheduled activities.

Like traditional KPU classes, the field school and ARTS 3100 course have a capacity of 35 students. It requires a minimum of 15 students for the program to run.

KPU International will be accepting applications for the field school from Dec. 1 to Jan. 31. Registration for summer courses begins on March 5.

“This will be a defining experience in students’ education at Kwantlen,” says Tones. “It’s unlike anything they’ll get to do in their other coursework here, and they’ll learn so much by visiting another culture. In other words, they’ll learn so much by getting outside the classroom.”

KPU Student Designs Arabic Calligraphy Workbook

Grey Lines is available for purchase on the author’s LaunchGood page Mel Pomerleau | web editor A Kwantlen Polytechnic University business student, Tauheed Faheem, has designed and self-published his own workbook, Grey Lines, to teach people the art of calligraphy.

Faheem, who is also president of the Muslim Student Association, currently has two volumes of the workbook available as part of an ongoing LaunchGood campaign. Volume 1 focuses on basic pen control while Volume 2 builds on those skills to write shapes derived from Arabic letters.

The goal of the LaunchGood campaign is to raise $8,000 and will run until Dec. 31. Faheem hopes to print a number of the books in bulk with the money raised, rather than printing them individually as they are ordered, and to expand the series to include third and fourth volumes. Any remaining funds may then go towards creating online tutorial videos about drawing lines, shapes, or pen angles that are involved in calligraphy.

Faheem says he designed the workbook with young learners in mind, and sees them as a potential addition to elementary school classrooms.

“I’m in discussion with a few schools and am trying to figure out a way that I can bring it into their system without it being too costly,” says Faheem.

He has also designed an in-depth booklet that is similar to Volume 1,

describing it as “a warm-up before you actually buy the book.”

The booklet will be available to schools for $15.00 each, while Volume 1 starts at $25.00. The price increases from that figure with the inclusion of Volume 2.

Careful thought and consideration went into every aspect of his workbooks’ designs, from the quality of paper to the page layout to the pens used to write in the book. Faheem

made the books to be written on with permanent markers only.

“Even if it goes into a school, the teacher doesn’t have to worry about having to spend 10 bucks or even five bucks on each child to buy a pen,” he adds. “They can buy two for a dollar at the dollar store.”

With semi-gloss pages, ink used in his books isn’t absorbed as quickly as with regular paper.

“The ink will stay more stagnant

on the page, so when you make a line, it will be more crisp,” says Faheem.

Thinking back to the practice sheets he used in grade school to learn cursive and penmanship, Faheem remembers worrying that his lettering would never be as perfect as the computer-printed outlines intended to teach the user pen control. Because of this, he wrote each shape and line on the practice sheets in his book by hand to show the realistic outcome of

practiced pen control.

“I tried to make it so kids can actually feel like, ‘Oh, someone else did it by hand. I can also do it by hand.’ It makes them feel more comfortable in trying to learn,” says Faheem.

He compares his workbook to a diary—in it, students are able to see their own progress and learn from their own mistakes.

Self-taught artist and KPU business student Tauheed Faheem demonstrates his penmanship to promote his calligraphy workbook Grey Lines. (Mel Pomerleau)

STUDENT SNAPSHOT

The KPU Wind Symphony directed by Dr. Scott MacLennan.

The concert, called Winter Dancing, was performed on the Langley Campus on Dec. 1.

(Mel Pomerleau)

Every semester end the KPU Wind Symphony puts on a seasonal performance. This year’s performance included “Vesuvius” by composer Frank Ticheli, and “Snowflakes Dancing” by Andrew Boysen Jr. (Mel Pomerleau)

KPU instructor Ying-Yueh Chuang held a ceramics handbuilding lecture demonstration for students on Nov. 27.

(Alyssa Laube)

Students mingle with one another as they pick out the colours that they want to use for their ceramic projects on Nov. 27. (Alyssa Laube)

The KPU music program hosted a performance that showcased some of the talented members of KPU student jazz bands on Dec. 2.

(Mel Pomerleau)

16 opinions

Mulled Wine & Candles Make for a Lazy Winter DIY It’s easy to make your time at home more festive on a budget—here’s how

It’s the time of year when most people want nothing more than to get cozy and hide away from the winter cold.

If that sounds like what you’re looking for but you don’t have the time, money, or patience to do a full-on Martha Stewart-inspired do-it-yourself holiday, look no further.

There’s nothing I’m better at than making quick crafts and goodies. You can spend more time enjoying them and less time stressing out over how to make the things you need to relax.

The following how-to is for anyone who wants to enjoy the winter break on a student’s budget and a student’s schedule.

3) Purchase some Merlot from your nearest liquor store (for those who don’t know, Merlot is a red wine). The price of the bottle makes no difference. The point is to save money.

4) Take your ingredients home and put them in a small pot on the stove.

If you’re aiming to make a cup of mulled wine, split it down the middle.

Half of the liquid in the pot should be the fruit juice, with the remainder being the Merlot. Try not to boil it, you just want to heat it up on the stove top.

5) There you have it—a mulled wine beverage to help you get through your last essays and warm you up at the same time.

Mulled Wine

Cheap and Cozy Candles

Everyone makes a big deal out of eggnog during the winter seasons. It’s everywhere: in movies, cafes, holiday parties, and possibly even in your fridge right now. I’m going to introduce you to something a little spicier and less eggy.

The steps are simple: 1) Go to your nearest IKEA. 2) Find yourself the “Mulled Fruit Juice” bottle, which costs around $4.00 and saves you a lot of time mulling different spices, juices, and fruits together.

This one takes a bit more preparation, but for all of us who have looked at Pinterest, seen beautiful homemade candles, and said, “Maybe one day,” it’s worth it. Today can be that day.

Here’s what you need to do: 1) Gather the basics for your candle. You’ll need something for the candle to go into—personally, I like picking up a vintage-looking teacup from a thrift shop, since they are often very inexpensive. You will also need a wick, which you can get a small pack of at your local craft shop,

Nicola kwit | art director

like Michaels. Don’t buy the candle wax from Michaels, just go to a dollar store, buy some tall candles, and chop those up into small pieces to melt. If you want to be really cost-efficient, use the wick from the candles you chop up!

2) Pick your scents. If you want a scented candle, the best way to do it is to use essential oils, which you can also pick up at Michaels. Anything else will just give you a headache. If you do use oils, go with festive scents like gingerbread, vanilla, cinnamon, or student’s tears.

3) Take all of these goodies home and get cracking. Boil water in a pot and then remove it from the burner.

Boil just enough water so that when you put a glass bowl in it—the size of which should depend on the size of your tea cup—the water doesn’t spill over into the bowl. Put the aforementioned bowl into the hot water and then put in the wax, moving it around to melt it. Once it’s melted, get your teacup and the wick.

4) Hold the wick with tongs so you don’t burn yourself and keep it still in the middle of the cup with the end gently touching the cup’s base.

Pour the wax in to the brim. Try and keep the wick straight. If you want to add any essential oils, do so while the wax is still soft. You may need to stand there for a few minutes to hold

the wick. Otherwise, the wax will swallow it up.

5) Once the wax is stiff, you can let go and use your own little homemade

candle.

You’re welcome, and happy creating. Please don’t burn your house down.

(Nicola Kwit)

South Surrey Rubber-Producing factory Isn’t worth protesting

Though local residents are concerned about air pollution, the plant will not be a health or environmental concern Daniella Javier | contributor Metro Vancouver issued a permit for Weir Canada Inc. to begin construction on a rubber-producing plant in South Surrey on Nov. 9, but local residents are uncomfortable with the manufacturing facility being in their neighborhood, according to an article

by CBC. The rubber plant—which is situated in the Campbell Heights Business Park—will replace two other facilities, one in Richmond and one in Delta. It will produce rubber coatings made of pre-purchased rubber for pipes, valves, and pumps used in the mining sector and oil sands.

Weir first submitted its proposal to run the plant in August 2016, but revised its application to reduce the level of emissions after public consultations. Initially, the plant’s emission level was supposed to be 42 tonnes per year, but Weir brought it down to 2.49 tonnes. Metro Vancouver’s environmental protection notice stated that contaminants such as nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and hazardous air pollutants would be released by the facility.

Nearby residents don’t want the rubber plant to release any contam-

inants into the air because they feel that it will affect their health and the health of their families. It’s understandable to be concerned about the impact of air contaminants on oneself and the environment, but most people—including those who live in Surrey—contribute to global warming in their everyday lives anyhow. If they aren’t worried about living emissions-free, they shouldn’t be so concerned about the new rubber plant.

Metro Vancouver Media Relations Manager Don Bradley also told the Surrey-Now Leader that the emissions produced by the plant contain fewer air contaminants than those emitted by a single wood-burning fireplace. The facility will operate within air quality objectives, as established by the city, and Metro Vancouver operates air quality monitoring stations across the region.

There hasn’t been any clarity on what will be discharged from the plant, though. An environmental notice was sent out, but that won’t satisfy South Surrey residents unless physical measurements of what will be emitted are made available. They need more proof in order to support it.

Worried residents need to realize

that Campbell Heights has become one of Metro Vancouver’s most attractive industrial hubs because of its location and infrastructure. Those living in industrial areas should not be surprised if plant facilities show up near their homes.

More companies are also moving to South Surrey, which means that more jobs are becoming available.

According to The Canadian Press, Weir’s facility will create 30 new jobs, bringing the company’s total number of B.C. employees to 110.

Everyone should see the rubber pant as an opportunity for job creation.

There’s also been some growing concern about how Weir’s rubber plant will affect the Little Campbell River. Peace Arch News reported that close to 60 years have been spent restoring the river, and as a result, it is now the most productive salmon stream in Greater Vancouver. Some are afraid that the rubber plant will wreck the river again, and that’s a valid concern. Hopefully, Weir will be responsible enough to ensure that those fears do not become reality.

For now, South Surrey residents are going to have to accept Weir’s rubber plant into their neighbourhoods.

(@RESLUS)

opinions 17

TransLink’s Double-Decker Buses are Taking Transit to the Next Level

The company’s decision to test out new double-decker buses will hopefully reduce transit overcrowding Daniella Javier | contributor If you’re tired of having to deal with overcrowding on bus rides in Greater Vancouver, double-decker buses are going to be your best friend.

TransLink has added to its fleet of vehicles a set of new double-decker buses that will be travelling on overcrowded routes from Vancouver to Langley, Surrey, White Rock, and Delta. The buses have 83 per cent more seating and double the capacity of older highway coaches.

The double-decker bus routes will include the 351 between Crescent Beach and Richmond, the 354 between White Rock and Richmond, and the 555 between Langley and Coquitlam, according to TransLink.

These three routes are often overcrowded during peak times, but putting more double-deckers on the road will likely help people in those areas get to where they need to go while providing a panoramic view from the top deck.

Personally, I have travelled on the 351 during the work rush hour and it is not fun. I had to stand on the bus for the full 45-minute bus ride, which wouldn’t have been so uncomfortable

if I wasn’t squished inside a horde of other people. The new buses should help make that commute more pleasant.

Taking transit is the most common way to get to work for anyone without a car, and TransLink’s ridership is steadily growing. Kevin Desmond, CEO of TransLink, told CTV Vancouver that the company’s ridership increased by more than four per cent in 2016 and more than six per cent by the end of October this year.

To make matters worse, TransLink’s highway coach fleet is aging. It’s time to replace it with newer buses like the double-deckers, which produce less emissions per passenger than traditional buses. Regular transit users should take advantage of this upgrade because, after dealing with the stuffiness of local buses for years, they deserve to be able to rely on efficient buses.

Double-decker buses have been received well in other cities such as Ottawa, Toronto, Seattle, and even Victoria, so there’s no reason why Vancouver wouldn’t benefit from testing them out. Our city is beautiful and people should be able to get a new perspective of it on the bus, espe-

cially on long rides. And as tourism continues to boom, more visitors will be able to ride on the double-deckers to get a better view of the area.

Some riders might see the double-decker buses as a waste of money because TransLink has historically been heavy-handed with how it spends its funds. In 2013, TransLink’s independent regulator found that the transportation authority spent more on providing its services than organizations in most other Canadian cities, but failed to focus enough on its quality of service. Some have argued that the money should be spent on expanding the normal fleet of buses instead, and 12.9 per cent of participants in a Vancouver Sun poll think that there are better options for improving TransLink than using higher buses on busy routes.

TransLink plans to have 32 double-decker buses transporting passengers by 2019 as part of its 10-year plan. Government money should be spent on benefiting transit riders, and TransLink is trying to improve the quality and comfort on buses by testing out double-deckers in Metro Vancouver.

(Epifania Alarcón)

Net Neutrality in Canada Isn’t as Safe as You Think

The gutting of net neutrality protections in America may have a creeping influence on how you surf the web joseph keller | staff writer As the United States’ short-lived protections for net neutrality are being cut down, Canadians can seemingly rest easy knowing that our government is committed to strengthening affordable access to the web.

But how safe is the internet in Canada if our southern neighbors go through with the FCC’s plans to sacrifice the consumer to the corporate gods? The unfortunate reality is that if net neutrality dies in the United States, it’s likely only a matter of time before the same happens in Canada and the world over.

For those who have somehow remained unexposed to the fight for the web, net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers should treat all data on the internet the same.

This means that, under net neutrality, service providers may not favoritize one service or website over another by granting faster or slower speeds and can not deny their users access to certain content for whatever reason.

Without net neutrality, service providers would have the power to charge fees and throttle bandwidth to sabotage web-based services that compete with their own services.

They would be able to censor the flow of whatever information they would rather deny their customers access to. Net neutrality is vital not just to the consumer, but also to the overall health of freedom of speech.

The death of net neutrality in the States will impact the wallets of Canadians even without any change to Canadian law. If American services that are popular in Canada like Netflix and Spotify are forced to pay ransoms to American service providers in exchange for not having their services throttled in their home markets, they will almost certainly pass that expense on to their customers.

This is why, on Nov. 21, it was so devastating for net neutrality advocates the world over when the Federal Communications Commission, under Trump-nominated chairman Ajit Pai, moved to gut protections for net neutrality that were put in place by the Obama administration in 2015.

Fortunately, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission has recently reaffirmed its commitment to straighten consumer protections for net neutrality in Canada. On our side of the fence we know that, at least for the moment, our institutions are on the side of the consumer.

However, this is no reason for net neutrality advocates to become complacent.

While it might not seem like it these days, the United States still wields immense influence over the international community and international laws. The death of net neutrality in the U.S. will embolden telecom companies and other corporate interests to put pressure on governments around the world to kill consumer

protections. Canadian telecoms have already invested major resources towards undermining our net neutrality laws. These pushes will only intensify and find new legitimacy if the battle to support their anti-consumer ideology has been won in the United States.

The strategy from the anti-net neutrality camp relies heavily on misinformation, often tying the issue to Reagan-era anti-regulation ideology.

In the opinion of anti-net neutrality sources, any rules at all—even those which only apply to internet service

providers and do nothing but protect the online freedom of consumers— are somehow an assault on freedom.

While baseless, this is the position that has been taken by President Trump since the early days of his campaign, and therefore has been adopted as gospel to a not-insignificant base of American voters. Canadians are not immune to being affected by the same sort of spin.

While it’s comforting to have the CRTC on the side of net neutrality for the moment, the fallout from the 2016 U.S. election shows us just

how fast institutions can be steered in the wrong direction. It was only as recently as 2015 that the FCC was moving to protect American net neutrality, and less than a year of Trump leadership later, it is now poised to gut consumer protections with a machete.

This is why it is more important than ever for Canadians to pay attention, speak up, and use their votes to protect a free and open internet.

(Leah Rosehill)

18 columns

Artist Spotlight: Duck!

Pop punk and playing around is at the heart of the new four-piece from downtown Vancouver

alyssa laube | coordinating editor With a sound inspired by 90s pop punk, Duck! invites the Vancouver community to get silly with them at their live shows.

The band in its current form has only existed since the end of the summer, when Jens Johnson, Sam Hurley, Devalin Galloway, and David Went came together to start a playful, down-to-earth project. Each of the members have been otherwise involved in the local music scene, contributing to bands like Elf Pity and Dadweed, but now have dedicated themselves to releasing Duck!’s first record, an EP called Pond Scum.

Right now, only two songs are available on Duck!’s Bandcamp page: “duck! 2” and “duck! 5”. All of their tracks have similarly ambiguous titles—a habit that Hurley says makes counting their completed works confusing. Pond Scum is guaranteed to include somewhere between five and 10 songs when it is dropped by the spring of next year.

“We started off more pop punk-ish, but now we’re doing more. There’s a spoken word song, and songs that have more yelling,” says Hurley.

“We’ve incorporated a performance gimmick into some of our shows

also. During breaks where there are no words I have to sing we’ve done costume changes, running outside and picking flowers and bringing them back. Just a bunch of wacky stuff.”

For Galloway, throwing on glitter to perform is one of the best parts of being in the band, other than helping create and record the music. Johnson adds that the dynamic between himself and the other three “ducks” has a special place in his heart.

“We’re very similar, I feel. We’re all on the same page with sound and direction and where we want to go,” he says. “I think the fact that we have a similar perspective on the reasons why we play music and how that fits into the community at large is the most important to me.”

Getting the crowd to do more than bob their heads while sipping beer is a key goal for Duck!—especially for Hurley, who is free to make use of the stage and interact with the crowd without an instrument to carry.

“One of my favourite aspects of the band is the performativity to it. It started off with us covering fun stuff like “Karma Chameleon”. We even had a stuffed chameleon we would throw around and everyone would get super into it during the chorus,”

says Hurley. “We [in Vancouver] don’t really have anything outside of the realm of just regular bands playing and audiences listening. There’s a lack of experimental stuff too.”

Although visiting the band’s social media pages brings plenty of images of friendly, feathered ducks, the name of the group itself has a very different meaning: as Hurley puts it, “the action of ducking.” This meaning has slowly been lost over the months, but the members don’t seem to mind.

“I feel like we just got carried away. It was ‘duck’ like the verb, and just with ducks being so charismatic and loveable, I get attached to them,” says Johnson.

The band hopes to schedule a short tour as soon as possible, with hopes of taking a longer trip in the summertime. Duck! will be playing at The Matador to raise funds for W.I.S.H., a charitable organisation for women working in the street-based sex trade in the Downtown Eastside, on Dec. 15.

(From left to right:) Devalin Galloway, Jens Johnson, David Went, and Sam Hurley of Duck!. (Photo by Maymoona Gaid)

(From left to right): Devalin Galloway, Jens Johnson, and Sam Hurley are the members of Duck!, seen here in Café Deux Soleils on Commercial Drive. (Alyssa Laube)

Afterthought: Don’t Hold Your Breath for High-Speed Rail to Seattle

The difficulty of crossing an international border is just one of many obstructions the project would face BRADEN KLASSEN | PHOTO EDITOR In late November, Washington Governor Jay Inslee paid a visit to the B.C. Legislative Assembly to announce that he would soon release a report on the feasibility of a high speed rail system that would stretch from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver, British Columbia.

A part of the report apparently says that the trains on the route would run with top speeds reaching 400 kilometres per hour. Inslee said that it would cut the trip time between Vancouver and Seattle down from the three-hour drive to less than an hour, meaning that Vancouverites on the move would have a faster time getting to Seattle than to Langley.

This would obviously open up a world of possibilities for commuters in the metro areas along the West Coast. There are people who already commute from the island to work, or who drive over the border and back every day, so it’s definitely plausible that people would start to take jobs in Washington while still living in and around Vancouver, and vice-versa.

This would also benefit local industries in each of the cities, primarily technology, real estate, tourism, and maybe even shipping. Businesses would have a much better selection of employee options, and

workers would have more choice in where they can look for jobs. However, I can also see this backfiring for B.C. businesses that pay their employees minimum wage, since their workers would have access to a job market that pays $15.00 U.S. minimum. Could this lead to Vancouver experiencing an employment shortage in services and retail? Or would it force these businesses to start offering higher wages in order to stay competitive?

These are just a few in a litany of questions that need to be answered before B.C. can seriously consider accepting this proposal, which is why John Horgan seemed leery of the project when it was announced. He pointed out that Canada-U.S.A. customs and border control regulations might prove to be a major obstacle for commuters looking to save time.

“If we stop for an extended period of time at the border, we’re defeating the purpose,” Horgan said during a press conference with Inslee. And he’s right. It doesn’t matter how quickly the train gets you to Seattle if you still have to spend an hour and a half beforehand lining up for security checks, declaring goods, and filling out those irksome customs forms.

Border control laws are handled federally, and so any workarounds to solve this issue would have to come

with the assent of the federal government, which could take more than a year to finalize. The fact that this is even a problem points out just how obstructive our constantly tightening border controls are in the face of international cooperation. For a project geared towards increasing convenience for commuters and travellers, it’s already looking pretty inconvenient.

Most European countries have been interconnected by rail for the better part of the last century, and border crossings there are commonplace. There should be a wide selection of ready-made legislative models that we could look at in Canada.

Another question worth asking is, “Who’s paying for this, and how are they going to do it?” Governor Inslee said that he was looking into getting funding from the American government, and that revenues from the project would cover operating costs. It’s likely that our provincial government would do the same with the Canadian federal government, but the B.C. NDP don’t really need another massive and expensive infrastructure project on their plate. The Site C Dam and the now toll-less Port Mann Bridge are stark examples of how fiscally volatile these projects can become in the long term.

Obviously, this would take a good

number of cars off of the road and reduce pollution, but what will the local environmental impacts of the construction be like? And what effect would this have on busses and air travel?

Perhaps when Inslee’s report is released in full it will answer some of these questions, but until we can seriously address these issues, we probably shouldn’t expect this idea to come to fruition any time soon.

(Epifania Alarcón)

PROCRASTINATION HOROSCOPES Sagittarius Nov. 23 - Dec. 21

Capricorn Dec. 22 - Jan. 20

Aquarius Jan. 21 - Feb. 19

Your bow is a shit bow.

Your plans for the weekend: 1) burst out of your sarcophagus, 2) bareknuckle box an octopus, 3) burn down the walls of the necropolis, 4) educate the populace.

The criminal government agent who oppresses you has taken the week off.

Take this opportunity to have an original fucking thought for once in your life.

Pisces Feb. 20 - Mar. 20

Aries Mar. 21 - Apr. 19

Taurus Apr. 20 - May 20

“If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you can possible imagine” only works for so long before the cops realize you’re not a Jedi.

Frozen lasagna is still lasagna.

You’ve been on a bender ever since long-legged Brenda died.

Gemini May 21 - June 20 In a couple of years your name is going to be really, really funny for reasons I can’t get into right now.

Virgo Aug. 24 - Sept. 23 ”Dunkin’ on them fascists” is the only applicable thing to write on an application that asks you to list your skills.

Leo July 24 - Aug. 23

Cancer June 21 - July 23 It came from somewhere beneath his chest, sounded like wind pushing through a moss-covered cavern deep underground. His last mortal breath.

Scorpio Oct. 24 - Nov. 22

Libra Sept. 24 - Oct. 23 All I’m saying is that you can come to my community centre’s next slamdance interpretation of the works of Mary Wollstonecraft or they can find another foot in the Strait of Georgia.

SUDOKU

Mickey Mouse, but like, he’s got three eyes. And he won’t stop smiling. And you can see a second set of teeth behind his smiling teeth. And you’re pretty fucking sure the cat’s not just “missing.”

You’ve maxed out your allotment of horoscopes for the year. Please purchase a Premium Fortune Telling Account by throwing your wallet at the night sky or shouting your credit card number into a crystal ball. Goodbye.

THE DOODLE BOX Last issue’s answers.

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