Coquitlam
Port Coquitlam
Port Moody
City, school district call for mental health unit.
Only one complaint so far during booze in parks pilot.
City looks at replacement cost of Ioco footbridge.
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T H U R S D AY
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2020
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Mayors call for end to homelessness Pandemic recovery a ‘watershed moment in Canadian history’ MARIO BARTEL mbartel@tricitynews.com
“This fist that you’ve been seeing, this is a sign of solidarity. This means to rise up, to defend. Not that we want to harm white people, that we want to eradicate people. We want to be able to exist in the same way white people can, too,” said Emma Kiwanuaa during a demonstration in Coquitlam last weekend. Hundreds of people gathered at a Black Lives Matter rally in Town Centre Saturday in an event that drew people together from the local Black community, a variety of Indigenous groups and others flying the rainbow colours of LGBTQ pride. For more photos and a story, see page 3. STEFAN LABBÉ/THE TRI-CITY NEWS PHOTO
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The mayors of Port Moody and Port Coquitlam have joined leaders from several other communities around the province to urge the federal and provincial governments to do more to combat homelessness. Mayor Rob Vagramov, along with Port Coquitlam’s Brad West and 14 other municipal leaders, along with Chief Ken Baird of Tsawwassen First Nation, said in a joint letter sent to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and B.C. Premier John Horgan that the coming rebuilding of the economy as it recovers from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic is “a vital opportunity to move Canada’s blight of homelessness from out of our challenged present and our bright future, and into the shadows of the past where it belongs.” The letter said the homelessness problems needs a “decisive program” that will help get peo-
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ple off the streets and benefit the rest of society by reducing poverty, cutting crime, advancing public health objectives and creating employment. It will also increase the province’s appeal to tourists and make its cities safer and more inviting. The leaders said the recovery could be a “watershed moment in Canadian history to build a society that is fundamentally better than ever before.” They said cuts and closures of supportive housing arrangements over the past several decades, like those at Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam, have sent “countless members of society” out into the streets that has “blighted our communities with a level of needless and unjustifiable suffering.” The letter urged the federal and provincial leaders to resist the temptation to ignore the homelessness issue in favour of focussing on economic recovering. Instead, it said, the two should go hand-in-hand. “This is one of those crucial turning points in the life of a society that calls upon our national community to use the pause we have all been forced into to step up to a better system.”
JIM VAN RASSEL