PACIFIC SPIRIT 12
FRIDAY
April 24 2015
Genocides remembered
Vol. 106 No. 32
FEATURE 14
Restaurants and red tape SPORTS 29
Close call on the Chief There’s more online at
vancourier.com WEEKEND EDITION
THE VOICE of VANCOUVER NEIGHBOURHOODS since 1908
Students rally for literacy
VSB ponders program closure Cheryl Rossi
crossi@vancourier.com
FOOD TALK UBC grad and podcaster Lillian Yang hopes to meet an audience appetite for information about food with the new podcast Food NonFiction, which she produces weekly with her co-host Fakhri Shafai. See story page 19. PHOTO DAN TOULGOET
Pot stores face new city rules Established dispensaries willing to work with city Megan Stewart & Naoibh O’Connor mstewart@vancourier.com noconnor@vancourier.com
City hall is putting a halt to the rapid expansion of Vancouver’s unregulated marijuana dispensaries by becoming the first jurisdiction in Canada to “normalize” pot shops and treat them as legitimate businesses. Under proposed new rules, dispensaries would be able to operate on main thoroughfares away from schools, community centres and other dispensaries but would also face higher fees and more strident licensing compared to other businesses. On Tuesday, council will consider the regulations, which include a $30,000 an-
nual business licence, and which would weed out many of the estimated 80 to 90 pot shops in Vancouver. But the city will have to find them all first. On the 600 block of East Hastings at one of five locations of the Eden Medicinal Society, no one would go on the record — but one young blond man wearing a latex glove said, “Outside of this store, it’s still an illegal business.” And inside the store? His answer: “Oh, you’re tricky.” An office manager put the number of Vancouver dispensaries at more than 130. “Good luck getting to them all in one day,” she said. Two blocks east at the Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary, which has operated since 2008 and would be forced to move under the new regulations because it is less than 300 metres from the RayCam Community Centre, a staffer in dark glasses estimated
there is at least one dispensary on every block from Clark to downtown — but not all of them are visible from the street. According to city information, there are more than 80 dispensaries in Vancouver, 20 of which have opened in the last four months. In October 2012, the Courier counted 29 dispensaries in Vancouver. The growth followed changes to the federal medical marijuana laws, which the Conservative government is appealing in court, leaving advocates, health practitioners and retailers to operate in uncertainty. The city’s plan to regulate the industry — without addressing the legality of the plant itself — was welcomed by a number of dispensaries and marijuana advocates, including Dana Larsen of the Medicinal Cannabis Dispensary, and Clint, the manager of the Healing Tree, who withheld his last name. Continued on page 7
Thinking oƒ SELLING your Vancouver area home? THINK OF PAUL.
Jin Ru Wu may be improving her English through the Vancouver School Board, but she has trouble being heard. Wu wanted to speak at the April 14 public consultation about the VSB’s preliminary budget after she learned the board proposes to close the literacy outreach program she attends at Nightingale elementary school. But the 73-year-old immigrant from China didn’t know not to put spaces in email addresses, so her messages bounced back. She attended the meeting, saw 22 speakers were registered and felt too intimidated to try to add her name. “No one speak about the ESL,” she said. “I can’t speak. Even [if] I speak and no one understand what I say. My English is so poor. We very need to continue to study English.” “The literacy load was too great,” said adult education literacy outreach instructor Rick Georg of Wu’s failed efforts. Instead, his Nightingale class penned a letter to the Courier that said: “Studying basic literacy is necessary for us to become part of the community… Cutting our class puts a barrier in front of us.” The VSB faces a budget shortfall of $8.52 million for 2015-2016 and expects another multimillion dollar shortfall for 2016-2017. The board proposes discontinuing the seven classes in its literacy outreach program that the district offers under adult education at six elementary schools to save $55,248 in 2015-2015 and $108,232 each year thereafter. Adult education falls outside the VSB’s core mandate of offering kindergarten to Grade 12 education, the budget reports state. Continued on page 3 $
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