Chaos at the Cobalt

When I saw pastor Barry Morris on the front page of the Province newspaper yesterday, I recognized him. Years back he was a pastor at First United on the Downtown Eastside, until he knocked up one of the church women.

Morris has been in the news this week, along with City Councillor Susan Anton [NPA], calling for an independent inquiry into the death of three men in an East Vancouver flophouse. They say the City had known about the unsafe conditions in that house for some time but wasn't enforcing bylaws. Councillor Andrea Reimer [Vision] has responded by pointing out that the fire is believed to have started from a faulty electrical cord, so it wasn't directly related to the condition of the house. [Update Jan. 15/11: A report by a City inspector prior to the fire has now been released, a report in which concerns were raised about the reliance on electrical cords in the house.]

All flexible cords or extension cords that are being used as a substitute for fixed wiring in the building shall be removed and outlets installed where required.

Based on what we hear from tenants at the Cobalt Hotel, I agree with Morris and Anton that there seems to be lax enforcement of bylaws.

The Cobalt, which has been a slum for years, has been allowed to further deteriorate in recent months. Tenants have often found themselves with no running water in their rooms, no heat (the radiators not working), no hot water for showers, the toilets plugged. One tenant said, "I had to take a cold shower."

The toilets being plugged is the tenants' doing. But the other problems are not. Management does make an effort though. "They try," said one tenant, "They're always working on it." Maybe the City should work out a plan with them and do follow up.

The provincial government sends a wad of money to the Cobalt every month, as many of the tenants are welfare clients. The rents are $425 or $450 if I remember correctly. Can't some of this money go toward serious repairs?

The Cobalt did spray for bed bugs. The City gave a contract to Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users to spray. Tenants wondered about the wisdom of the City hiring people with drug problems to go into people's rooms when they weren't there.

Sometimes, the chaos at the Cobalt is almost funny. A painter was working in the hallway and at the end of his shift, he set a five gallon can of paint in a corner along with his equipment, well out of everybody's way. Somebody picked up the five gallon can and poured it all the way down the carpeted hallway. The next day, the painter was painting the pipes, surrounded by this huge mess of paint.

"Car 87" Abuse Raised by Mayoral Candidate for the First Time in a Vancouver Election

Soviet-style political psychiatry practiced in Vancouver has been attracting attention internationally but I’d never heard it mentioned by a candidate in the civic election campaign. Until Monday. At an All Candidates meeting in the theater of Carnegie Center, Independent mayoral candidate Golok Buday (pictured above in black cap), said:

“Car 87 forces it’s drugs on you and forces you to go places based on arbitrary political reasons. And I think that should be acknowledged.”

Car 87 is a police car, carrying an armed police officer and a psychiatric nurse. There is a stockpile of documented evidence that it is being used by the Vancouver School Board and other organizations to smear critics. Politically vocal people against whom no evidence of wrongdoing can be found too often find Car 87 arriving at their homes to assess them for “apprehension” to a mental hospital.

Vision Council candidate Andrea Reimer (on left in above photo), who took Al Gore’s training program to become a presenter of his “An Inconvenient Truth” seminar, didn’t look up when Buday mentioned Car 87 civil liberties abuses. But an inconvenient truth is that Reimer has been implicated in a cover-up involving fraud of Car 87 abuses while on Vancouver School Board in 2003

The alleged cover-up came after several adults had independently lodged complaints about a verbally and physically abusive teacher. VSB sent Car 87 to the home of the last complainant, identifying the fact that she had made “freedom of information requests” as the official reason. The only evidence they turned over to Car 87 to be used against her, though, was a document indicating that she intended to campaign about their mishandling of bullying complaints in a School Board election. Police-School Liaison, Sergeant Garry Lester, admitted that the Vancouver School Board had pressured him to send Car 87 to the woman’s home even after he had emphasized to them that there was “nothing untoward” about her conduct.

How did Reimer and her colleagues address this Car 87 visit arranged by the VSB under fraudulent pretenses? With more fraud, says the victim. Reimer and her fellow elected School Board trustees arranged for an “in camera” review of the case, which they conveniently concealed from the victim. They invited a primary offender in this case of criminal wrongdoing to brief them. He re-offended. He fabricated claims such as that the teacher didn’t actually work for the VSB when her abuses occurred. This cover-up has contributed to the international boycott of VSB diplomas organized by Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry.

The use of in-camera meetings by elected officials in Vancouver to ensure secrecy was mentioned at the All Candidates meeting by mayoral candidate Betty Krawczyk (in top photo wearing yellow scarf) of the Work Less party. “When they have something important to do, they do it in camera.”. Krawczyk told the audience that she had moved to Canada from the U.S. because she was opposed to the Vietnam war. “Every year I’ve been here, there’s less democracy”.

Krawczyk was referring to what others had said earlier. Nicholai, an audience member, had said, “When I arrived in Canada as a political refugee, the democracy I expected was not so much in place.” Buday had added, “My father is a refugee from Hungary and he told me that Canada was less of a democracy than his family expected too.” But by being the first politician in Vancouver to mention the use of Car 87 as a political tool, he has moved us a step toward more democracy.

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Who's Who in the above photographs?

Top photo: (left to right) Ellen Woodsworth, COPE councillor candidate; Mark Emery, mayoral candidate; Golok Buday, Independent mayoral candidate; Betty Krawczyk, Work Less Party mayor candidate; Lea Johnson, Independent councillor candidate

Bottom photo: (left to right): Andrea Reimer, Vision councillor candidate; Michael Geller, NPA councillor candidate; Ivan Doumenc, Work Less Party candidate for Park Commissioner; Jamie Lee Hamilton, Independent candidate for Park Commissioner; [name unknown] Work Less Party; Geri Tramutola, Work Less Party councillor candidate.

Larry, did ya lie?

Pivot Legal Society is blaming all three political parties -- NPA, Vision, and COPE -- for keeping the big secret.

Pivot issued a press release yesterday announcing that they have complained to the Provincial Ombudsman that the City of Vancouver did not have "legal authority" to conceal information from the public about the $100m Olympic village loan guarantee. “This complaint targets all three major municipal parties represented on council right now,” said Laura Track (pictured at left of above photo taken this year), housing campaigner with Pivot. “To our knowledge, not one councillor stepped up and voted against holding the meeting in secret or insisted on public debate.”

The Pivot press release leaves me wondering if former Vancouver mayors Larry Campbell [Vision] and Philip Owen [NPA] lied to us on Remembrance Day. The two ex-mayors held a press conference at Olympic Village to announce that the public should not be suspicious, that a secret in-camera meeting about a $100M deal is the way things are supposed to be done.

But Pivot tells it differently. Pivot claims in their complaint that City of Vancouver bylaws allow in camera meetings only when discussion of the “acquisition, disposition, or expropriation” of land or improvements would harm the interests of the City -- and the $100m loan guarantee raised none of those issues.

Larry, did ya lie?

Track says there are better ways to spend this $100M and other guarantees for developers which will come out of the City's Property Endowment Fund. “We’re told that the Property Endowment Fund has now been emptied to support the development of luxury condominiums. If the City can use the PEF to subsidize private Olympic developers then it can certainly use it to finance social housing."

“We need public debate on how the Property Endowment Fund is spent, not secret meetings and bailouts for Olympic developers”, says Track.

To get a link to the original complaint, go to davideby.blogspot.com

Peter Ladner Hears Raymond Louie Discussing $100M Loan on CKNW and Angrily Phones In

My guess is that Peter Ladner will lose the Mayor's race over the scandal involving a secret promise of a $100 million loan from the City to keep developers of the Olympic Village afloat. Add the $100 million to guarantees already given to the developers by the City and you're looking at roughly $300 million, in turbulent economic times. The Globe & Mail reports that early voting is more brisk than expected due to people being upset over this issue.

When people were just getting wind last week of the $100M loan that City councillors were apparently going to hide from us until after the election, I heard Vision Councillor Raymond Louie and NPA's Peter Ladner on CKNW's Christie Clark show. Ladner wasn't scheduled to appear but he heard what Louis was saying on the radio and he was madder than hell and phoned in. The two men were both excited and talked over each other at times.

Louie had been saying that although HE VOTED FOR the deal, he now felt that he had not been given all of the information he needed to make an informed decision. He had since learned that Estelle Lo, the City accountant, had concerns about the deal. She was apparently not at the meeting. There is a rumor, which Clark couldn't get confirmation on, that Lo had resigned over this matter.

Louie said that he had made requests for relevant documents on the case but he has not been given what he's requested. [Vision is the pot calling the kettle black. I'm currently covering a case in which Vision's Eleanor Gregory -- who is very close to Vision mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson -- failed to turn over a key document that a Vancouver woman requested about her own case at the Vancouver School Board, a copy of which the VSB has already acknowledged she has a right. Vision's Andrea Reimer is implicated in secrecy and an alleged cover-up -- supported by documentation -- in this case as well, which dates back to Reimer's time on School Board. Reimer's conduct contributed to the fact that there is now an Int'l Boycott of VSB diplomas. But that's a different scandal.]

Ladner then phoned in to CKNW. He was not at his most composed. He argued that Louie had been at the same meeting as him, the one in which the decision had been made, and that there had been nothing new on the issue since. His point was that Louie knew as much as he did. But Louie retorted that being Chair of the Finance Committee, Ladner was privy to more information than he was.

Ladner mentioned at one point that Estelle Lo is currently in Hong Kong, where he said she goes at this time every year to visit her mother. He claimed that words were being put into Lo's mouth "which is scandalous in my opinion".

It is no coincidence, Ladner noted, that at a time when Gregor Robertson's unpaid skytrain fine is front page news, Vision goes public with this issue.

Ladner was asked again by Louie if he would agree to a public meeting to bring this out into the open. Ladner did not agree, saying that to work on this type of negotiation requires a confidential setting and that the public knows that's the way it is always done.

Shortly after this radio exchange interview, CKNW News reported that Gregor Robertson had held a a press conference on the issue. None of the Vision Councillors who had voted for the potential $100 million loan to developers showed up at the press conference to answer questions.

Both Vision and the NPA deserve blame for the $100M scandal as all councillors voted for it. This weekend there was speculation in the Globe & Mail that the new man Gregor Robertson would be hardest hit if voters responded by staying home on election day. But the voter turnout for the early polls indicates they're not staying home. I think Ladner's finished.

Jamie Lee Hamilton to Run for Parks Board under NPA

Jamie Lee Hamilton, a Downtown Eastsider who writes the Oldtown News blog, intends to run for Parks Board under the NPA, according to CKNW.

Hamilton has been willing to criticize povertarians on her blog, so she looks pretty good to us.

NPA "Breach of Public Trust" School Trustee Switches Allegiances

Non-Partisan Association School Board trustee Eleanor Gregory has revealed that she is abandoning her own party's Mayor Sam Sullivan and supporting Vision mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson.

But is she doing Robertson a favor?

Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry allege that Gregory has a history of breach of public trust in concealing from parents the fact that there is an international boycott of Vancouver School Board diplomas.

The boycott was organized by COPP as a "last resort” after the VSB failed to seriously investigate documented evidence that fraud and human rights abuses had occurred under the NPA-dominated School Board in the lead up to the tightly contested Nov. 2002 election. According to COPP, tactics used by the NPA-dominated School Board included “political psychiatry” that could rival China and resulted in a woman being intimidated into dropping her plans to campaign against the NPA School Board in the election. The well documented tactics were used against the woman after she informed the VSB in writing that she would be campaigning in the election, then just weeks away, about their “duplicity” in the handling of bullying complaints. She had seen an NPA trustee on television assuring the public that bullying complaints were being taken seriously when, in fact, she and others who had independently lodged bullying complaints against a verbally and physically abusive teacher were being ignored, sent intimidating correspondence, and/or generally treated like they were the problem.