Articles of Section 'News and Views'.

News and Views

Parks budget down, private-cop budget up

COPE parks commissioner Loretta Woodcock notes that the $800,000 city hall is asking the parks department to cut (double what they asked for unsuccessfully in 2006) roughly equates to the new Downtown Ambassador private-security budget
News and Views

Best of Vancouver 2007 | Best of City Life

Our readers dish on the Best of Vancouver, 2007.
News and Views

Analyst says Canada is not losing the war

The head of a think tank that focuses on security and military issues says he doesn't think many Canadians are counting the number of coffins coming back from Afghanistan. Alex Morrison, president of the Toronto-based Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies, told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview that he thinks the Canadian Forces will receive a "high level of support" as long as the soldiers are well trained, well equipped, and well led.
News and Views

Sex laws will be challenged

Critics of Canada’s prostitution laws will file two Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenges within the next few months, arguing that current legislation puts sex-trade workers at risk.
News and Views

Some boat people still searching for a future

In a world heaving with more than 20 million refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, and stateless individuals uprooted by raging conflicts (based on a count by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) by the end of last year, it is easy to forget people like Hung Dung Pham.
News and Views

Cadman flags property tax

COPE Coun. David Cadman fears the current property-tax debate will slip behind closed doors where consultants will tell business interests what they want to hear.
News and Views

Income-assistance cuts examined

Judging by newspaper headlines, B.C.'s economy is booming. But for Bonnie McKay, a single mother with a five-year-old son who's been on and off income assistance for years, the benefits seem far away.
News and Views

Head-tax redress fails to account for total toll

A Vancouver man has attributed the death of his mother to the Chinese head tax. But he won't be among those receiving federal compensation because his parents died before Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that $20,000 payments will go to surviving head-tax payers and their spouses.
News and Views

Military goes multicultural

Strapping on combat boots was the last thing in the mind of Luis Miguel Portillo Illescas when he moved to Vancouver as a landed immigrant last year.
News and Views

Welcome to Think Vancouver: Living Together

From October 16 to 20, 2006, the Georgia Straight, along with CBC Television, CBC Radio, and CBC.ca, will be exploring, investigating and celebrating what Living Together means to all of us in Greater Vancouver.
News and Views

North Van trees threatened

Waterfront Park may be a dozen trees lighter if local residents get their way before the City of North Vancouver council on November 6.
News and Views

Babies' health not in formula

Breast-feeding, which is promoted by Health Canada as the best nourishment for most infants, is still far from universal in this country.
News and Views

New injection sites stalled

A completed proposal and architectural plans for a second safe-injection site are currently on the back burner, according to a Downtown Eastside housing advocate.
News and Views

Blind man claims cop abuse

A blind man who claimed that he was assaulted by two SkyTrain police officers is asking what has happened to the complaint he filed.
News and Views

Queer film fest under attack

The Department of Canadian Heritage should cut $23,000 in funding to the Vancouver Queer Film Festival because the films are “degenerate and degrading to humanity”, according to conservative lobby group REAL Women of Canada.
News and Views

Prof seeks Emerson's seat

UBC medical-school professor Kerry Jang has told the Georgia Straight that he plans to seek the federal NDP nomination in Vancouver Kings- way.
News and Views

City breaks disclosure rules

The City of Vancouver has so far refused to identify municipal politicians' corporate contributors on the Internet, even though this is a council policy. Instead, city staff have blacked out the names of contributors on the versions put on the city's Web site.
News and Views

Kamikaze-female trend could end with May

Canadian political parties have chosen a female leader when the party was in trouble””until now?
News and Views

Aquarium fight intensifies

An animal-welfare group says it will take legal action this fall to try to prove that the Vancouver Aquarium violated a park-board bylaw.
News and Views

Olympic cities punish poor

A University of Toronto sociologist claimed in an academic paper that poor people suffer greater housing shortages and lose their civil liberties in cities that host the Olympics.
News and Views

Telling true lies about Michael Ignatieff

The left-wing intellectual icon is reconciled to the fact that there will always be those who consider him controversial
News and Views

Sullivan backs off bus promise

A Vancouver city councillor is calling Mayor Sam Sullivan's reversal of a pre- election pledge to push for lower transit fares a “broken promise”.
News and Views

Philippines shootings wound local community

An increasing number of new Canadians are able to put a familiar face to reports of killings of political activists in the Philippines, like the document recently compiled by the London-based Amnesty International.

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