This will radically change the DTES more than anything else. My prediction is that starting next year it will be an all-out war on the homeless and the marginalized by police, developers, and gentrifiers of all stripes. They’ll be some blow-back too. It will be ugly. And after it’s all done Vancouver will never be the same. In some ways it will improve. Downtown will be much prettier for the tourists who won't be forced to see the effects of colonialism, and the war on drugs, and our lack of mental health care, and ever widening income inequality. Having United We Can downtown is a reminder of our responsibilities as Canadians and how far we need to go. Vancouver doesn't want to be reminded of that and so as a city our taxpayer dollars are going to be used to pretend these problems don't exist. Our dollars are going to be used to push marginalized people into a poorly lit and policed industrial area - remember Pickton? Effectively our policy is to push our "problems" outside of downtown and outside of our city limits. Take a look at San Francisco vs. Oakland, Vallejo, and Hayward to see how that will work out.

Exciting News.

Johnny Baltimore - for crying out loud, people are fully aware of problems in the DTES, and they are no different than problems in every other city on earth, it's just that it's concentrated in Vancouver....like everything else. Life must be horrific for you knowing that you are part of the problem by merely existing in Vancouver. If 'colonialism' keeps you up at night I would suggest you go back to the country of your ancestors.

Well said, Johnny Baltimore. Typical of Vancouver to sweep its ills under a rug so it can't be seen, so to the public eye we always remain the "best place on earth." It's not just the homeless and the addicts -- the poor Chinatown grannies with no family to take care of them and no pension, lugging around massive bags of cans, now have trudge 4 km.

Is there no disused downtown city parkade that can be converted??

@Johnny Baltimore

Um, ok.

So, United We Can gets below market rent, the founder of United We Can supports the move because the existing facility can't support the volume, the new recyling venue is 25 minutes away on foot, and the current premises will be developed by Atria, a nonprofit that provides housing and services to reduce violence against women in Vancouver...and you're against *that.* *That* sounds bad to you.

"Ugly" don't begin to cover it.

I wouldn't presume to know what's best for the DTES or United We Can's location. But I don't think we should be spending our tax dollars to force binners to go deep into an industrial dead zone. I don't want that on me. UWC needs a second location, or they need a bigger location with easy and safe access. This sweetheart deal doesn't do that. I never said I was against Atria. They do good things. Their proposal for the site doesn't include housing for battered women though, but it does include 52 much needed units at shelter allowance rate (i.e. practically one's entire disability or welfare cheque). Their proposal also includes a 14 story building with underground parking. Two stories of retail. 67 ridiculously overpriced (market rate) units, as well as 50 subsidized units (around $1000 for a one bedroom). I suppose there have been worse ratios. But again my comment was concerned with safety and accessibility for those who rely on United We Can's services, and transparency in how our city uses our tax dollars. And the fact that there is a civic policy to sweep our social problems out of sight. And no life is not horrific for me Alan, but as a society we have never properly addressed colonialism. Have you read any of the articles coming out recently about residential school abuses and experiments? And although that's not the whole story or reflective of the entire neighborhood, some of the negative effects of colonialism and poor government accountability and policy are easy to see if you take a stroll through the DTES. As a society we can do better and we can demand more from our politicians.

Johnny Baltimore seems to share the conceit that "settlers" and "colonialists" are uniquely responsible for the problems of the DTES.

This is unscientific nonsense. EVERY resident of the Americas is a "settler". The best evidence today tells us that, via the Bering Land Bridge 12,000 to 20,000 years ago, the First Settlers crossed over from Asia.

There is also evidence that early seafarers from SE Asia may also have crossed by boat, and settled parts of Central and South America.

Baltimore's talk of "settlers" and "colonialists" is not just bad science -- it is bad ideology.

It allows some people to avoid personal responsibility for bad decisions, and blame everything on The Man, or any other easy-pickings target.

As homo sapiens, we are ALL 'out of Africa'. As North Americans, we are ALL settlers. There are no exceptions. Even Johnny Baltimore.

Not to derail this thread but I want to ponder on colonialism.

The problems of the War On Drugs can hardly be overstated. A harm-reduction process assists the shortterm effects of the addicted, and culture of bringing wanted children into the world and raising them with compassion and their health as the guiding principle should reduce the demand side of the equation.

Colonialism is neither here nor there IMO. I can't think of any society that wasn't overrun by invaders at some point. Japanese people are actually Chinese, culturally Mongol...the English are Saxons not Picts and their (our) Royals are Germans.

Haves and Have Nots, that's the point. The mechanisms by which one goes from one to another are pretty diverse and while we have to look at them to avoid repeating mistakes, I worry that putting blame on forces of history is demotivational and entrenches a victim mentality.

Now all that said, I might agree with you that there could be a satellite bottle collection. It's (very hard) and legal work for binners, it's recycling natural resources for our planet, and everyone supports that.

"Canada has “no history of colonialism.” So said Stephen Harper in 2009. Today the Idle No More movement is shouting down this lie through actions both creative and courageous. In its place, it is telling Canadians at large what some of us have always known: that the country we live in was founded as – and continues to be – a colonial-settler state.

Colonialism involves one society seeking to conquer another and then rule over it.

Two main types of colonialism grew out of capitalism’s hunger for profit: colonialism based on exploitation of labour, and settler colonialism...

In most colonies, a small number of Europeans ruled over much larger Indigenous populations. In order to make profits from a colony, Europeans needed the labour of the people they had conquered. In these kinds of situations, the goal of the colonizers was to take wealth produced by the work of miners, farmers and, as time went on, sometimes factory workers. One good example of this was the work that farmers in India in the 1800s did to grow cotton, which was then shipped to Britain to be processed in factories and sold at a large profit.

Colonialism in Canada was different. Here it took the form of settler colonialism (other states with this type of colonialism include the USA, Australia and Israel). Settler colonialism took place where European settlers settled permanently on Indigenous lands, aggressively seized those lands from Indigenous peoples and eventually greatly outnumbered Indigenous populations.

Unlike the kind of colonialism experienced in places such as India, the main goal of settler colonialism was not to take advantage of the labour of Indigenous peoples. Instead, it was to displace Indigenous peoples from their lands, break and bury the cultures that grew out of relationships with those lands, and, ultimately, eliminate Indigenous societies so that settlers could establish themselves.

In Canada, the society that settlers established became capitalist and created an economy that continues to exploit (much like the owner of a company demanding workers produce as much wealth for him as possible).

Canadian colonial capitalism would not survive without access to Indigenous peoples’ lands. This was true in 1867 when Canada was founded, and it is still true today.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/first-nations-rights-confronting-colonialis...

Jeeze, Johnny Baltimore, talking about settling and exploiting!

Your cut-and-paste response is credited to "globalresearch.ca".

It was actually written by Monique Waroniak and David Camfield, and first published in the "new Socialist Magazine', online at 27 January 2013. It was picked up four days later by 'globalresearch'.

http://www.newsocialist.org/676-choosing-not-to-look-away-confronting-co...

Are you ashamed to cite your 'socialist' sources? Surely not.

Monique Woroniak is a librarian who works, writes and does Indigenous solidarity work in Winnipeg. David Camfield is one of the editors of New Socialist Webzine. Both authors acknowledge that they reside on Treaty One territory and the traditional lands of the Red River Métis.

They would be horrified -- horrified! -- that you exploited their work without credit. Talking about colonialism...

Besides, Idle No More is so... 2012.