Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Coming up in this episode, City Beat with Ian Maas. Today councils debate on living wages, the climate emergency plan and major upgrades to West End facilities.
Speaker: Next week, Vancouver City Council will debate paying a certified living wage to everyone who works for the city, both staff and employees of contracted services. This is one of the issues we're going to discuss in CityBeat this morning. Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass is also going to talk about the city's climate emergency action plan and a revitalized vision for West End services. Hello, Ian.
Speaker: Good morning, Jane. Tell us what you know about this upcoming debate about a certified living wage. Vancouver's been paying a certified living wage since 2016, but in 2023, the new ABC City Council, it was facing a tax increase of over 10 % and they were looking to trim wherever they could.
Speaker: And paying a certified living wage to its contractors, which were the lowest paid, looked like an easy win because the living wage had gone up over 17%.
Speaker: because of inflation and housing costs. So instead of keeping with this, what's called a certified living wage commitment on an annual basis, they decided to use a five -year average of living wages, which effectively cut the wages of contractors from $25 .68 an hour.
Speaker: which is the certified living wage to $2 ,186 per hour, which is the city's five -year rolling average. Now, the bottom line is about a $4 difference there, and ABC calls $21 .86 a fair wage, not a living wage. So there's lots of semantics there, but the bottom line
Speaker: is ABC Council's decision was to cut the wages of the lowest paid contract staff. All of it done behind closed doors. And Councilor Christine Boyle had to wait a year before she could bring a new motion before Council. They're not allowed to bring anything new for a year after Council decides one thing. And she wants the city to reinstate that certified living wage, $25 .68 an hour.
Speaker: which is what two parents working full time need to earn in order to support a family of four in Metro Vancouver. So her motion before council next week essentially says, let's get back to paying a certified living wage and stop penalizing the lowest paid workers. If ABC went behind closed doors last time to decide what to do, what makes you think they won't do the same thing this year?
Speaker: Well, I spoke with councilor Boyle about this and she told me that her motion, which goes to council next week is really a rewrite of a motion that the original motion way back in 2016. So she thinks that, look, we've already discussed this in public, so that should set a precedent. So she doesn't see a problem there at all. I'm, I'm not convinced, you know, the Vancouver and district labor council in one city.
Speaker: the municipal political party Councilor Boyle is from, are hosting a town hall meeting this Monday evening at the Maritime Labor Center.
Speaker: public's invited if you want to go. But they're making this issue a big mobilizing event. And ABC doesn't do well with dissent, especially from political critics. And so we'll see what happens there. But there's also some bad political blood in this too. Mayor Sim filed what's called a code of conduct complaint against Boyle in March last year.
Speaker: alleging that Boyle had improperly disclosed confidential information by talking about how she voted when the council was debating this whole fair wage behind closed doors. The Integrity Commissioner tried to sort this out, had to do a full investigation on it when Tim wouldn't cooperate around trying to work this out informally. And the Integrity Commissioner essentially cleared Councillor Boyle of any wrongdoings, but not after Boyle spent
Speaker: Apparently she says $7 ,000 in legal fees and seven months waiting for a decision. So we're gonna see how this plays out at council next Wednesday. Okay, moving on to the climate emergency plan. At the last city council meeting, councillors heard that Vancouver is not considered likely to meet most targets set out in that plan. What's happening with the plan at the moment?
Speaker: Well, the city's climate emergency action plan, it was approved back in 2020, and it has an overall goal of reducing the city's carbon pollution by 50 % by 2030 and become totally carbon neutral by 2050. So they set out the targets back in 2020. They had six targets, but the update showed the city is currently considered unlikely to meet the targets in three of the six areas.
Speaker: had a medium likelihood of meeting it for two, and likely to meet the target in only one area. In the unlikely to be completed category, it includes promoting complete neighborhoods, and they define that as having 90 % of the people living
Speaker: in that neighborhood within an easy walk of their daily needs, groceries, banking, medical, those kind of things. Another unlikely one is active transportation and the transit goal.
Speaker: which wants to have two thirds of all trips in Vancouver made on foot or bike or transit by 2030. And finally, the third one they're unlikely to meet is zero emission heating targets, which focuses on conversion from natural gas to electrical. Because natural gas apparently accounts for about 55 % of the total carbon pollution generated in Vancouver.
Speaker: Maybe they make a couple of other ones, medium they call it, 50 % of the kilometers driven on Vancouver roads will be zero emissions by 2030. And finally, restoring Vancouver's coasts and forests, tree planting, those kinds of things. Now, interestingly, staff say they've got the plans to meet all of those goals, but not the cash. It's a $30 million per year deficit in spending needs to be overcome to achieve the plant.
Speaker: And there's no clear idea on how to raise that kind of money. So we're the last year of this particular plan. Council will have another look next year when they consider a new plan that leads us up into 2030. And what about the one climate emergency action plan that they're in fact likely to meet? Which one is that?
Speaker: Well, the one target the city believes they're likely to meet is what's called reducing emissions from new buildings. Now they set a target of 40 % reduction in emissions associated with construction materials and designs.
Speaker: And in a nutshell, that really means less concrete, more wood construction. And with that wood construction, the city touts all kinds of other potential benefits. They talk about reducing housing costs, help mitigating the skilled construction labor shortage, create local and regional jobs. Apparently, wood is much more efficient, energy efficient, contributes to seismic resilience, and is faster and quieter than a typical onsite construction.
Speaker: because they make most of this stuff off -site and bring it on site and just kind of put it up. The city, in fact, has been experimenting with this. They've got the new Marpole Community Center, which is wood, the proposed P &E amphitheater, and even some private developers.
Speaker: have been given early incentives and they're building wooden rental buildings. So now they want wood construction to really take off here. And so council will be considering increased incentives to entice developers to add two or three more stories to their mid -sized wood frame buildings that they're proposing to build. And the incentive will likely be approved next week. We'll see if the developers respond.
Speaker: Now, another climate change report being considered next week is quite supportive of e -scooters. And it says, both private and shared e -scooters offer a convenient and sustainable mode of transportation that may help ease congestion and help diversify mobility options. So that's a laudable goal. How is staff recommending that this support be activated?
Speaker: Well, they've actually had a pilot since 2021, an e -scooter pilot, and staff think that they've learned enough from this pilot to take the restrictions off the use by allowing e -scooters on all city streets now, not just in bike lanes.
Speaker: but all city streets with a posted speed limit of 50 kilometers or less, which is most every street in Vancouver. They're also recommending this, maybe really controversial, this one, allowing them on the sea walls a lot because they're admitting they can't even enforce the existing bylaw since it's being so largely ignored. And there's so many of these e -scooters now on the streets. Somewhere around 10 % of all of the bike
Speaker: devices operated or bike -like devices operate in the city are e -scooters and the prediction is it's growing about 25 % annually. So there are already a lot and there's going to be a lot more. The report also wants to set up these self -service stations where users can rent and return shared e -scooters including the helmets for trips they want to take.
Speaker: It sounds similar to the bike share stations we see around town. So we'll see what council does with this, especially opening up the seawall bike lanes for all kinds of manual and electric mobility devices. And since this falls into one of the climate emergency goals that they want to meet, I would suspect it's likely to pass.
Speaker: Now, the final climate emergency issue that Council is considering next week is a report recommending that all of the bylaws dealing with single -use items like foam containers, plastics, drawers, single -use utensils, plastic shopping bags, all of those be rescinded. Now, this seems counterintuitive, what's going on here.
Speaker: Well, staff's making the argument that in fact, this is a significant achievement for the city. They proudly say in the report that the single use items bylaws were the most comprehensive in all of Canada when council adopted them back in 2018.
Speaker: And overall, the province and federal government have finally caught up with the city. So they say there's really no need to have three levels of government all regulating the same thing. It doesn't make any sense. So they say, let's rescind these bylaws. There's 10 of them that they have to
Speaker: rescind on these things. The city still has issues with senior governments' work focusing on single -use cups. They want the province and federal to promote reusable cups. They want the federal government to be more mindful of diverse needs when it comes to drinking straws. But overall, I think ABC Council will take credit for successfully getting rid of red tape, but it was really Kennedy's Stewards Council that did the heavy lifting on this one.
Speaker: Okay, now the final thing we're going to talk about is the West End Community Hub Renewal Plan. It's quite a mouthful. And actually there's a mouthful of a report that goes along with 329 pages, and this is the redevelopment of the community center, the neighboring King George High School, the playing fields. What can you tell us about it?
Speaker: Well, it just came out yesterday morning, so I haven't worked my way through all 329 pages. I was stunned when I saw it. I'm sure glad they've got an executive summary, which is good. But what they want to do is they want to do a new and expanded community center and library there with ICE and all of that stuff. They say it's going to be equivalent to the Hellcrest Community Center, which is Vancouver's largest community center, that one
Speaker: was built back in 2010 with a lot of Olympic dollars. And the King George High School will be rebuilt. They're going to triple, almost triple the capacity of that to 1 ,000 to 1 ,200 students. It's quite small now, only about 375. And this time they're going to put the high school behind the community center in what they call a quote, a peaceful setting for public education.
Speaker: there's going to be a sports field between the two buildings. For people who know, the school's now on a pretty busy corner on Denman Street. So this whole thing in 2023 dollars is going to cost 300 to 350 million dollars. And where are they going to get the money? Well,
Speaker: There's some capital dollars that are sitting in what's called the Community Amenity Fund. That's the fund that developers pay into when they want extra things on their buildings. And developers have already paid a huge amount of
Speaker: what they call CACs or community amenity contribution to build those extra tall, expensive stratas on Alberni and Georgia Street with the views over Stanley Park and the North Shore. But regardless, this is a huge project. It will likely take a decade to do the detailed planning, find the funding, and then build it as imagined. And if it actually happens, it's really something to look forward to for the West End. And there we go. That's all that fits.
Speaker: Oh great, thanks so much Ian. Great Jane. I've been speaking with Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass with his Citi Beat report. The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org slash redeye.
