January 14, 2019
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B.C. Today – Daily Report January 14, 2019 Quotation of the day “We should have looked at this a long time ago and been much more serious about stopping it.” Joe Schalk, former director of B.C.’s Gambling Policy and Enforcement Branch, says he co-authored multiple reports warning government officials that “horrendous amounts of unexplained cash” were flowing into B.C. casinos — and was fired soon after. Today in B.C. On the schedule The House is adjourned for the winter break. MLAs are scheduled to return to the House on February 12 for the delivery of the government’s throne speech. Committees this week The Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services will meet at 4 p.m. on January 15 in the Douglas Fir Room at the legislature to review a supplementary funding request from Elections B.C. Today’s events January 14 at 11:45 a.m. – Nanaimo Advanced Education, Skills and Training Minister Melanie Mark and Jobs, Trade and Technology Minister Bruce Ralston will join Vancouver Island University president Ralph Nilson to announce a new research facility designed to benefit the province’s fisheries. January 14 at 12:30 a.m. – Abbotsford Health Minister Adrian Dix will provide an update on seniors services in the Fraser Health Authority at the Menno Home. Topics of conversation ● In the wake of last week’s standoff between the RCMP and members of the West’suwet’en Nation, the role of elected and hereditary First Nations leadership — and the relationship between the two — has become a topic of public debate. ○ NDP MLA Jennifer Rice (North Coast) has been criticized for a Facebook post in which she describes elected band councils as “a colonial construct with the historic intention of annihilating Canada’s First Peoples.” ○ Liberal MLA Ellis Ross (Skeena), a former elected chief councillor of the Haisla Nation, took exception to Rice’s characterization of band councils. ○ “I was on council for 14 years and I didn’t have any intention of destroying Native people,” Ross told Global News on Friday. “I’m saying the community has to decide who represents them.” ○ Rice’s Facebook post linked to a clarification the government posted about comments Premier John Horgan made during his Wednesday news conference. Horgan’s office backtracked his description of the “hereditary model” of Indigenous governance as “emerging,” noting he should have said “re-emerging.” ● Some of the people arrested at the Gidimt’en checkpoint on January 7 say the RCMP used “excessive force” when making arrests last week. “I saw ... officers with assault rifles very aggressively take people down who were not resisting arrest, throw them to the snow, grinding their faces into the snow with their knees in the back of necks,” Liam Moore told Global News. “Just really a lot of abuse towards elderly people who were there.” ○ The RCMP maintain officers used reasonable force under the circumstances; one officer at the site was injured after being hit with a stick. ○ The RCMP’s use of exclusion zones to block journalists from covering parts of the enforcement action has also been criticized as an infringement of press freedom. ● Indigenous opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline could have repercussions for the Trans Mountain expansion as well. Business Council of Canada president Goldy Hyer doesn’t see that project, which the National Energy Board is still in the process of re-reviewing, moving ahead in the near future. “If I was a betting man, I’d say not anytime soon and it’s not for the lack of effort,” Hyer told Global News. ● Between 2010 and 2017, casinos in B.C. likely laundered more than $700 million according to secret internal reports from the province’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch (GPEB) investigation division obtained by CBC. A 2013 report warned that reforms introduced by the government in 2011 had not “slowed the dramatic and ongoing increase in suspicious cash" into B.C. casinos, while a follow-up report in 2014 estimated that “a massive escalation of suspicious currency entering casinos" would amount to more than $185 million in 2014-15. ○ Former GPEB director of investigations Joe Schalk pegs the total amount of money laundered between 2010 and 2017 at more than $1 billion. Schalk believes he and GPEB’s executive director, Larry Vander Graaf, were fired for repeatedly “ringing the bell” on the issue. “In our opinion, [the B.C. Lottery Corporation] was wilfully blind to what was happening," Schalk said. "They were well, well, well aware of exactly the extent and the severity of the suspicious currency that was coming in." ○ Both the BCLC and former finance minister Mike de Jong deny ignoring the issue. ● The National Energy Board released draft conditions and recommendations for how marine wildlife should be protected once the Trans Mountain pipeline reaches tidewater. ○ The board recommends measures to avoid danger to southern resident killer whales and to limit underwater noise from ships. ○ The failure of the pipeline plan to include marine protections was one of the reasons the project was quashed by the Federal Court of Appeal last summer. ○ The NEB will release the final recommendations from its court-mandated Trans Mountain reconsideration hearings by February 22. ● A B.C. First Nation is challenging the federal government’s right to allow fish farms to operate in unceded traditional territory. The Dzawada’enuxw First Nation, located in B.C.’s Broughton Archipelago, has already fought the province on the issue, launching a landmark case in May. In the B.C. case, the nation claimed Aboriginal rights and title extend to marine areas and that provincial fish farm tenures in Dzawada’enuxw are therefore unauthorized. ○ “These challenges to the federal permits are different,” Jack Woodward, the lawyer representing the First Nation, told The Narwhal. “They are challenges to the idea, in contravention of the Dzawada’enuxw’s Aboriginal rights, that you can introduce Atlantic salmon to Pacific waters. That’s the fundamental problem here.” ● ICBC is taking a wrongheaded approach to injury claims in its efforts to address rising costs, according to some personal injury lawyers in the province. “ICBC is withdrawing all offers, making lower offers and not negotiating thereafter,” Westpoint Law Group’s Matthew Fahey told the Vancouver Sun. “Now we have to litigate the matter, which will cost ratepayers a lot of money.” ○ B.C. Trial Lawyers’ Association president Ron Nairne said the Crown corporation is “acting inappropriately on legislation and regulations that do not become law in this province until April 1.” ○ Cost-saving measures at ICBC, including a $5,500 cap on pain and suffering claims, go into effect on April 1, 2019. ● Tony Harris, the Nanaimo businessman running for the B.C. Liberals in the Nanaimo by-election, made a slight but significant tweak to his business website this month. A line in Harris’ bio was edited to remove a reference to Harris, who owns a property development business, enjoying “real estate speculation.” Funding announcements ● The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and the City of Vancouver are partnering to build a 98-unit modular supportive housing development in the city. New Beginnings will be managed by the Lu'ma Native Housing Society, which will provide residents with 24/7 supports including meal programs, and life and employment skills training. The 320-square foot units, several of which will be wheelchair accessible, will rent for $375 per month — the current provincial shelter rate. ○ The ministry is contributing $16.1 million to the project while the city obtained a five-year licence agreement with the landowners. ○ More than 600 modular housing units are now operating or under construction in Vancouver. Can’t get enough of B.C. politics? Listen to this week’s episode of PolitiCoast on the upcoming by-elections and the Indigenous protests over the LNG pipeline. .