Ben helped commemorate a forgotten mutiny at the corner of the Fort and Quadra streets in Victoria, December 2011

On December 21, 2011, I helped commemorate a forgotten mutiny of French-Canadian soldiers that occurred 93 years ago at the corner of Fort and Quadra streets in downtown Victoria, as the 259th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (Siberia) embarked for the port of Vladivostok and service in the Russian Civil War.

I first discovered the story of the Victoria mutiny while researching my book From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada’s Siberian Expedition, 1917-19.

Casting a critical eye on the government of the day’s reading of the Military Service Act, and the use of conscription for a theatre of war a world away from the Western Front, I joined other citizens in calling for the soldiers’ pardon and for an apology for their families.

Here I discuss the mutiny on CBC radio’s On The Island program, recorded at Fort and Quadra with host Gregor Creggie:

Link to CBC Radio interview, December 21, 2011

Download CBC radio Podcast

Watch Video Footage of the mutiny commemoration

Listen to the full Audio Recording, courtesy of Victoria’s Gorilla Radio

Link to audio recording of Victoria Mutiny Commemoration, December 21, 2011

Download Mutiny Commemoration Podcast (22 MB | 24:25 min)

I also spoke with Adam Sterling on CFAX 1070:

Link to CFAX 1070 interview, December 22, 2011

Download CFAX1070 Podcast

And I appeared on Vancouver Co-op Radio’s W2 Morning Project:

Link to Vancouver Co-op Radio interview, December 21, 2011

Download Vancouver Co-op Radio Podcast
Television media reported on the event

Radio-Canada television report (en française), December 21, 2011

CTV news report

Print media coverage in the Victoria Times Colonist and Victoria News

Learn More
Read about Canada’s Siberian Expedition in the Legion Magazine
Visit the Siberian Expedition Virtual Exhibition & Digital Archive
Watch the Documentary Film Trailer | En Française

Learn More!
Read about Canada’s Siberian Expedition in the Legion Magazine
Visit the Siberian Expedition Virtual Exhibition & Digital Archive

By Derek Spalding, Victoria Times Colonist, December 22, 2011

Victoria coun. Ben Isitt and Maihanna Murphy help commemorate on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011, a forgotten mutiny of French-Canadian soldiers that took place in 1918 at the corner of Fort and Quadra streets. Photograph by Adrian Lam, Times Colonist

Victoria city councillor Ben Isitt was sitting in the basement of the University of B.C. library 12 years ago when he discovered a historical event that he thought shed light on Victoria’s military past.

After years of research, he’s leading a charge to clear the names of French-Canadian soldiers who mutinied in Victoria in 1918 because they refused to fight in an overseas battle in Russia.

Isitt was joined by about a dozen people on Wednesday as he commemorated the mutiny that took place at the corner of Fort and Quadra streets. Ninety-three years ago on Dec. 21, French-Canadian conscripts in the 259th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force mutinied on the very spot Isitt stood.

The soldiers did not support Canadian forces entering a battle simply because Great Britain had sought their support, Isitt said.

He is calling on the Canadian government to pardon the men.

Isitt has extensively documented the event in his book From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada’s Siberian Expedition. The nine ringleaders of the mutiny served a range of jail terms, stretching from 30 days to three years.

“I’m really happy today to see this history remembered by a growing number of people,” he said.

Isitt has met the families of the men in Quebec and is preparing a legal brief outlining that the Military Service Act did not empower the government to force soldiers to serve in Russia.

Linda Doctoroff sings at the site of a 1918 Victoria mutiny. Photograph by Adrian Lam, Times Colonist

“The military command admitted as much back in 1919 when it suspended their sentences before the soldiers came home,” Isitt said.

“So they came home as free men, but we think it should go a step further in that their records should be cleared or pardoned and their families should receive an apology.”

The executive director of the Victoria Francophone Society attended the event. Christian Francey said the work being done on behalf of the dead soldiers represents the ability of French and English communities to work together.

“For many, many years we are two communities, English and French here in Canada and we’ve been working together even if we have different challenges and different ideas,” Francey said.

The Esquimalt & Nanaimo Railroad, Vancouver Island's historic and vital rail link

A letter writer suggests that rail service along the Esquimalt and Nanaimo (E&N) corridor “doesn’t seem to fit Via Rail’s mandate” (“E&N track is dead thanks to inaction,” Dec. 9).

But what then is Via Rail’s mandate? Is it to focus exclusively on inter-city rail service in vote-rich Ontario and an over-priced, tourist-oriented trans-Canada train?

Or does the federal crown corporation have an ongoing obligation to connect the communities of Vancouver Island, providing an efficient alternative to automobile transport that will help reduce carbon emissions and mitigate harmful climate change?

Nearly a quarter of Vancouver Island was handed to the Dunsmuir family in the 1880s to build a railroad connecting the port at Esquimalt with the coal-mining towns further north. Surely this massive transfer of public land to private interests should provide an ongoing benefit to the public in our 21st-century world.

Whether the federal government supports the restoration of the E&N corridor through Via Rail, or provides capital funds along with the province to a public island-based operator, is an open question.

But we should reject the notion that a sustainable future can be built on this island in the absence of commuter and inter-city rail.

A thousand people gathered in downtown Victoria on October 15 as part of the "Occupy Together" movement , advocating for a fairer, more sustainable economic system. Photo: Times Colonist

Victoria, like cities across Canada, North America and the globe, has become a site of contestation, where young and old people have drawn a line in the sand against a system they believe is built upon inequality and exploitation. These visionaries offer the brightest beacon in a generation of the possibility for a better world.

The people camped in Victoria’s Centennial Square belong to a global movement, inspired by the “Occupy Wall Street” protest that emerged in mid-September as a spear in the heart of the global financial system. They also look beyond North America to millions of people in North Africa and the Middle East who collectively made the “Arab Spring.”

My sympathies are with the visionaries occupying the world’s squares and the 99% they believe are on the losing end of our so-called “free” market economy. They point to more than a billion people across the globe who lack safe supplies of food, water, shelter, and access to medical care. They point to the fantastic concentration of wealth at the top of our global economy — the billionaires and their lieutenants who live off surplus value and inherited wealth as the 99% work, suffer and — suddenly — struggle for system change.

The “Occupy Together” movement offers grounds for optimism for everyone seeking a path out of the neo-liberal era of privatization, environmental despoliation, and “dog-eat-dog” attacks on the working class, the poor and the fabric of our civil society.

But to succeed in their goal of eradicating inequality and exploitation through systemic change of the world’s financial and economic structures, the visionaries in the world’s squares (and Victoria’s Centennial Square) need to be cognizant of history.  Many social movements have emerged rapidly, only to fade away (or be suppressed) without meeting their goals.

As a student of the history of social movements in Canada and globally, I’m volunteering some advice:

1. Move with the 99%

To win a better world, the movement needs to move with the majority of people in Victoria, the country and the globe. This is no small task, but it is the only way to avoid becoming marginalized and isolated by the opponents of social change. Language, vision, strategies, and tactics need to be developed with constant attention to the day-to-day realities and needs of the majority (“where the masses are right now, rather than where radicals think their ought to be”).

2. Organization is key

At the same time visionaries move with the 99%, they need to lead, to provide an “arrow-head” capable of piercing the cultural and political armour of a resilient economic elite. Organization is key. “Consensus”, “autonomy” and “self-organization” (watchwords of many social movements) are admirable qualities to bring to a potluck or a church picnic. But they are insufficient on their own to challenge the economic power of billionaires. To succeed, the visionaries need to create disciplined political parties that enlist the 99% and democratically develop strategies, tactics and a “road map” for the future.

3. Draft a road map

“What is the alternative?” skeptics inevitably ask. And it is a good question. If millions of people are mobilizing to change the system, what do they propose to build in its place? Social movements have skirted this kind of hard theorizing and planning for several decades. If they are now talking about “system change” in a serious way, visionaries in every community of the globe need to start drafting a road map today. What does the transition look like? How will different groups and individuals become involved? How will a fairer, more sustainable economy be structured? How will resources be allocated? How will political decisions be made? How will civil liberties and human rights be safeguarded? How will disputes between individuals, groups and states be resolved?

Before the visionaries answer these questions, it would appear premature to ask the 99% to join them in discarding the status quo.

4. Keep to the high ground

Advocacy for system change inevitably involves conflict — between proponents of change and the elite that benefits for the status quo. In many countries, advocacy for system change has degenerated from a political struggle into horrific civil wars. Both revolutionaries and elites have resorted at various times to violence (and sometimes totalitarianism) to protect and advance their interests. To win over the 99% in our 21st-century world, the visionaries would be wise to pursue their objectives in accordance with principles of non-violence. This does not mean rolling over and surrendering as the elite turns to trickery and thuggery to retain its privileges; non-violence can include civil disobedience and many tactics that disrupt attempts to suppress the movement. But a basic humanitarian ideal — respect for human life and human dignity — must inform every act and word.

5. Become the state

The movement originated in the public squares of Cairo, New York and now Victoria. But its tactics must extend beyond the idea of tent cities and occupying public space to engage in the struggle on every front.  At its root, the movement must confront the issue of state power — which presently leaves armies and many police at the command of the elite, rather than the 99%. The movement will never have an arsenal capable of matching the technological firepower of NATO and its client states. So the slogan “Become the State” is essential for a non-violent transition to a new system.

To become the state, the visionaries need to form alliances with existing community organizations and political parties to field candidates for election to every public office. Fill the councils, legislatures and parliaments of the country with representatives of the 99%, rather than representatives of the elite. Then, as the movement moves, the elite will lack the political tools to resist the transition to a democratically organized economy.

Link to Interview on CKNW Radio Vancouver on Jack Layton’s passing

Download Podcast

The man knew how to eat pizza. With the same seriousness of purpose and concentration that drove his political life, Jack Layton devoured two loaded slices of pizza pie at a hole-in-the-wall place on Rue St-Denis in bohemian Montreal. Jack stacked the slices one on top of the other, face in. I was captivated by the technique. Perhaps he sought to maximize his calorie intake to sustain a frenetic schedule. Perhaps he had devised a time-tested technique to keep tomato sauce and toppings out of his neatly-groomed, signature moustache.

It was a blustery March day in early 2003. The then-52-year-old former Toronto City Councillor and Ryerson political science professor was biding his time. Two months after being catapulted into the leadership of Canada’s New Democratic Party with a commanding 31,000 ballots (54%), in the party’s first-ever “one member, one vote” contest, Jack led his tiny 13-member caucus from the political sidelines. He viewed Question Period for the parliamentary visitor’s gallery and held press conferences on the House of Commons front steps.

It would be more than a year before the voters of Toronto-Danforth invested Jack with his own seat in Canada’s Parliament (as part of an emboldened yet compact 19-member caucus that wielded disproportionate influence with Paul Martin’s minority Liberal government). Two years after that, Jack’s caucus would grow to 29 members (in an election that landed the neo-con Calgary economist Steve Harper in the Prime Minister’s chair).

Five years after that blustery Montreal day, his caucus grew to 37 members – the second-best showing in the NDP’s history to that point – and days after the new parliament opened, Jack would enter into an agreement with the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois for a Coalition government to topple Harper.

That Coalition was not to be (as Harper successfully implored the Queen’s representative to lock the doors on parliament to avoid a test of confidence in the house). Nor, would it seem, was Jack destined to be Canada’s first socialist prime minister. The forces of nature and politics work in mysterious ways.

But what Jack Layton achieved during his eight years at the NDP’s helm – and, most notably, during his final six months in politics and life, as he battled at least two forms of cancer and hip surgery – has indelibly imprinted his name in the history of the Canadian Left and the broader political history of the country.

On May 2^nd, 2011, Jack Layton led the NDP to a historic breakthrough, capturing one-third of the seats in Canada’s House of Commons (103 of 309 parliamentary seats) and an unprecedented 59 seats in Quebec (a province where the party had never before held more than a single seat). Buoyed by the quirky slogan “Yes We Cane” (a reference to his walking stick-turned-campaign ornament), Jack’s party usurped the Liberals (until very recently Canada’s “natural governing party”) as Her Majesty’s Official Opposition. For the first time in Canada, the socialists were the government-in-waiting, on the brink of federal power.

At this moment of triumph, both personally and for his party, Jack was publicly revealed in a most human form. Cancer had resurfaced, he informed Canadians two months after the May election, and with startling rigour. He was stepping aside, “temporarily,” for renewed treatment, with the hope of returning to the next session of parliament in the fall.

Jack Layton never recovered from this cancer and never again assumed his seat in the hallowed chamber of the “Peoples’ House.” He had fought the battle of his life in the 2011 election and that summer the warrior passed over to the other side. The Canadians mourned from coast to coast to coast as flags at government buildings and private business establishments flew at half staff. Political opponents lauded Jack Layton’s political achievements and hopeful spirit, even if they had “never supported the NDP party.”

I will remember Jack’s less public side, from the years we worked together as members of the NDP federal council. He was a complex personality, acutely aware of his surroundings and the balance of forces around him. Driven by big dreams but reluctant to speak about the world in ideological terms. To media pundits, this was a sign of Jack’s political “mellowing,” a supposed move from the hard-left posturing of his municipal career to more moderate, centre-left stances that characterized some elements of his tenure as NDP leader. I did not agree with every decision Jack made as NDP leader (including support for the extension of NATO’s Libya mission). But I will always respect Jack Layton’s tireless contribution to the Canadian Left and to public life, a contribution that likely contributed to the rapid deterioration of his health.

I will fondly recall that blustery March day at the pizzeria on Rue St- Denis. And I will strive, with that exemplary seriousness of purpose and concentration, to eat my pizza double-stacked.

The 21-year-old parliamentary page from Winnipeg has now been fired for her defiant act. On June 3rd, she stood stone-faced in the centre of the sterile red chamber of privilege, holding a sign reading “Stop Harper.” To the shock of Canada’s PM and his coterie of MPs and senators, Ms. DePape made her protest for 20 long seconds as the Queen’s representative in Canada, David Johnston, attempted to read his prepared remarks from the Harper government. Ms. DePape was finally led out of the chamber by a grim and aged sergeant-at-arms, a memorable image broadcast across the country.

Ms. DePape has been attacked by critics on the political right, centre, and left (including remarks from Green Party leader Elizabeth May and New Democrat Jack Layton) who suggest that she should have protested elsewhere to preserve the sanctity of parliament). But she has also mustered strong support in Canada and abroad, including from celebrated American filmmaker Michael Moore, who urged Canadians “to put aside the full respect thing and bring out their inner hockey stick and get to work on preventing their government from turning into a version of ours.”

DePape has been criticized for debasing Canada’s Parliamentary tradition, but she defends her actions as belonging to another deeply Canadian tradition — ”the tradition of ordinary people in this country fighting to create a more just and sustainable world, using peaceful direct action and civil disobedience.”

My personal view is that we need more Brigette DePapes in this world, to speak truth to power and take risks. This is needed in the short term to resist the Harper Conservatives’ agenda of austerity in social spending and largesse for militarism and corporations, and in the mid- and long-term to build a fairer society. I will close with Ms. DePape’s own words:

“I think those who reacted with excitement realize that politics should not be left to the politicians, and that democracy is not just about marking a ballot every few years. It is about ensuring, with daily engagement and resistance, that the vision we have for our society is reflected in the decision-making of our government.”

Re: Story published May 30 called, “Time to reform public-sector pensions, city told”

The Fredericton Chamber of Commerce is wrong to attack the pension benefits of city workers.

While pension reform may sound harmless, it threatens workers whether they have pensions or not, as well as businesses that rely on consumer dollars in this community.

It’s popular these days to attack the wages and benefits of unionized workers, who have won a better deal through decades of bargaining collectively through their democratic unions.

But all workers are entitled to a decent living standard. Our goal should be to improve the working and living conditions for all workers, particularly those in the non-unionized service sector.

The Fredericton Chamber of Commerce wants to end the “defined-benefit” pension plan of city workers because it serves as an example to workers in other sectors. It shows that it’s possible to achieve financial security in old age through the collective bargaining process.

Rather than co-operate with workers across Fredericton and the province to achieve financial security (through improvements to the Canada Pension Plan as well as industry-specific pensions), the chamber is trying to push down the aspiration of all workers.

Businesses and workers need to send a clear message to the leadership of the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce: the long-term health of this community requires fair incomes and financial security for all, rather than a mean-spirited race to the bottom.

But today’s major policy announcement is the more ominous – the dismantling of the Canadian Wheat Board, an important institution founded in response to the collapse of Prairie agriculture and world prices in the Great Depression of the 1930s. For nearly eight decades, the board has provided a fair price to farmers while stabilizing the Prairie economy from the boom-bust cycle of the global capitalist commodity markets.

While pro-Conservative loyalists in some farm organizations will support this move, let’s hope that grassroots Prairie farmers send a clear message in defence of this successful co-operative enterprise.

Surely Adrian Raeside has been following B.C. politics long enough to know that it is naive to depict the NDP as a “dying party” (cartoon, Jan. 21).

The New Democratic Party is no stranger to controversy or internal debate. It is composed of diverse individuals and groups, with wide-ranging views on how social change should be achieved, how resources and the environment should be managed and the role of markets and the state.

But to suggest that current debates over leadership foreshadow the NDP’s demise is not supported by evidence.

In 2001, when the Campbell Liberals reduced the governing NDP to two legislative seats, predictions of the NDP’s “death” were perhaps appropriate. But the party rebuilt and holds 34 seats. It holds power in Manitoba and Nova Scotia and, at one time or another, governed Ontario, Saskatchewan, BC and the Yukon.

After every election but one since 1932, the NDP or its predecessor, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, has formed the opposition or government in BC. Representatives of working people have held legislative seats as far back as 1900, when coal baron James Dunsmuir still dominated B.C. politics and economics.

Raeside’s cartoon reveals a predictable editorial line, attacking the NDP on whatever grounds while handling the Liberal party with kid gloves. As a historian of B.C.’s left, I predict it will take a lot more than a cartoon by Adrian Raeside for the New Democratic Party to die.

Re: “Picnic brigade reclaims patch of Pandora Avenue,” Aug. 22.

I live in the immediate vicinity of downtown Victoria, with all the social problems of homelessness and substance misuse outside my doorstep.

I would, of course, prefer that poor people had housing options outside our public parks. I would prefer to see those managing addictions afforded a range of treatment options, from safe-consumption sites to publicly funded residential treatment.

But rather than relegate our street community to the status of a permanent underclass, I am committed to the redistribution of resources. Our tax system provides a mechanism to take income from me (and those far more affluent) to build social housing and provide treatment. This should be a higher priority than the Band-Aid solution of policing the poor.

At the same time, we must not lose sight of the big picture: an economic system that privileges property over human rights, denying shelter to vulnerable people in one of richest countries on Earth.

This contradiction — poverty in the midst of plenty — is not new. But that does not make it any less abhorrent, nor any less deserving of root-and-branch reform.

Ben Isitt

A recent article suggests that Western Forest Products wants to sell 2,500 hectares of undeveloped land on southwestern Vancouver Island “to finance mill modernization.”

I do not believe this. WFP is as much a land development company as a forestry company. It is a major supplier of the “land bank” for Island developers who are extending sprawl into forested areas — contributing to problems ranging from climate change and loss of ecosystems to traffic gridlock on roads and highways.

How much of WFP’s profit from the sale of Skirt Mountain land in 2001 to the Bear Mountain development has been spent on “mill modernization?”

Rather than upgraded “modern” mills creating jobs and adding value to Vancouver Island timber, we see WFP moving in the opposite direction: Closing mills, exporting timber and selling off more land for urban sprawl.

The whole regime of forest tenure and land development on this island should be questioned.

Ben Isitt

Re: “Voting systems aren’t the same,” letters, April 7.

I appreciate the interest generated by my op-ed on B.C.’s experience with electoral reform in the 1950s, which was intended to draw attention to this history.

Though technically an alternative vote system, the term “transferable vote” was used interchangeably during the 1952 election. This is confirmed by a Victoria Daily Colonist editorial just prior to the election, on June 7, 1952:

“Whether or not the new transferable vote system will do what it is designed to accomplish, spread the legislative seats in fairer ratio to the votes cast, will not be known until all the ballots are counted right down to the bottom names.”

This evidence complicates one letter-writer’s claim that “B.C. has never used any form of the transferable vote system for provincial elections.” Moreover, another Colonist editorial (from voting day, June 12, 1952) discussed the connection between the new voting system, absentee ballots and the delay in the count:

“Under the new transferable vote system, a hiatus seems inevitable… The test count undertaken recently by a returning officer and his assistants illustrates the huge task ahead.”

Two days later, the Colonist described the counting procedure as “disgraceful incompetence,” with “muddle and confusion in issuing and handling ballot papers” and an unprecedented number of spoiled ballots. The Colonist called for an “overhaul” of the new Elections Act “from top to bottom.”

As a parent, cyclist and pedestrian, I’ve got a bold proposal for neighbourhood safety – lower the speed limit on all City of Victoria streets to 30 km/h.

Unnecessary, excessive, foolish?

The current limit, 50 km/h, enables commuters to race along Fernwood’s borders – Pandora, Cook, Shelbourne, Begbie, and zoom through its heart of Fernwood Road. Safety is imperiled on secondary streets as drivers scramble to navigate their way around the forward-looking street closures of the 1970s (Gladstone, Pembroke, Queen’s and Grant).

Many of these road-warriors are non-Victorians. They race to and from their homes in Oak Bay, Gordon Head, Broadmead, and other Saanich neighbourhoods. Victoria residents deal with the burden on local infrastructure and the hazards to ourselves and our children. Underscoring this irony, Oak Bay’s internal speed limit is 40 km/h.

Several Fernwood organizations and residents have banded together demanding a 30 km/h speed limit along the length of Fernwood Road. This is a great idea that I whole-heartedly support.

I propose taking this idea a step further – working with the City’s Engineering Department and Council to lower the limit on all Victoria streets to 30 km/h. Some details would have to be ironed out – including possible exemptions on a handful of arterial roads – but the general principle has many advantages. The small increase in driving times for city residents – no more than five minutes on a cross-town trip – would be worth it.

Children would be safer as drivers have adequate time to slow down and stop for changing road conditions. Cyclists and pedestrians would be safer as downtown and neighbourhood traffic mellows. Victoria would truly emerge as Canada’s pedestrian and cycling capital – and its most child-friendly city.

Now that the B.C. Supreme Court has struck down Victoria’s anti-camping bylaw, let’s hope that city leaders adopt a more pragmatic and compassionate approach. Too much public money has already been wasted fighting the basic principle of the right to shelter.

The issue is not whether homeless people should sleep in parks. Let’s raise the level of discussion to how we can compel the provincial and federal government to provide funds to build a home for every homeless person in our city.

Studies show that over 80 per cent of the street community are from our region (rather than “outsiders”). Regardless of their place of origin, action can no longer be avoided. The private real-estate market creates gaping holes that only people power and government action can fill.

Let’s end the cat-and-mouse between police and homeless, by putting a roof over the head of everyone in need. Surely if we can squander $1 billion on security for the Olympic Games (and another billion on highways and stadiums) we can spend the same amount of public money on permanent, safe, supported housing.

Agencies like the Victoria Cool Aid Society, Our Place, and Pacifica Housing have already proven their ability to provide stable homes for the hard-to-house. These organizations and others will eliminate homelessness as soon as citizens force their governments to provide adequate funds.

Ending homelessness is not a mystery. It is a question of political will. The B.C. Supreme Court victory is a kick in the right direction.

Statistics Canada has confirmed what many Greater Victorians have known for some time: B.C. Liberal “downsizing” since 2001 contributed to a drop in incomes. This might be a “puzzle” to economists and employers, likely because they never bore the brunt of Gordon Campbell’s cuts.

Across B.C., median incomes dropped three per cent between 2000 and 2005, after rising almost four per cent in the previous decade of NDP government. Campbell’s anti-labour policies and social program cuts go a long way in explaining this shift.

Restrictions on union organizing and bargaining slashed incomes of health-care and social-service workers. Women and recent immigrants were particularly hard hit: Wages of dietary and housekeeping staff in Greater Victoria hospitals dropped from nearly $20 per hour to around $10 per hour. Manufacturing workers also suffered from increased export of unprocessed commodities (such as raw logs to the U.S.). Social assistance cuts denied people with disabilities the meagre incomes necessary for shelter and food.

These steps were taken to “downsize” B.C. workers’ expectations and wages and expand the incomes of corporations and the affluent through tax cuts and privatization.

B.C.’s economy is now exhibiting signs of strength and a tightening labour market. But our economy has always been cyclical, and a downturn is inevitable in construction and all sectors. With Campbell’s leaner and meaner government, the downward income trend will not easily be reversed.

In the long term, British Columbia’s economic and social development is best served by a policy of equality.

Why is it that Halifax can build a public sewage treatment system for $400-million (one-third municipally funded) and the CRD considers a $1.2-billion, public-private system?

The population of Greater Halifax was 372,000 in the last census, compared with 330,000 in Greater Victoria. Even if our region chooses better treatment that Halifax’s “advanced primary” system, the proposed price is too high.

A costly P3 (public-private partnership) should be rejected.

Affordable sewage treatment meets the following criteria: (1) Publicly owned, operated, and financed; (2) Resource-recovery to capture heat and energy for transit, residential, and commercial use.

This is the most cost-effective and sustainable sewage treatment option for the CRD – and the best deal for taxpayers.

Against the backdrop of rising land values and a booming village centre, half of Fernwood’s corner stores have disappeared in recent years. Is this a sign of gentrification?

Since 2004, the following small retailers – all operated by Chinese-Canadian families – have closed their doors:

• Wall’s Food Market (Fernwood at Bay)
• Gladstone Noodle House and Grocery (Gladstone beside Fernwood Inn)
• Cook Street Grocery (Cook at Pembroke)
• May’s Grocery (Chambers at Princess)

Three established stores and a new one – Mom’s Market – remain open:

• Lum’s Grocery (Begbie at Stanley)
• Arcade Grocery (Pandora at Camosun)
• Bay Grocery (at Shakespeare)
• Mom’s Market (formerly Gladstone Market; Gladstone at Stanley)

The loss of small retail is not confined to Fernwood. Communities across North America grapple with “Walmartization” and the impact of soaring land values on businesses operating on razor-thin margins. Chinese-run corner stores have historically provided employment and housing for recent immigrants. They offer self-sufficiency irrespective of language aptitude, and often serve as conduits to other fields of work.

In Oak Bay and neighbourhoods near and far, the closure of Chinese-run corner stores was a bellwether of gentrification. Block by block, diversity and eclectic neighbourhood features gave way to a homogenous urban form. Only recently has the clarion call of “smart growth” and the waning of automobile culture resuscitated neighbourhood-level services.

Fernwood’s future is not yet written. Vitality in our core and periphery give reason for hope. Haultain Village features the twin retailers Haultain Grocery and Adam’s Food Fair; Oak Bay Junction offers Stadacona Grocery and Freddie’s Flowers; and Wellburn’s Market soldiers on at the corner of Pandora and Cook.

But for the late-night crowd, it’s a corporate-only affair: Husky, Mac’s, and the soon-to-open (cringe) Shell Oil Convenience Mart at Fernwood and Yates.

The fate of Fernwood’s small retailers is in our hands. Hopefully, in the headlong rush to become a “destination” “have” neighbourhood, Fernwood doesn’t abandon those homey, eclectic features that drew us here in the first place. To quote Joni Mitchell’s wise words, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

The Conservative government’s decision to spend $3.4 billion on four “super-jets” is good news for defence contractors, but bad news for ordinary Canadians who support other priorities. Climate change, child care, housing and health and education require a substantial injection of federal funds.

But sadly, ramping up defence spending seems to be the top priority for the Harper Conservatives.

Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Gary Lunn has touted a new $300-million energy efficiency program, which essentially restores a program cancelled by his government in 2006. This investment, which is needed, is one-tenth the magnitude of a single defence contract.

Defence personnel are entitled to adequate wages and benefits, but under the cover of “supporting our troops” the Conservatives have opened the money taps for transnational firms like Boeing.

Issues like climate change and poverty pose a far greater threat to this country’s well-being. What good is having a representative at the cabinet table when that representative remains silent in the face of skewed priorities?