Olympics

[caption id="attachment_4715" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Seems the folks at Greenpeace were also focused on December. Photo courtesy Greenpeace."][/caption]

Well, President Obama should be landing in Copenhagen right around now. His mission: bring the Olympics to Chicago.

There's another job he has that even the president would admit is a lot more important. Sure would be good to see him arriving in Copenhagen in December.

Congress: Are you listening?

-- Robert McClure

Judging by the way Kelly Sinoski's story in the Vancouver Sun is written today, it must now be PC to call prostitutes "sex workers." But we're going to continue to call them prostitutes, which is the plain English most people understand, as we muse about Sinoski's story saying that these women who perform sex for money are really, really ticked off at the Salvation Army.

It seems that the Army has put up a number of posters in Vancouver, particularly in bar bathrooms on Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside, with the theme "The Truth Isn't Sexy." They show women who are supposedly prostitutes being brutalized in various ways. The Salvation Army says Vancouver is a major port of entry for prostitutes brought in from overseas, and that many of the prostitutes in the Downtown Eastside are effectively in bondage to gangs or pimps.

And the Army says the number of prostitutes in Vancouver is sure to swell as the 2010 Winter Olympics draws near.

Comes now a group known as the Sex Industry Worker Safety Action Group to protest the Army's campaign. Said SIWSAG spokeswoman Tamara O’Doherty:

[Sex workers] are raising some concerns over the fact the campaign perpetuates the myth of sex workers being slaves.

The she goes on to say something that sounds at least a little contradictory:

They’re traumatized. ... For some of these people who work on the streets, they do experience violence. 

Hmmm... now we see that Stuart Hunter's story in The Province also uses the "sex worker" nomenclature.

The British Columbia provincial government is backpedaling in the face of outrage over legislation it drafted allowing the jailing of homeless people who refuse shelter in severe weather.

A partial draft of the legislation leaked, prompting officials to take pains to explain that what got out was an early draft discussion paper and not a proposal, reports Jonathan Fowlie of The Vancouver Sun. It was prompted by the death of a homeless woman on the streets in a fire she was using to keep warm last winter, said Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman:

It’s about trying to get them [homeless people] to a place where we can show them what’s available so they can make a decision hopefully to not freeze. There’s no movement to say we’re going to take them to jail. There’s no movement to say we’re going to put them in a secure facility.

Critics charge that the move is intended to help clear the streets of undesirable people in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The city's Downtown Eastside neighborhood houses hundreds of homeless people and has become an embarrassment to city and provincial officials.

For a taste of the criticism, dip into Harsha Walia's post on the Sun's Community of Interest page, which details how similar street-cleanings took place in Atlanta (which has *much* more dangerous neighborhoods than Vancouver) and other cities where past Olympics were held. Walia cites a report by the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions etitled "Fair Play for Housing Rights." An AP story by Erica Bulman summarizes the report.

Update 3:50 p.m. : Whoops. I totally forgot to include this interesting Globe and Mail story that InvestigateWest intern Emily Linroth pointed out to me.

Tenants of a rat-infested hotel in Downtown Eastside Vancouver are being encouraged by the city to stay, despite an eviction notice from their landlord, reports Doug Ward in the Vancouver Sun. The landlord told tenants they would have to leave by the end of September so pest control could take care of the rats, cockroaches and bedbugs in the hotel. The city says it's illegal and unnecessary for the hotel's low-income residents to leave, because the pests could be taken care of while tenants are there. The city fears the landlord plans to kick all the tenants out so he could renovate the hotel and rent its rooms to clients with higher incomes, potentially visitors to the 2010 Olympic Games. The current tenants could end up homeless if the eviction was successful.

– Emily Linroth

Metro Vancouver was planning on dumping more than 660,000 tons of trashannually in a Washington state landfill. But after the provincial government announced plans to outlaw international exporting of garbage, the region is looking for places closer to home to deposit its waste, according to Kelly Sinoski of the Vancouver Sun.

One solution proposed by Environment Minister Barry Penner is to expand the Cache Creek landfillnear Ashcroft instead of shutting it down next year as originally planned. The nearby Nlaka'pamux Nation Tribal Council heavily opposes the suggestion, saying the landfill already pollutes local rivers and affects salmon in particular. An independent study suggests the dump doesn't pose a hazard to humans or wildlife, but the council still would rather shut down the site.

Another possibility would be sending the trash to an incinerator at Gold River on Vancouver Island – a facility that hasn't been approved or built yet.

“It makes sense to deal with our environmental problems here in B.C., rather than exporting our problems to somewhere else,” Penner said. But is depending on potential expansion of an already full landfill to store garbage for the next three to 20 years the solution?

If slumlords won’t keep their rentals in shape, the city will get a judge to order the work be done by city-paid crews. That’s the tactic the Vancouver City Council is taking, says a story in today’s Vancouver Sun by Rebecca Tebrake. Vancouver is in the midst of a campaign to improve slum housing conditions, particularly in the rundown Downtown Eastside neighborhood.  Recalcitrant landlords whose properties are fixed by city-paid crews could see the cost of repairs added to their city tax bill. The city’s always had that power, but the new twist is getting a judge to order the repairs. That way, there won’t be any squabbling later about whether the repairs are really necessary. Interesting that there’s no mention in the article of the upcoming Olympic Games; this appears to be part of a series of efforts by Vancouver to get its house in order in anticipation of the world’s TV cameras being focused on the city next year.