Anti-Climate Change Government Uses Climate Change-Driven Events To Justify Term Extension.

Weather'sGoodThere

InTheFall(Maybe)Ville

You think I'm joking?

From the invaluable blogging/reporting man on the other side of the Rockies, David Climenhaga:

The United Conservative Party announced yesterday it would use the potential for spring forest fires three years from now as an excuse to extend its term in office by four and a half months...

{snip}

“With natural disasters like wildfires, drought, and floods more likely to occur in the spring and summer months, moving Alberta’s election date from May to October just makes sense,” said Justice Minister Mickey Amery, who was also trotted out at the news conference along with the Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz, Forestry Minister Todd Loewen, and Emergency Services Minister Mike Ellis...

Imagine that!

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Image at the top of post...A dust storm near Taber Alberta in early 2022.

Earworm in the sub-header?...Of course....This!

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Winslow Arizona On The Fraser?

PlentyOfFlatbedFords
NotSoFarFetchedVille

This time we're not talking about gambling.

Instead, the topic of the day is drought:

Parts of British Columbia will likely enter "unfamiliar territory" with drought if they see another hot, dry summer, says the head of the province's River Forecast Centre...

{snip}

...Pockets of the Interior are especially dry. (The B.C. River Forecast Centre's Dave) Campbell said he's most worried about the effects of drought on smaller rivers and creeks in the central Interior.

"Prince George, Quesnel, Williams Lake, Vanderhoof, that's kind of the hot spot, and then the other (area) that would be a concern would be up in the northeast," he said...

Meanwhile, the very fine fellow who was kicked out of the provincial soccer party for, at least in part, wurlitzering anti-climate science propaganda and stating that "real harm" is being done by global climate policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions is now apparently in a dead heat (pun very much intended) with Mr. Eby:

...Among decided voters, the company’s (Yorkville Strategies) survey found 37 per cent support for the Conservatives under leader John Rustad and 35 per cent for Premier David Eby’s incumbent NDP...

Sheesh.


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First quoted story, unbylined, in the Canadian Press...Second quoted story from Andrew MacLeod in The Tyee....But...Beware the reappearance of the Pantazopoulos and take his alleged 3.9% MOE with a very large grain of salt.

Image at the top of the post...Low water levels in the Quesnel where it meets the Fraser last winter...From a piece by Frank Peebels in the Quesnel Cariboo Observer.

Obliquious, non brain-eating ear worms in the header and the subheader?...This! and This!


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The Casino-Industrial-Complex Deal Is Done.

Bet365
24/7Ville


It would appear that the potential deal we talked about earlier this week is done, at least as it pertains to Lotusland Central:

Vancouver city council voted this week to allow for applications to increase the number of slot machines and tables at the city’s two casinos, on the condition they be accompanied by an assessment of their social and economic impacts.

The request to amend the city’s 2011 gambling moratorium was made by the B.C. Lottery Corp., which told council the city’s population has increased 22 per cent in the past decade and that the amendment is a first step to allow BCLC to look at ways of expanding its two existing facilities — the Parq casino in Yaletown and Hastings Racecourse in East Vancouver — rather than building more casinos...

The only question that remains is whether there will once again be organized, sustained pushback from the citizenry as there was last time.


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Quoted piece is by Joanne-Lee Young writing in the Vancouver Sun.

The thing that really makes me wonder about motives here is the fact that the changes for the Parq-no-longer-Paragon and Hastings Park are only supposed to be worth a measly few million to the CoV....So, does that mean that this change is a proof-of-principle prelude for the backers of some really  big deal lurking out there somewhere?

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Dr. Beer 'N Hockey On That Recent Bridge Bashing In Baltimore.

It'sAlwaysSomething
NewVille


Beer 'N Hockey is back.

And he is now a doctor.

More importantly, however, he is also writing again.

To wit, on that recent bridge bashing in Baltimore:

I noted there were no tugboats escorting the container ship out of Baltimore harbour. That, my friends, is what deregulation gets you: death and destruction. The firms which lobbied to save money for their shareholders by decreasing harbour safety ought to be ashamed of themselves. Yeah right. All they give a f*ck about is having the best lawyers in town.

Go give his 'new' place a visit, where 'power is not happiness', when you get a chance.


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Macau On The Fraser?

KnowYourLimit
SoWeCanJackItVille


Further to yesterday's post (and today's muted headlines)....

A very good backgrounder on the request from the BC Lottery Corp that the City of Vancouver 'modify' the moratorium against super/mega/uber casinos in Lotusland was written by Sandy Garossino, Ian Pitfield and Andy Yan and published in The Tyee.

Essentially the trio ask what the hurry is and why the need for such quietude:

Thirteen years after the BC Lottery Corp. failed in a major casino expansion effort in Vancouver, it’s back to try again.

And already things seem sketchy. The public is not getting the whole story. And the BCLC doesn’t want to give it to us.

BCLC is backing a motion before city council (in committee) on Wednesday morning to lift the moratorium on gambling expansion in Vancouver. There’s a hushed urgency to this whole process. What’s the rush here? And why so quiet?...


Clearly, there is something we are not being told here.

And I have a feeling that thing involves yet another push to make us Pottersville on the Salish Sea or, worse, Macau on the Fraser.

If you get my drift.

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Tip O' The Toque to reader Graham for the heads-up.

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Vancouver Not Vegas (Maybe)...

BagsFullOfCash

'RUsVille

Here we go again...

Vancouver council is being asked to "modify" the 2011 moratorium on gambling expansion to allow Hastings Racecourse and Parq Casino to expand the number of slot machines and table games at its locations.

Parq currently operates 600 slots and 61 gaming tables, while Hastings has 446 slots and no tables. A staff report that goes before council May 8 doesn’t say how many slots or tables could be added to the two gambling venues.

The report, however, says the BC Lottery Corporation (BCLC) has projected the City of Vancouver’s share of potential increased revenues to be in the range of $2.6 million to $5 million.

For any expansion to be considered, council would have to lift or modify the gambling expansion moratorium established in 2011 by the Gregor Robertson-led Vision Vancouver council...

Gosh.

I guess that means that the laundry 'problem' has been taken care of, right?

VANCOUVER — Self-professed students were buying multimillion-dollar homes in the Vancouver area, with dubious sources of income, or none at all.

A family of modest means transferred at least 114 million Canadian dollars to British Columbia.

Loan sharks cleaned their dirty money by giving garbage bags and hockey bags full of illicit Canadian 20 dollar bills to gamblers who took it onto casino floors.

Those were just some of the findings from a long-awaited report into money laundering in Canada’s western province of British Columbia...

Sheesh.


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First quote is from Mike Howell, formerly of the Courier now working for the wider Glacier Media world...
Second quote is from Catherine Porter et al. writing in the New York Times in June of 2022...

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It's Not Christmas Time, But...

AugieWasPhotographing

TimeVille


We are on our way to summer.

Which means that we are also just about as far away from Christmas as you can get on the calendar.

But with the death of writer Paul Auster last week, regardless the season, now is the time for one great Christmas story.

Augie Wren's Christmas story:


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The story was first published on the New York Times OpEd page on December 25, 1990...My copy, which like the story itself and Augie Wren's camera, is not my own. It actually belongs to our oldest kid and was published by Henry Holt and Company in 2004...I gave it to her that very Christmas...How do I know this?...Because the inscription says it's so.

If you prefer, you can listen to and watch Harvey Keitel, playing Mr. Wren in the movie tell the story to William Hurt...here.


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Mr. Mayor, You Keep On Using That Word.

CliffsOf

InsanityVille


From a report by Les Leyne in Glacier Media on  the huge increase in the cost of hosting World Cup soccer games in Lotusland:

“We are literally hosting 30 to 40 Super Bowl equivalents,” he (Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim) said.

Hmmmmm.

Inconceivably, Mr. Sim keeps on using that word, literally.

As Inigo Montoya might say.... I do not think it means what he thinks it means.

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The Fine Young Man Who Once Tried To Make Canada Alabama.

GotAManOfThePeople

SaysKeepHopeAliveVille


Recently, we've been discussing how workers in the Southern US'ian states have started to push back against 'right-to-work' edicts that have been designed to shut out unions and depress wages and benefits as much as possible.

And it looks like a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama might be next:

...Thursday the National Labor Relations Board announced voting will take place May 13 and 17 on whether workers at Mercedes-Benz U.S. International will join the United Auto Workers union. Vote totals are expected May 17.

That’s after the most successful, and one of the fastest campaigns, the union has ever had, signing a supermajority of the plant’s more than 6,000 employees in less than five months...

Which is both interesting and inspiring from a 'tides turning' point of view.

But here's something of historical interest that you may not know (and/or may have forgotten).

Something that Linda McQuaig noted in her most recent Toronto Star column.

Which is that, about a decade ago, a fine young politician in our then most Harperian midst did his best to turn the country of Canada into a worry-free, fully-liberated right-to-work state.

It's summarized in the Star's archives, circa 2012, in a story by Tim Harper:

Meet the young man who would be the father of right-to-work legislation in Canada.

If you think Pierre Poilievre is a young dad, at age 33, he has the prime minister's confidence and his ear, has been rightly tagged one of the most powerful persons in the national capital, and is already in his fourth term as the MP for Nepean-Carleton...

{snip}

...Poilievre doesn't buy this concept that collective bargaining and trade unions are somehow in the Canadian DNA and he believes workers' freedom mirrors individual freedom as a deeply ingrained Canadian trait.

Opponents, he says, are hung up on the U.S. experience and the domino of right-to-work states, which U.S. President Barack Obama has argued is a race to the bottom...

Man of the people, indeed.

Sheesh.

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Earworm in the sub-header and the kicker too?...Of course, this!

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