Ending Homelessness in Victoria

by Chris Johnson
As a stand-alone document, the Mayor’s Task Force Report contained some challenging objectives for dealing with homelessness. As a blueprint for ending homelessness in ten years, it was woefully inadequate, to put it politely.
What’s missing from the Coalition’s efforts is a clear plan outlining it’s objectives, such as Calgary and Edmonton have.
The [...]

Anti-Olympic Festival and March disrupt Torch Relay send-off

Video produced by Victoria Indymedia in co-operation with B Channel News, Vancouver Media Co-op and subMedia.TV
No2010 Victoria calls event “a victory for rights and justice”
From No2010Victoria:
Victoria, Coast Salish Territories, November 1, 2009 – Over 400
people gathered to oppose the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay in Victoria on
Friday, October 30th at an “Anti-Olympics Festival” and “Zombie
March” organized [...]

Analysis: No need for a law to pick up the homeless in the cold

By Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun
The poor, as the Bible informs in one of its less optimistic asides, will always be with us. So, too, are society’s schemes to try to get the unfortunate to improve their lot in life.
The latest in tough love comes from the provincial government, which is now writing a law to [...]

Weather trumps homeless rights: Attorney-General

by Justine Hunter, Globe and Mail
The right to sleep in the street ends in extreme weather, maintains B.C.’s top law official.
Attorney-General Mike de Jong told reporters yesterday he is satisfied the province can draft a law that would allow police to compel people living on the street to go to homeless shelters if winter weather [...]

Victoria protesters plan anti-Olympic rally at start of 2010 torch relay

(this is a corrected version of an article published yesterday on the TC website, which claimed that No2010 ‘vows to disrupt’ events. Zoe called and had them correct it.)
By Staff Reporter, The Province
A group of social-welfare advocates in Victoria plan a mass rally to coincide with the kickoff to the Olympic torch relay in the [...]

BC Preparing New Law to Apprehend Homeless

Read these articles carefully. Coleman tries to deflect by saying that they can’t compel people to stay at the shelter once they are brought there. What the bill says is that if they refuse to stay at the shelter, officers can the use force and jail the person. So Coleman responds that there is not [...]

Surrey won’t force homeless into shelters

-from Surrey Leader
A provincial initiative that would force homeless people into shelters during extreme weather conditions – whether they wanted help or not – is receiving cool reviews in this city.
Victoria is drafting legislation that would give authorities the power to compel the homeless to go to shelters if it’s determined they would be harming [...]

Bury my heart at Main and Hastings

by Zoe Blunt
Olympic Games and Murdered Women
The Downtown Eastside of Vancouver – Canada’s poorest urban neighbourhood – hosts the world at the Olympic Games in February. The people in this old Skid Row don’t have much in terms of material things, but they have more than their share of murder and mayhem. As many as [...]

Homeless may be forced off street

Proposed law denounced as a bid to conceal problem during Games
By Rob Shaw, Times Colonist
Police officers will have the power to forcibly transport homeless people to shelters during harsh weather, but not confine them there, under new legislation to be introduced by the B.C. government this fall.
The proposed Assisting to Shelters bill could be [...]

Halloween anti-Olympic protests will test police vows

By Rod Mickleburgh, The Globe and Mail
The first big test of vows by police and security that protests and civil rights will be respected during the Olympics is headed for normally sedate Victoria.
Under the organizing banner “NOlympic Torch Relay Halloween Convergence,” opponents of the 2010 Winter Games have been meeting and planning for months [...]