The mayor of Burnaby was in fine punching form yesterday after the provincial government backed down on its plans for a remand centre at a site near Canada Way and Willingdon. The story in the Globe today, by Justine Hunter and me, captures some of his trademark style. This decision also goes into my file [...]

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Okay, he put it in more lawyerly language than that, but essentially that’s what Richard Peck said about Vancouver’s “code of conduct,” its definition of “confidentiality” and its whole process for reporting on misconduct at the city. It’s in his eight-page report due out tomorrow on what to do about the city’s in-camera meetings, in [...]

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Here’s a fun story I stumbled across last week, now in today’s Globe. I didn’t realize this, but the city and the private telecommunications companies have been dickering over various issues ever since telecommunications got deregulated and all kinds of companies decided they wanted to have their own cables running through the city to serve [...]

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Get used to it. Everyone is going to be writing about us ad nauseam for the next year. Here’s just one sample of how we look to the outside world, from today’s Financial Times: homelessness, drug addiction, gang violence all chipping away at our beautiful image.

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Being a hopelessly obsessed city lover, of course I can’t go anywhere without looking at what’s the same, what’s different, what’s better and what’s not in different cities. Things I saw in Montreal and thought, hmm, maybe Vancouver should think about this. 1. So many restaurants with signs in the window saying “Apportez votre vin” [...]

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Unbeknownst to many of you, I snuck out of town in disguise and am currently hiding out in the Plateau area of Montreal for a few days. But I must be really old because it’s only 11 p.m. and here I am, sitting at home instead of wandering up and down St. Laurent or St. [...]

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My story a couple of days ago referred to the other site Vancouver would be running as part of the Olympics, in addition to the two “live sites” on Georgia and at David Lam Park. Here’s the city report on the details of what’s going to be at that site, which will be “a venue [...]

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Everyone who FOI’d Judy Rogers’ severance package got their letter this morning on the amount, though not the full severance agreement. It was $571,788 — not the $700,000 that some people had been chattering about. Still a whack of money, though. You can read my web file here from the Globe and I’ll have more [...]

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The latest update from the finance committee is due out today, showing that the new likely tax increase is somewhere around 5.7 per cent. Since this new council plans to keep up with the shift of taxes from the business sector to the residential sector, that will effectively mean an increase of close to eight [...]

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I was so excited when I saw the following public announcement from the city, thinking this was going to be the public’s chance to remake the Olympics transportation plan, even though it’s already been announced. But when i called to get more information, it was clarified to me that the forum and public consultation will [...]

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