It’s been 38 years since two bombs were placed on separate flights in Vancouver setting off what would become Canada’s worst act of terrorism. Air India flight 182 blew up hours later off Ireland’s coast, killing all 329 people aboard — most of whom were Canadians. Health Minister Adrian Dix will take part in an event today for the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism at the Air India Memorial in Vancouver. Similar events will be held in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
Premier David Eby says he wants protesters who have been hanging banners with hateful messages aimed at transgender people to “go home.” Eby says the messages that have been displayed over a Metro Vancouver highway for months are “reprehensible” and seek to stir up division and hatred. The premier’s comments come more than a month after a B-C Supreme Court judge granted the government an injunction banning signs or gatherings in the area around the Mountain Highway Overpass over Highway 1 in North Vancouver. RCMP have said they were seeking clarity from the Ministry of Transportation related to whether enforcing the injunction, which was granted on safety grounds, would mean infringing on protesters’ Charter rights.
Police in Victoria say detectives have confirmed that a fire that destroyed a restaurant last week was the result of arson. Officers and the Victoria Fire Department were called to the restaurant at the intersection of Douglas Street and Burnside Road just after 3 am last Friday. The investigation is continuing, and police area asking anyone with dash-camera footage of the area from the time of the blaze to contact them. No injuries were reported as a result of the fire.
BC Ferries is putting five more vessels into service on key South Coast routes to provide more than 47-hundred additional sailings between now and Labour Day. But its president warns that cancellations are to be expected as the company grapples with retirements and a global shortage of professional mariners. Nicolas Jimenez says the company is still short backup staff to cover unexpected absences in key positions, particularly at the Swartz Bay and Nanaimo terminals. He says the service is boosting training and hiring hundreds of new staff members, but getting to long-term reliability will take time.
A rebate program designed to encourage people in BC to adopt electric vehicles has run out of cash, amid surging demand from the public. The province has doled out about 26-million dollars through the fund aimed at helping drivers install EV chargers at their homes with a rebate of up to 350 dollars, but it stopped accepting applications last week as the fund ran out. That’s after a rebate program for electric bicycles blew through its entire six-million-dollar allocation on the day applications opened. Energy Minister Josie Osborne says demand has outstripped funding, saying EVs represented nearly one in five new cars purchased in BC last year.
The City of Vancouver will need to look at service cuts or property tax hikes in the range of nine per cent over the next five years if its fiscal situation doesn’t change. That’s what the 2024-2028 budget outlook report, prepared by the city’s director of finance, indicates. The report says the outlook for operating expenditures is driven by factors, including higher fixed costs to provide existing service levels, the renewal of infrastructure and public amenities, Metro Vancouver levies, and the implementation of key initiatives from the 2023 budget, such as the hiring of additional police officers. The report says an average property tax increase of about nine per cent each year would be needed to balance the budget if service levels stay the same.