Cops, ninnies and playing for Team Canada
Welcome to our alternate universe
Happy 2025! Hope your year starts like a firecracker and ends with a warm breeze and a hammock.
Our first stop on today’s newsletter journey is the Greater Victoria School Board, where trustees have lost their collective mind.
‘It just doesn’t make me feel good’
For some reason, the Victoria board hates cops and has been fighting to keep them out of their schools ever since the province’s human rights commissioner bizarrely and proactively advised BC school boards to remove police liaison officers from schools unless they could provide evidence they were needed.
“American research finds that [school liaison officers] make marginalized students feel less safe at school, contributing to a sense of criminalization and surveillance,” Kasari Govender wrote, likely inspired by mass protests against the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
Police are harmful to some students, Grovender told trustees, urging BC ministers of Education and Public Safety to ice them and instead guarantee funding for civilian coaches, youth counsellors, substance use educators, and restorative justice initiatives “so that no school district feels it is forced to rely on uniformed officers to provide services that should be delivered through the education system.”
Ironically, Govender’s demand for evidence and the removal of police was based on several gigantic assumptions for which she shared, well, no evidence. She had no proof there isn’t a need for police liaison officers, nor that their services can be better delivered by a grab bag of educators.
Predictably, her social justice call-out to trustees tied several ideologically captured school boards into gordian knots for months as they debated the perceived harm to certain unspecified students who might be irreparably traumatized by the sight of a police officer in their school hallways.
In response to the commissioner’s letter, the Vancouver and Greater Victoria school boards both hurriedly cancelled their police liaison programs. Vancouver later backtracked, reinstating a revised version in 2023, with the district’s superintendent telling CBC, if a student is uncomfortable with an interaction with an officer, they can request to speak with another adult.
[Can students similarly evade a stern teacher or unwanted instruction?]
Other B.C. schools considered Grovender’s recommendation, but, like the Burnaby board, opted to keep or tweak whatever version of police liaising they had, thank you very much. Some boards went so far as to assess their respective programs as valuable for students. In Penticton, 91 per cent of parents and teachers, and 93 per cent of students approved of their police liaison program, so it stayed in place.
Victoria’s SD61 board in class of its own
The SD61 Greater Vic board trustees, on the other hand, kept it axed. This despite a majority of respondents to the board’s own survey having spoken positively about having police in schools. Most of the survey participants “self-identified as having white ethno-cultural background,” the board reasoned, so their opinions didn’t count against the marginalized few. Which, itself is racist and marginalizing.
To-this-day, Victoria school board members remain locked in a highly charged existential battle against program advocates, including local First Nation chiefs and the Education minister herself.
"There are 60 districts in this province, and I am not having this conversation with 59 other districts," Education Minister Lisa Beare rather hilariously explained to Arnold Lim from Black Press. "There is a version of police presence in every other school district in this province."
Les Leyne has covered the ongoing nitwittery at the Greater Victoria board for longer than he’d probably prefer, most recently in November, December, and this week. Vaughn Palmer had an useful overview in September and a recent story by Bailey Seymour in Black Press will bring interested readers up-to-speed.
Anti-police activist teachers federation
Sadly, but not surprisingly, the BC Teachers Federation is strenuously against having police on school premises on account of those unnamed individuals who “feel uncomfortable, intimidated, fearful and unsafe.” In the words of an ‘anonymous student’ quoted on the activist Cops Out of Schools website: “When police are in my learning environment and my school district preaches diversity and reconciliation, it just doesn’t make me feel good.”
First of all, what student calls their school “my learning environment?”
And second, boo-hoo.
What ninnies our educational administrators have become.
How on earth will younger generations build competencies and critical thinking if we helicopter them away from every adversity before they can figure their own way through it? Anyway, it can’t be done. Children can’t be protected from all harms. Problem-solving crafts character and builds resilience. We need to raise adventurers with intellectual curiosity and self-confidence who want to explore the world, not fear it.
Kudos to northerners and mid-Islanders
By contrast, the obviously much more robust Prince George school board co-hosted the 2023 RCMP Youth Academy “to give students a sneak-peek into the RCMP training.” The district also offers a week-long, RCMP ‘boot camp’ police training session for students during their spring break. [Imagine, leaving students alone with the police] As well, Prince George students can access a wildfire training program and a 60 hours of fire rescue job shadowing with a local fire crew.
Similarly pragmatic up near Campbell River, We Wai Kai Nation Chief Ronnie Chickite recently told me they want to increase RCMP presence in their school, daycare and other youth and children services, so students can build positive relationships with law enforcement from an early age.
Amen to that.
A few Northern Beat bonbons
Speaking of Prince George, Todd Corrigall suggests a more equitable mix of energy generating sources would better benefit all British Columbians, instead of just favouring residents in the Lower Mainland.
Geoff Russ says Premier Eby’s decision on whether to green-light the Prince Rupert pipeline will be a litmus test for his government on where they intend to take their energy policy.
Jeff Davies dug into the upcoming dramatic effects about to rock BC colleges following federal restrictions on international student enrolment. His news story, Brace for impact, struck a chord with readers, judging by the number of times it’s been read and shared across B.C. and Canada.
Is that a Conservative or just another thorn in my side
The new year was barely out the gate when BC Conservatives delivered their first significant thwack upside of the BC NDP body politic head. Last week, Honveer Singh Randhawa, BC Conservative candidate for Surrey-Guildford laid out allegations of 46 voting ‘irregularities’ in the riding he lost to BC NDP MLA and current Solicitor General, Gary Begg.
Affidavits from two residents at a seniors mental health and addictions recovery house say they were coerced by staff into marking their X on mail-in ballots.
“I did not know which box was for which party. I just marked the box as instructed. I did not believe I had a choice to not mark a box as instructed,” said one resident in an affidavit provided by Randhawa to the press. Another resident of the recovery house was registered as having voted but said they hadn’t.
In all, 21 of the 22-bd capacity recovery house residents voted by mail-in despite having a polling station directly across the street, which understandably struck Randhawa as “red flag.”
It’s possible a staff person at the residence was incredibly dedicated to the democratic process and zealously assisted all the residents to cast their votes. Although Elections BC rules dictate a person can’t help more than one person fill out their ballot. As well, Conservative volunteers who visited the recovery house reported many residents seemed unable to carry on a conversation or even utter a greeting.
The manager of the recovery house denied any wrong-doing to reporters, saying Elections BC dropped off mail-in ballots like they do every year and residents filled them out as they’ve always done. Except Elections BC says ballots are not just dropped off anywhere, they have to be requested. And the two residents in the affidavits said they didn’t know the election was happening or how to obtain the mail-in ballots they allegedly filled in.
Dozens of voting ‘irregularities’
Rustad and Randhawa told of other incidents elsewhere in the riding variously involving people casting a vote despite living outside the riding, non-Canadian residents who voted, and an individual who voted twice.
While 46 questionable voting occurrences may not seem like much, and they’ve admittedly split hairs to uncover them, accepting any voting fraud is a slippery slope for our democratic process. Add to that, Randhawa’s rival won the seat by a mere 22 votes, on a judicial recount yet, which gave the BC NDP the slimmest win in BC’s narrowest majority ever. Stack this beside evidence Canadians have already heard from federal law enforcement officials about known previous election interference activities by foreign nations and we have a potentially serious situation.
Whether you believe the Surrey-Guildford allegations or not, and love or love-to-hate the Conservatives, these incidents sound a lot like voter fraud if proven true and need to be investigated.
Thankfully, Elections BC said it is looking into the situation. Meanwhile, Randhawa said he’ll be filing a court petition to ask that the riding election results be over-turned. The odds of that are unknown. Regardless, Rustad and Randhawa both said they would accept the decision of the court, however it shakes down.
Disappointingly unconcerned
The reaction from the BC NDP camp to the voting allegations was characteristically nonchalant. The possibility of voter fraud, political meddling and erosion of the electoral process appears to be not much of a worry. The province’s Attorney General said the allegations were a matter for Elections BC to decide, then tried a little gaslighting, castigating the Conservatives for fixating on the election, rather than ‘the issues most important to British Columbians.’ Which presumably don’t include matters of election integrity.
Attorney General Niki Sharma also noted how Rustad accepted the election result in November, but has now changed his tune, as if considering new evidence was a flaw in character. Dismissing fraud allegations and new evidence before either are investigated, are curious strategies for any lawyer, never mind the one tasked with safeguarding the integrity of BC’s justice system.
Opposition wants investigation, Premier suggests a committee
Meanwhile, BC Conservative leader John Rustad has called for an independent investigation into the allegations to ensure voter confidence in election integrity. In response, Premier David Eby floated the idea of an all-party legislative committee to look into it. This would leave the issue of uncovering and resolving possible political election interference in the hands of partisan politicians on a NDP-majority-controlled parliamentary committee.
What could go wrong for British Columbians?
Vaughn Palmer shares his seasoned perspective on how that all-party committee scenario might play out (and more), and his Vancouver Sun colleague, Alec Lazenby, delivers a balanced overview of the Conservative allegations and the BC govt reaction.
Times, they have a changed
We are definitely living in an alternate universe.
A convicted felon US president-elect is musing about his transnational expansionist plans, the Great One is his citizen and friend, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have become the strong, sensible centrists on our national political scene.
In the absence of federal leadership, these two populist powerhouses reveal the merits of pragmatic governance as they lead Canada’s counter-offensive to the would’ve-been-funnier-if-it-was-a-joke 51st state troll campaign south of the border.
In BC, Eby has been scrambling for purchase in the international dialogue. While Ford talks about Ontario exporting 4 million barrels of oil a day to the US and Smith assures Americans a new federal government will open up the oil and gas industry, Eby held up the importance of a tech smelter in Trail.
I know he’s said other things and no doubt the Trail plant is doing great work, but is this seriously the best argument his team could muster to demonstrate BC’s worth as a trade partner? It seems a little… ah… light.
Canada’s premiers will travel to Washington on Feb. 12 to meet with representatives of both parties on the topic of tariffs. The original Team Canada game plan in December was for left-leaning premiers to meet with politically aligned governors and US representatives, and right-leaning premiers to connect with their counterparts. Which is good, I guess, as long as Eby intends to get over that Bright Line thing of his and also roll up his sleeves with political opponents to find common ground. He can agree with all the Democrats he wants, it’s the Republican decision-makers who need swaying.
Unless he intends to leave all the heavy lifting to Smith and Ford.
Tapdancing on the head of a pin
Which leads to the central point of Ford and Smith’s messaging about why Americans are our beloved neighbours and trading buddies – our interdependence on natural resources. Namely, US dependence on our oil and gas products, and a wide range of critical minerals.
With Trump’s tough talk on tariffs, Canadians will have to unite across the political spectrum and play hard ball to leverage its resources. Which means, Eby is going to have to shake off his queasiness about oil, gas and mineral development and support growth in the province’s traditional resource sectors. Otherwise, he will be seen as an obstacle who brings nothing to the negotiations and his presence won’t be required.
If supporting the LNG sector becomes necessary for the success of national trade talks as a matter of Canadian sovereignty, and the BC govt continues to impede plans to deliver resources such as LNG to the US and world markets, Eby’s first minister counterparts will not be happy.
At the least, Eby will have to make some decisions he’d rather avoid and will likely be forced to alter his energy agenda, including his overly ambitious emission targets. This will no doubt upset his NDP base and the BC Green Party MLAs (and the federal NDP, who have an election coming up).
On the long shot that Conservative election violation allegations trigger a by-election in Surrey-Guildford, and on the very much longer shot the NDP subsequently lose the riding, Eby’s govt could find itself in some jeopardy. Because the nice-to-have-as-political-insurance Greens would rapidly devolve into two need-to-have votes if the NDP lost its one-seat majority. Never mind if any additional MLAs depart the government bench for a myriad of other reasons.
That’s all extremely speculative of course and based on a domino of unlikely, though remotely possible, events.
Is it me, or is this chair getting hot
No matter how things unfurl, Eby is already on the hot seat getting pressed to contribute to the national trade strategy, or risk being left behind. Danielle Smith just met with Trump down in his Florida white house, and Ford is calling for a meeting with Mr. Art-of-the-Deal as well. Given Eby’s proclivity for only working with like-minded politicians, it’s hard to imagine he’ll ask for, or be granted, a meeting with the mercurial president-elect.
Eby’s likely next move will be to stall making any dramatic decisions until a new federal government is elected in the hopes the feds will force a decision on the province, giving the BC NDP a fall guy to rail against indefinitely. The downside is Eby and company won’t like whatever the feds will do, nor how they go about doing it. For starters, a federal Conservative Pierre Poilievre govt might use its might in ways the Justin Trudeau Liberals never did, and expedite development of resources and infrastructure, like the Northern Gateway and Prince Rupert pipelines.
No matter the outcome, playing for Team Canada while simultaneously playing to his base will be an exhausting balancing act that we wouldn’t wish on anyone. Don’t let that hot yoga membership lapse just yet, Mr. Premier, those deep stretches are going to be a godsend.
A rare glimpse of Pierre Poilievre
If you have any curiosity about the man who will likely be leading our country before the year is out, it’d be well worth an hour-and-a-half of your time to listen/watch Pierre Poilievre speaking with Jordan Peterson earlier this month. No matter what your political persuasion, it’s an unusually in-depth, informative interview of a future prime minister.
That’s all we have for today. As always, thanks for reading our stories at Northern Beat and supporting independent journalism.
Stay warm wherever you are (except Jeff Davies, who is in Mexico – you stay cool, Jeff)
Cheers,
Fran
To share feedback or story ideas, Fran@NorthernBeat.ca
For brain calisthenics, read NorthernBeat.ca
Police liaison officers are a good and positive interaction for schools and the students. That is the level of introduction that should be promoted. Starting at the elementary level (intermittently). Respecting the law and law enforcement officers should be a common goal of parents and education systems. That changes when officers are assigned to schools as a security measure because of a criminal minded atmosphere developed by attending students that create potential dangers for students attending those schools.
Society has lost its way. The obvious attitude decline toward the policing service is detrimental to the safe existence of our social environments. Understanding what side of the line to stand on is important for order to be possible. Follow that by kindness and good intentions and we are fine. Choose the other and we are not. Sadly Crime is Winning. The proper attitude toward society starts at home and should be flourished through our education systems when young minds need that type of positive interaction. Addressing crime in schools leaves us in a conundrum but in some cases it is the only answer for attempting to provide a safe and secure environment for students. Early introduction to this is very important and should be supported. Victoria is lost on many files for many reasons.