That article is stupid.
The video doesn't demonize homeless, it highlights the magnitude of the problems everyone knows is there.
One of the major issues in Vancouver is how this has been turned into a left vs right fight. Anyone who admits there's a crime or drug issue gets labeled far right.
It's easier to throw labels and watch more people die on the streets than to admit there's a problem.
Why not rebut the video with better solutions if it's so far off?
Ok. Well first of all I am not sure where it said in the article there is not a crime or drug problem in Vancouver. Also not sure where you got the idea that anyone claiming there is a problem gets labelled "far right". Of course there are these problems in Vancouver. The DTES is a complete mess and is getting worse. The situation in Vancouver is bad. Maybe stop with the straw manning.
But a large part of the video is misleading and quite frankly a long VPD Union comms piece on keeping their massive budget and hiring more officers. Do I think the VPD are the victims in this as it seems to be portraying. No. The retired VPD officer wants to be arresting people for doing drugs on the street, says that a collaborative approach with the community was the wrong way to go and straight up says they are there to "control behavior". Aaron then says police presence has decreased in the DTES without any evidence to back that claim up. Then right away the VPD Union guy says you join this job to help people. Doesn't sound like that to me, sounds like you're there to control behavior. Again the VPD officer sounds off on being frustrated about not being able to stop anyone he wants to and indignantly says he can't because "that would be infringing on someones rights", Aaron didn't seem too concerned about individual rights and freedoms though. Aaron then disingenuously says K Stewart was part of the "defund the police movement" by removing 6 million dollars from their 360 million dollar budget, trying to ensure that property taxes didn't go up during a pandemic when people lost jobs in one of the least affordable cities on earth. Funny Aaron didn't seem to care about public spending there. In fact the VPD budget increases annually, up 50 million from 2019, and crime is getting worse, so they should be rewarded with..more money? Dropping a "woke" in there too and Aaron's credibility just dissolved into the ether. The other annoying thing is I don't like K Stewart and you made me defend him.
Equating SROs and Supportive Housing - again misleading.
Another troubling narrative with the movie is 'when it all stayed in the DTES, everyone was ok with that, but now we see drug use across our street, thats not OK' (essentially just go back to the DTES and be an addict there not here).
The lack of compassion is quite frankly troubling.
The one thing I do agree with Aaron is that treatment and prevention needs to be paired with harm reduction. Harm reduction alone is not working. And the emphasis on de-stigmatizing doesn't, in my opinion, do much to solve anything. And the safe supply system has to be paired with, intervention, treatment and most importantly, mental health supports. Safe supply alone does nothing and will likely be a large failure.
The tent cities suck. I don't know what the solution is. I do know that 100 VPD officers won't change anything except your tax bill though.
The ease at which the VPD can just get whatever they want from a city for a budget by demonizing a mayor and joining forces with a guy like Aaron Gunn to create a 'VPD is the real victim' video is silly.
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Here are some simple resources from Langley School District #35 for learning a little of the henqeminem language. Don't see why learning the basics of this language and how to read the phonetic symbols used shouldn't be part of basic public education in the lower mainland.
Here are some simple resources from Langley School District #35 for learning a little of the henqeminem language. Don't see why learning the basics of this language and how to read the phonetic symbols used shouldn't be part of basic public education in the lower mainland.
While it's perhaps a noble goal, there are over 70 distinct aboriginal languages and dialects in Canada. Hul'qumi'num' is spoken by about 260 of them. Much lower than many others, but how do you expect people to learn the basics of them all?
While it's perhaps a noble goal, there are over 70 distinct aboriginal languages and dialects in Canada. Hul'qumi'num' is spoken by about 260 of them. Much lower than many others, but how do you expect people to learn the basics of them all?
I'm fine with the names, but I don't think you can expect people to learn the languages unless it is somehow relevant to them.
Having kids learn a few basic words/greetings/counting and how to use the phonetic system of a language that's local to where they're growing up wouldn't be a huge burden in a lot of districts and could probably fit pretty well into the BC primary curriculum.
It's relevant enough to warrant learning a bit in school. I would see it as a valuable addition to the curriculum.
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I'm all for renaming stuff originally named for controversial colonial figures, but at least make it readable in the latin alphabet. Most people won't take the time to learn the international phonetic alphabet, they're going to keep calling it the Matthew Begbie school simply because they can actually say it, which defeats the whole purpose
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Hearing it while looking at the name it makes more sense, but if you're just reading a sign with no experience with the IPL how do you figure it out? Why not just write it as Wekwanes T'Syaqwem?
Ok. Well first of all I am not sure where it said in the article there is not a crime or drug problem in Vancouver. Also not sure where you got the idea that anyone claiming there is a problem gets labelled "far right". Of course there are these problems in Vancouver. The DTES is a complete mess and is getting worse. The situation in Vancouver is bad. Maybe stop with the straw manning.
But a large part of the video is misleading and quite frankly a long VPD Union comms piece on keeping their massive budget and hiring more officers. Do I think the VPD are the victims in this as it seems to be portraying. No. The retired VPD officer wants to be arresting people for doing drugs on the street, says that a collaborative approach with the community was the wrong way to go and straight up says they are there to "control behavior". Aaron then says police presence has decreased in the DTES without any evidence to back that claim up. Then right away the VPD Union guy says you join this job to help people. Doesn't sound like that to me, sounds like you're there to control behavior. Again the VPD officer sounds off on being frustrated about not being able to stop anyone he wants to and indignantly says he can't because "that would be infringing on someones rights", Aaron didn't seem too concerned about individual rights and freedoms though. Aaron then disingenuously says K Stewart was part of the "defund the police movement" by removing 6 million dollars from their 360 million dollar budget, trying to ensure that property taxes didn't go up during a pandemic when people lost jobs in one of the least affordable cities on earth. Funny Aaron didn't seem to care about public spending there. In fact the VPD budget increases annually, up 50 million from 2019, and crime is getting worse, so they should be rewarded with..more money? Dropping a "woke" in there too and Aaron's credibility just dissolved into the ether. The other annoying thing is I don't like K Stewart and you made me defend him.
Equating SROs and Supportive Housing - again misleading.
Another troubling narrative with the movie is 'when it all stayed in the DTES, everyone was ok with that, but now we see drug use across our street, thats not OK' (essentially just go back to the DTES and be an addict there not here).
The lack of compassion is quite frankly troubling.
The one thing I do agree with Aaron is that treatment and prevention needs to be paired with harm reduction. Harm reduction alone is not working. And the emphasis on de-stigmatizing doesn't, in my opinion, do much to solve anything. And the safe supply system has to be paired with, intervention, treatment and most importantly, mental health supports. Safe supply alone does nothing and will likely be a large failure.
The tent cities suck. I don't know what the solution is. I do know that 100 VPD officers won't change anything except your tax bill though.
The ease at which the VPD can just get whatever they want from a city for a budget by demonizing a mayor and joining forces with a guy like Aaron Gunn to create a 'VPD is the real victim' video is silly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matata
There are a lot of good counterpoints to the ViD video in this post. The article had none of these points and was just an ad-hominem appeal.
This^
I wasn't suggesting the video is above discussion or this Aaron guy has it all down. I don't know much about him and he could be a complete tool like his new Tweet is showing.
I'm certainly open to hearing rebuts of the video and appreciate you're posting some.
But that article didn't dive into anything and through out "far right" about every sentence and in every direction including mayor Kim Sim. They even made sure to tie in a MAGA hat and a white power solute?
Lazy dismissal method of writing.
I'm all for renaming stuff originally named for controversial colonial figures, but at least make it readable in the latin alphabet. Most people won't take the time to learn the international phonetic alphabet, they're going to keep calling it the Matthew Begbie school simply because they can actually say it, which defeats the whole purpose
Teach the basics in schools and in a generation or two it wouldn't be a big deal at all, and people would have picked up a useful tool for learning all kinds of other languages as a bonus. It's already used in dictionaries and other reference texts around the world for helping with pronunciations anyways and could be easily taught in primary school.
The crux of the issue is really the extent to which people support language preservation, because if people here are serious about supporting indigenous language preservation in public spaces there's no way around learning some new sounds. The languages around here use quite a few sounds that don't exist in English, so whether or not latin letters are used people are still going to have to learn challenging new pronunciations to get it right. Insisting that it be anglicized in writing is just saying it's more important that English speakers can pronounce it in a way that makes sense to English speakers than it is to represent it in a way that preserves the correct pronunciation. The signs that use a combination of anglicized and IPA versions are a compromise, but getting rid of the IPA altogether doesn't make much sense for anyone that cares about the language being preserved with correct pronunciation.
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Teach the basics in schools and in a generation or two it wouldn't be a big deal at all, and people would have picked up a useful tool for learning all kinds of other languages as a bonus. It's already used in dictionaries and other reference texts around the world for helping with pronunciations anyways and could be easily taught in primary school.
The crux of the issue is really the extent to which people support language preservation, because if people here are serious about supporting indigenous language preservation in public spaces there's no way around learning some new sounds. The languages around here use quite a few sounds that don't exist in English, so whether or not latin letters are used people are still going to have to learn challenging new pronunciations to get it right. Insisting that it be anglicized in writing is just saying it's more important that English speakers can pronounce it in a way that makes sense to English speakers than it is to represent it in a way that preserves the correct pronunciation. The signs that use a combination of anglicized and IPA versions are a compromise, but getting rid of the IPA altogether doesn't make much sense for anyone that cares about the language being preserved with correct pronunciation.
Not trying to be an #######, but do you think Joe Public has any genuine interest in putting any meaningful level of effort into this? If so, you have more faith in the general population than I do. Heck, the majority of English Canadians take full French classes for the majority of their schooling and can't string together a few words, let alone reasonably pronounce most words. Do you really expect what sounds like it would amount to a unit in social studies to have any lasting impression on the broader population?
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Not trying to be an #######, but do you think Joe Public has any genuine interest in putting any meaningful level of effort into this? If so, you have more faith in the general population than I do. Heck, the majority of English Canadians take full French classes for the majority of their schooling and can't string together a few words, let alone reasonably pronounce most words. Do you really expect what sounds like it would amount to a unit in social studies to have any lasting impression on the broader population?
I don't think your average adult would take much interest at all. I'm sure a bunch of adults would push back against it too. That said, if there's more and more public place names around that use local languages and kids in school learn enough to be able to pronounce those pretty correctly on a regular basis, I don’t see that as too tough for an education system to achieve over a generation or two.
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The most egregious group of food sellers for Gouging as far as I can tell, Loblaws. Followed closely by independent grocers like one here in Victoria called country grocer.
I find Thriftys/Sobeys the most closer to normal inflationary prices than anyone else. Save On has been gouging for decades, never do I ever go there.
It's pure Larceny what they're charging for things.
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