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Vancouver’s downtown east side a disaster area ?

A lot of people would say YES. Crime is the one of the biggest reasons. There are drug deals in the DTES and many drug users. The users have to commit crime to support their drugs habits. A lot of the users are either homeless or living in affordable housing, main rundown east side hotels and apartments.

First of all the hotels they live in are disgusting, infested by insects and rodents. They are also in disrepair having owners that don’t seem to care. The Sahota family is one of the owners , owning a number of hotels and apartments. The Cobalt Motor Hotel on the 900-block Main Street is one of the hotels that is owned by Sahota.

A 21-storey condo/townhouse complex across the lane has just been finished and is ready for occupancy. Security guards are stationed at the back of the building, the fifth tower of the City Gate development at the end of False Creek, and a fence has been erected.

The Regent and the Balmoral Hotels are another two run down hotels, with many other DTES hotels in the same condition.

Drug Users

Just today I observed two females on the Hastings Street side walk right near Insite the supervised injection site, which is funded by the government. One girl was laying down and the other was sitting up preparing to shoot up. Inject herself with drugs. This is not a unusual thing to see on east Hastings Street. Illegal drug use is right in the open on the street. Drug dealers are everywhere.

A lot of the homeless sleep outside on the sidewalks. There is 6000 homeless people in the DTES and the lucky ones have a place to sleep at night, it’s called a shelter. It is not housing. The don’t live there.

The governments answer for the homeless seems to be “ we’ll add more shelter “. This is not the answer. More affordable housing is needed. More programs for the drug addicts is needed. The laws concerning illegal drug sale need to be made a lot tougher, which will mean more jails are needed to house convicted pushers. It is not happening !

The Winter Olympics will here in 2010 and you can bet that a lot of this terrible situation will somehow be made to disappear. Laws will have to be enforced and the homeless people living on the street will have to somehow disappear. You can be sure plans are being made right now after all Vancouver can’t show it’s shame to the world.

Violence is what the Vancouver City Police try to control. With stabbings, beatings and murders the DTES is not a safe place to be. Very recently six people where killed in Surrey, four of which are known to police. Gang war is suspected. Dealers fighting for control of the drug trade.

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluegoose9999/1770171792/

Scientific evidence alone will not determine the fate of Vancouver’s supervised injection site, an undersecretary to Health Minister Tony Clement said Friday.

Winnipeg MP Steven Fletcher said his Conservative government will make a “rational and thoughtful decision based on science” when it comes to extending or ending a federal exemption for Insite, North America’s only such program.

But Fletcher told The Canadian Press the science is conflicting, so Clement will have to assess what Fletcher calls the “realities of the situation.”

“People will see that the government will make the right decision for the right reasons,” said Fletcher.

He listed the United Nations’ 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs and issues of crime prevention, rehabilitation, homelessness and mental health among the other factors involved in the government’s decision.

“There’s multiple sides to this and they all have to be taken into consideration,” said Fletcher.

His comment came after opposition MPs in the Commons grilled the government over published criticism in a drug policy journal that accused the Conservatives of attempting to muzzle scientific study of the Insite program.

According to the International Journal of Drug Policy, the government offered to fund further study of Insite under the condition that no new research be published until after the current licence expires on June 30.

“They actually wanted the thing to quietly expire before yet another piece of research came out showing it worked,” Liberal MP Dr. Carolyn Bennett said outside the Commons.

In the House, Fletcher had called Bennett’s accusation “ill-informed,” but he did not elaborate.

It’s just the latest front in a pitched battle over the supervised injection pilot project, which began in 2003.

In Vancouver, Evan Wood, one of the authors of the recent study, said the “prime minister is ignoring science in this area.”

“The revelation in this article is some information we obtained which demonstrates that (the federal government) is trying to suppress research in this area,” said Wood.

“The other issue that is relevant is the fact that there is such international condemnation . . . one calling (the federal government’s stance) a “policy horror story.”

Wood said that Clement had stated several months ago that research “has raised new questions.”

“The research hasn’t raised new questions. The research has answered questions. There is a huge academic consensus here.”

Two Vancouver groups are currently in B.C. Supreme Court seeking to keep Insite open.

The provincial government, Vancouver’s mayor and the Vancouver Police Department are among those who endorse the program, and numerous scientific studies have sung its praises.

Peer-reviewed studies have suggested the program minimizes harm to addicts, reduces the spread of disease and directs addicts toward rehabilitation programs while reducing emergency health-care and law enforcement budgets.

But opponents say allowing people to inject illegal opiates under supervision promotes drug use by facilitating addiction.

“Because if you remain an addict, I don’t care how much harm you reduce,you’re going to have a short and miserable life,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said last October.

Harper has also served notice that empirical evidence does not necessarily determine Conservative policy when it comes to crime and punishment.

In speech to party faithful this January on the second anniversary of his government’s election, Harper mocked those who cite falling crime rates to question his law-and-order agenda.

“(They) try to pacify Canadians with statistics,” said the prime minister. “Your personal experiences and impressions are wrong, they say; crime is really not a problem.”

NDP MP Libby Davies, whose Vancouver riding is home to Insite and its clientele, said study after study - and evidence on the street - shows the program works.

Local, national and international studies have all shown the benefits, she said, yet the Conservatives continue to question Insite on the basis of their subjective impressions.

“And that’s what is just so horrific about this situation,” Davies said outside the Commons, “with so many independent reviews about Insite on economic, health and social grounds that show it’s safe and it’s saving lives and it saves money.”

Insite opened in the Downtown Eastside for intravenous drug users to inject their own heroin and cocaine with clean needles and under the supervision of a nurse.

Addicts who get their fix at the site, instead of in alleys and decrepit hotels, can also access referrals to detoxification and rehabilitation services, including one that recently opened atop the Insite facility.

The federal government has twice exempted the site from federal legislation that would otherwise see operators charged under federal drug laws.

The current exemption expires June 30, when Clement must decide whether to grant another exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act or amend legislation that prohibits it.

Read more - http://canadianpress.google.com/article

Stage scaffolding fell and knocked approximately 70 people through the floor and into the basement at a crowded Christian rock concert in an Abbotsford church on Friday night.

Thirty-two people were injured and treated at Central Heights Church on McCallum Road by ambulance, police and fire personnel from several Fraser Valley communities. Twenty-two of them had to be taken by ambulance to hospital, said Const. Casey Vinet of the Abbotsford Police. Three were seriously injured, although Vinet did not know their ages or conditions.

About 1,000 people from around the Lower Mainland and Washington State were enjoying the concert by Christian rock band Starfield when light fixtures and scaffolding above the stage crashed down at 9:17 p.m. It landed on a crowd of people dancing in front of the stage and knocked them approximately 12-15 feet through the floor to the basement below. The hole left in the floor was about 24 feet sqare.

Alyx Peckinpaugh, 13, was distraught and crying after narrowly averting the fall.

“People were jumping and I started to jump,” she said. She then saw a security guard gesturing and all of a sudden the floor gave way. “I ran to the wall and yelled for my friend. I couldn’t find her, and then I saw her. I ran out to the hallway and then outside.”

Groups of people, including parents of youth who attended the show, huddled outside the church crying and praying after the incident, as the injured were treated and rushed to hospitals in Abbotsford, Chilliwack and Langley.

“Most of the injured were walking wounded, but some were taken away in stretchers,” said Chris Douglas, senior pastor of Central Heights Church.

Read more - http://www.canada.com

A Vancouver family lawyer has proposed drafting a better child protection law for children and calling it “Cordon’s Law” in the memory of the youngest of three children killed in Merritt almost two weeks ago.

“Cordon Schoenborn was the littlest one that was killed, he lost the most years of his life,” lawyer Kathleen Walker wrote on a Facebook site that contains an online petition to support the proposed new law.

She also said the name has a dual meaning: “When police want to protect something they ‘cordon it off,’ ” the lawyer pointed out.

“It comes from my 16 years in the trenches seeing what works and what doesn’t,” Walker explained Friday. “I’m adding to the debate about the gaps in the system.”

Walker’s proposal is that a new Cordon Order would be a “special red flagged, super duper restraining order that would have the urgency of an Amber alert.”

The person whom the order was obtained against would have to post a $25,000 surety, she said.

“If they breach the order, they would forfeit $25,000,” she added, “or the government could go after their house or any assets.”

Walker said her experience is that people obey orders “when their money is on the line.”

She said she hopes the idea for a Cordon Order is adopted to protect children and prevent a similar tragedy, which resulted in the death of the three children in Merritt — Kaitlynne, 10, Max, 8, and Cordon, 5.

The children’s mother, Darcie Clarke, came home last Sunday to her trailer in Merritt, where the children’s father, Allan Dwane Schoenborn, had been looking after the kids.

The mother found her children dead and Schoenborn gone.

Schoenborn, the prime suspect, was found last Wednesday morning in a wooded area on the outskirts of Merritt.

The mother had moved to Merritt from Vancouver last year to get away from Schoenborn, who turned up in Merritt about a week before the tragedy.

Schoenborn had been arrested three times in Merritt in the days before the murder of his children, who were apparently stabbed to death.

He had been arrested for being drunk in a public place and for an outstanding warrant stemming from a previous charge of driving while prohibited.

His final arrest April 3 allegedly involved threats Schoenborn made against a nine-year-old girl at the Merritt elementary school, Diamond Vale, attended by his children. He was also charged with threatening the school principal.

Schoenborn was released on bail that night during an after-hours bail hearing by phone with a justice of the peace in Burnaby after hearing police opposed Schoenborn getting bail because he wasa flight risk who tried to escape custody in Merritt and had violated a previous court order — a peace bond the Crown had obtained to protect Clarke after she was allegedly assaulted last year by her former common-law spouse in Vancouver .

Three days later, the mother found her children dead and Schoenborn gone.

Despite a massive ground and air search utilizing a police helicopter and up to 30 officers, Schoenborn was caught Wednesday morning by a Merritt trapper and his dog who had been looking for Schoenborn in the backcountry for 10 days.

Updated News- 25April 2008:

Allan Schoenborn, remained in hospital in Kamloops and did not appear in court Wednesday when the charges were laid.

“The Criminal Justice Branch has charged Allan Schoenborn with three counts of first-degree murder in relation to the deaths of his three children — Kaitlynne, Max and Cordon Schoenborn,” Crown counsel Lorne Fisher said.

“The police investigation remains ongoing and we expect to receive further evidence in the days and weeks to follow … We ask for your patience and that you allow the circumstances of this case to unfold in the court of law,” Fisher said.

read more - http://www.canada.com

The country’s only armed transit police have been tasering passengers who try to avoid paying fares.

According to documents provided in response to a Freedom of Information request, police patrolling public transit in the Metro Vancouver area have used tasers 10 times in the past 18 months, including five occasions when victims had been accosted for riding free.

In one incident, a non-paying passenger was tasered after he held onto a railing on the SkyTrain platform and refused to let go.

“After several warnings to the subject to stop resisting arrest and the subject failing to comply with the officers’ commands, the taser was deployed and the subject was taken into control,” said the report provided by TransLink, the region’s transit authority.

An internal review of the incident concluded that the action taken by transit police officers complied with the force’s policy and was within guidelines “set out in the National Use of Force Model,” the report said.

On another occasion, a passenger was tasered when he fled from police who found him without a payment receipt during a “fare blitz.” This time, however, the passenger got away because, as recounted in the report, “the Taser was ineffective due to the subject’s clothing and [he] escaped the custody of the officers.”

The region’s popular, elevated SkyTrain system operates on a partial honour system, without turnstiles. However, riders caught without a ticket are subject to heavy fines, as high as $175. Officers ask passengers at random for proof of payment.

Yesterday, the head of the RCMP admitted the that police force did not do a good job making information public about taser use, and vowed that changes will be made.

“Frankly we did not handle this matter very well,” Commissioner William Elliott told the Canadian Club of Ottawa. “We should not have needed two kicks at the can. We must learn from that and do better.”

The taser controversy will be in the spotlight again today - the mother of Robert Dziekanski, the Polish immigrant who died after being tasered by the RCMP last year at Vancouver International Airport, is expected to testify before a parliamentary committee in Ottawa.

With reports from Omar El Akkad in Ottawa and The Canadian Press

read more - http://www.theglobeandmail.com

Anyone with information about this man is asked to contact RCMP.


Allan Dwayne Schoenborn is shown in an RCMP handout photo. Police say a manhunt is under way for Schoenborn, the father of three children found slain in their Merritt, B.C., home. (April 7, 2008)

The father of three children found slain in their British Columbia home had been arrested at the local school last week and charged with making threats, RCMP now say.

And only a year ago, he’d been charged in Vancouver with sexual assault and making threats.

Allan Dwayne Schoenborn is now the subject of a massive manhunt, the day after his children were found slain in their Merritt, B.C., home.

Const. Julie Rattee said Schoenborn had a court order barring him from contacting the principal and the other children at the school. He did not have an order against seeing his own children.

Because it was a targeted crime, Rattee said there’s no indication the public is at risk but police did issue a warning today, 20 hours after the children’s bodies were found.

“He is obviously considered to be dangerous, although this was a targeted offence,” Rattee said.

“There’s been no indication that anybody else is specifically at risk, meaning the general public.”

Court documents show Schoenborn was charged last May with threatening and sexually assaulting a woman in Vancouver.

But the charges were stayed in July when Schoenborn apparently agreed to stay away from the woman and posted a $500 bond to keep the peace.

However Schoenborn was charged the following month with breaching his conditions, which included not being near the woman’s Vancouver home if he had consumed alcohol in the previous 12 hours.

He pleaded guilty to one count and was fined $200 but the second count was stayed.

In a statement issued toeday, police said they were “requesting that the public not approach Schoenborn if located as he may be dangerous and has suffered from a mental illness.”

Rattee says RCMP did not alert the public yesterday because they didn’t have a confirmed suspect in the killings.

Schoenborn’s uncle, Karl Schoenborn of Lorette, Man., said he heard a radio report about the slain children as he was driving home with his wife.

“We heard Allan Schoenborn,” he said. “We both just looked at each other and we couldn’t believe it.

“What a sickening thing to happen,” said a shaken Schoenborn. “I mean innocent little children.”

Schoenborn said he hasn’t seen his nephew since he moved from Manitoba as a young child.

“There was something (mentally) wrong with him,” he said, adding he’d heard tidbits about Schoenborn’s behaviour over the years from family members.

Rattee said Schoenborn is known to police.

The bodies of the girl and two boys, all under the age of 10, were found by their mother inside the family’s mobile home yesterday afternoon.

Meantime, the day before his neighbour’s three children were found slain in their home, Clint Heigh chatted over the fence with the man who had recently joined the family.

Heigh, a prison chaplain, said the woman and her three children had lived alone in the mobile home for the four or five months since they’d arrived.

“Then a man showed up a week or so ago and we noticed him in the yard cleaning,” Heigh said.

“On Saturday, he came up to the fence and talked to me and asked me what I did. I told him and he had some questions about that.”

Heigh said the man told him he was a roofer from Vancouver and “found that it was difficult to maintain a family and live in Vancouver.”

“Then, for some reason, I’m not a mystic of any kind, but I told him, I said” `If you ever need help, please feel welcome to give me a shout,”’ Heigh said.

Tragically, that offer of help was not heeded.

“He thanked me and he turned around and walked away . . . and then within 24 hours of offering him . . . whatever happened,” Heigh said, his voice breaking with emotion.

School district staff spent yesterday calling the families of all 185 students of Diamond Vale elementary, where the young victims went to school, to inform them that the school would be closed today.

A flower memorial continued to grow outside the police tape that still surrounds the home.

Kendra Bennett, 9, dropped off flowers today for her friend, Kaitlynne, the oldest girl. Kendra said one of Kaitlynne’s brother’s names was Max.

Through tears, Kendra said her friend was beautiful, with long, blonde hair, but she struggled to make the transition to a new school.

“Kids always teased her because of what she wore and no one really liked her because she was new. She only had a few friends,” she said.

RCMP say Schoenborn, who has a distinct scar on his right eyebrow that continues down the right side of his face and scars on both his ears, may be travelling with a large dog and has previously expressed a wish to camp out in the bush.

He has brown hair and hazel eyes, weighs about 130 pounds and is about five feet, four inches in height.

From http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/410957

Burnaby’s visible ‘minorities’ are now the majority, according to latest data from Statistics Canada.

More than half of Burnaby residents - 55 per cent - belong to a visible minority group. That’s up from about 49 per cent in 2001.

In 2006, Chinese-Canadians represented about 30 per cent of Burnaby’s total population. The information was part of a Statistics Canada report titled Canada’s Ethnocultural Mosaic, based on 2006 census data. Visible minorities referred to anyone, other than aboriginal people, who is non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.

The latest numbers put Burnaby in second place, next to Richmond, for the highest proportion of visible minorities in Vancouver and surrounding municipalities and the fourth highest in Canada. The national average is 16 per cent.

Overall results for Vancouver and surrounding municipalities, including Burnaby, showed two out of every five residents are visible minorities.

That’s 41.7 per cent of the population, up 20 per cent from 725,700 in 2001. That figure is also the second highest in the country, next to Toronto, which was about one per cent higher.

Seventy per cent of visible minorities in Vancouver and surrounding areas were born outside Canada.

Chinese was the largest visible minority group, followed by South Asians and Filipinos.

But Jody Johnson, head of the Burnaby Intercultural Planning Table, posed the question: What exactly are we counting?

She worried the data leads to an unsophisticated analysis and may be misinterpreted because some people confuse visible minorities with immigrants.

“That’s why I find immigration data and the number of foreign-born (people) are more significant and interesting pieces of information,” she said.

“Why are we lumping people into this huge group? People should be recognized, but they shouldn’t all be put into ‘visible’ and white,” she said, adding the vast majority of visible minorities are Canadian citizens.

From http://www.canada.com/burnabynow/news/

When it comes to Asian dining, you have to envy our fellow Canadians in British Columbia.

Richmond has what is generally accepted as the widest and best assortment of Chinese food available outside of Hong Kong.

And crossing the bridge into Vancouver, you encounter an assortment of Japanese restaurants unmatched anywhere in North America, with the city’s sushi bars occupying a particular place of honour.

Large, small, elegant, casual – every kind is available.

Here are a half dozen of my favourite and most reliable choices:

TOJO’S RESTAURANT, 1133 W. Broadway; 604-872-8050: For 20 years, this has been considered one of the city’s finest Japanese restaurants. The quality is high and the choices are varied. More is served here than just sushi, but it’s in the realm of raw fish that Hidekazu Tojo and his staff excel. For a real treat, sit at the Omakase (”Trust Me”) Bar and put yourself into the staff’s hands for a unique experience.

KIBUNE SUSHI, 1508 Yew St.; 604-731-4482: Just a few steps away from Kitsilano Beach, this intimate place has been a favourite of mine since it opened in 1982. The service is friendly and the place always seems full of regulars who are pleased to accept suggestions as to what’s freshest that particular day. If they have soft-shell crab on the menu, grab it. It’s not officially served sushi-style, but it’s fried so lightly and delicately it might as well be raw.

HONJIN SUSHI, 138 Davie St.; 604-688-8808: This bustling place in the heart of the city’s Yaletown district has a vibe not unlike your local pub.

But instead of chicken wings and burgers, they turn out superb sushi, including a series of multi-layered all-fish creations like their Sunshine Roll and Yaletown Roll, both real winners.

TOSHI’S, 181 E. 16th Ave.; 604-874-5173: Despite its location in a slightly funkier part of town, there’s always a line outside patiently waiting to sample the delights of this small but choice eatery, including a very special house roll with avocado on the outside and a grilled salmon skin roll that seems to be the very gustatory essence of life in British Columbia.

YOSHI JAPANESE RESTAURANT, 689 Denman St., 604-738-8226: One of the city’s most elegant Japanese dining spots, the view of Stanley Park gives Yoshi a certain upscale, dramatic flair.

But, in addition to a widely-ranging menu, it also features the classic “Kaiseki” dinner, with nine carefully thought-out courses that reflect the geography, time of year, and bounty of the seas. Yes, there is life beyond the California Roll!

OCTOPUS’ GARDEN, 1995 Cornwall Ave., 604-734-8971: Once upon a time, Kitsilano was Ground Zero for the hippie life in Vancouver. Its property values have largely changed that, but some of the old ideology still lives on, especially in restaurants like this, where a fine hand with seafood is combined with a gift for period humour, such as in the establishment’s name or its mango/yellowfin roll, known, of course, as “The Yellow Submarine.”

by Richard Ouzounian - http://www.thestar.com/Travel

A Somali-born immigrant convicted three years ago of the brutal assault of a woman in Surrey has been deported from Canada after finishing his jail sentence here.

Mohamed Hagi Mohamud, who entered Canada as a refugee, pleaded guilty to unlawful confinement and sexual assault causing bodily harm after accosting a woman near the Gateway SkyTrain station and taking her to his home.

The woman smeared blood from her face on her assailant’s couch because she thought she would die and hoped her blood would be the forensic evidence needed to convict her murderer.

The Canada Border Services Agency confirmed Monday it removed Mohamud from Canada last week. A federal law states that deportees must be sent back to their country of birth and the last country where they lived, but an official said the federal privacy law prevents the agency from disclosing which country he was deported to.

From http://www.canada.com

Agencies that bring foreign workers into Canada say they’re seeing a huge jump in demand for live-in caregivers who are recruited to look after senior citizens.

Having historically focused on importing live-in nannies for young children, those agencies attribute the increase to the perception that more families want the same type of care for their aging parents.

Andrea Texeira, a spokeswoman for Toronto-based Caregivers.ca, estimates that 75 per cent of the calls it receives now focus on eldercare, as opposed to child care.

Texeira says there are a couple of reasons for this trend.

Hiring a stay-at-home caregiver is less expensive than housing someone in a private care home. A caregiver costs about $1,700 a month, she says.

By comparison, keeping a senior in a private care home can cost more than $3,000 a month.

Hiring a stay-at-home caregiver also gives people the feeling that they have more control over the welfare of an aging parent, Texeira said.

“You can ensure your parents are treated well, and it’s not always the same case when you’re giving your parents into the hands of an organization or an institution,” she said.

In spite of the benefits, however, there are also potential risks to hiring a caregiver from another country.

“It can be quite risky, because there’s no way for you to check out their credentials or check out their experience,” said Peter Silin, who has worked with seniors in the healthcare system. He now runs a business counseling people on care decisions.

“You are also bringing in someone who is from a different culture with a different language background a lot of times, so sometimes the way they treat older people is different from the way we would,” he said.

Silin says foreign caregivers do give families a good option, as long as they monitor the home and keep in mind it’s not a replacement for 24-hour care.

From http://www.cbc.ca