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Ecofluency: Remembering the Power of Nature Communication
Épisode 49
lundi 1 juin 2026 • Durée 06:58
A September program explores conversations with the more-than-human world. … Article written by Hollyhock.
At the heart of Ecofluency is a simple but often overlooked truth: "The future of our Earth's well-being needs our full human presence, not our absence." We've forgotten that we are not separate from nature, we are nature itself; therefore, our shared future depends on us behaving accordingly, says Saskia von Diest, founder of Ecofluency, a practice and organization that promotes the field of nature communication.
Like all living systems, we are in constant conversation with the more-than-human world, and it's possible to remember how to consciously experience this, von Diest says. Ecofluency helps us rekindle this ancestral skill of dialogue with the more-than-human, she explains: by blending observation, sensory awareness and relational attention, humans can reclaim how we listen with the full capacity of the being. In this worldview, forests, oceans, animals and even the constellations overhead are not passive backdrops to human life, she says, but part of a shared field of awareness.
When we begin to attune to that field, von Diest says, something shifts: decision-making becomes more grounded, creativity becomes more expansive, and care for self, place, community and the future begins to feel visceral rather than abstract. At a time of ecological and social uncertainty, Ecofluency offers a practical way to access the eternal intelligence and wisdom of nature that has always been present, but often ignored or forgotten, she says.
For von Diest, an award-winning consultant, facilitator and activist in the field of nature communication, this shift from theory to lived experience was immediate and irreversible.
Fourteen years ago, in the middle of a PhD in agricultural plant pathology, von Diest attended a weekend workshop in animal communication. At the time, her worldview was firmly rooted in modern science. The idea that communication could happen telepathically with animals, let alone other beings, felt implausible, she says, even after a year spent reading about the subject. She needed experiential evidence.
During that workshop, participants practised communicating with animals through photographs. Again and again, they received specific and verifiable information that they could not have known beforehand, von Diest says. She was shown colours, textures, the layout of the apartment, even a view from the window where one cat lived. Afterwards, she learned that every detail was correct.
"The shock to my science-moulded mind was twofold: not only could every one of the dozens of people in that workshop do this, but more importantly is that I hadn't realized how lonely I had felt my entire life until that point," she says. "In accepting this as an ordinary skill that had been forgotten, I found a sense of enchantment and wonder again."
What followed was not a rejection of science, but an expansion of it, von Diest says. "Nature communication allowed me to access an informational field that isn't easily available to the logical mind, and trusting this wider range of senses and awareness didn't need to replace logical ways of thinking; instead, this learning contributed to a deeper, broader way of knowing."
Von Diest suggests that much of this work is not about learning something new, but about unlearning the barriers of certainty: "While certainty provides stability, it also narrows what we are willing to perceive. When we believe we fully understand what is possible, we close the door to other forms of knowing. I've seen miraculous shifts happen when people stay curious instead of certain. Our imagination really is the limit."
"Our brains play an important role in perception," von Diest says about how we perceive reality, "but so do our hearts, our digestive systems and other parts of the body, each in their own way. Even the electromagnetic field around the body is involved."
Western science has shaped so much of th...
BC's Family Doctor Crisis Gets Even Worse
Épisode 48
dimanche 31 mai 2026 • Durée 08:05
Despite measures, almost one in four people lack access to primary care. … Article written by Andrew MacLeod.
The number of British Columbians without a regular family doctor or other primary care provider has grown to nearly 1.3 million people.
That's a 45 per cent increase since 2017 when the NDP formed government.
Health Minister Josie Osborne says that despite the increase, the government's efforts to connect patients to primary care providers are showing progress.
But Conservative Party of BC health critic Brennan Day says the problem continues to get worse.
"There's a lot of rallying around headlines that don't really line up to people's reality," Day said, referring to recent government announcements that have highlighted the number of medical professionals who have been attracted to the province and the number of people who have been attached to care.
The announcements distract from the growing list of patients who remain unattached to primary care providers, he said. "The reality people are feeling on the ground — especially here in Victoria the numbers are massive — is not really reflected."
In response to questioning from Day during debate on the Health Ministry's $36-billion budget, Osborne said the most up-to-date information as of the end of April showed that 1,259,425 people in the province were not attached to a primary care provider.
That works out to about 23 per cent of B.C.'s current population of 5.7 million.
It's a significant increase from when the BC NDP formed government. At that time the Canadian Community Health Survey found that 897,000 people, or 18.2 per cent of the population, were unattached.
That too was part of a long-term trend. About twice as many people were unattached to primary care in 2017 as had been in 2003.
Family doctors act as gatekeepers to the health-care system, referring patients to other specialists, but they also get to know the people they serve over time, allowing them to deliver higher-quality care than a walk-in clinic or other episodic care.
In recent years the province has added training spaces for doctors and nurse practitioners and created primary care networks where doctors and nurses work as part of teams with other health professionals.
It has also introduced a new pay model that moves away from the fee-for-service system where physicians bill for each patient they see and towards paying them to look after a population of patients.
And yet the number of people who are unattached to a primary care provider continues to grow.
Minister points to population growth
During debate, Osborne said more than 4,000 attachments were being made every week through the Health Connect Registry and as of March 345,000 people were still on the registry waiting to be connected to primary care.
She declined to provide maximum wait times but did share the median number of days a patient waited to be attached in each health authority: 198 days in Northern Health, 171 days in Vancouver Coastal Health, 241 days in Fraser Health, 388 days in Island Health and 477 days in Interior Health.
Provincewide, the median time it is taking to attach a patient to primary care is 295 days.
"Big picture, I think there is real progress that is being made attaching British Columbians to family doctors and nurse practitioners, but there's clearly still a lot of work to do," Osborne told The Tyee. "We want to make sure that everybody who wants that longitudinal relationship with a primary care provider has it."
The problem has been growing for at least 20 years, she said, but there are indications it is changing direction. "We are seeing really good signs of progress in terms of outpacing population growth when it comes to attachment and outpacing population growth when it comes to adding more family physicians and nurse practitioners and other primary care team members to the system," she said.
The government has had some success, she said, with its primary care strategy that includes investing in traini...
Trump, Hoekstra and the Cabal Pushing Alberta Separatism
Épisode 47
dimanche 31 mai 2026 • Durée 11:07
Signs of deepening American collusion point to the US ambassador among others. Will Ottawa investigate? … Article written by Michael Harris.
It is high time that Canadians, including the Mark Carney government, started to seriously worry about Alberta's separatist movement and its U.S. connection.
Consider a recent headline for a piece by political commentator Dean Blundell on his Substack post: "Trump's ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, at the centre of the doxxing of three million Canadians and their voter data."
Blundell's thesis? Hoekstra appears to be connected to the biggest voter data leak in Canadian history and the attempt to rig the upcoming referendum vote on Alberta separation.
Blundell elaborates by pointing out that a cabal of right-wing Christian nationalists, "Freedom Convoy" veterans and political fixers is being protected by Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party. A Canadian clone of a U.S. voter-targeting app is being used by an Alberta separatist group. The group's leader, David Parker, says the app was built by U.S. Republican operatives. Parker also claims that the app helped deliver the crucial state of Michigan to Donald Trump in his run for president.
Interestingly, Parker left for Texas after the voter data leak in Alberta became public. Also of note, he is not co-operating with the Elections Alberta investigation into the massive leak. He is no stranger to elections violations. Parker and Take Back Alberta were fined $120,000 for violations of election finance law in 2023.
Ambassador Hoekstra has promoted the U.S. voter app, 10xVotes, at Trump rallies in Michigan. He has also landed in trouble for political interference before the Alberta controversy. That stemmed from his support of a Dutch far-right political party at the U.S. Embassy when he was ambassador to the Netherlands. He also denied saying earlier that there were Muslim-ruled "no-go zones" in the Netherlands, or at least he did until his comments were confirmed by a videotape record of his words.
Hoekstra now claims he was unaware that the U.S. voter app he promoted was used to help the Alberta separatist group. Not everyone is convinced. Blundell says the RCMP needs to interview Hoekstra. He also thinks Elections Alberta should find out if Alberta voter data was stored on U.S. servers. Canada's civilian spy agency, CSIS, he adds, should conduct a foreign interference investigation into Hoekstra's activities.
Hoekstra and the MAGA network
Some history here is useful. Hoekstra was formerly chair of the Michigan Republican Party. He was scheduled to speak at the Canada Strong and Free Network conference in Ottawa on May 8. Pierre Poilievre, the politician who brought doughnuts to the truckers who blockaded Ottawa, delivered the keynote speech.
Danielle Smith participated in a fireside chat at the conference. And President Trump's former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, warmed up the room by urging Canadians to "move past the irritation" of Trump repeatedly saying he wants to annex Canada. Hoekstra was called to Washington for urgent meetings at the White House as the doxing story was breaking and sent his regrets at the last minute.
It is up for debate how serious U.S. support is for Alberta separatists. But there's no denying that it's a factor.
Here's how Blundell described the Alberta separatist movement and its U.S. connection: "It's a MAGA-funded, foreign attempt to break Canada in half, supported by a small group of compromised White Christian nationalists who are getting paid by 'MAGA interests' to do it." A little over the top but not without evidence.
Besides the overt support for an independent Alberta voiced by Trump administration officials, researchers have identified a network of MAGA movement-funded online influencers bending truths as they hype Alberta separation.
Separatists' sway in Smith's party
Polls have shown that about 57 per cent of UCP members favour separation. The president of the UCP, Rob Smith, claims t...
Kerry-Lynne Findlay Pulls BC Conservatives to the Right
Épisode 46
dimanche 31 mai 2026 • Durée 04:48
Article written by Jen St. Denis.
The election of Kerry-Lynne Findlay as the new leader of the Conservative Party of BC signals that party members have firmly rejected the more centrist vision put forward by current and former MLAs Peter Milobar and Iain Black in favour of a loud and proud social conservatism.
During her leadership campaign, Findlay touted her experience as a cabinet member in Stephen Harper's government but also made opposing Indigenous rights and ending SOGI — sexual orientation and gender identity inclusive education — central planks in her pitch to party members.
"We can be a powerhouse in our nation, a powerhouse no longer denied by eastern and global elites, predatory foreign nations and our own Constitution," Findlay told Conservative Party of BC members in her acceptance speech.
Several recent court decisions have put the spotlight on Indigenous rights and title in British Columbia and raised fears that private property rights could be under threat, although experts and First Nations have said those fears are overblown.
All five Conservative candidates had promised to end the province's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, or DRIPA. Findlay had gone further, questioning whether her leadership opponent Milobar would be in a potential conflict of interest on future decisions involving First Nations because he has family members who are Indigenous.
In her speech, Findlay doubled down on the issue.
"The NDP's radical ideology has devastated property rights, backroom-signed treaties, and the NDP's economic vandalism has to end," she said.
Jennifer Whiteside, the BC NDP's minister of labour, attended the Conservative leadership vote announcement and told reporters that Findlay had run a campaign based on "division and racism."
"I think with this result the pro-Trump, extreme-right part of the party is firmly in control," Whiteside said.
"She made comments about her colleagues that were racist in nature; she called out Peter Milobar because his wife is Indigenous."
Findlay told reporters she's used to that line of attack from the BC NDP.
"They're going to say what they say. I believe the NDP are the ideologues — they're the extremists," Findlay said.
The B.C. Conservative leadership contest attracted five candidates: current Conservative MLA Peter Milobar; Iain Black, a former cabinet minister in Gordon Campbell's BC Liberal government; restaurant owner and investor Fulmer; Caroline Elliott, a former legislative staffer in Campbell's government and BC Hydro employee; and Findlay.
The leadership race followed a tumultuous period for the party. After being revamped by younger members who had taken over the party's board in 2022, the Conservative Party of BC overtook the more established centre-right party BC United in polling results and donations in the months before the 2024 provincial elections.
Many of the Conservative MLA candidates came under scrutiny for racist, far-right, anti-vaccine or conspiracy comments they'd made in the past. That included Findlay's own husband, Brent Chapman, whose history of posting Islamophobic and racist content was unearthed during his election campaign.
Findlay, the Conservative member of Parliament for South Surrey-White Rock until she lost her seat in the 2025 federal election, told The Tyee she and Chapman had met recently with Muslim leaders in their community.
"I've had three meetings with the amazing Muslim community in my riding as recently as a few nights ago, and I had a lot of Muslim supporters voting for me, which I love, because they know I believe in interfaith co-operation — I believe in freedom of religion," she said. "And Brent was at two of those three events."
The B.C. Conservatives fell short of forming government in the 2024 election but did become the official Opposition for the first time in the history of the party.
Almost immediately, the party came under strain. Five former Conservative MLAs have now left the party — Dallas Brodie,...
A Stunning Exploration of Climate Grief
Épisode 45
vendredi 29 mai 2026 • Durée 08:24
Are we redeemable? Humans, I mean. Up until the last few years, if you asked me this question, I would have answered, "Of course!"
But now, the certainty of this response has been whittled down into uneasy silence. I'm not so sure anymore.
Any student of history will tell you with alacrity the multiple and ongoing atrocities humans have engaged in over the millennia. Almost from the beginning of organized society, we have been murdering and torturing our fellow sapiens with glee. I'm sure hominids and neanderthals also took to clobbering each other whenever the opportunity arose.
But despite the recorded evidence, I've always believed that deep in its heart of hearts, humanity wanted to be good, helpful, kind, considerate. I'm not sure I believe this any longer.
Art hasn't changed this. It has cemented it more firmly.
A new exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery takes the relationship between art and the environment as its animating idea. But in examining the concept, something else surges to the fore. Namely, that we've made a nightmare of things.
Future Geographies: Art in the Century of Climate Change features 35 works drawn from the last quarter century. It is a big show — the ideas it tackles are global in their implications and impact.
It's also big in another more literal sense, encompassing some of the most influential folks in the art biz, one of whom is John Akomfrah. The Ghanaian and British artist works in a number of creative disciplines, including documentary film.
Vertigo Sea, Akomfrah's large-scale three panel installation, takes pride of place in the VAG show. First, a gentle word of warning. There is something about the convergence of beauty and horror in the piece that pierces the senses in the most profound fashion.
Just as one is beguiled by the staggering beauty of the natural world, be it a whirling murmuration of seabirds or a pod of whales moving sleekly through the ocean, other elements enter, pulling you under the dark water.
Beauty makes you vulnerable to the larger message of the work, sinking the experience so deeply into the conscious and unconscious mind that it refuses to budge. Even when you really want it to.
There are so many things at work in the piece that one viewing probably isn't sufficient to take it all in, even in a practical way. The triptych of screens, moving independently of each other in the narrative flow and sometimes in concert, means that you spend time whipping your head back and forth so that you don't miss anything.
Ideally, one should be able to see an artwork of this magnitude and power a great many times, but that too comes with some caveats of the emotional variety.
In 'Vertigo Sea,' an unforgettable tale of grief
On the surface, 2015's Vertigo Sea is a three-channel video installation. It makes ample use of archival footage from the BBC Studios' Natural History Unit, as well as images captured in different places around the globe, including the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Skye.
Over the course of its running time, it makes tidal shifts, moving from nature documentary to literary exploration to something far greater than the sum of its parts.
The literary works cited include Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and Heathcote Williams's epic poem "Whale Nation." The latter two are both central to the work.
Other key elements include the transatlantic slave trade and Argentina's Dirty War. While the whaling industry might not seem entirely related to the atrocities committed in the slave trade, the connective tissue between them is just that, tissue, flesh flayed out in enormous ribbons of muscle, sinew and veritable oceans of blood.
In an extended interview with curator Johanne Løgstrup entitled Co-existence of Times — a Conversation with John Akomfrah, the artist explains his ideas:
The connection between the whaling industry and industrialized, extractive capitalism is a direct line. The hunt for whales and their oil formed the b...
Gu Xiong's Constant Evolution
Épisode 44
vendredi 29 mai 2026 • Durée 04:42
Becoming: The Art of Gu Xiong traces the evolution of internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist Gu Xiong. On display at the Museum of Vancouver now through Feb. 7, 2027, Becoming is the most comprehensive display of his work and highlights landmark pieces from his 50-year career.
MOV: What will people see when they visit 'Becoming: The Art of Gu Xiong'?
Gu Xiong: I like to work in multimedia formats, which gives me more diverse opportunities to explore my ideas. People will see A River of Migration, which is an installation formed by hundreds of plaster salmon fish and small white plastic boats flowing across the entire exhibition space. There will be paintings like Enclosures and charcoal drawings in Here, There, Everywhere. Illuminated Niagara Falls is made of hundreds of photographs, and its associated piece A Migrant Worker's Crate is a re-creation of the crates Jamaican migrant workers send home to their families. Yellow Cargo is a sculpture made from cardboard boxes, produce labels and video projection. My favourite piece is Smile, three individual portraits of my family with a poem in English and Chinese. It explores our family's resilience through humour.
Creating this exhibition has been a journey to retrace my artistic roots and the flow of my artistic development, through migration and global changes, like a river finding its way through treacherous landscapes. These renewed reflections shaped the spaces and themes of this exhibition, forming new meanings from past and recent work.
How did you start as an artist?
During the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1970s, I was sent to the countryside. I sketched every day, recording my daily life. In 1978, I applied to art school and was accepted by the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, where I earned a bachelor's and master's degree in fine arts. I became an instructor and started to teach students in 1985. In 1986, I was the first Chinese artist to attend the artist-in-residence program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. I worked with contemporary artists from around the world, and we went to New York to visit art galleries and museums. This experience had a big impact. I saw the work of Andy Warhol, which had a huge influence on me. But I knew I had to find my own way for my art.
I returned to China, and in 1989, I participated in the groundbreaking exhibition China/Avant-Garde at the China national museum of fine arts in Beijing with Enclosures. In 1989 I had my second residency at the Banff Centre.
Tell us about moving to Canada.
I dreamed of going to Canada after seeing a review of a Group of Seven exhibition in 1975. At the Banff Centre, Alvin Balkind, the head of the visual art studio, was very supportive of my immigration. I moved to Vancouver in 1990, and my wife and my daughter came to join me.
In the initial years we were caught in a culture shock, losing everything we once had, feeling lost and disoriented in a new culture. The most challenging aspect was making a living and trying to make art at the same time. As a new immigrant, family was very important. Without their support, I couldn't keep doing my artwork; they are part of me.
As an immigrant I wanted to explore the process of creating our new identities, to have our experiences and voices be heard and shared. We became a blend of two cultures, creating something new.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, your work shifted, partially because of your role as a professor at the University of British Columbia. Tell us about that.
In teaching at UBC, I encouraged my students to deepen their artistic voice and concepts through researching other artists' work, art history and critical theory. This also inspired me to research and deepen my art. Through my research project, I was inspired by migrant workers on Canadian farmland. They came to earn money from physical labour to support their families. Their situation resonated with me.
What is next artistically for you?
Today, I see myself as a complex person w...
Teaching Artificial Intelligence to Zap Hate Speech
Épisode 43
vendredi 29 mai 2026 • Durée 12:51
How can spaces where people gather on the internet be safeguarded from trolls poisoning them with hate speech? Liam Hebert wondered if artificial intelligence could be trained to do the job.
So, he dived deep into the complex world of teaching machines to grasp what people truly intend when, in conversation, they use certain words that can have different meanings in different group contexts. After all, some words that can be used as a vicious insult in some settings can be harmless in another.
Hebert tackled the challenge as he pursued a PhD in computer science at the University of Waterloo in Ontario — and produced a hate-speech zapping deep learning model so effective that when he was done, Google hired him as a research scientist. Hebert has also received prestigious awards including the IEEE Canadian Foundation, the Nick Cercone Graduate Scholarship in Computer Science award and a Vanier scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
We are two secondary school students who participated in a UBC research project that invited us to note our worries about the future and interview someone working to make things better. Racist and sexist speech online is something each of us encounter often, so we wanted to know if a technological fix might be invented. That led us to reach out to Hebert and talk to him about his project and why he pursued it.
Along the way, we also spoke with Takara Small, a Toronto-based journalist who covers technology and its social impacts for news outlets including the CBC and BBC. She reminds us that even if AI gets better at detecting and removing hate speech online, "a lot of the platforms that many people use are designed by private companies and their filters are designed to work based on what they feel is important, what words, what ideas, what topics they feel their audience should have access to or be able to talk about."
The people who run these "private entities decide what words, what language is allowed and it may differ from what the general public feels is acceptable, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not working how their builders want them to." One example that comes to mind is Elon Musk's X platform which is home to a lot of bigoted views.
But Small considers combatting hate speech online "an incredibly important topic because a lot of these online spaces are how young people and people of all ages primarily engage with the world. That is their window into learning about other cultures, other people, world news. It's not necessarily from fact-based reporters like myself. Sometimes it's from individuals who have no interest in truth telling and reporting on the real world."
So addressing hate speech online, Small adds, is "important not just because it forms how we engage with each other, but because it's become the primary place where people learn about what's happening around them."
Small notes that legal regulation of hate speech can be an important tool alongside any technological fixes. "If you look at racism and how hate speech is treated in Canada versus in other places, for example, the European Union, there's a real divergence," she notes.
"The European Union has stricter rules when it comes to that. There are actually quite hefty fines in some instances, and then the consequences can grow from there. I think it goes to show that governments can have a huge role to play when it comes to the type of speech we see online, the type of racism, and that it exists everywhere."
With Small's perspectives in mind, we conversed by Zoom with Hebert in San Francisco about the power and limits of AI in detecting hate speech, how atoms and molecules helped him figure out his approach, the rough experiences as a kid that still motivate him, and more. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you tell us a bit about how you became interested in doing something about online hatred?
I grew up when the internet was popping off and...
When Urban Planning Works Too Well
Épisode 42
vendredi 29 mai 2026 • Durée 14:29
Planning the Future of Abu Dhabi: A Canadian-Emirati Collaboration for Sustainable Urbanism Edited by Larry Beasley and Michael White UBC Press, On Point Press (2026)
There is a version of city-building that planners often imagine, if not quietly hope for. A place where vision aligns with implementation. Where institutions work in concert rather than at cross purposes. Where decisions are made efficiently, guided by long-term thinking rather than short-term pressures. Where plans are not just written, but realized.
It is, in many ways, a planner's ideal.
And yet, this ideal tends to appear most clearly in places where another condition is also present — one that sits less comfortably within contemporary North American planning discourse. In many of these contexts, decision-making is centralized, public participation is limited, and the mechanisms of democratic accountability are comparatively weak.
This raises a question that is easy to sidestep but difficult to ignore: what if the conditions that make planning most effective are not always the ones that make it most democratic?
Planning the Future of Abu Dhabi: A Canadian-Emirati Collaboration for Sustainable Urbanism, offers a compelling entry point into this question. Co-edited by former Vancouver co-director of planning Larry Beasley and Michael White — now associate vice-president of campus and community planning at the University of British Columbia — the book reflects on a Canadian-led effort to reshape Abu Dhabi's planning system in the mid-2000s. Beasley led the overall planning initiative, while White served as its in-country lead during the implementation of the new planning framework.
The book offers a series of essays that document a Canadian-led effort, beginning in the mid-2000s, to bring coherence to a rapidly growing city shaped by fragmented decision-making and ad-hoc development — what Beasley describes as an "accidental" urban condition.
But this is not simply a story about urban design. It is, more fundamentally, a story about building a planning system from scratch.
That alone makes the book notable. Much of planning literature focuses on plans — their form, their intent, their outcomes. Far less attention is given to the institutional machinery that makes planning possible in the first place. In Planning the Future of Abu Dhabi, the reader is taken inside that machinery. The book documents, in considerable detail, the creation of a planning agency, the development of regulatory frameworks, the establishment of design review processes and the co-ordination of infrastructure systems across a rapidly urbanizing region.
In this sense, the book's most significant contribution is not its vision of Abu Dhabi, but its account of how planning institutions are constructed.
It shows how a city moves from reactive decision-making toward a more deliberate, co-ordinated approach to growth. It also makes a strong case for strategic planning over rigid master plans — frameworks that set direction while remaining adaptable to changing conditions.
Throughout, there is a clear effort to reconcile global planning principles with local cultural and environmental realities, drawing on Arab-Islamic urban traditions and the specific constraints of a desert climate.
Taken together, these elements form a persuasive argument: cities do not falter for lack of ideas alone, but for lack of institutions capable of organizing those ideas into action.
The book also hints at another important force shaping the planning initiative: Abu Dhabi's ambition to position itself as a competitive global city. Throughout the essays, there are recurring references to tourism, international investment, economic diversification and the desire to establish the Emirate as a globally significant urban centre.
This context matters because the planning project was not unfolding in isolation from global economic pressures, but alongside a broader effort to transform Abu Dhabi into an internationally rec...
Listen Up! 'The Tyee Podcast' Is Now Live
Listen Up! 'The Tyee Podcast' Is Now Live
Épisode 41
vendredi 29 mai 2026 • Durée 04:12
Tyee News
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Readers asked, and we delivered. Find it today across major streaming platforms.
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Jacob Boon is The Tyee's newsletter editor.
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Readers asked, and we delivered. Find it today across major streaming platforms. … Article written by Jacob Boon.
As a reader-funded publication, we're always listening to what our audience wants. Now, you can listen to us, too.
Today we're excited to share a whole new way to connect with our journalism.
Introducing The Tyee Podcast — a deep dive into the stories shaping the West Coast, because Canada needs more B.C.
Every other Friday you'll hear conversations with remarkable guests discussing the events and stories shaping our world — journalists, experts and iconoclasts who will break down big topics and cut through the noise to find solutions.
In our debut episode released this morning on all your favourite podcast apps, we're diving into the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, or DRIPA. Premier David Eby's reversal on changing DRIPA this past spring stirred as much controversy as it did confusion.
The moment was both inevitable and inescapable, says our guest, Adam Olsen. Lead negotiator for the Tsartlip First Nation, former BC Green Party MLA and a Tyee contributor, Olsen believes this firestorm was brewing for over a century — as long as British Columbia has evaded answering the question of Indigenous land rights.
But Olsen says there might be a way out — and a beacon of hope for reconciliation.
Check it out right now on Apple or Spotify, or listen to the episode directly right here.
The Tyee was founded to bring a B.C. perspective — and impact — to Canada's mediascape. For over 20 years that's what we've excelled at. And for nearly as long, our readers have told us they wanted a Tyee podcast.
It took a while, and a few stutter steps over the years (RIP, Chumbucket), but we've finally delivered.
A Tyee staff team consisting of Jacob Boon, Isaac Phan Nay, Sarah Krichel and our host-with-the-most Harrison Mooney has been hard at work building this podcast over the past few months. We're thrilled to finally debut it during our spring Builder campaign.
This project doesn't happen without the support of our readers — the generous folks who contribute an amount of their choosing on a monthly, annual or one-time basis.
We call them Tyee Builders. They're the reason we remain fiercely independent in a media ecosystem dominated by hedge-fund-controlled news entities. They're why our journalism remains free and open for all to read, with no paywalls. And they're why we can grow our non-profit operation and launch exciting new projects like The Tyee Podcast.
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Amid Tensions over Police in Schools, a Vancouver Report Shows Promising Change
Amid Tensions over Police in Schools, a Vancouver Report Shows Promising Change
Amid Tensions over Police in Schools, a Vancouver Report Shows Promising Change
Épisode 40
vendredi 29 mai 2026 • Durée 13:05
29 May 2026The Tyee
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BC Politics
BC's human rights commissioner would like to see external reviews for all programs in the province.
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BC's human rights commissioner would like to see external reviews for all programs in the province.
Katie Hyslop
29 May 2026
Katie Hyslop is a reporter for The Tyee. Follow them on Bluesky @kehyslop.bsky.social or send story tips to khyslop[at]thetyee.ca.
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BC's human rights commissioner would like to see external reviews for all programs in the province. … Article written by Katie Hyslop.
Vancouver students' opinion of police in their schools has changed significantly since the program was reinstated in public schools in 2023, according to a recently released third-party evaluation.
Earlier this month, a long-promised external review of the program that stationed police officers in 17 of the district's high schools and seven Vancouver-based independent schools was finally released publicly.
It's almost exactly what B.C. human rights commissioner Kasari Govender has been asking the province to do since 2022: review the efficacy of programs that place police officers in B.C.'s public schools.
"I'm really pleased to see them following at least the gist of the recommendation I made, which, despite how it was represented, wasn't to cancel all SLO [school liaison officer] programs carte blanche," said Govender, who had previously called for the programs to be cancelled until a provincial evaluation of their impact and potential harms was completed.
"It was to evaluate them and figure out what could alleviate some of the negative impacts that we have heard, certainly anecdotally, that these programs can cause... see how those can be alleviated, and study whether they actually are doing a job."
Govender's concerns had included the penalizing of Black, Indigenous and other students of colour, as well as students with disabilities, in particular, as highlighted in U.S. scholarship on police in schools. There are comparatively few academic studies of police in Canadian schools.
As well, she was concerned that police seemed to take over positions that teachers and other educators are trained to handle, such as counselling students and coaching sports teams.
Govender attributes the positive reviews the Vancouver Police Department's SLO program received this time around to the changes they made for the new program that started in September 2023. This includes an emphasis on relationship-building with students, teachers and staff, over law enforcement duties.
SLOs also traded wearing police uniforms for VPD-branded athleisure wear. They carry smaller and concealed weapons — a gun and baton — instead of the standard-issue police weapons in visible holsters. And they are driving unmarked vehicles instead of police cars.
"We saw them take some important steps towards addressing some of the potential harms of SLO programs and harms that had emerged from the 2021 review," Govender said.
"It's not perfect; I have some concerns. But I am pleased to see them properly evaluated and take stock of what works and what doesn't."
The evaluation report was released about two weeks before fired Greater Victoria School District trustees got their jobs back.
The trustees were dismissed by government in January 2025 due to their alleged failure to create a district safety plan in collaboration with local police and the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations, following the board's cancellation of the SLO program. The fired board members had requested a judicial review of their dismissal, which was supposed to begin May 25.
However, over the weekend the Ministry of Education and Child Care's lawyer disclosed previously unreleased text messages between Victoria Police Depa...
