BC is NOT getting a cosmetic pesticide ban. On May 17, 2012 the Liberal Government chose the weakest response across Canada. The Legislative Committee recommended increased public education and mandatory Integrated Pest Management (IPM) with NO ban on the sale or use of cosmetic pesticides.

See recommendations on page 54 of Committee Report.

Who would ever have thought that a single political donor could have disclosed so much about the sorry state of affairs surrounding money and politics in B.C.
In what they now call a “learning experience,” TRIUMF – Canada's nuclear physics laboratory located at the University of British Columbia – finally acknowledged last week that it wasn't the most prudent of moves to make $3,370 in political donations to the B.C. Liberal party over the past three years.
It also contravened the B.C. Election Act for the Liberal party to accept these donations, since TRIUMF is a registered charity. And because of that, this past week, Elections B.C. advised the Liberals that these donations “must be returned” to TRIUMF.

But what makes this tale even more remarkable is what TRIUMF said publicly to justify their donations in the first place.

People who are street-involved face disproportionate amounts of police attention in the form of ticketing, searches, stops, and seizures of personal property -- this is called social profiling.

Social profiling remains invisible because many of these interactions are undocumented by police, and marginalized community members lack access to reporting mechanisms such as the police complaints commission. It's time for us to put these practices on the radar.

Come and hear about police accountability issues in BC, about actions taken in other Canadian regions to address social profiling of people who are street-involved, and about how communities can work together for increased oversight of policing practices.