The mother of a BC teenage girl who became the face of online extortion in Canada says she was emotional to hear that the province is planning legal changes to protect those whose intimate photos are shared without their consent. Carol Todd says it’s an important step in protecting youth from being victimized in the same way as her daughter, Amanda Todd, who died by suicide in 2012, not long after posting a video in which she described being tormented by an online predator. BC Attorney General Niki Sharma says the proposed legislation would create new legal rights and remedies aimed at stopping the distribution of intimate images and allowing victims to seek compensation for their harms. She says it would cover intimate images, near-nude photos, videos and digitally altered images, including so-called deep fakes.
The City of Surrey will use new provincial infrastructure funding to shave an estimated five points from a proposed 17.5-per cent property tax hike. Mayor Brenda Locke confirmed the move at a council meeting. More than half of the city’s proposed tax hike 9.5 per cent had been earmarked to cover costs associated with scrapping the city’s transition to a municipal police force and keeping the RCMP, Locke’s marquee campaign promise. Locke told the meeting Surrey had secured 89.9-million-dollars in infrastructure funding from the province, allowing the city to revisit its budget and reduce the tax increase related to the policing transition.
BC’s human rights commissioner is expected to release the results of her office’s inquiry into hate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Commissioner Kasari Govender announced the probe in August 2021, saying there had been a significant increase in reported hate-related incidents since early 2020. The intent of the inquiry was to examine racism and racial hate, as well as hate directed at groups protected under B-C’s Human Rights Code, and make recommendations to address human rights concerns. The report is set to be released at 10 a.m. Pacific.
The City of Kamloops says officials will write a letter of support to the provincial government after hearing from a pulp mill that’s struggling to find fibre. Thomas Hoffman, fibre manager at the Kruger mill, says the facility has about 17 days’ worth of wood chips on site, below the typical inventory at this time of year. Hoffman says they don’t have any forest tenure, forcing them to increase the use of “non-traditional sources” of fibre, including fire-affected wood and slash piles. He says the shortage is in part due to recent mill curtailments and closures.
A clean energy project aimed at using ocean waves to power a coastal First Nation’s return to its traditional territory on the west coast of Vancouver Island has received a one-million-dollar boost. The funding was granted by T-D Bank to the University of Victoria’s Pacific Regional Institute for Marine Energy Discovery, a partner in the Mowachaht/Muchalaht (MOW’-ah-chat/MOOCH-ah-lat) First Nation’s wave energy project. It’s been underway for two years, with the aim of developing a first-of-its-kind renewable microgrid powered by wave energy at Yuquot a village site on Nootka Island, where members of the nation once lived. In planning their return, the nation doesn’t want to rely on diesel generators to provide energy at the off-grid site.