Vancouver police say officers responded to more than one-thousand-600 incidents over the weekend, fueled in part by multiple demonstrations across the city. Sergeant Steve Addison says recent geopolitical events have driven the protests, and police will continue to deploy extra officers to manage the situations as they arise. Vancouver police have said previously that community concerns stemming from the October 7th deadly invasion of Israeli towns by Hamas have led to increased police deployment to a number of locations. Chief Constable Adam Palmer said last week that while the extra officers present a budgetary issue, Vancouver police will not scrimp on costs when it comes to public safety.
The BC government has introduced legislation that’s expected to add skilled workers into the labour force more quickly by reducing barriers for internationally trained workers from more than two dozen professions. Alice Wong says she’s one of those professionals who is finally starting work in BC after a lengthy and frustrating journey to have her credentials recognized. She says her path to accreditation was marked with challenges, obstacles, frustrations and doubts, despite obtaining a degree in social work in Hong Kong that was assessed as being equivalent to the master’s level in BC. Wong says she hopes the new law will provide essential supports and streamline the process for internationally trained professionals, because her experience struggling to secure work in her field as a new immigrant is not unique.
A defunct medical device firm and its director have been fined 70-thousand-dollars for misrepresenting parts of the company’s finances to investors. The BC Securities Commission says Lenis Medicals Limited and director Hassan Seyed Salari have paid the fine after raising 1.9-million-dollars from 11 investors in 2018. The securities commission says the company raised the funds using a document that misrepresented Lenis’s full liabilities of more than one-million-dollars as well as how the investment would be used. It also says Salari must resign as a director or officer from any company issuing securities and will be banned from the sector for seven years.
Yukon’s Air North has signed a deal with the territorial government to operate a new restaurant at Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport next year. The government says the new eatery will open on February 1st, 2024. The airport in Whitehorse serves about 400-thousand passengers every year. Officials say renovations should not affect travellers, as food and beverage selections will still be available through vending machines, the airport’s gift shop and nearby hotel restaurants.
The Port of Vancouver says its final cruise ship of the 2023 season is setting sail today. It says the 2023 cruise season in Vancouver has been the port’s biggest season on record, with an estimated 1.25-million passengers this year. It says that marked a 54-per-cent increase in the number of visitors in 2022. The port says 332 ships docked between April and October this year, setting a new record for the Canada Place cruise terminal — and a nine-per-cent increase compared to the 307 ships it saw in 2022.
A child in Port Coquitlam received timely help from a stranger after a black bear approached him. A recording, which was uploaded to YouTube over the weekend, shows a boy with a scooter standing on the roadway in a residential housing complex in the city’s Fremont area when a bear emerges from behind a Jeep and rushes towards him. A few moments later, a man steps out of a nearby pickup truck and walks toward the bear with arms outstretched, causing the animal to run back behind the Jeep, and the boy – who seemed unfazed – rode his scooter away. The video does not specify when the incident happened, but the BC government says people who encounter bears should never run, but should instead remain calm and consider the bear’s behaviour before deciding how to proceed.