BC Business
Each week, BCBusiness gives you an update on some of the stories turning heads across the province. Looming over you with a seemingly never-ending sense of dread, here's what had our attention this week. Is this the new normal? If reports (as a general rule, we never put much stock in those...
Each week, BCBusiness gives you an update on some of the stories turning heads across the province.
Looming over you with a seemingly never-ending sense of dread, here’s what had our attention this week.
Is this the new normal? If reports (as a general rule, we never put much stock in those things) are to be believed, British Columbians should get used to a thick layer of smoke when late August rolls around.
It’s not clear if the federal and/or provincial government can or will do anything about the burning, but it was kind of hilarious that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet were on a Nanaimo retreat this week. Isn’t it beautiful, Justin?
Also, please stop trying to deny climate change. Thanks.
In Ontario, prompt payment legislation has been law since December 2017. It’s currently in progress in Manitoba. But so far in B.C., a province that badly needs a system to pay its 16,000-plus contractors on a timely basis, nothing similar has happened.
Taking matters into its own hands, the Council of Construction Trades Associations, which represents 11 groups, has launched Prompt Payment BC. The council aims to bring together construction and professional associations to lobby the provincial government.
They have a legitimate beef: in B.C., an estimated $6 billion in annual construction billing remains unpaid past a 30-day period.
With the B.C. municipal elections less than two months away, there’s been no shortage of characters of all political stripes coming out of the woodwork in attempts to grab a mayor‘s chair.
While many of Vancouver’s serious mayoral candidates are more or less slightly different versions of each other, the race also seems to have room for radicalism. First there was Wai Young and her ridiculous pledge to rip out the 10th Avenue bike lane. How she polled around 8 percent in the most recent survey is beyond us.
But Young appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. Enter Steffan Ileman and Restore Vancouver.
The West End resident looks to be making it his personal crusade to destroy some of Vancouver’s most prominent bike lanes, including those on Pacific Avenue and the Burrard Bridge.
To his credit, Ileman uses extremely in-depth research to support his stances, including this photo. “How many cyclists do you see on the bicycle lane to the right of the cars in the picture?” Ileman asks.
There are none.
Speaking of savvy political moves, Maxime Bernier decided this week to bail on the Conservative Party of Canada and start his own collection of parliamentarians. Conservative pundits across the country lamented that the fallout between Bernier and Tory leader Andrew Scheer essentially guaranteed Justin Trudeau a victory in the upcoming 2019 election.
In reality, the fact that the party’s leadership contest came down to Scheer’s anti-abortion views versus Bernier’s xenophobia meant that it always had no chance.
Finally, a Canada-U.S. team led by UVic green chemist and civil engineer Heather Buckley recently won first place in a global competition to identify new preservatives for cosmetics and household products.
The team won a Green Chemistry and Commerce Council award in Massachusetts for its “reversible” anti-microbial, which fights bacteria while in the container but breaks down into two harmless ingredients once outside it.
Buckley’s team owns the intellectual property rights for the new preservative and is now working to commercialize it.
Still, her research kind of pales in comparison to Steffan Ileman’s.