Opinion: Brad West been one of the sharpest critics of decriminalization
VICTORIA — Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West fired off a letter to Premier David Eby last week about Allan Schoenborn, the child killer who changed his name in a bid for anonymity.
“It is completely beyond the pale that individuals like Schoenborn have the ability to legally change their name in an attempt to disassociate themselves from their horrific crimes and to evade the public,” wrote West.
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The Alberta government has legislated against dangerous, long-term and high risk offenders who seek to change their names to escape public scrutiny.
“I urge your government to pass similar legislation as a high priority to ensure the safety of British Columbians,” West wrote the premier.
The B.C. Review Board has granted Schoenborn overnight, unescorted leave for up to 28 days, and he spent some of that time in Port Coquitlam, according to West.
This despite the board being notified that “in the last two years there have been 15 reported incidents where Schoenborn demonstrated aggressive behaviour.”
“It is absolutely unacceptable that an individual who has committed such heinous crimes, and continues to demonstrate this type of behaviour, is able to roam the community unescorted.”
Understandably, those details alarmed PoCo residents.
But the letter is also an example of the outspoken mayor’s penchant for to-the-point pronouncements on provincewide concerns.
He’s been one of the sharpest critics of decriminalization.
His most recent blast followed the news that the New Democrats were appointing a task force to advise on ways to curb the use of illicit drugs and the spread of weapons in provincial hospitals.
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“Where the hell is the common sense here?” West told Mike Smyth on CKNW recently. “This has just gone way too far. And to have a task force to figure out what to do — it’s obvious what we need to do.
“In a hospital, there’s no weapons and you can’t smoke crack or fentanyl or any other drugs. There you go. Just saved God knows how much money and probably at least six months of dithering.”
He had a pithy comment on the government’s excessive reliance on outside consultants like MNP to process grants for clean energy and other programs.
“If ever there was a place to find savings that could be redirected to actually delivering core public services, it is government contracts to consultants like MNP,” wrote West.
He’s also broken with the Eby government on the carbon tax.
“The NDP once opposed the carbon tax because, by its very design, it is punishing to working people,” wrote West in a social media posting.
“The whole point of the tax is to make gas MORE expensive so people don’t use it. But instead of being honest about that, advocates rely on flimsy rebate BS. It is hard to find someone who thinks they are getting more dollars back in rebates than they are paying in carbon tax on gas, home heat, etc.”
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West has a history with the NDP. He was a political staffer and campaign worker with Mike Farnworth, the longtime NDP MLA for Port Coquitlam and now minister of public safety.
When West showed up at the legislature recently, Farnworth introduced him to the house as “the best mayor in Canada” and endorsed him as his successor: “I hope at some time he follows in my footsteps and takes over when I decide to retire — which is not just yet,” added Farnworth who is running this year for what would be his eighth term.
Other political players have their eye on West as a future prospect as well.
Several parties have invited him to run in the next federal election. He turned them all down.
Lately there has also been an effort to recruit him to lead a unified Opposition party against Premier David Eby in this year’s provincial election.
I gather the advocates have some opinion polling to back them up and a scenario that would see B.C. United and the Conservatives make way (!) for a party to be named later.
Such flights of fancy are commonplace in B.C. when the NDP is poised to win against a divided Opposition.
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By going after West, the advocates pay a compliment to his record as mayor (low property taxes and a fix-every-pothole work ethic) and his populist stands on public safety, carbon taxation and other provincial issues.
The outreach to a small city mayor who has never run provincially also says something about the perceived weaknesses of the alternatives to Eby.
“It is humbling,” West said Monday when I asked his reaction to the overtures.
But he is a young father with two boys, aged three and seven. The mayor was 10 when he lost his own dad and he believes that if he sought provincial political leadership now, “I would not be the type of dad I want to be.”
When West ran for re-election — unopposed — in 2022, he promised to serve out the full four years as mayor.
He is poised to keep his word, confident that if the overtures to run provincially are serious, they will still be there when his term is up.
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LIVE Q&A WITH B.C. PREMIER DAVID EBY: Join us April 23 at 3:30 p.m. when we will sit down with B.C. Premier David Eby for a special edition of Conversations Live. The premier will answer our questions — and yours — about a range of topics, including housing, drug decriminalization, transportation, the economy, crime and carbon taxes. Click HERE to get a link to the livestream emailed to your inbox.
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HOUSTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris will team up with Beyoncé on Friday for a rally in solidly Republican Texas aimed at highlighting the medical fallout from the state’s strict abortion ban and putting the blame squarely on Donald Trump.
It’s a message intended to register far beyond Texas in the political battleground states, where Harris is hoping that the aftereffects from the fall of Roe v. Wade will spur voters to turn out to support her quest for the presidency.
Harris will also be joined at the rally by women who have nearly died from sepsis and other pregnancy complications because they were unable to get proper medical care, including women who never intended to end their pregnancies.
Some of them have already been out campaigning for Harris and others have told their harrowing tales in campaign ads that seek to show how the issue has ballooned into something far bigger than the right to end an unwanted pregnancy.
Since abortion was restricted in Texas, the state’s infant death rate has increased, more babies have died of birth defects and maternal mortality has risen.
With the presidential election in a dead heat, the Democratic nominee is banking on abortion rights as a major driver for voters — including for Republican women, particularly since Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn the constitutional right. He has been inconsistent about how he would approach the issue if voters return him to the White House.
Harris’ campaign has taken on Beyonce’s 2016 track “Freedom” as its anthem, and the message dovetails with the vice president’s emphasis on reproductive freedom. The singer’s planned appearance Friday adds a high level of star power to Harris’ visit to the state. She will be the latest celebrity to appear with or on behalf of Harris, including Lizzo, James Taylor, Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Springsteen and Eminem. While in Texas, Harris also will tape a podcast with host Brené Brown.
Trump is also headed to Texas Friday where he’ll talk immigration, and tape a podcast with host Joe Rogan.
There is some evidence to suggest that abortion rights may drive women to the polls as it did during the 2022 midterm elections. Voters in seven states, including some conservative ones, have either protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to restrict them in statewide votes over the past two years.
“Living in Texas, it feels incredibly important to protect women’s health and safety,” said Colette Clark, an Austin voter. She said voting for Harris is the best way to prevent further abortion restrictions from happening across the country.
Another Austin resident, Daniel Kardish, didn’t know anyone who has been personally affected by the restrictions, but nonetheless views it as a key issue this election.
“I feel strongly about women having bodily autonomy,” he said.
Harris said this week she thought the issue was compelling enough to motivate even Republican women, adding, “for so many of us, our daughter is going to have fewer rights than their grandmother.”
“When the issue of the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body is on the ballot, the American people vote for freedom regardless of the party with which they’re registered to vote,” Harris said.
Harris isn’t likely to win Texas, but that isn’t the point of her presence Friday.
“Of all the states in the nation, Texas has been ground zero for harrowing stories of women, including women who have been denied care, who had to leave the state, mothers who have had to leave the state,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, a legal group behind many lawsuits challenging abortion restrictions. “It’s one of the major places where this reality has been so, so devastatingly felt.”
Democrats warn that a winnowing of rights and freedoms will only continue if Trump is elected. Republican lawmakers in states across the U.S. have been rejecting Democrats’ efforts to protect or expand access to birth control, for example.
Democrats also hope Harris’ visit will give a boost to Rep. Colin Allred, who is making a longshot bid to unseat Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Allred will appear at the rally with Harris.
When Roe was first overturned, Democrats initially focused on the new limitations on access to abortion to end unwanted pregnancies. But the same medical procedures used for abortions are used to treat miscarriages.
And increasingly, in 14 states with strict abortion bans, women cannot get medical care until their condition has become life-threatening. In some states, doctors can face criminal charges if they provide medical care.
About 6 in 10 Americans think their state should generally allow a person to obtain a legal abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant for any reason, according to a July poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Trump has been inconsistent in his message to voters on abortion and reproductive rights. He has repeatedly shifted his stance and offered vague, contradictory and at times nonsensical answers to questions on an issue that has become a major vulnerability for Republicans in this year’s election.
Texas encapsulates the post-Roe landscape. Its strict abortion ban prohibits physicians from performing abortions once cardiac activity is detected, which can happen as early as six weeks or before.
As a result, women, including those who didn’t intend to end a pregnancy, are increasingly suffering worse medical care. That’s in part because doctors cannot intervene unless a woman is facing a life-threatening condition, or to prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”
The state also has become a battleground for litigation. The U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the side of the state’s ban just two weeks ago.
Complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion.
Several Texas women have lodged complaints against hospitals for not terminating their failing and dangerous pregnancies because of the state’s ban. In some cases, women lost reproductive organs.
Of late, Republicans have increasingly tried to place the blame on doctors, alleging that physicians are intentionally denying services in an effort to undercut the bans and make a political point.
Perryman said that was gaslighting.
“Doctors are being placed in a position where they are having to face the prospect of criminal liability, of personal liability, threat to their medical license and their ability to care for people — they’re faced with an untenable position,” she said.
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Long reported from Washington and Lathan from Austin, Texas.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston has announced a cabinet shuffle today, appointing Tim Halman as finance minister and deputy premier.
Halman will retain his portfolio as environment minister as he replaces Allan MacMaster who resigned as finance minister and deputy premier on Thursday.
In a statement on Facebook, MacMaster says he wants to seek the federal Conservative nomination in the riding of Cape Breton—Canso—Antigonish.
MacMaster says he will stay on as the member of the provincial legislature for Inverness, but will resign his seat if he wins the federal nomination.
In a short statement, the premier’s office says Halman’s swearing-in ceremony took place on Thursday.
The cabinet change comes as speculation mounts about a snap provincial election call as early as this weekend.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 25, 2024.
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Beyoncé is expected to appear Friday in her hometown of Houston at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Harris’ presidential campaign has taken on Beyonce’s 2016 track “Freedom” as its anthem, and the singer’s planned appearance brings a high-level of star power to what has become a key theme of the Democratic nominee’s bid: freedom.
Harris will head to the reliably Republican state just 10 days before Election Day in an effort to refocus her campaign against former President Donald Trump on reproductive care, which Democrats see as a make-or-break issue this year.
The three people were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Harris campaign did not immediately comment.
Beyoncé‘s appearance was expected to draw even more attention to the event — and to Harris’ closing message.
Harris’ Houston trip is set to feature women who have been affected by Texas’ restrictive abortion laws, which took effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. She has campaigned in other states with restrictive abortion laws, including Georgia, among the seven most closely contested states.
Harris has centered her campaign around the idea that Trump is a threat to American freedoms, from reproductive and LGBTQ rights to the freedom to be safe from gun violence.
Beyonce gave Harris permission early in her campaign to use “Freedom,” a soulful track from her 2016 landmark album “Lemonade,” in her debut ad. Harris has used its thumping chorus as a walk-out song at rallies ever since.
Beyoncé’s alignment with Harris isn’t the first time that the Grammy winner has aligned with a Democratic politician. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, danced as Beyoncé performed at a presidential inaugural ball in 2009.
In 2013, she sang the national anthem at Obama’s second inauguration. Three years later, she and her husband Jay-Z performed at a pre-election concert for Democrat Hillary Clinton in Cleveland.
“Look how far we’ve come from having no voice to being on the brink of history — again,” Beyoncé said at the time. “But we have to vote.”
A January poll by Ipsos for the anti-polarization nonprofit With Honor found that 64% of Democrats had a favorable view of Beyonce compared with just 32% of Republicans. Overall, Americans were more likely to have a favorable opinion than an unfavorable one, 48% to 33%.
Speculation over whether the superstar would appear at this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago reached a fever pitch on the gathering’s final night, with online rumors swirling after celebrity news site TMZ posted a story that said: “Beyoncé is in Chicago, and getting ready to pop out for Kamala Harris on the final night of the Democratic convention.” The site attributed it to “multiple sources in the know,” none of them named.
About an hour after Harris ended her speech, TMZ updated its story to say, “To quote the great Beyoncé: We gotta lay our cards down, down, down … we got this one wrong.” In the end, Harris took the stage to star’s song, but that was its only appearance.
Last year, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, attended Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour in Maryland after getting tickets from Beyonce herself. “Thanks for a fun date night, @Beyonce,” Harris wrote on Instagram.
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Long and Kinnard reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report. Kinnard can be reached at
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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