In The News

“When it’s healthcare practitioners saying ‘people are going to die, we feel a moral responsibility to challenge this law because of our profession’, I think that gets a lot more people listening.”

“They’re not challenging entirely any prohibition on public consumption. They are agreeing with the fact that there should be a prohibition of consumption in skateparks and children’s parks and school yards. So they’re limiting the nature of their challenge in such a way that it actually protects people from saying ‘well children are going to be exposed to drug use by a successful challenge of this law”…

Kyla Lee, a Vancouver criminal lawyer for Acumen Law Corporation, and Mo Amir, host of the podcast This is VANCOLOUR, react to Dr. Sanjiv Gandhi stepping down as the B.C. Greens’ deputy leader after liking a post that compared Dr. Bonnie Henry to Josef Mengele, Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke’s first year, and the quickly sold-out Stanley Park train tickets.

“Now that we know that everything you do as a politician, every second of every day is going to be scrutinized, and because we have a 24 hour cycle of politicians attacking other politicians, you cannot like, you cannot follow, you cannot retweet, you cannot comment until you’re fully sure that you’ve read everything any maybe if you’re not sure what you’re about to say, run it by your comms people…”

Listen here.

“My suspicion is that as far as criminal charges are concerned, they’re likely not to be laid. Because again, the government doesn’t want to have to get into this big constitutional challenge. They don’t want to take this person up on their dare to be charged and to challenge the law. So in all likelihood, they’re just going to seize all of the drugs, let the business get back up and running and then we’re going to go through this again and it’s going to be a repeat cycle…”

“They’re sending the message that building social housing is obviously not the priority. The priority is building housing and it’s building market housing and it’s moving developments along and it’s appeasing developers… We’ve seen the provincial government step in on a number of occasions now when it comes to housing… My hope is that we’ll see the provincial government stepping in and creating some sort of regulations that say if you’re financing these big projects, you can’t refuse to provide financing simply because there’s a condition that social housing has to be done first.”

Listen here.

“I’m concerned as a criminal lawyer about the prevalence of AI and the speed at which people are using it… With AI you can now use it to mimic somebody’s voice, to make a video to look like somebody, and that could be used potentially to defraud innocent people and put people at risk.”

“I’m not that concerned that AI is going to eliminate the role of lawyers. There are a lot of ways that AI can be used to make the job of lawyers for efficient or more effective, but at the same time the law is ever-changing…”

“That’s one thing that could lead to police involvement – if you’re using your fireworks unsafely, or if you’re using them when you’re not permitted to do so… If you’re violating those rules that could really get you into trouble because those are considered explosives and they are considered dangerous and there are a number of injuries that people can suffer…”

Mo Amir, host of the podcast This is VANCOLOUR, and Kyla Lee, a Vancouver criminal lawyer for Acumen Law Corporation, weigh in on B.C. politicians trying to make their nicknames for opponents stick, a Vancouver councillor’s attempt to make intersections safer with speed and red-light cameras — and how they handle handing out candy on Halloween.

“In some jurisdictions they’re using intersection cameras to issue distracted driving tickets by using really high-powered lenses to look through the windows of motor vehicles – we probably won’t ever see that in British Columbia because of the privacy concerns.”

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“Intersection cameras can’t identify who was driving the vehicle and the result of that is that the government has made this compromise where if we’re going to be policed by robot, we’re not going to get the tickets added to our driving record and we’re not going to get penalty points which is what most people are concerned about.”

Listen here.

London Drugs says they’re seeing more shoplifting and violence at their stores, and the province is clamping down on short-term rentals. These are just some of the topics we covered with our Soapbox Social panel today.

“There’s not a lot you can do. Unless you actually witness somebody commit the offence, you don’t have a lot of rights to stop somebody. The laws in Canada related to citizen’s arrest make it so have to be effectively very, very sure that what you’re doing is lawful before you take any steps to physically apprehend a person.”

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“There’s a lot of development applications for hotels in this city and there’s a lot of abandoned development in the city that could be turned into more hotel stock. So I think there is a long term strategy in relation to building more hotels but I do have a concern about tourism…”

Listen here.

“It feels a lot like blaming the victim considering the pedestrian was the only one who was following the law.”

“Although the video has generated a lot of controversy online… it’s generating a lot of buzz surrounding pedestrian safety. Even though the execution (of the video) was terrible.”

“As a driver, put your phone away… It’s not worth it for one text message.”

Listen to the segment here.

Richmond RCMP releases a video to help inform pedestrians and drivers about how everyone has roles to play to make our roadways safer.

“How many laws does the driver break in this video?”

“…the driver picks up the phone, clearly something you’re not supposed to do when you’re behind the wheel, picks up the phone , is looking at the phone and at that point almost hits the pedestrian in the crosswalk”

“Wow, this feels a lot like blaming the victim, like here’s this woman, fair enough she’s wearing all black and she’s got her headphones in, so she can’t hear what’s around her. But she’s in a marked crosswalk, and somebody who is using her cellphone while driving almost mows her down and they’re sort of pointing the finger at her for not protecting her own safety? That’s really bad.”

“…not a situation where, as a pedestrian, you’re expecting you’re going to be seen regardless of what you’re wearing in that situation”

“Oh absolutely, as a pedestrian you should take actions to make sure you keep yourself safe because I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every driver is going to be driving perfectly”

Listen to the full episode here.