Jenny Kwan, MLA, Vancouver-Mt. Pleasant

Nighthawk Aboriginal Arts & Music Festival Vendor Call

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Downtown Eastside Centre for the Arts is presenting the 1st Annual Nighthawk Aboriginal Arts & Music Festival on Sunday, March 21, 2010 at Crab Park.

The Nighthawk Aboriginal Arts & Music Festival is a free, all ages, drug & alcohol free event that will feature headline musical performances, a food village, an artisans market and a children’s teepee with special children’s programming and entertainment.

This is an invitation to be a food or art vendor at this event. Booth sharing is permitted. The festival will provide tables & chairs. Booth fees will apply.

The deadline for applications is March 12, 2010.

For more information, or to apply for a booth, please contact Maureen Bourke at: maureen_bourke(at)yahoo.ca

Statement about Margaret Prevost

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Statement by Jenny Wai Ching Kwan, MLA for Vancouver-Mt. Pleasant
in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia
Afternoon Sitting, 3 March 2010

Margaret Prevost, also known affectionately as Princess Margaret, passed away on February 7, 2010 after a heart attack at the age of 53. A catastrophic car accident left her paralyzed from the waist down when she was only 18. Unfazed by the setback, Margaret became a member of the Canadian National Wheelchair Basketball Team, and in 1992 the team won gold at the Pan American Games.

Margaret, also known to her community as the mayor of the Downtown Eastside, was a tireless advocate for the people of the neighbourhood. She went from store to store telling store owners to remove rice wine from their shelves because it was killing people who were drinking it. She lobbied vigorously for wheelchair-accessible ramps to make the city more accessible. She served on the Vancouver Native Health Society board and volunteered at the community policing centre.

Margaret Prevost officially retired from the Carnegie community centre board of directors last year after serving on that board for 20 years, ten of which she was the president. The Carnegie Centre currently celebrated its 30th anniversary. To this day, it’s the busiest community centre in the city of Vancouver.

Margaret’s contributions were immeasurable. She was a steady hand and a rock during these turbulent times. From housing to poverty to addiction to policing, Margaret fought every battle on behalf of the community. She sat in rooms with politicians, bureaucrats, police officers, community workers and the media. When she finished her say, it was impossible not to take her side.

She had the gift of bringing people together where divisions were everywhere. Margaret demonstrated that women in this community can be strong leaders. She mentored dozens of future leaders. Margaret was awarded the Queen’s Jubilee medal in recognition of her community service.

I had the pleasure of knowing Margaret for close to 20 years. I will miss her e-mails raising issues that she’s passionate about. I will miss her calls just to say hello. I will miss her great hugs. Thank you, Margaret — Princess Margaret.

The importance of filing Income Tax returns

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Every year, my office deals with people who are having difficulty with provincial government programs and we discover that part of the problem is that they have not filed their income tax returns.

The Province uses the Canada Revenue Agency statement of Net Income to calculate eligibility for Medical Service Plan Premium Assistance and Pharmacare deductibles. Other programs such as Student Loan repayments also refer to income tax statements.

We recommend that, regardless of how big or small their income is, people file income tax returns on time by 30 April every year so as to avoid difficulties.

Lunar New Year Greetings from Jenny Kwan and Colleagues

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Photo Gallery updated

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Click here to see the new photographs

Protest HST on bicycles

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

My colleague Lana Popham, the MLA Saanich South has created a new website, http://www.squeakywheels.ca/!

On Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 12:00pm! Lana is inviting cyclists to fill the Legislature grounds in Victoria to show the BC government there will be a political price to pay if they ram through this HST which puts a new tax on cycling.

The next session of the BC Legislature will begin the 1st week of March. We believe the government will likely try to rush the HST through this spring. They promised to implement by July.

As you know, if it passes as is, you will be paying 7% more tax on a bicycle purchased in BC. This is more than you have paid in almost 30 years. You’ll also have to pay 7% more for stuff like helmets and locks, as well as paying 7% more for repairs.

The Government has got its head in the sand. Cycling is a sustainable transportation choice and should be encouraged, not punished with new taxes.

Approximately 40% of emissions in BC come from transportation. Global warming is a crisis: creating disincentives for cycling is unacceptable!

It is critical that the BC Government hear from all of you!

And 1000 bikes on the lawn of the legislature will get their attention!

My hope is that bike shops, cycling associations and cycling enthusiasts all over BC will help me organize a critical mass at the legislature on March 3. Please contact Lana at saanichsouth@gmail.com or 250 479 4154 or visit the facebook event page.

March 3rd will also be the day that Lana will present the petition that she hopes you will sign. We’re already at more than 1700 signatures! But she would like to increase that tenfold before the rally. Please encourage others to do the same.

Thanks.

Correcting the record on business taxes

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The following letter was published in the Vancouver Sun:

B.C.’s Minister for Small Business, Iain Black, is wrong when he says, in this business-section article from the Financial Post, that when the B.C. Liberals took office in 2001, the province had the highest small-business tax rate in the country. In fact, it was the lowest. Between 1999 and 2001, the New Democrat government of the day cut the business tax rate from nine per cent to 4.5 per cent.

Black also misleadingly claims that the B.C. Liberals created Straightforward B.C., a government department aimed at streamlining and deregulation. What it did was change the name of a New Democrat program that worked with business to streamline government regulations and procedures. Now the B.C. Liberals are pushing forward with the harmonized sales tax, a regressive new tax that will harm small business in the province. Tourism operators stand to lose 10,000 jobs and $545 million in revenues; the restaurant industry is campaigning hard to stop the tax, which it says will cost it $750 million a year. These are small businesses the B.C. Liberals have chosen to ignore.

Jenny Kwan
Opposition Critic for Small Business, Technology and Economic Development

Jenny Kwan 2009 Fall Session Video Update

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Follow the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCmYq4ur0hc

Finding information about the plans for the Olympic Games

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The City of Vancouver has set up a website for people to check:
http://olympichostcity.vancouver.ca/mediaroom/frequently-asked-questions.htm

Transliink has also created a link to information about transit services during the Olympic period: http://www.translink.ca/en/Utilities/2010-Games.aspx

BLADERUNNERS YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

J. Kwan: Our community had a dream 15 years ago, a dream of inclusivity, a dream to give voice to at-risk youth in a tangible way, a dream that is rooted in the belief that everyone should be given the opportunity to maximize their potential. This dream became reality for some 3,000 young people under a program called BladeRunners.

Since 1994 BladeRunners has provided support, helped place participants at construction sites and secured training opportunities for them. GM Place was the first private partner in this program. One of the early participants was Chris Cardinal, who started with the program in 1996. Today he is a Red Seal–certified cement mason with BOSA Construction.

Working together, developers, labour unions and civil society organizations have proven that at-risk youth ages 15 to 30 will succeed if given the opportunity. With an 88 percent job placement rate, 32 percent female participation rate and 66 percent aboriginal participation, BladeRunners is an incredible success story.

In the late 1990s BladeRunners was given the PEPNet award in Washington D.C., for excellence in youth employment programs. Today BladeRunners is sought after by cities like New Orleans, Calgary and Toronto as a model for community economic development.

I would like to recognize the founders of the program — people like Jim Green, who conceptualized it, and Garry Jobin, who has been a tireless advocate for young people in the Downtown Eastside. Garry has vouched for the participants in court, he has shown up at their doorsteps to make sure they get to work on time, and his cell phone is on 24 hours a day.

Recognition is also in order for all the partners, job coordinators and the BladeRunners who went through the apprenticeship and got their trades training. I would like to ask all members of the House to join me in thanking them for their hard work, dedication and commitment and for the wonderful success of the program over the last 15 years and, hopefully, many more years to come.

Kinuko Laskey

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

J. Kwan: On October 24, I attended the unveiling of a bronze memorial statue dedicated to peace activist and educator Kinuko Laskey at the Seaforth Peace Park. She’s one of the few, if not the only, first immigrant Asian-Canadian women to be honoured in the province of B.C. in this way.

Kinuko Laskey was a survivor of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing on August 6, 1945. At the time she was a 16-year-old student nurse and was less than two kilometres away from the hypocentre. As a result, she suffered from radiation sickness, loss of sight in her right eye and underwent many plastic surgery operations.

She immigrated to Canada and settled in Vancouver with her husband, David, in 1953. Kinuko’s personal experience of the horrors of nuclear warfare prompted her to actively promote peace in schools, within our communities and across the globe. She was a founding member of the Canadian Society of Atomic Bomb Survivors. She delivered a message of peace to Vancouver’s Expo 86, and in 1987 she co-lit the Vancouver Centennial Peace Monument flame with former Mayor Mike Harcourt at Seaforth Peace Park, the same park where her statue now stands.

Her dedication was an inspiration to many, including artist Keith Shields, who donated the beautiful sculpture of Kinuko Laskey for this memorial, and to the members of the Vancouver and District Labour Council, who are also strong supporters of social justice and the peace movement and are the sponsors of the memorial project.

Kinuko passed away on the third of November 2004, but the memory of her work continues. I would like to ask all members of the House to recognize Kinuko Laskey for her contributions and to reflect on her words and wishes that we must all be tolerant and respect each other, and we must know how important peace is to each and every one of us.

CELEBRATION OF ENTREPRENEUR SPIRIT DAY

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

J. Kwan: Small business plays a significant role in B.C.’s economy. It serves as a job generator, innovator and producer of niche products and services. In fact, the small business community is the economic engine of our communities.

[C. Trevena in the chair.]

According to the 2008 B.C. statistics, there were approximately 384,300 small businesses in B.C. This accounts for 98 percent of all businesses in the province. In B.C. 1,058,100 people were employed by a small business in 2008. This translates to approximately 34 percent of B.C.’s gross domestic product.

The range of activities in the small business sector is varied, and a significant proportion is in the service industry. They include the mom-and-pop corner stores, to self-employed computer programmers to your local restaurant to small industrial operations.

There are 8,500 small businesses in the high-tech sector alone. That’s approximately 96 percent of all high-tech businesses in B.C. Virtually, there are small businesses of one form or another in all communities. They’re an essential component of our community’s fabric.

Last week I attended a wonderful event in my riding, where over $500 million in revenues generated by small businesses came together to celebrate Canada’s first Entrepreneur Spirit Day.

[1005]

Entrepreneur Spirit Day falls in the middle of Canada’s Small Business Month, the month of October. This event was hosted by cityMax.com. It was an opportunity for the entrepreneurially-minded to get together to celebrate, to share their successes and challenges and to meet with other up-and-coming business owners. It was an excellent networking opportunity.

It was also a time to just relax and have some fun. It was an opportunity to honour and recognize the spirit of entrepreneurs. Also at the event there was a fundraiser for an international microlender. CityMax.com sponsors three international entrepreneurs in their pursuit to expand their small businesses.

Attendees at Entrepreneur Spirit Day voted from 12 potential candidates, and the three international entrepreneurs chosen were a 49-year-old woman from the Philippines with a small business in the medical and health field, a woman from Ghana who will use sponsorship investment to purchase expanded stock for her fish store and a man from Bolivia who will expand a citrus fruit–farming operation with their microloan.

This is one small way in which cityMax.com, a small business in our neighbourhood, is giving back to support other entrepreneurs in the world. Their goal is to help and empower one million entrepreneurs throughout.

Aside from being a significant contributor to our economy, small businesses play a role in the social and charitable affairs of our community. British Columbians have a long tradition of donating and volunteering to support a variety of endeavours in our neighbourhoods. In fact, private contributions to community, whether through donations of time or money, have done much in support of the non-profit sector to serve their communities.

For example, in upper Mount Pleasant, the Mount Pleasant BIA’s contributions include: graffiti-removal programs; street cleaning programs; facade grants to assist in upgrading building facades; an economic resource development centre with resources for members; a beautification program, including provisions of banners, flower baskets, trash receptacles and lights; an annual business directory; and sponsorship and promotion of a number of annual community events.

The Commercial Drive BIA hosts an annual benefit dinner for the food bank and sponsors free family-movie showings in local parks during the summer. They have also trained the local community safety team to provide information about services to homeless people. This is just a small sampling of the entrepreneur spirit of the small business community and its relationship to our communities.

The Chinatown BIA community contributes by providing cleaning of alleyways in the district, graffiti-removal programs, providing security patrol for businesses in the area, organizing the Chinatown Festival, providing window decoration for the Olympics and organizing events such as an event around the Olympic Torch Relay.

The Chinatown BIA shares an office with the Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association, which promotes Chinatown and Chinese culture. Some of the programs include printing tourist maps of Chinatown and the pedicab program, which transports people to Chinatown from Canada Place. It is estimated that these contributions have a value of $200,000 to $300,000 annually.

In Strathcona the BIA’s community contributions include sponsorship of the East Side Cultural Crawl, the Powell

[ Page 1512 ]

Street Festival and a number of smaller community festivals throughout the year — putting on a yearly sustainability expo which is open to the public, cleaning of the streets and alleyways in the district, providing security to area businesses and putting up hanging baskets on Hastings Street. The BIA also started an innovative program to become Vancouver’s first green business neighbourhood and is launching some waste reduction–sharing programs with its members.

The small business community is a lifeline to our communities. Let us honour and celebrate small businesses in our neighbourhoods, because when they succeed, we succeed.

ARTS AND CULTURE IN MOUNT PLEASANT AREA

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

J. Kwan: Mount Pleasant has the highest percentage of people working in the arts and cultural sector in Canada. There are more than 250 artist studios and 38 exhibition centres including artist-run centres and commercial galleries. There are many artists who are engaging in innovative ideas who struggle to make rent, to access studio space and have performance venues. Artist-run centres and live theatre not only provide original works but are crucial to holding public discussions and artist talks and to publishing emerging ideas which contribute to the public sphere of B.C.

The Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres represents arts facilities that exhibit contemporary art, which parallels the larger public institutions and private commercial galleries, offering an alternative to artists in determining how to represent their work.

Many of these organizations are based in my constituency — The Western Front, Artspeak, Access, the Or Gallery, the Gallery Gachet, VIVO and many others. These spaces are vital to the cultural fabric of B.C. Internationally renowned artists such as Stanley Douglas, Jeff Wall and Ken Lum have a long history in the Downtown Eastside, where they have studios, have shown their work or used the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood as part of their artwork.

I’m sad to report that Mount Pleasant is losing a place and space that has for 35 years made a distinct and important contribution to the artist-run-centre community in Vancouver. The Helen Pitt Gallery suffered a fatal blow to its operations recently and, as a result, earlier this month laid off its director and will close its doors at the end of this week.

Arts and culture nourishes the heart and soul of the social and spiritual fabric of communities and is a significant contributor to both local and provincial economies. Every dollar invested is a return of $1.36 to the province. It’s a smart investment. I ask all members of the House to join me in recognizing the arts and cultural community and thanking the Helen Pitt for their 35 years of contribution.

HOMELESSNESS

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

J. Kwan: Last week was Homelessness Action Week. It is estimated that there are over 10,000 homeless people in our communities, of which 32 percent are aboriginal, and amongst women, 50 percent. A homeless person dies every 12 days in B.C. Last week the opposition leader and I met with representatives from the aboriginal transformative justice project, where they once again raised the desperate need for additional aboriginal-specific services, housing and homeless shelter.

We met with VanDo and the Carnegie action project. CAP recently finished a community visioning and mapping process that involved over 1,200 low-income residents in the Downtown Eastside. The mapping project identified at least ten community assets in the Downtown Eastside that residents want to preserve. They include acceptance, empathy, social justice, appreciation for community and cultural heritage, a strong sense of community.

People at all the mapping sessions stated the need for good-quality, affordable self-contained housing to be built in the community. As one woman said: "I could have a whole other life if I could just be in affordable housing. Living in an SRO limits my capability of being a grandmother. More social housing is desperately needed.”

One person said of Mavis McMullen Housing: "When my life crashed and burned, I needed housing, and welfare was only $610. This housing saved my life, and life lost is harshness. It kept me from destitution.”

Currently there are nearly 700 people homeless in the Downtown Eastside. Displacement is really happening. In 2009 CAP’s hotel survey found an additional 800 hotel rooms between 2008 and 2009 lost to rent increases beyond what people under the low-income cutoff can afford.

Canada is the only G8 country without a national housing plan or poverty reduction strategy. I ask all members of the House to join me in renewing our resolve to end homelessness.

BREASTFEEDING CHALLENGE AND SUPPORT FOR BREASTFEEDING MOTHERS

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

J. Kwan: The sight of a baby usually brings a warm smile from members of the public. We can’t help ourselves. When we see a little baby, we go ga-ga and goo-goo, even

[ Page 1041 ]

though everyone knows they often look like wrinkled little monkeys — yes, my children included. But still, when you see a new baby, it’s a beautiful sight.

You know what I’m talking about, Mr. Speaker. You yourself are enjoying your second grandchild. The slightest mention of them, and your face lights up. See what I mean? [Laughter.]

On October 3 proud moms and dads gathered together with their babies at the Trout Lake Community Centre to celebrate in the world breastfeeding challenge. This international event began in 2001, and by last year there were over 7,600 children feeding in 19 countries at 300 sites with over 20,000 supporters at 11 o’clock. On last Saturday when I arrived at the Trout Lake Community Centre, I received a sticker, and it read: "I make milk. What’s your superpower?”

Breast milk contains close to 200 compounds that fight infection, help the immune system mature, aid in digestion and support brain growth. Breastfeeding helps to lower the risk of premenopausal breast cancer, not to mention the incredible feeling of hugging your baby close to your heart while you’re nursing — the ultimate bonding experience.

The WHO recommends that mothers nurse their babies until they’re two years old. So why do we still hear of stories of roadblocks and obstacles for nursing mothers? Last year a woman in Vancouver was hustled off to a back room at H&M when she was breastfeeding her two-month-old baby in the store.

In Minneapolis a woman returning from a two-day business trip was forced to pour out her two-day supply of milk by the airport security. I myself was not allowed on a flight to Kamloops for an all-day caucus meeting because I had my breast pump and these specialized ice packs with me. Due to the Minneapolis incident, a human rights complaint was filed, and the U.S. Transport Security Administration reclassified human milk as liquid medication. Indeed, breast milk is like liquid gold to a nursing mom.

Let’s break through the barriers. Let’s celebrate the magic of breastfeeding, and let’s just do what the old Madonna song says: "Express yourself.”