Cutting clearance from five to 2.5 metres would create more spots and not affect fire safety

Susan Lazaruk
The Province

Metro Vancouver’s engineers and fire chiefs are offering a partial solution to the parking shortage that’s particularly affecting Surrey and Coquitlam, where increased densification in some neighbourhoods means not enough room for all the extra cars.

They say the answer to creating several hundred additional, on-street parking spots is hiding in plain sight : By cutting the no-parking clearance around hydrants in half, there would be room for more cars on streets.

The city engineers, through the Regional Engineers Advisory Committee, are proposing the province change the Motor Vehicle Act to reduce clearance around hydrants to a minimum of 2.5 metres on either side from the five metres required now.

The change would increase the number of parking spots in some neighbourhoods by 20 per cent, said Fraser Smith, the general manager of engineering for Surrey.

He said Surrey estimated it could create 18-20 additional, on-street parking spots by reducing no-parking zones around the 100 hydrants in the Clayton Heights neighbourhood alone.

That neighbourhood has an increasing number of secondary suites, in addition to coach houses, besides primary residences, meaning three households can live on one lot.

Ideally, residential areas would have improved transit and provide residents with more work-live

communities, but, in the meantime, more room for cars is welcome, said Smith.

“It’s a small impact, but overall it could free up a lot of parking spaces,” he said.

There are between 8,500 and 9,000 hydrants in Surrey. Halving the setback from one, mid-block hydrant would free up five metres. One on-street parking spot requires six metres of space.

The move is supported by B.C.’s fire chiefs, who last year passed a resolution supporting the change, said Surrey Fire Chief Len Garis.

“The resolution (at a fire-chiefs association convention) was passed unanimously,” said Garis. “I couldn’t find a reason for (setting the clearance at) five metres,” he said. “We did our own testing and we discovered we don’t need the five metres.”

The proposed change was born out of a simple question that Smith put to Garis: Why is the no-parking zone around hydrants set at five metres for a mid-block hydrant?

Garis found the limit recommended by the National Fire Protection Association — an international body that develops fire standards

— was 1.5 m on each side of a hydrant with water outlets measuring 6.5 centimetres or more.

He also discovered that across North America clearances range from three to five metres, and that B.C. was at the top end of the scale across Canada.

The Surrey fire department conducted its own tests to determine the minimum distance needed by fire trucks and crews to use hydrants during a fire without damaging parked cars.

The tests determined that a minimum of two metres would provide

firefighters with the room they needed to access the hydrant and the results were published in the Reduction of Parking Restrictions around Fire Hydrants: An Examination of Parking Distances and Setback Regulations.

The report, written by Garis, Surrey Assistant Fire Chief John Lehmann and Alex Tyakoff, the strategic planning analyst for the Surrey fire department, was published by the school of criminology and criminal justice at the University of the Fraser Valley, where Garis is an adjunct professor.

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

E-commerce revolution has both social and employment implications

Derrick Penner
The Province

In the future of retail, it is likely that bricks-and-mortar stores and online commerce will merge into a seamless entity, says Vancouver tech entrepreneur Igor Faletski.

As CEO of the Vancouver-based online-commerce platform Mobify, Faletski has had a front-row view of the trend toward using technology to create a “frictionless transaction” that maximizes convenience for consumers while minimizing the amount of time they spend waiting in line.

“The days of a retail store as a place where you have inventory, you sell it and take money are short, because that’s not enough value to attract (consumers) to come there,” said Faletski. “Therefore, there is more of a focus definitely on frictionless shopping.”

Whether it is simple click-and-collect online grocery shopping, managing investments on your smart phone or using an app to pay for something in store to avoid a checkout line, commerce has become all about “reducing friction.”

Most people are familiar with the concept through online shopping with services such as Amazon Prime.

Shoppers go to a store’s website, click the “place order” button to purchase items that are billed to a credit card linked to their account, and a package arrives on their doorstep, maybe even on the same day.

The trend is to extend that simplicity across all retail.

“Everyone is focused on automating the payment process,” said Faletski, whose business builds ecommerce platforms for retailers to use. But this means eliminating points of contact between people, which has the power not only to alter the experience of consumers but to shape the nature of work itself. Replacing those contacts with automation and artificial intelligence shifts where the jobs are in commerce, potentially eliminating whole classes of employment before it is entirely clear if workers will have comparable jobs to move to, experts worry.

It also threatens to increase the so-called digital divide between those who are adept with technology — and can afford the smart phones, computers and data plans that go along with it — and those who aren’t, especially seniors who also face increasing issues with social isolation.

Social implications of automation

“I think we’re still grappling with what the implications are of taking the human element out of some of these transactions,” said Kendra Strauss, director of the labour studies program at SFU’s Morgan Centre for Labour Research.

“And what we’re probably not thinking about is what does it mean for people who rely on those interactions for any human contact in their day.”

That is a prime concern for another SFU academic, gerontologist Andrew Wister, who is studying the prevalence and consequences of social isolation that seniors already face.

“It’s a double-edged sword, isn’t it?” Wister said of the technology that enables automation in commerce.

On one side, Wister said, technology that lets people shop from their homes is a benefit to seniors with limited mobility who can’t get outside as much as they used to.

On the other side, technology that removes human contact from the equation can magnify the sense of isolation people are already experiencing.

Wister characterizes those everyday contacts as “extremely important” in helping people maintain a sense of connectedness with the community around them.

Social isolation is becoming a big enough problem that the United Kingdom has appointed a minister for loneliness. In Canada, data shows that between one in four and one in five middle-aged and older citizens experience some form of loneliness, Wister said.

When it comes to counteracting social isolation, face-to-face interactions matter more than conversations via text or social media, he added.

As for technology in commerce, Wister said there has perhaps been too much focus on efficiency and not enough thought about the unintended consequences when it comes to decreased social interactions.

At the front end, removing friction is all about increasing convenience.

“When you remove friction from the consumption of a particular service, people love it,” said Andrew Harries, a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business.

He points to examples such as the ride-hailing service Uber, which makes arranging transportation as simple as opening up an app, or mega tech-and-retail firm Amazon, which does the same for online shopping and has upped the ante for all of retail with its Amazon Go store in Seattle.

On its website, Amazon boasts that creating Amazon Go was a four-year journey to weave a network of cameras, sensors and “deep learning algorithms” together for an experience that allows shoppers to scan its app upon entry, pick up items and walk out without going through a checkout.

The cameras and sensors keep track of what shoppers pick up, or put back, then the app bills their credit cards for what they keep after leaving in what Amazon bills as “walkout technology.”

Traditional jobs versus artificial intelligence

“And people will enjoy this too,” Harries said. “But there are two schools of thought on the bigger question about what AI is going to do with the future of work.”

Optimists hold that innovations will create new jobs and new types of work, Harries said.

However, although Harries is inclined toward using technology to streamline services — he was a co-founder of Sierra Wireless and other startups — he is also “deeply concerned about the future of work with the advent of AI.”

Retail and wholesale trade has a big footprint in the Canadian economy, accounting for 389,000 jobs in B.C., 20 per cent of all service sector employment, according to Statistics Canada’s labour force survey.

Within that, Stats Can data classifies 77,000 0f those positions as “sales support” occupations — cashiers, gas-station attendants and employees who stock shelves.

Nationally, those numbers are 2.84 million wholesale and retail employees — just under 20 per cent of the service sector with 624,000 in sales-support occupations.

Previous cycles of the Industrial Revolution saw automation replace dirty and dangerous jobs and workers move on to more skilled occupations, but with AI and robots taking over repetitive tasks, “it’s not entirely clear that there will be better work for people in the future,” Harries said.

Faletski, however, is in the optimistic camp, arguing that even if cashiers are displaced, retailers will need to turn them into more skilled in-store experts to improve customer experience, which will carry more of a premium for retailers in the future.

There is a big drive toward more automated payment systems, Faletski said. The options might not be as sophisticated as Amazon Go, but will involve retailers using mobile-based payment systems, such as the system Apple gives to its in-store staff.

“There’s definitely a trend of putting people into solving more difficult problems (for customers) than just taking your credit card,” Faletski said.

While retailers are trying to reduce friction in transactions, it is still a relationship business, argues SaveOn-Foods spokeswoman Julie Dickson, which requires “the human contact piece of it” to work well, particularly in the grocery sector.

Save-On-Foods has embraced online shopping, offering either home delivery or click-and-collect orders in 77 communities via the grocer’s website, but Dickson maintains that the move hasn’t cost the grocer jobs but has created hundreds of jobs to provide new services to customers.

“We have quite a large new group of customer service experts on the phones working on the technical supports needed when customers are new to it,” Dickson said.

When customers aren’t coming into stores, that creates the need for a new group of “personal shoppers” who pick and put customer orders together, right down to selecting the correct ripeness of bananas customers have requested.

“It’s a personal business, it’s a people business,” Dickson said. “It’s about finding ways to use technology and the tools available to us that further enhance that relationship.”

Tech jobs being created

There won’t be any going back, either, according to Tea Nicola, CEO of the AI-enhanced investment adviser WealthBar, which has seen its own smart phone app become central to its services.

“I think that this technology is changing the way that consumers think and behave,” Nicola said, and Amazon, with its Prime delivery service and Amazon Go store has set high expectations for everyone else.

In financial services, it can still take days for transactions that WealthBar executes for clients to clear the layers of bureaucracy within the industry. However, Nicola said, an increasing number of its clients use and depend on the firm’s app.

“There has been pressure on us from customers to improve its functionality, add features and improve speed,” she added, so the company has invested in creating a next generation of its technology.

WealthBar, as a so-called robo-adviser that uses artificial intelligence to help make decisions within investment portfolios, is a disruption within the industry itself to start with.

However, Nicola doesn’t worry about any of the technology displacing people because she sees new jobs and entire new career fields being created to enable it.

Inside WealthBar, for instance, Nicola said they’ve re-organized their workforce to leave their human advisers free to work with clients and write investment plans while the firm’s marketing team concentrates on recruiting and signing up customers.

And both teams rely on new layers of technology that require their own personnel.

“The advisers of the past didn’t have a software development team and didn’t have a user-experience designer (to support their work),” Nicola said.

“User experience designer didn’t exist as a degree in school when I went to university, now it does.”

Nicola said automation will reduce some roles, so society as a whole will have to embrace the concept of continuing education and training of its workforce as it adapts to new technology.

“I don’t think that’s impossible,” she said. “It’s not, ‘Now we have technology and x amount of people are going to lose their jobs, too bad so sad’.”

Technological change, though, does invite questions about who will be the winners and losers when it comes to what kinds of jobs will be displaced and who will get the new jobs that are created, according to SFU associate professor and labour expert Strauss.

“To my mind, the question, in part, is not just what jobs are going to be created and what kind of jobs lost, but what kind of (new) jobs will they be,” she said.

At one end, Strauss said, the concern is that automation will replace stable, full-time jobs with what labour groups refer to as precarious employment — part-time jobs or contract positions — in the so-called “gig economy.”

Strauss said studies are showing that those in precarious employment tend to be minorities, new immigrants and the young.

Many of the new jobs being created through services such as Uber, Lyft or Airbnb are billed as “side hustle,” Strauss said, or opportunities for people to earn extra income.

“One of the things we’re hearing from younger people is that they’re increasingly cobbling together fulltime income from a variety of more precarious, gig-type work,” Strauss said.

Those kinds of contract jobs are hard to capture in Canada’s traditional workforce measurements, such as Statistics Canada’s labourforce survey, Strauss said, so “we’re already a little bit behind the curve in terms of figuring out the shifts we’re in the middle of.”

The kicker, however, is that the big, growing companies that successfully embrace change, such as Amazon, will always have room for more staff in stable jobs, according to Harries.

Those will be the creators, the companies that come up with new ideas for ways of doing things and the technologists capable of coding them into existence.

“I don’t see Amazon laying off all its workers and hiring them back on contract,” Harries said.

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

The Province

The new school tax (on homes assessed at more than $3 million) will take 10 per cent of my annual income or more each year.

Because I worked hard and sacrificed, even during my teenage years so that I could buy a house at the age of 21 and look after myself, I am deemed in the eyes of the government as lucky and privileged.

I’m in the drywall industry. I scrape and sweep floors, hang drywall in stairwells, sometimes 10 metres in the air, and literally risk life and limb, break my back and ruin my knees and elbows to earn a living. I’m not the CEO of a tech company driving a Ferrari, but being treated like one.

I hope The Province keeps the subject of these new taxes on homes front and centre. There are many people like me who don’t deserve to be treated like this by the NDP.

Dean Letroy, Vancouver

Speculation tax isn’t fair

The NDP’s new, so-called “speculation tax” hurts Canadians and discriminates based on one’s province of residence.

An individual from Vancouver could own a vacation home in Kelowna, while a Calgarian could have the home next door inherited from her family decades ago. Both use their homes the same way — a few months in the summer, a few weeks at Christmas and occasional weekends.

Assuming each property is worth $1 million, the Calgarian has to pay $20,000 a year due to the new “speculation tax,” while the Vancouverite pays nothing.

How is that fair?

If the tax on “empty” homes was intended to address housing availability, shouldn’t the tax be levied on both homes? Has the provincial government forgotten what it means to be a country? Finally, will the NDP do the right thing and narrow the tax so it doesn’t apply to other Canadians?

Jim Casey, Edmonton

Bad driving mostly to blame

The reporting of serious accidents often claims bad weather or poorly designed roads were the cause.

But there are generally three reasons for accidents: Driving with no consideration for either traffic and/or road conditions, which includes speeding; persons driving beyond their ability; or driving while distracted.

We can all improve the safety on our roads if we carefully think of these issues and drive with due consideration — not only for ourselves, but also in consideration of others.

Frank Wirrell, Abbotsford

Sand needed on highways

I’m a retired commercial driver with 27 years and five million kilometres under my belt. The majority of my days were travelling through the southern B.C. highways hauling hazardous liquids.

During this time, highway crews put sand and salt on the road. With the sand, we had traction. It helped tremendously, especially once it froze up. Nowadays, with fiscal and environmental restraints, they use liquid glycol and salt, which doesn’t work. It may melt some frozen roads for a time, but leaves life-threatening ice on the roads in the end.

The Coquihalla Highway rarely gets sanded, but you’ll notice that after a big crash the contractor puts down sand. It would save accidents and lives if sand was used regularly. James Ponath, Abbotsford

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

Tiffany Crawford
The Province

Vancouver gas prices hit 150.9 cents a litre at some stations Wednesday, and according to a prominent petroleum analyst, it’s likely to go up.

GasBuddy.com analyst Dan McTeague says the price has jumped 20 cents over the last couple of weeks. And, while this isn’t the highest price Vancouverites have seen — it jumped to 156 cents a litre in July 2014 — it’s the highest in North America.

McTeague says there are several factors contributing to the skyrocketing costs, including the declining Canadian dollar, a shortage of supply to the Lower Mainland, and a reliance on U.S. refineries, which are charging a premium for gas.

He says the Parkland refinery in Burnaby, which produces about 30 per cent of Vancouver’s fuel, is shut down for maintenance.

“So all these things combine to increase prices,” he said, adding that Vancouverites pay 49.4 cents a litre in taxes, which are also the highest in North America.

He also said with spring maintenance coming up at most refineries, prices are likely going to remain high into April.

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

Gordon Clark
The Province

Last May, B.C. voters decided they wanted a kinder, gentler sort of provincial government and transferred their support to the NDP and the Greens.

Now that the dust has settled, with an NDP minority government nominally in charge (although with a Green tail wagging an NDP dog), voters should wake up to the fact that, yet again, they’ve elected a gang of bandits.

Consider the NDP’s first budget, delivered last week. It slams British Columbians with $5.5 billion in new and expanded taxes over three years while increasing spending by $5.2 billion.

What is it about that party that its members can’t get it through their heads that most people actually want fiscal responsibility from their governments and that the days of tax-and-spend should be history? As usual, the NDP thinks its sole purpose is to transfer wealth from anyone who is working hard and doing well. As has happened every time they’ve formed government, that attitude is their undoing. The sheep inevitably decide they’ve been sheared enough.

So, again, the NDP has leaped to pass a slew of unprincipled new taxes to pilfer any income or wealth they decide is excessive, regardless of the damage they inflict on individuals or the economy. This is always couched in the rhetoric of making the rich pay or, as Finance Minister Carole James self-righteously put it, to ask “people who have benefited from out-of-control housing prices to pay a little more to help ensure all British Columbians can afford a place to live.”

When did that become the job of homeowners? And “pay a little more”? Does she mean the $12,000 a year in extra school taxes she has imposed on retired economics professor David Tha, who lives on a pension and happens to own a Vancouver home he bought decades ago that through no fault of his own has increased in value? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of David Thas out there.

While the finance minister clearly doesn’t care, it must be said that the Mr. and Ms. Thas of B.C. already pay a lot more school and other property taxes because of higher property values. They are already contributing a little bit more, to use James’ unctuous words, and don’t deserve an even higher tax burden.

The same is true of the NDP’s new five per cent property transfer tax for homes that sell for more than $3 million. (It’s three per cent for lower-priced homes.) If the NDP cared about affordability, why didn’t they eliminate that idiotic tax, brought in as a temporary measure 31 years ago?

Then there’s the 20 per cent foreign buyers tax and the two-percent speculation tax on those who own property in B.C. but don’t pay income tax here — a few foreigners, but mostly other Canadians. Both pay income taxes somewhere, and Canada has tax treaties with other countries so people, Canadians included, aren’t forced to pay in two jurisdiction.

Here’s why all of this is unethical, including the NDP view that they have a right to force people through rapacious taxation to rent out their private properties, as if they were public assets.

Canadians support progressive taxation, where wealthier people pay higher taxes. But the NDP — being urged on by bogus university academics who are really taxpayer-funded, highly paid left-wing activists — are applying the same tax principles to assets.

Having taxed income, government should not take a second run at people’s wealth by annually taxing their property, which they have usually acquired through hard work and sacrifice. Unless they want to help people pay their mortgages, or cover their losses when there is a downturn in the housing market, the NDP should not stake a claim to homeowners’ equity.

What is even more stunning is James’s admission that the government didn’t study or model the impact of all these taxes on the housing market before imposing them. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything more incompetent or irresponsible from a finance minister. Real estate and construction are the two largest contributors to B.C.’s economy, and James just wants to throw the dice?

Finally, her actions will actually hurt many British Columbians by lowering the value of their homes, especially those who recently bought into the market and may find themselves owing more than their properties are worth. There are words to describe people who would do that to others, but they are unprintable.

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

New WorkSafeBC campaign warns of ‘significant’ risk when used for storage

GLENDA LUYMES
The Province

Designed to transport goods across international waters, shipping containers have become darlings of the DIY world, linked with buzzwords like “pop up” and “upcycling.”

They’ve also attracted the attention of B.C.’s workplace safety authority. A new WorkSafeBC video campaign warns that reusing or repurposing shipping containers can “create unseen risks to workers and the public.”

“The potential for explosion is quite significant,” WorkSafeBC director Dan Strand said Friday.

Portable, strong and easy to secure, shipping containers have become a popular storage solution on construction sites across the province, he explained. Many large sites have one or two steel containers for various uses, including office space, electrical rooms or painting. They’re also popping up on farms and in residential neighbourhoods.

While the containers can be used safely, WorkSafe has found a lack of awareness about the risks. Because they are airtight and watertight, it is unsafe to store anything flammable inside without proper ventilation. Employees should be trained to prevent accidents while proper signage lets firefighters know the container is a “potential bomb,” Strand said.

In 2011, an Enderby firefighter was struck and killed by a door that blew off a shipping container while he was fighting a fire in the next building. Afterward, investigators found the container was being used to house a collection of gas-powered tools. When the fuel vapour was exposed to extreme heat, the container exploded.

In 2013, a propane tank stored in a shipping container on a Saanich construction site “became a bomb,” according to a WorkSafeBC video about the incident. The explosion sent one of the container’s heavy metal doors across the street into a public park. It also destroyed an adjacent shipping container that served as an office, injuring one worker, and blew out the windows of nearby buildings and cars.

A WorkSafeBC investigation attributed the explosion to a barbecue that had been used the previous day by construction workers on a break. The propane tank valve had been left open, while a burner valve may have inadvertently been turned on as the barbecue was being placed in the container for storage. The container filled with propane, and a spark from a soft drink dispenser — also stored in the container — ignited the gas.

The Fire Chiefs Association of B.C. has been working on the issue for several years, said member Don Delcourt.

“Shock went through the whole fire service when we lost a firefighter to a hazard we hadn’t really considered before,” he said.

Attempts to get the fire code changed to recognize that shipping containers are being used as buildings were unsuccessful, leading the association to draft a “model bylaw” that can be adopted by local governments. Bylaw officers can enforce standards around venting and labelling.

WorkSafe is also educating employers on the potential dangers associated with shipping containers, said Strand. If education is unsuccessful and a risky situation persists, the safety authority can order the employer to improve conditions. WorkSafe plans to be in contact with the companies that sell shipping containers, hoping they’ll provide safety material to purchasers.

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

Direct Vancouver-Seattle floatplane flights expected next year

Dan Fumano
The Vancouver Sun

Direct floatplane flights connecting downtown Vancouver and Seattle are expected to be running regularly by next spring, but Vancouver’s mayor says the service can’t come soon enough.

And with hundreds of North American cities and regions currently vying to host a new second headquarters for tech giant Amazon, the folks behind Vancouver’s bid hope increased connectivity — including floatplanes as well as more futuristic modes of transport — along the so-called “Cascadia corridor” could boost Vancouver’s chances.

Last Thursday marked the deadline for proposals from North American cities trying to become the home of a second headquarters for Amazon, the Seattle-based online retailer. Metro Vancouver’s proposal, led by the Vancouver Economic Commission (VEC), was hand-delivered to Amazon last week, concluding a six-week collaboration between regional stakeholders at “a level unprecedented since the 2010 Winter Olympics,” according to a statement from the commission.

Vancouver is far from alone. A reported 238 cities and regions submitted proposals, Amazon said Monday. The company expects to invest more than $5 billion US in construction for the new facilities and create as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs.

The VEC proposal highlighted the location of the two Pacific Northwest cities, according to a statement from the commission, citing “millions of hours in reduced travel times and a minimized carbon footprint,” and stating the “region’s geographical proximity means unmatched accessibility.”

In an emailed statement Monday, VEC manager of research and analysis James Raymond said: “In our proposal to Amazon, we’ve really leaned into our proximity to Seattle, simply because there are so many options to take advantage of how short the distance is and how much of a logistical asset that is.”

The Vancouver-Seattle floatplane route — or “nerd bird,” as Raymond calls it — is just one of four inter-regional transport options the VEC has discussed over the past year, he said, along with high-speed rail, a hyperloop (a network of tubes zipping passengers around in pods at super-fast speeds), and a dedicated lane for autonomous or self-driving vehicles between Vancouver and Seattle.

This week, the VEC is bringing together local stakeholders for discussions with representatives from Washington and Oregon on a “high-speed Cascadia train line,” Raymond said.

Meanwhile, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson told Postmedia on Monday the floatplane route between the two downtown cores “is long overdue,” and “can’t happen soon enough.”

That lack of a downtown-to-downtown floatplane connection is “a limiting factor for all the companies doing business back and forth with Seattle, from Amazon and Microsoft to our local companies doing work in Seattle,” Robertson said. “It’s absurd that we don’t have regular-scheduled floatplanes between downtown Vancouver and Seattle. … We have a lousy connection by road and airport — it’s not efficient.”

Harbour Air has been working out details on the plan with the Canada Border Services Agency, as Postmedia reported last month. An inquiry sent Monday to CBSA was not returned by deadline.

Robertson said he believed the Vancouver-Seattle service would be approved and operational “imminently,” adding “it’s bizarre” that it isn’t running already.

“It doesn’t help our case when CBSA hasn’t followed through with a long-overdue service. That’s the bottom line,” he said.

Harbour Air president Randy Wright said Monday the partnership with Washington-based Kenmore Air is still “on track” to begin operation by next spring, pending CBSA approval.

Some warn that Amazon’s jobs and economic activity could come with a cost. Last week, Seattle-based New York Times columnist Timothy Egan wrote of the “mixed blessing of Amazon,” describing concerns about rising housing costs and increased traffic in his hometown, and warning: “To the next Amazon lottery winner I would say, ‘Enjoy the boom — but be careful what you wish for.’”

© 2018 Postmedia Network Inc.

Ride out climate change and rising waters in your ARKUP floating home

Lloyd Alter
other

TreeHugger is all about sustainable design, so what’s not to love about the new ARKUP livable yacht? The designers claim that it is “environmentally friendly, powered by solar energy, no fuel, zero emission, equipped with waste management, rainwater harvesting and purification systems, [and that] our livable yachts are totally off-the-grid.” Unlike their state governor and their president, this Miami company believes that something is happening out there.

Urban growth, rising seas and energy independence are key challenges for our generation. Our solution is a unique avant-garde concept of life on the water. A combination of research in renewable energies, technological innovation and cutting edge spatial design and style situates your new home between the sea and the metropolis.

They have worked with Koen Olthius, a Dutch “water architect” to develop these 4,350-square-foot floating houses. Notwithstanding the size, they “think sustainably from conception to construction” to create “future proof blue dwellings.”

You can Live Ecologically “while being self-sufficient with water and electricity. Enjoy living off-the-grid and feel the satisfaction of minimizing your carbon footprint.”

You don’t need to worry about getting seasick either; unlike a boat it has four “spuds”, 40-foot-long hydraulic legs that that can stabilize or even lift the home right out of the water. But if the neighbours get noisy there are two 136 horsepower electric thrusters that can move you somewhere else at 7 knots.

It has so much green goodness — 30 kw of solar panels, 1,000 kWh of lithium-ion batteries and high grade insulation. There is rainwater collection and a “marine sewage device.”

They say that it is hurricane proof but that seems to be a lot of glass. No word on what the hull and superstructure are made of, but I suspect it’s not wood and straw bale.

No matter the weather conditions, hurricanes, high winds, surge and floods are no longer an issue thanks to this self-elevating system. Arkup represents a new way of living on the water, making you feel 100% safe and protected.

t’s a nice generous plan with four bedrooms that they say can sleep eight people. But come the flood and the revolution, no doubt it can be subdivided into smaller apartments for multiple families and be floated inland to where the water will be shallow enough for the pontoons to reach ground.

And it is so reassuring to know that not all the billionaires are going to New Zealand, but that some are planning to tough it out at home in America.

COPYRIGHT © 2017 NARRATIVE CONTENT GROUP

Ballet guru went from penniless to lifetime achievement award

GORDON MCINTYRE
The Vancouver Sun

Her parents Choo Chiat and Lin Yee started teaching ballet in 1978 at a W. 12th Avenue basement studio with a ceiling so low, dancers were unable to jump.

Today, Choo Chiat is a decorated dance mentor who put Vancouver on the global ballet map, most recently receiving a lifetime achievement award in the arts from Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson.

Choo Chiat could not have dreamed of this when he arrived in Vancouver in 1977, penniless, friendless and with rudimentary English.

“No, I never thought it,” Choo Chiat said inside the Goh Ballet Academy, a refurbished bank that still has a huge vault in the basement (costumes are stored there) and that has been the academy’s home since 1985.

“It touches my heart. Forty years here, can you imagine that time passing by? To think the mayor, the city, the world recognizes my work, it touches me deeply.

“When you do something and people recognize your work, I don’t know how to express the sweetness in the heart I feel.” Choo Chiat was born 78 years ago in Singapore, one of 10 siblings. He fell in love with ballet at 13 after seeing the 1948 film The Red Shoes, amazed by the beauty and the art form. At 14, he went to England to study at the Royal Ballet, followed by training with renowned Soviet dancer and choreographer Pyotr Gusev in China.

That’s where he met and fell in love with Lin Yee and where, to his family’s chagrin, he remained, becoming a principal dancer in the National Ballet of China.

It was fun at first: Swan Lake, Le Corsaire, Giselle. Then the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution happened and suddenly the ballet was performing works such as the Red Detachment of Women.

“Ballets have kings, queens, princes in them, then the Cultural Revolution made everything the opposite,” Goh said. “Peasants and workers were the heroes.

“It was still dancing, but it was not ballet. They wanted strong movement, not grace, not romance.”

So Choo Chiat came to Canada, ostensibly to visit his sick mother. When it became clear by 1978 he was not coming back, the Chinese government permitted Lin Yee and their eight-year-old daughter Chan to join him.

“The Cultural Revolution left no career for me at all, so I thought why not take the opportunity to go to the West and look around, see what I can do with my life,” Choo Chiat said.

He applied for a job gutting fish in Richmond, but fate intervened and someone who had heard he’d been a dancer hired him to teach her children.

Soon after, the Gohs opened their first academy.

“It was very much a partnership from the start,” said Chan, now director of Goh Ballet Academy after a career as the principal dancer with the National Ballet of Canada (interestingly, her parents did not want her to dance; it was an aunt who encouraged her to follow in mom’s and dad’s fouette).

“I’ve always looked up to my father because of the image of him on stage when I was a little girl,” Chan said. “He was so brilliant, his performances were so contagious.

“But also, he is such a great parent. He instilled such confidence in me, confidence I struggled to find. Confidence and he made me aware nothing comes without hard work.”

Choo Chiat is young at heart, is as passionate about dancing as ever. “No, no, no, you don’t have the beautiful eyes,” he tells a young student. “Do it again. Yes, that’s it!”

“When you see the dancer,” Choo Chiat said later, “you don’t just see the body. You see the beauty from their love of dancing.

“Physical technique is important, but just being technically very good does not make you a dancer.”

Next season, the academy will perform Prokofiev’s Cinderella to mark its 40th anniversary.

But at the moment, everyone’s readying for the Goh Ballet’s Nutcracker, a performance that has become a Christmas ritual for many since its inception in 2009.

The dancers are from the academy, but also from top companies worldwide — this year, dancers from Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet and the National Ballet of China will be in the cast.

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc.

Apple announces investigation, vows to redress payment discrepancies

ERIKA KINETZ
The Vancouver Sun

Hundreds of workers streamed through dark streets, blocking an entrance to an Apple iPhone supplier’s factory in eastern China to protest unpaid bonuses and factory reassignments, two witnesses and China Labor Watch, a New York-based nonprofit group, said Thursday.

The protest Wednesday night at Jabil Inc.’s Green Point factory in Wuxi city prompted Apple to launch an investigation and vow to redress the payment discrepancies. “We are requiring Jabil to send a comprehensive employee survey to ascertain where gaps exist in payment and they must create an action plan that ensures all employees are paid for the promised bonus immediately,” Apple said Thursday in an email to China Labor Watch.

The incident highlights the complexity of overseeing global supply chains that can involve hundreds of manufacturers and subcontractors, as well as third-party labour brokers — and their subcontractors — that are tasked with recruiting workers for those factories.

Companies differ in the amount of responsibility they are willing to take on. Apple stepped up oversight and disclosure following a spate of negative reports about worker suicides and injuries at suppliers.

After Tim Cook took over as chief executive, in 2011, Apple began publicly identifying top suppliers. It also publishes annual audits detailing labour and human rights performance throughout its global web of suppliers. Apple said it did comprehensive audits of 705 sites last year and documented significant improvements in compliance with its supplier code of conduct.

“About 600 workers went protesting for failing to get their bonus,” a worker who asked that only his family name, Zhang, be published for fear of retribution, said Thursday. He said that like many of his colleagues, he was promised a bonus of up to 7,000 yuan (US$1,056) if he stayed for 45 days when he signed up for the job through a labour broker.

“It has already been over three months but I still haven’t got the money,” he said.

Tu Changli, a security guard at Jabil’s Green Point factory, said a labour broker promised him 2,000 yuan (US$302) if he stayed for two months. “I didn’t get it at all,” he said. He also said he saw hundreds of workers protesting. The company he said he works for, Wu Tai Security Co., declined comment.

A spokeswoman for U.S.-based Jabil, Lydia Huang, disputed those accounts, saying only 20 to 40 employees were actually protesting and the rest were night-shift workers trying to enter the factory. “As long as they can present evidence of promises by brokers we will help them to get paid,” she said.

Jabil, in a statement late Thursday, said it was “committed to ensuring every employee is paid fairly and on time.”

Tensions had been running high at Jabil’s Green Point factory. Tu, the security guard, said he saw a worker talked down from the edge of a rooftop in late September. And Zhang said that on Sept. 30, he saw a security guard hit a worker with a wooden stick so hard the stick broke.

© 2017 Postmedia Network Inc