Squamish Nation development to expand downtown Vancouver's footprint

The $3-billion Senakw project will consist of 6,000 mostly rental units in 11 towers on a five-hectare parcel. RANDY SHORE
Updated: November 5, 2019

An artist's rendering of the 6,000-unit Senakw development proposed for Squamish First Nation lands in Kitsilano adjacent to the Burrard Bridge. REVERY ARCHITECTURE / PNG

A residential development proposed by the Squamish First Nation for band-owned lands in Kitsilano will bring downtown-style density to a relatively low-rise community.

The $3-billion Senakw project will consist of 6,000 mostly rental units in 11 towers on a five-hectare parcel at the western foot of the Burrard Bridge. The tallest tower is expected to be 56 storeys, a shade shorter than Shangri-La and the Trump Tower, just across the bridge from the downtown peninsula.

The project was announced last April as a two-tower, 3,000-unit development; the new concept adds nine towers.

As the downtown Vancouver residential community has expanded from the West End, through Yaletown and into False Creek, the density has changed dramatically as part of the evolution of the area, according to Squamish Coun. Khelsilem.

An artist’s rendering of the 6,000-unit Senakw development proposed for Squamish First Nation lands in Kitsilano adjacent to the Burrard Bridge. REVERY ARCHITECTURE / PNG

Senakw’s design has changed several times over the years and this latest iteration reflects the extreme shortage of rental housing in Vancouver, he said.

“We see a huge need for rental with the vacancy crisis at one per cent or even lower in some places,” he said.

The City of Vancouver has struggled to get rental housing built, because developers would rather build condos. But because the Squamish have a preference for a long-term revenue stream rather than a quick profit, they can do things differently, he explained.

Senakw will not employ the typical podium and tower design used in many large projects. Because of the tower-only design, 80 per cent of the land at grade will be activated for public use such as park space, Khelsilem said.

The design for Senakw incorporates the areas beneath the bridge. SUBMITTED / REVERY ARCHITECTURE

By targeting renters, they can also dispense with most of the parking typically required by the city.

“We are looking at removing mandatory minimum parking requirements and it makes more sense when you are building rental,” he said.

Mayor Kennedy Stewart agreed the project “will really help us hit our own targets” for rental housing, a need that is at crisis levels.

Stewart isn’t concerned that other developers will try to push for increased density, citing the Senakw project.

“The Squamish development is a very special case because it’s on reserve land,” he said. “This is a very special case and we’re treating it as such.”

The Squamish planning group has briefed Vancouver city staff on the vision for Senakw and hopes to tap into their expertise as the project moves forward, especially concerning public consultation. But that consultation on Senakw will have a historical context attached.

“This is a government doing a project that has a particular history of injustice in the removal of our ancestors in 1913, who were evicted by the provincial government at the request of the Vancouver parks board and the City of Vancouver,” said Khelsilem.

Because the project is on First Nations land, the city has little power to influence the scale and form of the development, nor is the project subject to municipal zoning.

“We’ve seen some tentative support from city staff, in part because we are able to propose some big solutions for the city, quickly and at scale,” said Khelsilem.

The Squamish Nation isn’t required to apply to the city to redevelop this area, the city confirmed.

In 2014, city council designated Vancouver as a City of Reconciliation and set as its goal the creation of “sustained relationships of mutual respect and understanding with local First Nations and the urban Indigenous community.”

The Squamish Nation plans to collect taxes on the development themselves and use the revenue to buy services, such as policing, fire protection, water, sewage and waste removal from municipalities.

The development is a near-perfect experiment in urban development, to see what a landholder would do if it were free of the constraints placed on it by municipal government, said Tom Davidoff, a professor at the Sauder School of Business at the University of B.C.

The Squamish are making bold choices about what the market wants by choosing to build rental units and the decision to limit parking, he noted.

rshore@postmedia.com

— With files from Susan Lazaruk

The Guardian

Three Oaks student honoured for excellence in workplace safety

Melanie Rodger, who recently graduated from Three Oaks Senior High School student in Summerside, has been busy creating safe spaces at her school, work and volunteer settings.

Recently she was recognized for showing excellence in the demonstration and understanding of occupational health and safety (OCH) principals, by the Workers Compensation Board (WCB) with the Safety Matters Award during their annual public meeting.

“One of the ways to build safer workplaces is to focus on our future workforce,” said Stuart Affleck, chairman for the Workers Compensation Board. “The WCB places great importance on fostering safety champions in our next generation of workers and employers.”

Melanie participated in the OHS Leadership Program over the past year, where she worked with a partner to plan and host events designed to raise student awareness around safety in the workplace.

In the summer of 2017, she worked in a laboratory setting at University of Prince Edward Island, where she gained awareness and appreciation for safety training, and the need for personal protective equipment in certain workplace settings.

She participated in a training course at an aerospace company where workers were provided with an orientation to a new 3-D printer and learned more about effective communication of workplace hazards.

Rodger volunteers at the Prince County Hospital, in addition she serves as president of a volunteer youth board at the hospital. She has taken a leadership role in sharing knowledge about OHS with her co-workers and plans to study bioengineering at McGill University in Montreal this fall.

“We applaud Melanie and the many other students who take an interest in health and safety in the workplace,” said Luanne Gallant, CEO for the Workers Compensation Board. “Any effort to educate and engage others in discussions around safety will help benefit everyone.”

To learn more about educating young workers about workplace safety, visit the Workers Compensation Board website at or call the WCB office at 902‐368‐5680 or 1‐800‐237‐5049.

CBC

Overall crime rate in Vancouver went down in 2017, VPD says

Property crime and deadly car crashes are down, but homicides and sex offences are up slightly

Vancouver police say the rate of crime in the city dropped in 2017, with less property crime and deadly car crashes but more homicides and car theft.

The overall crime rate has gone down 1.5 per cent, according to department data released Thursday.

Property crime went down nearly two per cent, ending a five-year streak of rising rates. Break-ins to businesses also went down by nearly 18 per cent, robberies were down 23 per cent and deadly motor vehicle collisions dropped by 13 per cent.

There were 1.9 per cent more violent crimes in 2017, but when you compare those numbers for the last 10 years, there's still a decrease.

Homicides in the city went from 12 to 19 last year, for an increase of 58 per cent. Shots fired incidents were up 19 per cent, from 26 to 31.

Sex offences were also up by two per cent.

A statement from the department said motor vehicle theft is still a persistent problem.

"Theft from motor vehicles continues to be an issue in Vancouver, especially downtown," said Const. Jason Doucette. 

"While we'll continue to target offenders, drivers can help by simply not leaving anything visible in their vehicles. If thieves can see it, they're more likely to steal it."

On average, the data noted, Vancouver police responded to calls within nine minutes and 46 seconds in 2017 — about one second slower than the year before.

HelpNetSecurity

Four tips for keeping security worries away this summer

As the summer weather heats up, so does the desire to cut out of the office early and finish the workday from the park, a local pub patio or maybe the family cottage.

Now is the time where many of us take advantage of the ability to work remotely – using portable devices and free Wi-Fi or mobile hotspots to stay connected. While many managers are fairly flexible on this type of ‘perk’ if the position allows, IT security experts understand that is comes with some risk. To offset this, steps should be taken to ensure data and access is secure while at work, home or on the go. 

Consider working remotely. Where do you start? The first thing you’re going to do is to sign into email or your white-listed business application of choice to access the files you need to do your job. Doing so in the office versus doing so on a busy summer patio poses different threats. Still, there are a couple of steps organizations can take to keep remote employees happy, while maintaining security. Here are four main ones to consider:

1. “Just enough” access

Whether it’s the summer vacation season or the middle of winter, this tip still applies. Limit the access entitlements that employees have to only what they need to do their jobs and nothing more. This sounds straightforward and simple, but it’s often a surprise at how much access employees can accumulate.

Often referred to as ‘access creep,’ the term refers to the additional access employees have received over time that was never turned off. This could be due to a previous role in another department or a special project the employee worked on. The idea here is that if employees only have the bare minimum of access and nothing more—should something happen and an employee’s access is compromised somehow—the risk to the company is lower than it would have been otherwise.

2. “Only when needed” access

There’s going to be roles that require elevated access to important data, as it’s the nature of business. But there are things organizations can do to limit that access with by putting extra protections in place so that the access is only granted when necessary.

A single sign-on solution is great for enabling employees to be able to access various applications from one simple location, but implementing a risk-based authentication that requires additional authentication if certain parameters are detected will help ensure additional safety measures are in place. For example, when the employee is detected in the office, they can click in without issue. When they are trying to access that application from elsewhere on their personal network though, additional authentication will be required to make certain they truly are who they say they are.

3. “Sorry, not now” access denial

In the same vain as the ‘only when needed’ access scenario, there may be situations or applications that organizations are going to decide they do not want to allow any access to outside of their strict controls. Through the use of an advanced authentication tool with Geo-Fencing included, organizations can configure a policy to limit access to only those users in the allowed location.

4. “I forgot my password” access

There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to get something done so you can sign off for the day and getting hit with password request. For example, consider trying to access a previous application you were working in to upload work (i.e. Box, Dropbox), and you are asked to enter a password you don’t remember.

In the case of remote working, due to some of the tips I described above, it’s not uncommon to be asked for that password once you’re out of your network. However, unless you’re used to working remotely and can recall it on the fly, it can be a real inhibitor of getting work done when you’re not at the office. This is where a self-service password reset tool is not only a godsend for the end user, but it also alleviates calls to the help desk and can increase security. The reason for this is that customized—or pre-written—challenge questions are more secure than verifying a user’s identity on the phone before resetting a password or unlocking an account.

We should all be allowed to enjoy some fun in the sun this vacation season. By incorporating some—or all—of these strategies, organizations can better prepare themselves for the inevitable summer ‘WFH’ requests and allow their employees to do just that. In doing so, companies will achieve a more secure environment for their employees who plan on sneaking in some much-needed family time.

It world Canada

UK minimum cyber security standard should be followed in Canada, says expert

There’s no shortage of advice to infosec leaders about what they ought to be doing to tighten the IT security of their organization, starting with the Center for Internet Security’s critical security controls . But what if the board and C-suite wants to tell departments what they must do?

The recently-issued minimum cyber security standard for U.K. government departments is a good place to start. In seven pages the government sets out what it expects departments to adhere to — and exceed wherever possible.

This concise document goes along with the more detailed best practices security policy framework for protecting government assets, first published in 2014, to comply with the U.K. national cyber security strategy.

Those two documents can be granular, and in some ways ‘here’s how you do it’. The minimum cyber security standard is ‘here’s what you better be doing.’

So, for example, one of the first standards is “Departments shall identify and manage the significant risks to sensitive information and key operational services.”

Here’s another notable must: “Access shall be removed when individuals leave their role or the organization. Periodic reviews should also take place to ensure appropriate access is maintained.”

And another: “Multi-factor authentication shall be used where technically possible, such as where administrative consoles provide access to manage cloud based infrastructure, platforms or services. Multi-factor authentication shall be used for access to enterprise level social media accounts.”

Four sections

The standard is broken down into four sections infosec pros will recognize for creating a strategy: Identify, Protect, Detect and Respond. Within each department heads are mandated to take certain action. This means if there is a failure the government can ask, ‘Why wasn’t this done?”

“This is a  useful starting point for Canadian authorities,” said David Swan, the Alberta-based director of cyber intelligence at the Centre for Strategic Cyberspace + Security Science, an international consultancy. “All levels of government can use it. The requirements of the standard can be integrated into any regulatory framework. The standard can be expanded or included in other guidance. In the corporate environment, this level of knowledge should be required by boards of directors, CEOs, CSOs and CISOs. Organizations that don’t require this level of knowledge are essentially ‘co-operative victims’, unaware of their risk, cyber threat and consequences.”

The standard does allow some implementation flexibility. So the definition of ‘sensitive’, ‘essential’, ‘important’ and ‘appropriate’ are left open. “However , the document adds, “departments are accountable for the effectiveness of these decisions.”

U.K. departments “shall understand and manage security issues that arise because of dependencies on external suppliers or through their supply chain,” the standard says. That includes ensuring that the standards are met by the suppliers of third party services, such as hardware, software, consulting or cloud providers  However, those third parties could meet compliance in one of several ways. One is if the supplier holds a valid Cyber Essentials2 certificate as a minimum.

The U.K. Cyber Essentials program has accredited bodies issue certificates to private sector companies attesting they have met certain minimum security standards. Last month, when it released the latest Canadian cyber security standard Ottawa said it is looking to set up a similar program here.

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However, the Canadian program may take some time. The government said it will first consult with the private sector and potential certification bodies.  At this point it isn’t known who those certification firms could be. In the U.K. they include many IT security consulting companies, who have expertise in the area. The department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) will be responsible for approving the Canadian program. The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), which oversees security for federal systems, will define a basic set of measures SMEs would have to follow. And the Standards Council of Canada will approve certification bodies to assure evaluate SMEs have met the standard.

Note where the U.K. mimimum standard starts: “There shall be clear lines of responsibility and accountability to named individuals for the security of
sensitive information and key operational services.”