When it comes to trying to live life without creating excess waste, Elisabeth Ormandy and her partner Oliver Giving aren't perfect — but they're pretty close.

For the past three years Ormandy, 39, and Giving, 38, have increasingly tried to keep garbage to a minimum. In July, they celebrated by finally sending the garbage they accumulated during that time to the landfill: four shopping bags worth.

"For me it's just showing that two regular folks who work 60-plus hours a week on our various endeavours can still make a personal difference in our lives," said Ormandy.

The bags were mostly full of non-recyclable items like twist ties, plastic clips from bread bags, floss, stickers and toothpaste tubes.

According to officials with Metro Vancouver, households in Vancouver produce about one large garbage bag of waste a week. That adds up to about 500 kilograms of trash over a year.

The couple said they decided to start trying to produce less waste to do their part to help slow climate change and live in a sustainable way.

"Both Oliver and I have these deep values that are committed to having minimal impact, and it's fun to try to figure out ways to live in alignment with those," said Ormandy.

Like other Canadians, Ormandy and Giving were appalled when they read about trash that was shipped from Canada to the Philippines, only to be returned.

Paul Henderson, general manager of solid waste services for Metro Vancouver, says people in the region are already more progressive when it comes to waste reduction and recycling compared to other parts of the country. The region produces about 30 per cent less trash destined for a landfill than the national average.

"I think in general, we're all realizing that it's important to make change in order to protect the environment and look to the future generations," he said.

Ben Prins, who runs a countertop business in Abbotsford, never thought about his contract with his waste disposal company until he tried to get out of it.

After eight years with Maple Leaf Disposal, he decided to leave for another service provider.

"I expected a bottle of wine and a thank you note," he said. "I got a lawsuit instead."

And he lost.

Prins was was ordered by the court to pay half of his monthly bill for the 18 months that were remaining on his contract.

He blamed himself for not reading the fine print about the company's automatic renewal policy and cancellation penalties.

Then he found out he's not alone — hundreds of other small businesses in B.C. have also wound up on the receiving end of a civil suit after trying to sever ties with a waste disposal company.

"At first, I thought, well I might just be the only idiot out here," Prins said. "But when you find out it happens every day, then something has got to change."

Thank you to everyone who has followed this blog so far! I didn't expect all that many people to follow, but I'm happy that people did decide to. I've been very busy with work recently so so haven't been able to post anything, but I'll be reposting and reblogging posts again as soon as I have the time!

The province has unveiled the final pieces of its ride-hailing puzzle which will finally allow services like Uber and Lyft to hit B.C. streets.

North Vancouver-Lonsdale MLA Bowinn Ma announced on behalf of the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, that ICBC has completed the insurance portion of the proposed legislation, and the Passenger Transportation Board will be able to take applications from ride services companies starting Sept. 3.

Last November, the province's proposed legislation received royal assent. The amendments, which will significantly expand the power of the Passenger Transportation Board to determine fares, as well as the number of licensed vehicles in each region or area, have now been passed by order in council.

Today, Ma said the board will start assessing licence applications in early September with the final regulations coming into effect Sept. 16.

Application processing time will be anywhere from two weeks to a month, the ministry estimates.

"We fully expect that people will be able to hail a ride through this new industry — the Transportation Network Service industry — by the end of the year," said Ma in a teleconference.

Another part of the legislation to ensure passenger safety, said the ministry, is the need for all ride service drivers to have a Class 4 licence, which means drivers will have to provide an ICBC driver abstract, as well as a police criminal record check.

"The Class 4 requirement is not negotiable for us," said Ma.

Taxi companies will also be required to pay 30 cents for every non-accessible trip completed in a vehicle without rear or side entries. The province says this is an important step in modernizing the taxi industry and supporting accessibility in our region.

The ministry will also require all drivers to have their vehicles inspected periodically under the Motor Vehicle Act. Any vehicles operating more than 40,000 kilometres per year will require inspection every six months. If fewer than 40,000 kilometres, vehicle inspections will be required every 12 months.

Ride hailing companies will be required to pay a $5,000 annual fee to operate, but the ministry said it still does not know if it will be more or less expensive to insure a ride hailing vehicle, compared to a taxi.

The Passenger Transportation Board is an independent tribunal in B.C. established under the Passenger Transportation Act. It makes decisions on applications relating to the licensing of taxis, limousines, shuttle vans, inter-city buses, and now, ride-hailing services in B.C.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association has released thousands of heavily redacted documents by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in regards to allegations the agency had spied on peaceful protesters of the now-defunct Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project.

The BCCLA has uploaded all the documents to a searchable website.

The CSIS-disclosed documents had been held under a confidentiality order by the Security Intelligence Review Committee [SIRC], Canada's spy agency watchdog, which recently expired.

"What we've now received is a huge volume of secret evidence that we didn't get to see at all before," said Paul Champ, a lawyer with Champ and Associates representing the BCCLA.

Champ told CBC's Early Edition host Stephen Quinn the documents show over 500 CSIS reports about individuals or groups who had been protesting the pipeline proposal.

"[It] raises concerns that this isn't about national security, but it's about protecting the economic interests of Canada's energy sector and, in our view, that's completely beyond CSIS' mandate," he said.

The civil liberties association first challenged CSIS' actions in 2014 with a complaint to SIRC alleging the agency was spying on pipeline opponents. The association further claimed the information was being shared with the National Energy Board and the petroleum industry.

During private hearings with SIRC, CSIS disclosed the now-available documents.

The complaint was dismissed, however,  when the review committee concluded information had only been gathered on peaceful protesters as a by-product of investigations into legitimate threats, not as the goal.

The BCCLA has been working to overturn the watchdog's dismissal in Federal Court.

Over the last couple of years, the tension over how to manage fossil fuel-induced climate change within provinces and states in North America has reached a boiling point.

The petro-identity Conservatives have constructed for themselves faces an existential threat: a world that needs to get to net-zero emissions, and fast. Alberta, like other jurisdictions with compromised democracies has become an incubator for those not willing to face that future.

Stretching from coal country in Virginia to mill towns of the Pacific Northwest, there’s a pattern: when the horse in a one horse town disappears, residents tend to shoot first, ask questions later.

The tendency to shoot first is fuelled by fears that rise in any of us when we face an uncertain future. And increasingly, conservative hardliners are joining with industry to prey upon that.

Tanya Clarmont’s relationship with voting is complicated.

Clarmont is Teme-Augama Anishnabai on her father’s side. For many years she wanted nothing to do with federal elections, feeling that they were irrelevant in terms of the issues she and her Northern Ontario community faced.

At 41, the only federal election she has voted in was the last one.

Now she sees the value, and thinks everyone should participate.

“When you don’t see yourself reflected in the system at all, it’s hard to feel motivated to participate,” Clarmont said. “But at this point I think we need to be in there making ourselves heard and impacting the outcome.”

Clarmont, who has lived in B.C. for 14 years, is a director at the Victoria Native Friendship Centre. In June she took part in a panel discussion on strategies for calling out racism in the coming election campaign and increasing the participation of voters who have been marginalized. Planning is under way for a second event in August.

It’s a discussion with implications for individual Canadians, but also candidates and parties. In some cases, what’s needed is a commitment to keep the conversation inclusive. But deep structural changes are also needed.