The Current's stories to watch

📷 Photos: top-centre: John Deacon/provincialcourt.ca; others: Tyler Olsen

The last two days we’ve written about the biggest political and environmental stories of 2023. Today, as we get ready to throw out this year’s calendar, we’re going to ditch the categories and instead highlight four 2023 stories that will be ones to watch in the coming .

1. Abuse and investigations

The horrific abuse suffered by two children at the hands of their government-appointed guardians in the Fraser Valley led to outrage. Even with a publication ban limiting what could be reported, the details of what the two children lived through—and how a system failed them—were shocking.

First Nation leaders blasted a “lack of accountability” and called for BC’s Minister of Child and Family Development Mitzy Dean to resign amid revelations that mandatory oversight that could have limited the abuse was not completed.

Dean did not resign, instead pledging to continue to work with First Nations leaders—the same leaders who had asked her to leave.

The case is likely to reverberate. BC’s Representative for Children and Youth, Jennifer Charlesworth, has promised to undertake an investigation into either this specific incident or the broader issues facing children in care. If it’s the latter, it wouldn’t be the first such report her office has produced. Over the years, the children’s representative’s office has completed several investigations showing how the province is failing BC’s most vulnerable children. The recent abuse case shows it continues to do so.

Catch up

On Charlesworth’s plans to investigate the abuse case:

2. Health care capacity

Earlier this month, a 55-year-old woman spent more than half a day waiting in pain for treatment at Abbotsford Regional Hospital. It took more than 14 hours for Luanora Irtenkauf to receive antibiotics and a CT scan, her daughter said. That scan revealed the need for urgent surgery. And although family was told the surgery went well, Irtenkauf died several days later, having never emerged from her medically induced coma.

Whether Irtenkauf’s long wait was linked to her death isn’t yet known. But the episode is just the latest in a long line of similar stories about health care capacity issues in the valley’s hospitals. Earlier this year, we reported on how the troubles for the Fraser Valley’s ERs date back more than a decade, and how Fraser Health has been unable to stop hospital congestion issues from getting progressively worse.

Canada’s health care system has come under increased scrutiny the last year, particularly as British Columbians have struggled to access cancer treatment. But the entire system has been shaky for years, particularly in the Fraser Valley. Can recruiting more staff, investing in new facilities, and changing incentive structures finally turn the tide? One hopes. All our lives depend on it.

Catch up

3. The Lytton rebuild

In February I stopped in Lytton to talk to the mayor about how, nearly two years after the fire that burned down the town, no homes had yet been rebuilt. Denise O’Connor, the mayor, was optimistic that things would start to pick up. But obstacles remained. The following month I published a long story about what had gone wrong and why the promises of provincial officials had not been fulfilled.

It’s the end of the year, and yet there are still no new homes built. In the fall, O’Connor and others held their first protest after more challenges involving archaeology emerged. And a Mennonite group that hopes to build homes for free for community members had to delay its plans.

But there is some optimism—and some reason to believe it might finally be justified.

One home is now under construction. And that single house seems likely to be followed by other building plans around town. It has taken years to get the ground to the point where new homes could be built, but the land is finally ready. Residents are making plans. And O’Connor hopes up to 20 homes may go up in 2024.

If the last two years are any indication, one wouldn’t bet on optimism. But people have lived on the Lytton townsite for thousands of years. Given enough time, one bets on a new Lytton rising from the ashes.

4. The bus strike

For more than three months this spring, the Fraser Valley’s transit system ground to a halt as bus drivers across the valley went on strike.

That strike was eventually resolved and the buses began running again. But the event illustrated a major vulnerability for not only transit users, but official plans aimed at encouraging more Fraser Valley residents to ditch their cars. Local cities, the province, transit advocates, and environmentalists all have good reason to want to encourage more people to use transit. The widened Highway 1 will have dedicated bus lanes to allow buses to zip passengers around the region. The province is requiring that cities allow very dense housing—with no required parking—near bus exchanges. And communities are trying to promote transit as a cheap, reliable, and environmentally sustainable alternative to cars.

But what happens when people build their lives around buses, only to have those buses disappear for months at a time? That’s a question prompted by the Fraser Valley bus strike and a work stoppage the previous year in the Sea-to-Sky corridor.

BC Transit and the BC government are adamant that you can’t take away the right to strike. The courts have backed that up. But governments do have the power to change the conditions that determine whether strikes are likely to occur or persist. It’s hard not to think that a three-month-long transit strike in Vancouver might have prompted more reflection on whether today’s system—wherein BC Transit contracts out operations and labour relations to private third-party operators—is worth the trouble.

As 2024 dawns, Translink’s bus union is warning of possible service disruptions as they hash out a new contract. That has the potential to impact transit service in Langley, which escaped the impacts from last year’s strike.

A new barrier

While on the topic of buses, 2023 also revealed that one issue holding back the Fraser Valley Express from further expansions is not just provincial government funding, but the capacity of Chilliwack’s transit yard to hold more buses.

If the province does want to ramp up transit service in the valley (thus far its words have been far greater than its actions), it will need to help build a new transit yard at the eastern end of the FVX’s route in Chilliwack. Such a project won’t be small. Abbotsford recently got a new transit facility at the cost of more than $25 million. (The federal government also chipped in money.)

Catch up

As the Fraser Valley’s transit strike began, we reported on lessons from the last strike:

Our story on plans to increase regional transit in the Fraser Valley: