"Justin, once the election is over, what will you be doing?"

me: here is a pyramid of beer from the seven key municipalities we will be focusing on tonight 7. KELOWNA

It's a rematch of the 2018 election where Colin Basran won big — can he do so again in an environment where crime and growth concerns are greater than four years ago?

there were no kelowna beers in the bcl so we're going with a more geographically appropriate cider

it's a beautiful saturday in august

the pne has begun

it's a little cooler than the last few days

really the ideal time to enjoy the last good stretch of summer

who is ready for some charts The rolling average of #COVID19 wastewater measurements fell in ALL FIVE Metro Vancouver treatment plants last week.

It's now about half what it was at the height of this wave.

Vancouver's centre-right Non-Partisan Association has been one of the city's top two parties in 58 of its last 59 elections.

In 2018 they won the most council seats & came within 1000 votes of being elected mayor.

And then what happened? First there was a battle for control of the board that seemed to get pretty nasty.

thebreaker.news/business/npa-t…

who is ready for some charts Four of Metro Vancouver's five wastewater treatment sites have seen a marked decline in #COVID19 concentration in the last three weeks, suggesting the third Omicron wave has peaked.

Outside of Langley, numbers are back to where they were in early June.

Today in "governments being accountable for the billion dollar organizations they oversee", a quick recap of hoping to speak to someone about the departure of BC Housing's CEO Shayne Ramsay announced today he would be leaving BC Housing after two decades leading the organization.

It's a big, complex job, and has become bigger and more complex as time as gone on.

For a very basic metric of this, here's a chart.

Last weekend I went to the weirdest ghost town in Canada, a time machine to 1981, hundreds of kilometres from any major city.

Here's what it was like in Kitsault, British Columbia.

justinmcelroy.com/2022/07/26/vis… RANKING THE SPOOKIEST PARTS OF CANADA'S ONLY FULLY PRESERVED 1981 GHOST TOWN

14. GYM

- great raised stage
- yes that's original gym equipment, this will only get weirder
- literally dozens of chairs stored for the school assemblies that will never happen

for those keeping track this is day five of the public hearing

https://twitter.com/VanCityClerk/status/1551811404998578176

councillor boyle is a mood

I have a funny story involving two things the B.C. government does very well:

- present accurate data about a deadly pandemic at the same level as other provinces

- freedom of information requests Every year, the B.C. government gives its bureaucracy a bunch of awards for the best projects of the year.

They're called the Premier's Innovation and Excellence Awards.

Ministries nominate projects, and finalists and winners are eventually chosen.

I tracked down the salaries for every local politician in British Columbia.

Here's what I found.

cbc.ca/news/canada/br… Let's start with the simple stuff — who makes the most?

You might instinctively say Vancouver, but for mayors it's actually Coquitlam's Richard Stewart topping the list.

But the entire top 10 is Metro Vancouver communities.

Because I'm legally obligated to talk about every big UBC thing until the end of time, it's time to chat about President Santa Ono seemingly leaving the university tomorrow for Michigan, and why The Narratives From America tomorrow will likely be inaccurate. "Ono is good at Twitter and loves sports" was what B.C. was told when he became president, and seems like what the story will be tomorrow.

Nobody really cared about his Twitter account when he was at UBC, and sports on campus churned along at the same pace as before.

park board gonna park board

https://twitter.com/MonikaGul/status/1544500683147132928

"Removing the logs has allowed more room for people to spread out. Areas between the logs were often an awkward distance for people to set up a spot."

https://twitter.com/MonikaGul/status/1544504351762264067

who is ready for some charts There are a number of signs that B.C. has entered into a 3rd Omicron wave, the length and severity of which is yet to be determined.

Let's take a look at what we know at the moment.

Hello.

I've identified 185 communities in the province of British Columbia that have welcome signs.

And in this thread, I'm going to rank every single one. NOTES TO START

1. This thread will go on for at least 185 tweets, over several days, so feel VERY free to mute this now.

2. Here are the details over how I scored each welcome sign, along with some caveats to this project.

3. Now, let's get going.

One thing I find odd about the Current National Housing Debate is the notion that politicians are scared of reducing the value of people's homes.

But in B.C., people said in poll after poll they would be fine with it. The NDP said they would do it, and then formed government. And after the NDP formed government, the value of homes did go down in the Metro Vancouver for 3 years, and by a noticeable amount (see that 2017-2019 zone).

And during this time when home prices went down, their popularity did not suffer, at least if you go by the polls.

I'm not sure why the VPD deputy chief is going #contextmatters when this started because they tweeted out a graphic saying serious assaults and assaults against peace officers were going up (with big arrows!) when they are in fact down so far this year The graphic they tweeted out also showed robberies up, and indeed they are so far this year.

But again, we go back to the fact the VPD's topline crime data shows some things are up and other things are down, while the message they communicate often frames things differently.

who is ready for some charts Levels of #COVID19 in wastewater transmission rose in four of Metro Vancouver's five treatment plants over the last week, continuing a trend we've seen the latter half of March.

Levels for now between 72 and 90% lower than what they were during the Omicron peak in January.

#BESTSMALLTOWNBC

SWEET SIXTEEN

INTERIOR AND THE NORTH

LET'S BRACKET

cbc.ca/news/canada/br… Me: I'm not gonna profile Nelson yet because I think they're the favourites to win it all, so I've got time to tell their story

Kimberley: and i took that personally

folks seem to be pretty upset about this photo because there's lots of incentives to make people angry at the media in 2022, but this is sort of the rudimentary building block for television that is done hundreds of times every day across this continent

https://twitter.com/glen_mcgregor/status/1511747271607652362

Here's finance minister Jim Flaherty in 2013, doing the shoe thing for a budget preview.

Look at all those reporters! Why were they there, and couldn't they spend time doing something else?

Here's my feature on small communities with big population growth, and the worries when the taco shop and craft brewery come to town

cbc.ca/news/canada/br… The small towns with big population growth in B.C.. since 2016 tend to share a few characteristics, including access to nature and/or decent proximity to Vancouver or Victoria.

But they've also seen big increases in property values.

google is so committed to privacy that they blurred the face of the sasquatch sitting at the harrison hot springs welcome sign thinking about this more

is google being respectful of the sasquatch's privacy

or this is another BIGFOOT COVER UP BY BIG TECH

So, where are we at for #COVID19 transmission in British Columbia now?

It seems pretty clear that the downward trend stopped earlier this month.

What's less clear is how whether we're decisively going up yet, and if so, at what speed.

Here's our main chart once again. After 43 straight days of declines, hospitalizations have gone up two of the last three days.

Not by a lot mind you, but enough to add to the pile of evidence that the sharp downward curve is over.