PHS Housing Director Andy Bond Promoted To Lead The Vancouver Nonprofit Through Challenging Times

The Portland Hotel Society (PHS) has named Andy Bond its interim executive director.

Early reactions suggest the appointment could finally end a tumultuous period in which PHS has burned through no less than six executive directors in barely four years.

Bond was unavailable for an interview Friday (November 30). Reached by phone, the organization’s board chair, Allen Garr, told the Straight that Bond was selected for his extensive experience working for PHS Community Services Society (as PHS is known officially).

“The staff who work for us are under particular stress, because of the opioid crisis,” Garr said. “We needed someone like Andy to let them breathe a bit and then put their shoulder into it for the next few months.”

The nonprofit supportive-housing provider is one of B.C.’s largest provincial partners on social services. In 2017, its annual revenue exceeded $36 million, according to Canada Revenue Agency filings.

In 2014, PHS’s founders and entire management team were forced to resign amid accusations of financial improprieties. In the year that followed, Ann McNabb, Dominic Flanagan, and Ken Bayne provided leadership under appointment by the provincial government or otherwise cycled through the organization’s top position in quick succession.

By 2015, Ted Bruce brought a brief period of calm to PHS’s upper management team. He was executive director for 14 months. Eamonn O’Laocha took over next and lasted eight months. Then Jennifer Breakspear was named executive director in January 2017. She came to the position with some experience running a large nonprofit, Qmunity. That raised hopes the organization’s Game of Thrones imitation had come to an end.

Alas, Breakspear resigned without warning at the end of October, after 22 months on the job. Garr declined to discuss her departure and Breakspear did not respond to a request for comment.

In May 2016, the Straight reported on a PHS internal memo that described the preceding years as “some very difficult times”. More recently, mid-level managers and lower-level PHS staff have consistently complained to the Straight that the executive directors hired from outside the organization simply did not understand PHS, or how it provides care to people who struggle with severe mental-health issues and long-term drug and alcohol addictions.

bit.ly/2Nn1umd via @georgiastraight

High-Roller Targeted In RCMP’s Probe Of Alleged ‘transnational Drug Trafficking’ Ring

On a country road in British Columbia’s Chilliwack Valley, a Chinese VIP gambler has spent years constructing a compound of incredible wealth, according to witnesses and sources with access to police intelligence.

If it was in Colombia or Mexico, the secluded five-acre property on Chadsey Road might pass for the set of a Netflix narcos drama.

bit.ly/2Axj7dV via @globalnews

David Eby Disappointed By Stay On Charges In BC Money-Laundering Case

B.C. Attorney General David Eby reacted strongly Wednesday to news that criminal charges in B.C.’s largest money-laundering case had been stayed, calling the inability to prosecute these cases a crisis.

“I was incredibly disappointed — as I imagine are many British Columbians,” Eby told reporters at a news conference in Vancouver.

He said he learned that criminal charges in the RCMP’s E-Pirate money laundering investigation had been stayed after reading about it in The Vancouver Sun.

Eby said there was an “urgent” need to find out why this happened and how to fix it, which would need the co-operation of all parties, including the federal government.

“It is a disturbing signal that a prosecution of this magnitude collapses shortly before going to trial,” said Eby, who believed it was the largest money-laundering case in B.C. history.

bit.ly/2LOXN82 via @VancouverSun

Criminal Charges Stayed In Major BC Money-Laundering Investigation

Criminal charges have been stayed relating to a high-profile RCMP investigation that alleged money laundering, underground banking and suspected drug cash used to fund VIP Chinese gamblers in B.C. casinos.

And now, the RCMP is conducting a review in an attempt to identify what police “activities” could have contributed to the charges being stayed, said Sgt. Marie Damian in a statement on Wednesday.

“The RCMP is conducting a full scale review to understand its activities which contributed to this stay, and will incorporate relevant lessons learned into its investigative practices and processes where necessary,” Damian wrote in an emailed statement. “More importantly, how to mitigate against the possibility this set of circumstances occurs again in the future.”

bit.ly/2F8gcMH via @VancouverSun

‘It’s Murder’ - How Lethal Opioids Devastated A Small Region Of Ontario

The wood framed clock on the table of Melissa Hurst’s living room is stopped at 7:42 a.m.
Inside the clock are the ashes of her son, Luke, who on Mother’s Day 2017 was discovered at that same minute in his bed dead of an overdose.

He was 19.

“My heart was ripped out that day,” Hurst told Global News. “I wake up with pain every single day. I go to bed in pain thinking of him and in some ways I feel like I failed him as his mother.”

bit.ly/2G8orrZ via @globalnews

Fentanyl Kings In Canada Allegedly Linked To Powerful Chinese Gang, The Big Circle Boys

In October 2015, RCMP officers wearing tactical gear burst into luxury homes, an underground bank and two illegal casinos in Richmond, B.C.

At a hidden casino on Richmond’s No. 4 Road, they found 27 surveillance cameras. The place was abandoned but police saw something that concerned them.

On a wall calendar, a day had been circled. It was the execution date for the RCMP’s search warrant.

bit.ly/2ScdJqK via @globalnews

Secret Police Study Finds Crime Networks Could Have Laundered Over $1B Through Vancouver Homes In 2016

The stately $17-million mansion owned by a suspected fentanyl importer is at the end of a gated driveway on one of the priciest streets in Shaughnessy, Vancouver’s most exclusive neighbourhood.

A block away is a $22-million gabled manor that police have linked to a high-stakes gambler and property developer with suspected ties to the Chinese police services.

bit.ly/2SaujHn via @globalnews

An Introduction To Fentanyl: Making A Killing

Almost a dozen Canadians died every day from opioid overdoses last year. Since 2016, more than 8,000 have lost their lives, primarily to fentanyl. In British Columbia, the problem has become so bad that life expectancy has dropped for the first time in decades.

But it has also made traffickers astoundingly rich.

In a multi-part investigative series, Global News follows the money, revealing how organized crime groups and small-time operators alike are making a killing from fentanyl.

bit.ly/2AAiOPq via @globalnews

A Botched Murder Case And Secrecy At The Top

No one should be satisfied with the secrecy around a botched “Mr. Big” murder case in B.C. that raised questions about the integrity of the justice system.

Especially Attorney General David Eby.

Kristy Morrey, 28, was found dead in her small Port Alberni home on a Sunday in 2006. Police believed she had been murdered, but couldn’t come up with evidence to charge anyone.

Nine years later, they reopened the case and set out to get a confession from Morrey’s former boyfriend, truck driver Larry Darling, spending $2 million on an elaborate “Mr. Big” sting

bit.ly/2Te89EC via @TheTyee

Statue Honouring Pat Quinn Defaced In 'Disrespectful' Act Of Vandalism

A statue outside Rogers Arena honouring hockey legend Pat Quinn has been defaced in an act of vandalism one Vancouver Canucks executive is calling “disrespectful and disappointing.”

The statue's face and part of its torso were seen covered in orange paint or a similar substance Monday afternoon, though it's unclear when the vandalism took place.

Canucks Sports & Entertainment told CTV News it is working to have the statue cleaned up.

bit.ly/2EMni8M via @CTVVancouver

East Vancouver Church Daycare Vandalized On Anniversary Of Polish Independence

East Vancouver church daycare vandalized on anniversary of Polish independence

Members of St. Casimir’s Polish Parish in East Vancouver discovered the church daycare had been vandalized with “Antifa” graffiti on the same day they gathered for a mass marking one century of Polish independence. Kristen Robinson reports.

bit.ly/2Aft1R4 via @globalnews

Jean Swanson Wants City Council To 'Recommit' To Affordable Rental Rates At 58 West Hastings

COPE Coun. Jean Swanson is taking a years-long effort aimed at ensuring that housing built at 58 West Hastings rents entirely at pension and welfare rates to next week's council meeting.

Swanson has a motion on notice for the Nov. 13 meeting calling on the new council to “recommit” to those rates. She also wants council to direct staff to report back within a month on what funding is required to achieve the 100 per cent welfare/pension rate, with at least three options for sources of revenue.

http://bit.ly/2AAQ8Ws via @VanCourierNews

Outgoing Executive Director Jennifer Breakspear Says Resignation Not Related To Payment Issues Plaguing Staff

The executive director of the Portland Hotel Society is resigning after less than two years on the job, as struggles continue with a new payroll system that has consistently delivered inaccurate payments. Some PHS workers, along with their union representatives from CUPE 1004, say the payroll system has been malfunctioning for months, leading to financial insecurity, bounced rent cheques, non-sufficient fund fees from banking institutions and hours spent in the PHS payroll offices trying to get the money owed them.

"Some folks are potentially on the verge of losing their homes because of repeated errors in payroll, " said Cupe 1004 president Andrew Ledger.

bit.ly/2CCZLV6 via @CBCNews