Straight Talk

NPA COUNCIL ROSTER LOOKING PRETTY SLIM OPIOID EPIDEMIC MAY GET ROYAL COMMISSION

The president of the Non-partisan Association is putting to rest speculation that NPA Vancouver city councillor Melissa De Genova may jump ship.

“Melissa is running with us,” Gregory Baker told the Straight by telephone.

Baker said the NPA board has approved De Genova as a candidate for councillor.

However, as of the July 9 interview, there were no others yet on the party’s council slate.

Baker said Coun. Elizabeth Ball has not informed the party if she’s interested in a fourth term.

“I don’t think she’s going to run,” he said about Ball.

In November last year, NPA councillor George Affleck declared that he will not run in this year’s October 20 civic election.

Hector Bremner, who won a council seat in the 2017 byelection as an NPA candidate, has formed the Yes Vancouver Party and will run for mayor under its banner.

There had been some speculation that De Genova might join Bremner’s camp.

Baker said park-board commissioner Sarah Kirby-yung has told the party that she wants to run for council. He noted that Kirbyyung has yet to get the green light on that, and he added that she is already approved to go for another term on the park board. Her husband, Terry Yung, is on the NPA board of directors.

Park commissioner John Coupar sought but failed to secure the NPA’S nomination as its mayoral candidate. He has yet to tell the party if he wants either another term on the park board or a shot at city council.

“I’m expecting that it will be park board,” Baker said about Coupar’s decision, noting that Coupar is currently on vacation.

Businessman Ken Sim won the NPA’S mayoral nomination, defeating Coupar and West Side resident Glen Chernen. According to Baker, Chernen has not advised the party if he plans to run for council. Chernen did not return a call by the Straight.

As with the last municipal election, NPA directors will pick the party’s candidates instead of a nomination vote.

Baker said the other approved candidates are incumbent education trustees Fraser Ballantyne and Lisa Dominato, who will seek new terms on the school board.

NPA park commissioner Casey Crawford has been authorized to go for another term, Baker said.

Baker also said that people interested in running with the NPA have until July 20 to apply.

> CARLITO PABLO

91-YEAR-OLD SCIENTIST PATENTS CANCER DRUG

Dr. Pat Mcgeer has achieved many milestones in his lifetime. He competed as a Canadian basketball player in the 1948 Olympics. He’s a UBC- and Princeton University– educated neuroscientist.

Mcgeer, a UBC professor emeritus, also served in the B.C. legislature for 24 years, leading the B.C. Liberal party from 1968 to 1972.

He was a Social Credit cabinet minister for 10 years, and during that time he helped kick-start B.C.’S high-tech sector.

But the 91-year-old Vancouver resident’s greatest claim to fame could end up being as a cancer researcher. In 2012, he and his wife, Edith Mcgeer, founded Aurin Biotech Inc., which created a drug called aurintricarboxylic acid complex (ATAC).

Last week, the company received a U.S. patent for the way in which it cuts the blood supply to a tumour, preventing it from growing.

According to an Aurin Biotech news release, the oral medication accomplishes this “by preventing the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which induces capillary formation”.

The news release states that “no other anti-cancer agents are known to arrest the progression of malignant tumours”.

Initial tests have shown no side effects in research subjects.

“The most exciting aspect of this discovery is the unique way in which ATAC works,” Mcgeer said in the news release. “It starves the tumour of its needed blood supply by preventing the complement system from inducing it. A starved tumour may not disappear, but if it is arrested, it is no longer lethal. In other words, individuals doomed to die from a cancer can be rescued by this drug.”

> CHARLIE SMITH How did Canada fall victim to an opioid epidemic that killed almost 4,000 people across the country last year?

It’s a big question, and a pioneer of Vancouver’s harm-reduction movement wants an answer.

Last May, Dan Small, a cofounder of North America’s first supervised-injection facility, Insite, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau requesting the appointment of a royal commission “to examine the variables that have accounted for the dramatic overdose tragedy”.

It was a long shot, Small told the Straight. But now the Canadian government has responded with a letter that, he said, suggests it is possible his royal commission could actually come to fruition.

“While a Royal Commission specifically has not been considered to date, I would suggest that you contact the Governor General’s office to identify your concerns and your ideas on the matter,” Heidi Jackson, executive director of Health Canada’s opioid-response team, wrote to Small on behalf of Health Canada on July 9.

In a telephone interview, Small, a medical anthropologist and adjunct professor at UBC, outlined his next steps.

“A royal commission would allow us to look backwards at the mistakes we’ve made,” he said. “Ms. Jackson is recommending that I follow it through to the Governor General. And I will.”

If a royal commission is established, it will likely focus on the years when former prime minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative party held power in Ottawa.

In B.C., the first province hit by the fentanyl crisis, there were roughly 200 fatal overdoses each year during the first half of Harper’s time in office. Then, nearing the end of his term as prime minister, in 2013, there were 333. Then 368 in 2014 and then 522 in 2015, the year that Harper was defeated by Trudeau and the Liberals.

Statistics show that Canada’s epidemic of overdose deaths began on Harper’s watch, Small maintained. > TRAVIS LUPICK