Vancouver Sun Headline Five more Metro Vancouver homeowners hosed in a falling market

A Surrey man claims he discovered too late that a beer bottle he was served at the Grand Villa Casino was chipped. Burnaby NOW file photo A Surrey man claims he accidentally drank glass from a broken beer bottle at Burnaby’s Grand Villa Casino. Gurcharan Singh Grewal filed a lawsuit against the casino and its parent company, Gateway Casinos and Entertainment, among other defendants, following an alleged incident in December 2017. According to the lawsuit, Grewal was at the Personas Bar in the Grand Villa Casino and ordered a beer from the bartender. After taking his first sip, he allegedly “felt a sharp object enter his throat, causing much discomfort and internal injuries.” Grewal claimed in his lawsuit that he found a chip in the glass on the rim of the beer bottle “due to the bartender incorrectly opening” it. As a result, Grewal said he suffered lacerations to his mouth, injury to his throat and esophagus, difficulty swallowing, discomfort and anxiety. Grewal “continues to undergo medical care” resulting from the injuries, according to his court filing, and “continues to suffer pain and discomfort and emotional upset.” Grewal is also seeking damages for alleged loss of income relating to the incident, as well as an alleged loss of housekeeping ability at home. The claims have not been proven in a court of law, and none of the defendants has yet responded to the lawsuit.

I wrote this Op-Ed for my Law 432.D course titled ‘Accountable Computer Systems.’ This blog will likely be posted on the course website but as I am presenting on a few topics related, I wanted it to be available to the general public in advance. I do note that after writing this blog, my more in-depth literature review uncovered many more administrative lawyers talking about accountability. However, I still believe we need to properly define accountability and can take lessons from Joshua Kroll’s work to do so.   Introduction Canadian administrative law, through judicial review, examines whether decisions made by Government decision-makers (e.g. government officials, tribunals, and regulators) are reasonable, fair, and lawful.[i] Administrative law governs the Federal Court’s review of whether an Officer has acted in a reasonable[ii] or procedurally fair[iii] way, for example in the context of Canadian immigration and citizenship law, where an Officer has decided to deny a Jamaican mother’s permanent residence application on humanitarian and compassionate grounds[iv] or strip Canadian citizenship away from a Canadian-born to Russian foreign intelligence operatives charged with espionage in the United States.[v] Through judicial review and subsequent appellate Court processes, the term accountability has yet to be meaningfully engaged with in Canadian administrative case law.[vi] On the contrary, in computer science accountability is quick becoming a central organizing principle and governance mechanism.[vii] Technical and computer science specialists are designing technological tools based on accountability principles that justify its use and perceived sociolegal impacts. Accountability will need to be better interrogated within the Canadian administrative law context, especially as Government bodies increasingly render decisions utilizing computer systems (such as AI-driven decision-making systems) [viii] that are becoming subject to judicial review.[ix] An example of this is the growing litigation around Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s (“IRCC”) use of decision-making systems utilizing machine-learning and advanced analytics.[x] Legal scholarship is just starting to scratch the surface of exploring administrative and judicial accountability and has done so largely as a reaction to AI systems challenging traditional human decision-making processes. In the Canadian administrative law literature I reviewed, the discussion of accountability has not involved defining the term beyond stating it is a desirable system aim.[xi] So, how will Canadian courts perform judicial review and engage with a principle (accountability) that it hardly knows? There are a few takeaways from Joshua Kroll’s 2020 article, “Accountability in Computer Systems” that might be good starting points for this collaboration and conversation.   Defining Accountability – and the Need to Broaden Judicial Review’s Considerations Kroll defines “accountability” as a “a relationship that involves reporting information to that entity and in exchange receiving praise, disapproval, or consequences when appropriate.”[xii] Kroll’s definition is important as it goes beyond thinking of accountability only as a check-and-balance oversight and review system,[xiii] but also one that requires mutual reporting in a variety of positive and negative situations. His definition embraces, rather than sidesteps, the role of normative standards and moral responsibility.[xiv] This contrasts with administrative judicial review, a process that is usually only engaged when an individual or party is subject to a negative Government decision (often a refusal or denial of a benefit or service, or the finding of wrongdoing against an individual).[xv] As a general principle that is subject to a few exceptions, judicial review limits the Court’s examination to the ‘application’ record that was before the final human officer when rendering their negative decision.[xvi] Therefore, it is a barrier to utilize judicial review to seek clarity from the Government about the underlying data, triaging systems, and biases that may form the context for the record itself. I argue that Kroll’s definition of accountability provides room for this missing context and extends accountability to the reporting the experiences of groups or individuals who receive the positive benefits of Government decisions when others do not. The Government currently holds this information as private institutional knowledge, with fear that broader disclosure could lead to scrutiny that might expose fault-lines such as discrimination and Charter [xvii] breaches/non-compliance.[xviii] Consequentially, I do not see accountability’s language fitting perfectly into our currently existing administrative law context, judicial review processes, and legal tests. Indeed, even the process of engaging with accountability’s definition in law and tools for implementation will challenge the starting point of judicial review’s deference and culture of reasons-based justification[xix] as being sufficient to hold Government to account.   Rethinking Transparency in Canadian Administrative Law Transparency is a cornerstone concept in Canadian administrative law. Like accountability, this term is also not well-defined in operation, beyond the often-repeated phrase of a reasonable decision needing to be “justified, intelligent, and transparent.”[xx] Kroll challenges the equivalency of transparency with accountability. He defines transparency as “the concept that systems and processes should be accessible to those affected either through an understanding of their function, through input into their structure, or both.”[xxi] Kroll argues that transparency is a possible vehicle or instrument for achieving accountability but also one that can be both insufficient and undesirable,[xxii] especially where it can still lead to illegitimate participants or lead actors to alter their behaviour to violate an operative norm.[xxiii] The shortcomings of transparency as a reviewing criterion in Canadian administrative law are becoming apparent in IRCC’s use of automated decision-making (“ADM”) systems. Judicial reviews to the Federal Court are asking judges to consider the reasonableness, and by extension transparency of decisions made by systems that are non-transparent – such as security screening automation[xxiv] and advanced

President Obama, arguably to the left of PM Harper, has decided to phase out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, their own two versions of our CMHC which insure mortgages. Our own dithering fools in Ottawa were anti-CMHC except when it suited them. And it did in 2008/9. Even as they watched the US equivalents pull hundreds of Billions out of tax-payers pockets, they cynically doubled our own CMHC, loaded it up with a weak board (IN MY OPINION) and allowed it to have poor risk management and operate opaquely (in the opinion of Nomura and IMF and other non-Major-bank economists).  Now hopefully they will do the right thing before this monster endangers our financial future further…and wind it down! BTW- there was a great BNN interview with Ian Lee, an Academic who has been sounding the alarm on CMHC liability which he calls gargantuan! Says the banks are using CMHC! Try this link. Click on the second video ‘CMHC to take stream out of housing market’. All bulls and bears should listen to this interview

We looked at an image of the Empress, and her next-door neighbour, the Phoenix, in a post we wrote six years ago. Then we saw a horizontal slice of the buildings, but this Archives image from 50 years ago shows the full vertical extent of a tall building on a 25 foot lot. The $90,000 construction was developed by L L Mills, and designed by his brother-in-law who worked in Independence, Kansas, and who almost certainly got the job because he was married to Lyle’s sister, Emma. Lyle Le Roy Mills was born in the US, in Iowa, and in 1912 when he obtained the permit for the building he was 43. His wife Elsie was from originally from Sweden, shown in the 1911 census as three years younger, (although actually three years older). They had married in Seattle in 1904, and were living in the West End with an extended family; Lyle’s mother, Margaret who was 85 was living with them, and Elsie’s mother, Carrie Swensen, and her sister, Ellen. Lyle’s brother, Oscar and his wife Cora were also living at 1967 Barclay with their children, Oscar Le Roy, 13, and Earl Van, 11. Oscar worked as a barman at what was described as the ‘world’s narrowest tallest hotel’ when it was built. Lyle and Elsie had married in Washington state in 1904, and it wasn’t Elsie’s first marriage as she was recorded then as Elsie Anderson. After a few years Mr Mills ran into problems. In 1916 it was alleged that a young woman stayed at the hotel without registering. On the strength of the allegation (which was never tested in court), Mr Mills was threatened with the loss of his hotel licence. Mayor McBeath, and the City’s Licence Inspector held the view that the board could arbitarily cancel a licence. They suggested that if he wanted his day in court, Mr Mills could always appeal. Lawyers appearing for Mr Mills initially persuaded other board members that they could only cancel a licence after a conviction in police court, but a temporary suspension was agreed Unwilling to drop the case, the board launched its own inquiry, and called the girl to give evidence. She admitted staying with two men for two nights without having registered. Detectives said that they had seen the girl leaving the hotel, and the hotel clerks were called and confirmed she was not registered. But they also stated that they, and Mr Mills, did not know she was staying, and they were under instructions to not allow unaccompanied women to use the hotel rooms. The lawyer for Mr Mills throughout the proceeedings objected that they lay beyond the board’s powers, and that there was no proof (or accusation) that Mr Mills knew of the woman’s presence. Just as the board were about to debate suspending the licence, Frank Lyons, the lawyer, produced writs claiming damages against the board members for usurpation of powers, and an injunction preventing them from suspending the hotel licence. “Remember that I am telling you now that you have no power, no authority, no right; your action is unfair, improper, illegal, unjust.” The mayor wasn’t willing to back down, and by the summer of 1917 the case was in the Supreme Court, where Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper was representing Mr Mills. (He was a former conservative politician, Minister of Justice and Solicitor General for Canada). There had also been something of a PR disaster for the hotel, when a sensational case arose concerning the death of Mrs Nora Cowan. She fell – or jumped – from a fifth floor window, and died as a result. The circumstances filled the papers for days. A coroner’s jury handed down an open verdict after hearing that Mrs Cowan (married to a soldier serving in Europe) had met Vernon Cole (a married man with a wife and children) and after several drinks in the hotel had appeared to have had too much alcohol, and had been taken to a room usually occupied by one of the hotel barmen. A doctor (a friend of Mr Cole) had seen she was asleep, and she was left alone. Mr Mills had briefly interacted with the party, as he was a friend of Mr Cole, but there was no suggestion of any inpropriety on his part. Nevertheless the mayor used the episode as another reason for the removal of the licence, and this time the board agreed. Sir Charles Tupper declared the board’s actions to be illegal, as they had determined to remove the licence and then tried to find grounds to support that position. There was a week’s delay in the appeal to the Supreme Court while the mayor was unavailable, on a trip to Winnipeg, and a week later when the mayor was again unable to attend as he was on holiday in Calgary. Eventually Justice Murphy held the hearing, and having heard extensively from Sir Charles Tupper (who continued to denounce the board for depriving the hotelier of his $200,000 investment with no direct evidence of any wrongdoing), he nevertheless determined, a week later, that the board could suspend or cancel the licence as they saw fit, without having to follow the normal rules of evidence or procedures of a court. Six days later Walter J Robinson, a baliff, was offering the contents of the hotel to meet a debt of $1,450 against Lyle L

“Two days ago, my mortgage holder (a Credit Union, no less) called and told me that after 22 years, I was no longer an “A-list” borrower, and they would not renew my mortgage. I have no credit cards, never late with a payment, never late with utilities, taxes, etc., etc., BUT, because of the ‘new’ mtg. rules, they could not renew my mtg. because two years ago (as a result of a series of family crises), I took a small 2nd mtg. (ridiculous rates, but I’ve met EVERY payment, etc. – the credit union wouldn’t ‘help’). My total debt is only the two mtgs. against the property and, together, they are less than 1/2 of my equity (compared to the assessed value). My son (who is on disability) lives with me and takes care of me (as I do him), and we share our expenses with our two limited incomes. I’ll be 73 in a couple of weeks, am not well, have been isolated at “home” since the beginning of March. None of that ‘counts’. Nor does it ‘count’ that for over 50 years, I’ve been involved in environmental and social justice issues, worked pretty much full time my whole life (never collected EI, even!), contributed to my community (have received awards), raised a family, supported many others in crisis. In a month, I, and my son, could be homeless. I don’t even have the strength to champion my own personal needs. To those of us that are experiencing the REALITY of the NOW – those living in corrupt care homes, or homeless, or helplessly addicted, or victims of genocide or poverty, or racism, what it’s “called” is moot. — from commenter ‘dda’ 30 May 2020, under the article, ‘Normal Is The Problem’, by Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee, 30 May 2020 Also see: A Confluence of Whammies: A Single Realtor (& Airbnb-host) with a dependent child, an elderly dependent parent, two lost tenants, and dwindling business is forced to sell their house (presumably at a loss) and take a $30,000 mortgage penalty. TD Bank charges $30,000 mortgage penalty to woman forced to sell home due to pandemic – 1 Jun 2020, CBC News. Your banker may seem like a friendly guy, but the banks will always look after themselves – first and last. – ed.

As you walk down various current-day commercial districts throughout Vancouver, have you ever noticed houses that appear to pop out the top or the backside of store fronts? These store-house combinations can also be spotted throughout various photographs of streetscapes in the Archives’ holdings, and are often a product of residential streets evolving into commercial use areas. A fitting term for them is ‘buried houses’.[1] A buried house at 1120 Robson Street, 1974. Reference code: COV-S509-: CVA 778-341 It can be interesting to try to speculate what the layout of the original house was based on similar house designs of the period and try to figure out what was changed during the conversion to a commercial space. Some of the house-store combinations in the photos make it look as if little was altered other than the equivalent of a boxed in area sprouting out of the front of the house. However, others have clearly had extensive alterations, and of course generally have had even further alterations throughout the decades. A store front that appears more like a box addition to the exterior of a house on Davie Street between Thurlow and Bute Streets, 1928. Reference code: AM54-S4-: Str N266.1 Store fronts where it appears more extensive alterations were done to the houses to which they were attached. Denman Street, 1928. Reference code: AM54-S4-: Str N267.1 An instructive record on how exactly some of the original alterations were designed is an architectural plan for 1132 Robson Street. This plan is part of the City of Vancouver Series 393: Building Permit Application Architectural Drawings. Records in this series have been recently made more discoverable, thanks to ongoing efforts of Archives staff. The descriptions have been uploaded to our database, as previously the only way to search these records was via a card catalogue in our Reading Room. Additional metadata filled out previously scant descriptions, while errant metadata has been corrected. Stay tuned for a future blog post that details all the work that went into this. Architectural plan for alterations to 1132 Robson Street, 1927. Reference code: COV-S393-1-AP-0948 The details of the architectural plan for house alterations for 1132 Robson Street are quite interesting to examine. It is almost as if by looking closely at the notations one can visualize the alterations taking place in real-time. A bathtub is removed and the washroom is made smaller on the first floor, walls are repositioned, new window openings and stairs planned. Details of the architectural plan for alterations to 1132 Robson Street. Notations as to the removal of certain features, and the addition or changes of others can be seen. As part of chasing up more information on this particular building, I fortuitously (after conducting some database searches) came across a photograph of the house-store combination, taken by A.L. Yates in April 1957. The house that corresponds to the architectural plans is the one on the right, with Bonita’s dress shop. Bonita’s dress shop at the time, according to the city directories, was run by Becky Beckman. Living in the upstairs flat (listed as 1132 ½ Robson Street), was Roy Powell, a maintenance worker at the Alaska Pine building. Exterior of 1130 and 1132 Robson Street. 1130 Robson Street on the left was altered eleven years after 1132 Robson Street on the right. Note the different architectural facades in keeping with their respective alteration dates. Photo reference: AM54-S4-: Bu P508.63 The house itself was originally constructed in the 1890s. The exact date is somewhat unclear, as the building permit registers for the City do not go back that far. However, the year of the alterations is known from the 1927 building permit record. The permit lists the owner of the building as A.C. Akroyd, though this was likely a clerical error, as the water service applications for expanding water services to the address indicates the applicant as H.C. Akroyd of the real estate firm Richards, Akroyd & Gall. Building permit register entry for house alterations. Reference code: COV-S385– Water service application made by H.C. Akroyd for enlarged water connection. Reference code: COV-S293 The architect, listed both on the architectural drawing and the building permit, was William Frederick Gardiner. He was a local architect, better known for larger buildings, such as the Hutchinson Block at 429 West Pender Street. The value of the alterations to the house, according to the permit, was $4,000. The Hutchinson Block designed by architect W.F. Gardiner is the tall skinny building at the very right of the photo, as seen in 1932. Reference code: AM1535-: CVA 99-4179 From the time of the house alteration, there were a number of businesses that occupied the shop space, beginning with Florence and Lillian Lewis, dressmakers in 1928, followed by The Paris, another dressmaker business in 1929. Advertisement for the opening of The Paris from The Vancouver Sun, March 13, 1929 By 1930, the category of store shifted to that of tea and coffee emporium, owned and operated by Charles H. Knight. By the end of the 1930s, Knight’s business had moved from the premises, and was replaced once again by a women’s clothing shop under a rotating cast of names and proprietors. Bonita’s makes its first appearance as the shop’s name in 1946, with Mary Burgess as proprietor. Bert and Becky Beckman, according to the city directories, took over Bonita’s in 1948. Bert died in March 1950, but Becky continued to run the