James Wolfe, who lives in B.C.’s Fraser Valley, spent the last year and a half looking for a long-term care bed for his 68-year-old brother Brian, who has Down syndrome and non-verbal dementia.

Mostly, it involved a back-and-forth with local health administrators. “They are great people,” he said. “They are very compassionate doing their job.”

But there was simply a lack of appropriate facilities, and Wolfe said his brother was in and out of hospital as his health declined.

“At Christmas, he was really sick in the hospital,” Wolfe said, and while his brother was eventually discharged, he was back in hospital with pneumonia and sepsis in January.

Wolfe’s advocacy has now finally landed his brother in a group home for adults living with disabilities.

Looking back, Wolfe said he wondered where his brother would be without family support, and he criticized a recent B.C. government decision to delay construction of seven long-term care projects.

The decision, announced in the February budget, comes amid a shortfall of long-term care beds that is projected to soar over the next decade as the population ages.

“I think it’s horrendous,” Wolfe said of the delays. “You are essentially putting people in danger, if you do not have a place to put them.”

The facilities being put on hold are in Squamish, Abbotsford, Campbell River, Chilliwack, Delta, Kelowna and Fort St. John. They involve 1,223 beds, although some of those would replace current beds in existing facilities.

The Squamish project is a planned 152-bed facility that was originally set for construction in 2027. The government hasn’t offered a new timeline.

The Sea to Sky Hospice Society had been planning to move into the new facility and the open-ended delay has stressed board chair Marya Hackett.

“We have a population of seniors that is aging, and is going to need long-term care. What are you going to do with them?” she asked.

Hackett said that even if it proceeds, the new project would not be keeping up with the need in the region. Eight of its beds have been slated for hospice care, although only four of them are new, with the others being transferred from an existing facility in Squamish.

The same could be said for the rest of the province.

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Figures released by the Office of the Seniors Advocate in January pegged the shortfall of long-term care beds at 2,000.

Government numbers released last year, meanwhile, show B.C. will need 16,000 new long-term care beds over the next decade to make up the gap between the projected supply of publicly subsidized beds and projected demand.

B.C.’s senior population, aged 65 and older, is projected to increase by 26 per cent in the next 10 years, and wait-lists for long-term care have “ballooned,” according to a report released by the seniors advocate in July 2025.

It shows that the number of people on the wait-list for long-term care tripled from 2,381 to 7,212 between 2016 and 2025. Wait times doubled from 146 days in 2018, the first year of data collection, to 290 days in 2025.

“Without significant additional investment in building more new long-term care beds, wait-lists and wait times will continue to rise to unsustainable levels,” it reads.

When Finance Minister Brenda Bailey announced the delays in last month’s budget, she said they would allow the facilities to be built at a lower cost in the future, by better distributing demand for building materials and other costs.

Speaking to local business leaders one day after tabling her budget, Bailey said she was asked to sign off on a project that would have cost $1.8 million per bed.

“That’s crazy,” Bailey said. “That is so expensive, you could buy a condo in (Victoria’s) James Bay for $1.8 million.”

Government, she said, had to do better. “How are we going to serve seniors? If we are spending that kind (of money), we’re going to be able to build very few.”

The finance minister said the government was looking into ways to standardize design of long-term care facilities without compromising quality of care, and she has insisted the delays are not cancellations.

Hackett agreed with Bailey’s rationale to save money — but only to a point.

Government, she said, needed to make sure that it got the best value for money. “But any time you delay a project, your costs are going to increase, because the costs of everything are increasing,” Hackett said.

The Opposition is not buying Bailey’s arguments.

Peter Milobar, the Conservative finance critic, called the delays a “mean-spirited attack” on seniors during budget debate last month.

His colleague Brennan Day, critic for rural health and seniors health, said in the legislature that he did not believe Bailey’s promise to build the delayed projects at lower costs, saying the government had “completely abandoned seniors.”

He later tabled legislation to require government to become more transparent around the state of long-term care.

“You cannot fix what you do not measure,” he said last month. “This bill forces the government to publish and update annually a clear plan to address long-term care beds, hospice capacity, wait-lists and care at home in full public view,” he added.

Dan Levitt, B.C.’s seniors advocate, told reporters after Bailey presented her budget that the delays would deepen the gap between projected needs and construction of long-term care beds.

While he acknowledged the financial realities facing the province, he said delays would put more pressure on hospitals as seniors spent more time in emergency rooms and acute care.

“It’s going to put pressure on doctor’s offices, because that is where the seniors are going to go to get medical care,” he said.

“It’s going to put pressure on the family caregivers. People who should be in workforce are now caring for that senior. It’s also going to create a situation where seniors are not getting the kind of care they should be.”

The process of finding a long-term care solution for Brian Wolfe wasn’t easy for James Wolfe, but he said it was worth it.

Wolfe said his brother is “doing really well,” after having regained up to 13 pounds in weight in five weeks. Wolfe said his brother weighed only about 96 pounds when he went to hospital in January.

“I had to take time off work to go deal with where he is, and stuff like that,” he said.

“It’s quite an emotional roller-coaster, and it doesn’t seem like anybody truly has any answers to anything.”

Fisheries officials say they are reviewing a video showing crew on a large ship boasting about catching hundreds of Dungeness crabs while visiting Vancouver — and appearing to break numerous fishing regulations in the process.

Video circulating on social media since last week shows the Mandarin-speaking merchant sailors hauling up crab traps dangling off the side of the massive commercial vessel, their catch appearing to include illegal undersized and female crabs.

It’s also illegal to pull crab traps at night, as shown in the video, while the possession limit is four per person.

“We don’t need to sleep tonight. Overkill. Catching crabs until dawn. Crabs are estimated at 441 pounds,” says a subtitle on the video.

After the men are shown pulling up the crabs, the scene cuts to the galley where the crabs are cooked in metal steamers and the men have a feast, washed down with cans of Tsingtao beer.

“It smells so good,” says one sailor, while the man next to him adds “my mouth is watering.”

Parts of Vancouver’s harbour are off-limits to crabbing, and while the men say they have stopped in “Vancouver, Canada,” it’s not clear exactly where the vessel is anchored.

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Fisheries and Oceans Canada said it is aware of the video and taking the matter “seriously,” while the Port of Vancouver said it wanted to help educate visiting sailors about local rules.

“We are currently reviewing the video for any potential indicators that may warrant further investigation,” the Fisheries Department said in a statement.

Subtitles on the video say the men made some of the traps themselves, pulling them up every 10 minutes and at one stage catching more than 100 crabs in two hours, with no time for bathroom breaks.

The name of the ship isn’t given or shown in the video.

The Port of Vancouver said in a statement that it was concerned about the “alleged behaviour” and would provide the Fisheries Department with support to properly investigate.

“We will also look into how we can work with Fisheries and Oceans Canada to help visiting ships and their crews understand their rights and responsibilities while in Canadian waters, such as proactively sharing relevant information regarding fishery licensing and regulations,“ read the statement.

Jason Voong, president of the BC Crab Fishermen’s Association, has seen the videos, and said it was bad practice for people to go crabbing without any knowledge or respect for local rules.

“The rules and regulations are there to make sure that crab fishing remains sustainable,” said Voong, a second-generation crab fisherman.

“Anyone around the world is eligible to come to B.C. and catch crabs. You just have to get a sport fishing licence. Even if you’re not a Canadian resident, you can still get a crab fishing licence,” said Voong.

“Our rules are, you can only get males, no females, because females lay thousands of eggs, and they have a high reproduction rate,” he added.

Voong said the minimum size for retaining a Dungeness crab is 16.5 centimetres across the widest part of the shell.

Dungeness crabs in B.C. are well known for flavourful meat, and they’re harvested year-round along the coast.

Voong said his fondest fishing memories involve crab fishing with his parents, then using a camping stove by the water to make noodles with crab.

The crabs were “easy to catch as a beginner,” said Voong. “If you have a boat, and you can drive anywhere and find a beach and set a trap, and you might find some crabs around.”

Asked how sailors visiting from other countries are treated under its regulations, the Fisheries Department said its officers have a range of compliance measures, including seizure of items and making arrests.

Officers were “assessing the video and verifying the information,” it said.

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Soon after Rhiana Stryd moved to the scenic lakeside Village of Granisle in British Columbia’s northern Interior in the fall of 2024, she says she began noticing her parents’ health going downhill, while she was vomiting every day for months.

Stryd said that when her daughter visited, she got sick too.

Their health woes prompted Stryd to start looking for a “common denominator” behind their symptoms.

“It ended up being the water,” Stryd said.

Now Stryd is leading a proposed class-action lawsuit against the village and Ontario-based water treatment company Purifics Water Inc., alleging that Granisle’s 300-plus residents were supplied with aluminum-tainted drinking water for an unknown period of time.

The Village of Granisle issued a “do not consume” order in December 2025, and residents have been relying on bottled water distributed with the help of volunteer firefighters, but Stryd said her efforts to get answers about the water problems are ongoing.

“Since then, we have been kept in the dark. The only information we were being provided for a number of weeks was information that I was gathering,” she said. “Then the village tried to get ahead of it and released a timeline into what had gone on in the water treatment facility to cause the coagulant to leak into our system.”

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The timeline of the lead-up to the order posted by the Village of Granisle said a power surge at its water treatment plant in June 2024 preceded complaints about water discoloration and a “slimy” feeling in the months afterwards.

The treatment plant, the lawsuit said, uses a “coagulation and filtration process” to remove impurities from water sourced from Babine Lake, and it’s alleged that the contamination resulted from a coagulant leak.

A test in October 2024 showed a water sample with aluminum levels of 8.99 mg/l — more than triple the maximum allowable concentration — but both the village and the Northern Health Authority only “became aware” of that test result in January 2026.

A document from Northern Health posted on the village’s website on Tuesday said Granisle’s drinking water shouldn’t be consumed, but it’s still safe for bathing, laundry, dishwashing and handwashing.

It said short-term aluminum exposure isn’t likely to cause any immediate health effects in healthy adults, but long-term exposure to high-levels of aluminum can cause neurological symptoms including tremors, confusion and gastrointestinal problems such as vomiting.

Stryd’s lawsuit alleges that residents weren’t told about the 2024 test results and “continued to consume drinking water supplied by the water system without being warned of contamination.”

“We are looking into how this occurred, and setting up protocols to ensure it does not occur again,” the village’s timeline document said.

New components to fix the leak were sent to the village by Purifics Water at the end of January, but testing at that time still showed aluminum levels beyond safe drinking water guidelines.

The village and Purifics have not responded to the lawsuit, and Granisle Mayor Linda McGuire said the village is aware of the claim and seeking out legal counsel, but she was unable to comment on the claim.

Purifics Water did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Lawyer Scott Stanley, who filed the action in Vancouver last month, said the class could include roughly 400 people if certified.

“I think I would be fair to describe the people of Granisle as being distressed, or collectively distressed, over the uncertainty of their water supply, not knowing what they’ve ingested, when they’ve ingested and what the long-term impacts of that will be. That would cause anybody to be distressed,” he said.

For Stryd, who unsuccessfully ran for Granisle council last year, the village’s small-town politics have boiled over at council meetings and on community Facebook groups as she’s tried to get health officials and other policy makers to take notice of the ongoing water woes.

“If you speak out against the municipality, they shut you down very, very quick. They tell you not to speak,” she said.

“That is why I ran for council because I was like, if I can get into council and I can get more information, then I can whistleblow. Now they’re going to hear me. I lost, which was to my benefit because now they can’t shush me.”

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