Alyse Kotyk is an associate producer, digital content with CTV News Vancouver. Previously she was a digital reporter for Richmond News. Her work has also appeared with the Globe and Mail, rabble.ca, and Vancouver Observer.
In 2019, she received first place in the category of Best Environmental Writing with the Canadian Community Newspaper Award for the series “Food Footprint.”
In 2016, she received the Jack Webster Student Journalism Award and in 2017, the Scott Schill Memorial Scholarship.
Alyse is passionate about sharing narratives and believes everyone has a valuable story.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Canada only trying to ‘manage the problem with Indigenous Peoples’: Wilson-Raybould
BY ALYSE KOTYK| April 24, 2019
richmond-news.com
Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott spoke in Richmond in front of the First Nations Justice Council on Thursday, April 24. Photo: Alyse Kotyk
Speaking in front of the First Nations Justice Council in Richmond Thursday, former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould accused former cabinet colleagues of “falling back” on commitments made on reconciliation with Indigenous communities.
Wilson-Raybould’s presentation was the keynote address for an intensive, two-day forum at the Westin Wall Centre aiming to change the relationship between First Nations peoples and the criminal justice system.
“While steps forward are being taken, they are not happening as coherently, systematically and quickly as is needed to set us on a proper and necessary path based on rights recognition,” Wilson-Raybould said.
“My fear and disappointment is that despite sounding the alarm, providing advice, pushing and challenging, sharing perspectives of lived Indigenous experience, providing a lens into the reality of being Indigenous, the federal government has fallen back once again into a pattern of trying to, quote, ‘manage the problem’ with Indigenous Peoples.”
Instead of management, Wilson-Raybould called for change.
“In my view, it is never appropriate or proper to have, as a rule, managing the challenges and the by-products of colonialism,” she said. “The goal has to be right the wrongs, to address the wrongs, to change patterns, transform the foundations and all that we do must be framed to achieve these goals.”
Wilson-Raybould was joined by former cabinet minister Jane Philpott at the forum, who also spoke, calling for the “full implementation” of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, funding for housing on reserves and training for Indigenous health professionals.
“There’s much more work to be done to educate Canadians about the truth, the history of this country,” she said. “As a person who was educated in Canada, I’m ashamed of how little I understood about Canada’s colonial past…we have a long way to go to convince all Canadians of the urgent need for reconciliation.”
Wilson-Raybould and Philpott have made national headlines since the start of the year after they were removed from the Liberal party caucus earlier this month, which followed Wilson-Raybould’s resignation from cabinet in February, shortly after she was moved out of the justice portfolio.
At the conclusion of her address, Wilson-Raybould called for a bold shift in government.
“Reconciliation reminds us how desperately a different form of politics is needed in this country, one with a new political culture. Reconciliation is a challenge that is vital to the survival and wellbeing of children, women and communities across this country,” she said.
“To meet this challenge, hard choices, innovative actions, transformation in laws and policies, new understandings and attitudes and new patterns of behaviour are needed…I’ve heard from Canadians across the country yearning for this new kind of politics and in this regard, I think we, as Indigenous Peoples and leaders have much to share and teach the rest of the country.”
‘Some people might not make it’: B.C. responds to national housing strategy
Alyse Kotyk | Nov. 22, 2017
bc.ctvnews.ca
The Canadian government launched its long-awaited national housing strategy Wednesday, but Vancouver advocates say the move is long overdue in a city already that is facing record levels of homelessness and an affordability crisis.
The 10-year plan includes some bold promises such as committing $40 billion to build 100,000 new affordable housing units, repairing 300,000 existing affordable housing units. The initiative also aims to cut chronic homelessness in half and remove 530,000 households from “housing need” by 2027.
Vancouver affordable housing advocates say the move is long overdue. According to Union Gospel Mission spokesperson Jeremy Hunka, it may be too late for some of the 2,100 currently facing homelessness in the city.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson speaks at the announcement of Canada’s national housing strategy.
“The bottom line is this is a big number, there’s a lot of money coming, help is on the way. A lot of that help is a long way down the road and a lot of people are going to be struggling until that comes,” he told CTV Vancouver Wednesday. “A lot of people are going to be suffering and some people might not make it to see some of this help because that’s the reality of the homeless crisis.”
The strategy also allocates $4 billion for a national housing benefit intended to provide low-income renters with an annual $2,500-subsidy beginning in 2020.
“There’s a lot of single mothers, a lot of families who are low-income who could really use that subsidy. For it to not come until 2020 means a lot of long, hard years ahead,” Hunka said. “We’re glad this funding is coming, but we’ve got a huge mountain to climb a lot of challenge to overcome until that help is there.”
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said the city has struggled to have conversations about housing with provincial and federal governments in the past.
“It’s been an embarrassment to not have a national housing strategy as a country and it’s fantastic to see one delivered that has had rigour and has had input from all levels,” he said Wednesday.
“We’ve struggled as a city with provincial and federal governments past who were not at the table with us at the level we needed them and as a result we’ve had record levels of homelessness right across Metro Vancouver, right across our region right now and it’s never been worse.”
B.C. Premier John Horgan also echoed the sentiment that governments need to collaborate to address housing affordability and homelessness.
“If we’re going to crack the affordability crisis of housing in British Columbia, we need all levels of government working together,” he said at a press conference. “This is a step in the right direction.”
Robertson said the housing strategy shows just how important “urgent action” is for the country.
“We have to treat housing as a human right and it’s critical that our federal government recognizes that and follows through in terms of the monitoring and the reporting on that,” he said.
However, both Robertson and Hunka pointed out that while having a strategy is a good start, targets need to be set to ensure the plan is implemented.
“It’s fantastic to have a game plan,” Robertson said. “We need to take those next steps and take action.”
With files from CTV Vancouver’s David Molko
Our people are survivors
BY ALYSE KOTYK| July 1, 2017
pilcrowpamphlet.com
It’s a 20-hour drive from Standing Rock, North Dakota to the Secwepemc territory of British Columbia in the best conditions. But halfway through her travels last December, Kanahus Manuel and her four children hit a blizzard in Missoula, Montana. Kanahus called her father, Arthur Manuel, who was in Mexico.
”It looks like it’ll only cost me $50 to change my flight,” he said over the phone. “I’ll come and I’ll drive you home. We’ll drive home together.”
Arthur redirected his flight to Montana, and together, he, his daughter and grandchildren drove through the snow.
”That’s around a 10-hour car ride,” remembered Kanahus. “We had a 10 hour conversation.”
It was Kanahus’ last car ride with her father.
That 10-hour conversation flitted from indigenous protests in Standing Rock, to on-the-ground fights against Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion in B.C., to the generations of Manuels growing up as a First Nations family.
”We are a huckleberry family,” Arthur told his daughter and grandchildren in the car. “I never got to pick huckleberries…we were in the residential schools, my father was always busy.”
But Arthur made sure his children got to pick huckleberries and experience First Nations culture.
”My dad brought me to the mountains,” Kanahus said about her father. “That’s something that I just took for granted, you know?”
”He made a real point of raising us with those things.”
In January, Arthur passed away and left a legacy of First Nations activism behind. As a child of residential schools and son of a First Nations politician, Arthur wanted his children to know and experience elements of indigenous culture that he was never able to. But it wasn’t just his appreciation of mountains and huckleberries that Arthur shared with his children. Instead, he also wanted to teach them that there was another way to live as an indigenous person in Canada.
”2017 will mark the fact that we have been officially colonized by Canada for 150 years,” he wrote in an open letter published in the First Nations Strategic Bulletin just months before his death. “I believe that under the existing colonial system in Canada, indigenous peoples are not Canadian because of the systemic impoverishment we are forced to live in because we are alienated from our traditional territories.”
”It is time for us to decide if we want to continue to be colonized peoples or if we want to seek self-determination.”
B.C. student groups seek to raise turnout for provincial election
BY ALYSE KOTYK| April 19, 2017
theglobeandmail.com
Photo by Rafal Gerszak for The Globe and Mail
Campus groups are pushing their peers to make it to the polls for British Columbia’s May 9 election, warning that typically low turnout among young voters could make it easier for politicians to ignore them and the issues affecting their lives.
Voters younger than 35 tend to have the lowest turnout in Canadian elections and B.C.’s last election was no exception. Fewer than half of registered voters aged 18 to 24 participated in 2013, while fewer than 40 per cent of those aged 25 to 34 voted. And those numbers were worse than the two previous elections.
To address these low numbers, the Alliance of BC Students has launched a campaign to increase student voter turnout by providing on-campus information for how and when students can vote. In turn, the group hopes increasing youth turnout will pressure politicians to pay more attention to young voters.
“Political parties are probably failing the most in terms of reaching out to young people,” said Alex McGowan, Kwantlen Polytechnic University student and chair of the alliance. “When it comes down to it, I think [they] are just not putting in the real time and effort that they put into older generations.”
And the fewer young people vote, the less incentive political parties have to invest the time and resources into reaching them.
“It is a tricky chicken-egg situation where young people need to be inspired to turn out,” said David Moscrop, a political science researcher at UBC. “That requires them being engaged, but they’re not being engaged because there’s no real benefit to the parties to engage them.”
Mr. Moscrop added that many of the issues on which parties campaign might not be of interest to young voters, which itself could be an election strategy.
“Parties, rationally, put all their attention to groups that are more likely to vote,” he said. “So they target them and they know to their build their platforms carefully and accordingly.”
Arianna Murphy-Steed, whose group Young Climate Voters BC encourages students to vote with environmental issues in mind, said young people have barriers beyond a simple lack of interest.
“We’ve found that a lot of people don’t know that they are eligible to vote,” said Ms. Murphy-Steed, who is a student at the University of British Columbia. The group’s campaign is called Together for Tomorrow.
Ms. Murphy-Steed said that with university classes wrapping up before the May election, it could be difficult to provide students with the information they need to vote before they leave campus.
She also said many students don’t realize they are eligible to vote if they have lived in B.C. for six months.
“Many students may not have a fixed address,” she said. “I don’t know that there has been enough effort to ensure that young people are aware of when and how to vote. Part of the reason we are running this campaign is to help fill in those gaps.”
Elections BC said not having a fixed address also means young voters may not receive information from the agency.
“Youth tend to be more mobile. They’re moving more. They may not be on the voter’s list at their current address,” said Andrew Watson, communications manager for Elections BC. “In general, they’re harder to reach through the communications that we conduct to inform people how voting works.”
Noor Youssef, a political sciences student at UBC, moved to B.C. from Syria five years ago. Even with a Canadian passport and five years of residency in the province, she did not realize she could vote in the upcoming election.
“There isn’t much awareness on campus,” she said. “I just don’t have enough information on who’s running.”
Ms. Youssef acknowledged students such as her need to take initiative to understand the issues.
“It’s also my fault because I haven’t taken it upon myself to get informed,” she said. “I don’t know that much, even though I should. I’ve been living here for a while.”
For Simka Marshall, chair of the British Columbia Federation of Students, a province-wide organization that launched its Students Are Voting campaign last month to collect voting pledges, the perception of young voters needs to change.
“One thing I think is really powerful is to stop promoting the myth that young people are apathetic,” she said.
Ms. Marshall said youth voter turnout discussions should help youth feel empowered to participate politically.
“Being a young person myself, there’s nothing less inspiring than having people tell me that I don’t vote,” she said. “Being shamed into voting isn’t something that is going to mobilize me to get to the polling station on voting day.”
‘We have never ceded our lands’: First Nations in B.C.’s interior weigh impacts of Kinder Morgan pipeline
BY ALYSE KOTYK| Feb. 28, 2017
rabble.ca
Across B.C.’s interior, Indigenous communities are deciding whether or not they will support Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline project through mutual benefits agreements (MBA).
While most of the media attention has focused on the Coast Salish First Nations near the lower mainland’s metropolitan areas, the majority of the pipeline crosses the traditional territories of interior First Nations, including the Secwepemc Nation in the Shuswap and the Nlaka’pamux to the west of the Okanagan.
Over the weekend, the Lower Nicola Indian Band (LNIB) voted to accept their mutual benefits agreement with Kinder Morgan. Near Merritt, LNIB was one of 133 Indigenous communities approached by the energy company to sign an agreement that included financial compensation and employment opportunities. Last November, Kinder Morgan signed a conditional agreement with the LNIB’s chief and council who then called for a community referendum to decide whether or not they would move ahead.
LNIB’s Chief Aaron Sam said he did not know which way the vote would go and that he thought the results would be close.
“If you look at the public at large of Canadians or British Columbians or Albertans, there’s a wide range of views on the project,” he said. “There’s many people that are supportive because of the financial component or the potential work. But at the same time, there’s people that are strongly opposed to the project because of concerns relating to climate change.”
For the LNIB, job opportunities are appealing. However, Sam, who is vying to be the NDP candidate for the Fraser-Nicola riding in the upcoming provincial election, said some of his community members are concerned about increased tanker traffic on the coast and how potential oil spills could affect their salmon supply.
“I think our community is not that different from many of the concerns that you see from the larger community outside of the Lower Nicola Indian Band,” Sam said.
Yet only 187 out of 964 eligible voters — little more than 19 per cent — participated in the referendum. The results were 111 votes for signing the agreement to 75 against with one spoiled ballot.
“We have never given that up.”
For Kanahus Manuel from the Secwepemc Nation in the Shuswap region of B.C. — an area that would be largely affected by Trans Mountain — chief and councils should not be playing a role in these agreements with Kinder Morgan.
“The chiefs and council are, we call them, agents of the government. We call them civil servants of the crown. They work for the government and this is the way Canada manufactured these leaders and manufactured consent to go into these projects,” she told rabble.ca by phone. “The Secwepemc people that are 10,500 or so strong are the ones that should be making decisions about their territory, including opposing or allowing this pipeline to go through.”
Kinder Morgan appears to be positive about these agreements and said it has worked to build relationships with the Indigenous communities that would be affected by the Trans Mountain project.
“Together with these communities, we worked very hard to establish a relationship built upon respect, trust and openness,” said Ian Anderson, President of Kinder Morgan Canada in a media statement. “These MBAs represent not only an agreement to share opportunity and provide prosperity, but a symbol and recognition of a shared respect.”
However, Manuel also pointed out that Indigenous-elected chief and council are often in a difficult position when faced with development projects.
“We’re forced into this extreme poverty-stricken conditions on Indian reservations where the elected chief and council are being forced to sign under duress for these pipeline projects and mining projects just in order to give the basic needs to the people,” she said.
Instead, Manuel said she advocates for a return to traditional Indigenous governance to tackle issues of development and climate change.
“There’s traditional ways that we governed ourselves, there’s traditional ways that we continue to govern ourselves as Indigenous people,” she said. “We have never given that up. We have never ceded our lands or surrendered our lands.”
Image: Facebook/Shirley Samples — Stop Kinder Morgan Call to Action
Lawsuits pile up as Kinder Morgan opponents prepare next pipeline battleground in the courts
BY ALYSE KOTYK| Feb. 14, 2017
rabble.ca
While the provincial and federal governments may have announced their support for Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, opponents are continuing to strengthen their fight against the project in court.
From whales to rights to conflicts of interest, the reasons for legal challenges are vast and don’t appear to be slowing down. Just last week, Vancouver city councillor Adriane Carr put forward a motion to request judicial review of the province’s environmental approval of Trans Mountain.
“If there is real and genuine consultation with First Nations and real and genuine consultation with the public…I believe the outcome will be a no,” said Carr, in a press conference outside Vancouver’s city hall. “No environmental permit, no building of Kinder Morgan’s pipeline and thus a better future for all of us.”
The motion suggested that First Nations groups were not adequately consulted and there was little assessment of adverse effects on marine life. City council will hear speakers on Feb. 22. In the meantime, however, many other legal challenges are moving forward.
PIPE UP and the Province of B.C.
On Jan. 31, Democracy Watch and the PIPE UP Network applied for a B.C. Supreme Court order to challenge the province’s approval of Trans Mountain. According to these groups, Kinder Morgan and pipeline-connected companies donated more than $750,000 to the B.C. Liberal Party, creating a conflict of interest in Premier Christy Clark’s support of the project.
When asked to comment on this legal challenge, a representative from the Ministry of Environment said the province conducted its own environmental assessment and took the NEB’s decision into consideration.
“The information that the ultimate decisions are based on was gathered by professional staff, whose analysis and recommendations were then forwarded to elected officials. The final decision making process is also strictly outlined in statutes,” they said.
Even so, PIPE UP Network says the decision to approve the project is still a conflict of interest.
“The fate of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which puts our oceans and rivers at extreme risk, should be decided by people who do not have their hands in the pockets of Kinder Morgan and pipeline-connected companies,” said Lynn Perrin, director of PIPE UP Network.
What about whales?
For Living Oceans Society and Raincoast Conservation, the project’s issue lies with the National Energy Board’s assessment of Trans Mountain.
With support from Ecojustice lawyers, the groups filed a request for judicial review with the Federal Court of Appeal in late December. Dyna Tuytel, an Ecojustice lawyer, told rabble the federal government should not have relied on the NEB’s assessment because it did not consider the impacts the project would have on marine life, particularly on B.C.’s southern coast whale population
“The project would mean over 400 tankers a year travelling through the southern residents’ critical habitat on their way to and from Westridge Terminal in Burnaby,” she said.
Tuytel said that the tankers bring three main risks to the local whale population: increased ocean noise affecting their ability to communicate and hunt, shortage of food supply and contamination of the ocean from potential oil spills.
Currently, Tuytel said the court is considering both parties’ submissions on the case before moving ahead.
First Nations call for consultation
Multiple First Nations groups including Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Coldwater nations have also taken legal action against Trans Mountain and say they were not properly consulted on the pipeline project.
“The federal government’s consultation process was disappointingly flawed,” said Chief Maureen Thomas of Tsleil-Waututh Nation. “We do not consent to the Kinder Morgan pipeline project in our territory. We are asking the court to overturn the federal cabinet’s decision to approve this project.”
Eugene Kung, a staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law works closely with the Tsleil-Waututh’s Sacred Trust — an initiative to stop Trans Mountain. He says their case is particularly important because it’s an issue of constitutional rights.
“First Nations have very unique rights, constitutionally protected rights in Canada,” he said. “That is an ongoing and developing area of law which has had a very clear trajectory of increasing and entrenching those rights.”
Yet as all of these legal challenges progress, Trans Mountain appears unphased.
“As cases make their way through the courts, we are continuing to move forward with [the] project — planning, permitting, engagement and design — in order to meet conditions and be ready to begin construction in September 2017,” Lisa Clement, a media relations spokesperson for Trans Mountain told rabble.
Even so, Kung believes that legal challenges coupled with community support can overturn a federal decision and stop a pipeline.
“I think everyone on either side would have been anticipating and expecting legal challenges,” he said. “The legal challenges that have been filed were not necessarily a surprise but certainly are a really important part of the fight.”
Alyse Kotyk 