British Columbia's hotel association says a new central booking portal will help speed up the process of finding places to stay for emergency evacuees. A statement says the system launching in June will provide provincial emergency support staff with live information on room availability, eliminating the need to call hotels to find out.
Police in New Westminster, B.C., say they were called to a post-secondary school in the city when staff reported that a woman armed with a knife was inside the building. The woman was not a student at the institution and police say students and staff feared for their safety.
British Columbia's auditor general says his office is doing a review of the province's response to the 2021 wildfire that devastated the community of Lytton, B.C. Michael Pickup says in a video statement that the report will focus on the B.C. government's roles and responsibilities for disaster recovery, its support for Lytton, including funding, challenges that came with rebuilding and how the province can improve.
Plans to use a renovated cruise ship to house more than 600 workers as they build a liquefied natural gas facility near Squamish, B.C., have been voted down by the local council. The ship arrived in B.C. waters in January after a 40-day journey from Estonia, where it had sheltered Ukrainian refugees, but Woodfibre LNG didn't obtain a permit from the district to operate the so-called "floatel."
A second pro-Palestinian protest camp has been set up at a university in B-C, two days after the establishment of the first camp at U-B-C in Vancouver. Protesters say students at the new encampment at the University of Victoria are demanding that the school divest itself from investments linked to Israel.
The British Columbia government is spending more money to recruit and retain health-science workers, especially those in rural and remote communities. Health Minister Adrian Dix says $155.7 million has been set aside at a time when B.C. has a "significantly increasing population" and more skilled health-care staff are needed, particularly in remote communities.