By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer

SFU’s Responsible Investment Policy has become a serious topic of discussion in recent years.

Specifically, SFU community members have raised ongoing concerns regarding the university’s investment in companies embedded in the military industrial complex. In March 2024, SFU’s Faculty for Palestine (F4P) released a petition asking SFU to divest from the arms industry, featuring over 1,300 signatures. In response to these community pressures, SFU committed to reevaluating its investment policy on May 30, 2024. On June 7, the SFU Faculty Association passed two motions that were proposed to them by F4P, one of which further pressured SFU to divest from military arms producers. 

For many, the most recent draft policy has left much to be desired. The Peak corresponded with F4P, as well as the university, for more information on the decision making processes behind the policy, and the future of the university’s investments.

F4P released a letter on April 2, 2026 expressing concerns regarding proposed changes to the outline. “As documented in the Custodial Statement of Endowment Investments, SFU holds or has held shares” in BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, and CAE. F4P notes they are “corporations that derive the vast majority of their revenue from military equipment and  services.

“The weapons and services of these corporations have collectively facilitated the killing, maiming, or displacement of tens of millions of individuals, primarily in the Global South. These are not abstractions — they are lived realities.” They specified, “Many SFU students are here in Canada because of war.”

The faculty group noted that the revisions include “no reference to military arms production, no screening criteria applicable to weapons manufacturers, and no process for evaluating or acting on the community’s democratically expressed position.” The Peak could not access SFU’s draft policy.

“SFU has committed to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including reducing poverty and gender inequality, promoting environmental sustainability, and  promoting peace,” the letter continued. “The university’s own strategic plan declares it a community working to ‘make a difference in the world’ and ‘address humanity’s most complex problems.’ Investments in arms production and other military services are fundamentally incompatible with these commitments.”

Since the letter, “there has been no reply from the Board,” F4P told The Peak.

“After two years of waiting, they produced a draft policy that not only disregarded the concerns of a great many faculty, students, staff, and alumni, but they are poised to hollow out whatever matters in the current investment policy” 

— SFU Faculty for Palestine 

When The Peak asked about investments in weapons manufacturers, SFU stated that “the defence sector is multifaceted, encompassing companies that support national security, peacekeeping, disaster response, and technological innovation,” adding that “SFU’s investment managers assess companies for human rights risks, political instability, and social issue related concerns.” The university also explicitly stated that it “does not have any investments in arms manufacturers.”

The university’s 2025 endowment investment report features both Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Company and CAE. While not a producer of tanks, Booz Allen Hamilton develops military engineering and technology used for weapons. Similarly, CAE provides military services through training and simulations. SFU has not released their investment report for 2026.

“[SFU] may have traded out of a couple of these recently, but the SFU admin is completely disingenuous in this regard. If not, why not ban these investments in the so-called responsible investment policy?” 

“SFU’s Responsible Investment Policy should include a clear and enforceable screen excluding corporations that derive significant revenue from military arms production and military services,” reads the April letter. “This commitment should be anchored in the policy itself — not left to administrative discretion — and should be accompanied by a transparent timeline for  implementation. 

“It is long past time for the Board to act on these democratically expressed positions.” 

By: Maya Barillas Mohan, Staff Writer

Interest in student journalism has faced a steep decline, journalism instructor Barry Link told CTV News. Steep enough that Langara’s journalism program is in danger of closing after 60 years of running. The Peak reached out to Link, who chairs the program, to learn more.

The Langara Voice is produced by the journalism program with responsibilities split in two courses: the reporter course, and the editor course. These courses are trim, with enrollment between 12 and 25 students per class. “We set The Voice up as a real, working newspaper,” Link tells The Peak. Covering the Langara and South Vancouver communities, The Voice narrates going-ons in “a whole range” of geographical areas across the campus and beyond.

“The Voice reflects storytelling done by students.”

– Barry Link, journalism program instructor and chair at Langara College

“The Voice itself represents the diversity of the campus.” 

Students in the program are trained to be working journalists, developing teamwork, responsibility, and accountability. They also develop practical skills for the industry like reporting, interviewing, and fact-checking. Link expresses that digging into stories, going places, and taking interviews is part of the essential effort journalists take to parse facts and report to the public.

Journalism and entertainment may overlap, but Link remarks that nothing is fictional in journalism. “We aren’t cherry picking facts, we aren’t distorting reality,” Link says. He observes there are “changes in what people regard as journalism,” and “the industry has not kept up with how society processes and shares information.” He continues that “what journalism has not figured out is how to pay for itself,” and further, the advertising that kept broadcast stations afloat disappeared because of the internet, replacing the media landscape of 30 years ago. 

There is “less reporting than we had 20, 30 years ago,” Link reflects. He identifies a reduction in newspapers and radio outlets, supplanted by an influx of influencers without media training. Link laments that efforts to “make it work as best we can” are overruled by the college’s belief that “there’s no room” for the journalism program. 

According to Link, Langara has been concerned with enrollment and financial challenges for some time. “The biggest change for the college is the pretty big financial difficulties it’s having now, which most post-secondary institutions are having now, and that’s directly tied to the drop off in international student enrollment,” says Link. He shares that the lack of income from tuition means program cuts inevitably follow. 

“Journalism still has value in our society, and I think that’s an important role for post-secondary institutions to fulfill,” Link says. Supplemented by recent media attention, Link also notes that there are a lot of people “very concerned” about what this closure means for journalism. Optimistically, “there is public concern about this, and that reflects public demand and need for a solution.”

By: Jonah Lazar, Staff Writer

In 2016, the BC government declared overdoses a public health emergency due to the 474 reported overdose deaths that occurred in the province the year prior. In the 10 years that followed this declaration, BC used a series of policies to combat this crisis, including the expansion of supervised consumption sites, take home naloxone programs, the implementation of the safer supply program, and the decriminalization pilot program, with mixed results. The Peak spoke to SFU’s Dr. Kora DeBeck, distinguished professor of substance use and drug policy, to learn more about the effects these policies have had on the overdose crisis. 

In tackling this crisis, BC has adopted programs aimed at adequately preparing to respond to overdoses. Part of this has been an expansion of supervised consumption sites, which provide opiate users with safe, supervised places to use their own drugs in the presence of professionals to prevent accidental overdoses. Despite what she noted to be a large amount of drug consumption sites being introduced to the province, DeBeck said, “I didn’t think it met the full needs of everybody in the communities, everybody that was at risk.” While the first drug consumption site was introduced in the province in 2003, this program was significantly expanded across the province following the public health emergency. 

Another program the BC government has undertaken is the distribution of naloxone, a medication administered in order to reverse the effects of an opiate overdose. Naloxone kits have been made available at pharmacies and widespread take home naloxone sites without the need for a prescription since the pilot program in 2012, to distribute this life saving medication to people who are likely to witness overdoses or experience one themselves. DeBeck said “naloxone distribution has been very impressive” and “has made a huge amount of difference and saved a lot of lives.” 

Another facet of BC’s approach has been an attempt to control the substances being used by people in the safer supply program. Since 2017, BC has been expanding the prescription of less dangerous opiate alternatives such as hydromorphone for people with opiate use disorder. This program has fallen under scrutiny for its reach; at safe supply’s peak, it was treating approximately 5,000 people of the estimated 100,000–200,000 people in the province with an opiate use disorder. However, the program only treated people with opiate use disorder, when “the majority of people who are dying of a toxic drug poisoning did not have an opiate use disorder and were not using opiates on a daily basis” and therefore remain unaided by this particular program, DeBeck said. This led DeBeck to describe safe supply’s reach as “a drop in the bucket” for what is needed.

Despite BC’s policy reform, the crisis is still in full swing. In 2025, BC’s annual death toll from drug overdoses climbed to 1,833; over three times the toll from 2014. DeBeck attributes this in part to BC’s refusal to abandon a criminalization approach, which views the consumption and possession of illegal drugs as a criminal offence.

“The police have never been a good tool for [combatting] drug use.”

— Kora DeBeck, SFU professor of substance use and drug policy

In January 2026, BC decided not to renew the three-year long decriminalization pilot program which commenced in 2023. The program allowed for the personal possession of up to 2.5 grams of controlled substances such as cocaine, methamphetamines, and opioids like heroin and morphine. The program’s expiry means illegal drug possession, once again, is subject to criminal enforcement, with punishments ranging from seizure of the drugs to months in prison. DeBeck warned, “From an evidence-based public health perspective, [criminalization] is absolutely the wrong approach to take around substance use and the overdose crisis.”

The Peak reached out to BC’s minister of health, Josie Osborne, for a statement, but did not receive a response by the publication deadline.