Hey, if anyone has seen Elias Wood, let me know?

https://www.instagram.com/p/DQDYWQgisB6/

He's an MSW student who my boss is supervising and he's been missing since Sunday. It's very possible he skipped town; hopefully he's not been hurt. Please boost.

@waterlooregion @WaterlooEvents #MissingPerson #WRPS #Waterloo #Kitchener #WaterlooRegion

WATERLOO REGION POLICE PARTNER WITH PROJECT 529

Cyclists in Waterloo Region have a new tool to help protect and recover their bicycles from theft. On Aug. 7, 2025, Waterloo Region Police (WRPS) launched its partnership with Vancouver-based Project 529 at The Hydrocut in Kitchener. The program allows cyclists to register their bicycles and alert police, bicycle shops, and other registered users in the event their bike is stolen.  

In a Waterloo Region Police announcement of the partnership, Chief Mark Crowell said over 5,400 bikes were reported stolen between 2019 and 2024, but only 432 were successfully recovered.  

The local partnership lead, WPRS Constable John Heaton, was inspired by his experiences using Project 529 during suspected bike theft stops. He learned about the platform during an online search for bike registries and began using it to look up suspected stolen bikes.  

“There were several instances where bicycles were not registered on the traditional databases, but they were registered on the 529 database. So, I was able to recover a bunch of bikes and return them to their owners, years after they had been stolen, which is awesome,” Heaton said.  

Project 529 was launched in 2013 to address the large number of recovered bikes that went unclaimed at the Vancouver Police Department (VPD). Rob Brunt, Project 529’s chief outreach officer, was a police officer with VPD at the time and said he was inspired to take action after seeing the department’s property office filled with bikes.  

“They had 400 bikes in a storage system and another 100 on the ground. I’m an avid cyclist and thought it was crazy. Whose job was it to get these bikes back to owners,” he said.  

VPD, like many police departments, holds stolen bikes for 90 days before selling them at auction or disposing of them as surplus property. Brunt said that without a way to identify a bike’s owner, the police have no way to return it if it is recovered.   

“The police don’t have a way to do it. The public then goes, ‘Well, why would I phone the cops when they don’t have a tool to do anything anyway?’ The only people that win in that scenario are the thieves,” he said.  

Brunt raised the issue with the VPD chief and asked if the department’s IT team could develop a solution. Instead of handing it off, the chief assigned the task to Brunt.  

“That’s how I got assigned to it. I searched across Canada and the U.S. for an existing solution, and just by a fluke ran into people who knew someone building a solution for this,” Brunt said.  

That person turned out to be J. Allard, a former Microsoft executive who launched the Xbox gaming platform. Allard had been developing Project 529, and Brunt said the app met all the requirements he envisioned for the solution.  

“He’s the inventor of Xbox. The only person above him at the time was Bill Gates,” he said.   

After connecting with Allard, Brunt and the VPD launched Project 529 in Vancouver. Brunt said reports of bike thefts dropped 35 per cent after launch.  

“I was on the job 25 years. We don’t reduce property crime by double digits. That’s unheard of. I checked the arrest rates and custody times…Nothing had changed,” he said.   

“It was the registrations combined with the 529 Shield. The crooks figured out that the shield meant that the bike was registered, so they left them alone,” Brunt said.  

“So if you come out of a coffee shop and your bike lock is on the ground, you can use the app to mark your bike stolen. It acts like an Amber Alert to everyone within 15 [km] of you,” Brunt said.  

CycleWR board member Aldo Culquicondor welcomed the WRPS’s partnership with Project 529. The local cycling advocacy group has purchased 529 Shields for its members that can be picked up at events throughout the year.  

“Our goal is that everybody in the community knows that this program exists. The more people know about it, the more effective it is in preventing theft,” Culquicondor said.  

With the partnership, the WRPS is notified when a bike is reported stolen in the area. Heaton said Project 529 is giving his fellow officers a new tool to help return bikes to their rightful owners and reduce thefts.   

“Now that we’re working with 529, and the hope of as many people as we can get registered, when we make these stops and we run the bikes, they’ll come back as registered to someone or reported stolen already, and then we have more than enough authority to seize that bike and make an arrest and get the bike back to the owner,” Heaton said.  

Registration for Project 529 is free and can be completed on the website project529.com or through its mobile app. Each registration can include the bike’s make and model, serial number and photographs. The optional 529 Shield is a tamper-proof sticker that can be scanned by police or bike shop staff. 

#AlexKinsella #bicycles #bikeTheft #bikes #chiefMarkCrowell #coffeeShop #crime #jAllard #johnHeaton #microsoft #policeOfficer #project529 #vancouverPoliceDepartment #vpd #WaterlooRegionPoliceServices #WRPS

ONTARIO GOVERNMENT INTRODUCES BILL 33, CONCERNS RAISED

On May 29, the Ontario government introduced Bill 33 to legislation. 

The Bill offers more power to the premier’s office over school boards while tightening oversight of children’s aid societies, colleges and universities.  

The Supporting Children and Students Act, 2025, Bill 33, would amend four major laws—including the Education Act and the Child, Youth and Family Services Act.  

First, Bill 33 introduces new administrative and fiscal oversight measures for children’s aid societies, such as providing information about the Ombudsman to children and youth, reviewing by-laws and making them available to the public, obtaining ministerial approval for financial decisions that impact approved budgets, and expanding the definition of “institution” to include maternity homes.  

It also makes changes to the residing Education Act, where there will be more ministerial oversight and new cooperation requirements for Ontario school boards, with requirements such as: submitting to increased ministerial authority, where the education minister has more supremacy to investigate school boards, issue binding directives to the public and establish guidelines on board expenses.   

Other requirements include obtaining ministerial approval for the name of a new school or changing the name of an existing school, collaborating with police services on school programming, and implementing internal audits conducted by the ministry to enhance financial accountability.  

Scott Miller, director of education for the Waterloo Region District School Board, said the board will continue to work with local police and the community if the legislation passes.  

“The Waterloo Region District School Board [WRDSB] prioritizes safe, inclusive and welcoming learning environments for all students,” Miller said. “As a school board, we work closely with the Waterloo Regional Police Service [WRPS] to support the safety and well-being of WRDSB school communities. Bill 33 is still under review but if the bill is passed, we will continue to engage thoughtfully with our community partners, staff, students, parents and families to ensure decisions reflect the needs and values of WRDSB school communities.”  

Beyond K-12 schools, the bill also targets Ontario’s colleges and universities.  

The Bill amends the Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities Act, focusing on admissions practices, research security and fee regulations. They plan to implement publicly accessible, merit-based admission standards, with details to be defined through regulation, develop and implement research security plans to safeguard and mitigate the risk of harm to or interference with research activities, and comply with government regulations regarding ancillary student fees, which may restrict fee structures and affect funding for student services.  

The Ministry of Colleges and Universities also received a new name: the Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security. This change, along with the new requirements for colleges and universities to develop and implement research security plans, reflects heightened governmental focus on research security.  

“At this point, the university, along with our Ontario post-secondary education peers, is closely monitoring the legislative discussion of the proposed Bill 33 and its potential impacts on universities,” Aonghus Kealy, Communications and Media Relations Officer at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) said.   

Bruce Gillespie, President of the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Association (WLUFA), emphasized that there are more risks involved in this bill than benefits.  

“It centralizes control over admissions, enables ministerial directives for research security, and broadens authority over student fees,” Gillespie said. “Universities already publish admission standards and safeguard research; layering new directives and fee controls adds red tape and cost without fixing chronic underfunding.”  

He added that the bill will burden staff and students at post-secondary institutions such as WLU.  

“It increases compliance workload and puts student-funded services at risk, while the real issue-operating funding—goes unaddressed,” Gillespie said.  

He also explains that if provincial rules destabilize student-funded services (from peer supports to transit and campus media), the unmet need doesn’t disappear; it shows up in classrooms and office hours. Faculty across ranks, and especially contract faculty, will end up doing more informal advising, crisis triage and support with fewer resources.  

Gillespie said he opposed the bill, arguing it undermines the autonomy of admissions and fees, risks weakening equity initiatives, and expands oversight that bypasses normal scrutiny, without improving teaching, research, or student supports. He hopes that Bill 33 will either remove or substantially amend the bill to protect equity-based admissions in statute, avoid fee controls that destabilize student services, and provide transparent, consultative research-security guidance.  

“On governance, the province should explicitly preserve Senate authority over academic matters and commit to meaningful consultation with students, not just anonymous surveys,” Gillespie said.  

As Bill 33 moves through legislative debate, its impact on Ontario’s education and child welfare systems remains a central concern for educators, administrators and policymakers alike. 

#AbdullahZafar #bill33 #BruceGillespie #childWelfare #DougFord #educationAct #fordGovernment #ontarioEducation #SangjunHan #senate #WaterlooRegionDistrictSchoolBoard #WaterlooRegionalPoliceService #wilfridLaurierUniversityFacultyAssociation #WRDSB #WRPS

ANOTHER LOOK AT FIREWORKS: IS THE CHAOS WORTH IT?

https://communityedition.ca/another-look-at-fireworks-is-the-chaos-worth-it/

#BronteBehling #canadaDay #fireworkSafety #fireworks #JulieWright #MonicaSidel #WaterlooRegionalPoliceService #WRPS

At a few minutes past noon, I came across the scene of a cyclist casualty where an SUV from the Waterloo Regional Police Service had run over the front half of a bicycle. It was on Weber, in the plaza adjacent to the gas station on King. It appeared that it must have happened very recently. There was still medical supplies on the ground but the victim had been moved to the ambulance.

Paramedics were tending to the victim who looked to me to be in their 20s. They were alert and looking pissed off but had blood coming down their forehead. They did not wish to be photographed so I didn’t.

The bike is the kind of junker that you only ride when you have to to get by in life. It’s totally destroyed.

It appears to me from the positioning that the cyclist was riding on the sidewalk, though they could have been turning into the plaza or legally on the street. Wherever they were when they were hit, the cop did not react very quickly! You can see that the rear wheel is completely beyond the sidewalk. They probably went at least a full car length before they were able to stop.

Probably they will still charge the cyclist with unsafe operation or something.

Attached are a bunch of untouched photos straight off my phone. Please get in touch to use them. I have more.

#waterloo #wrps #police #cycling