Canwest sanitary supplies

Zalm, if you've read the Sun and the Province, you already have.

realisticman

Selective quotation frequently misses the point.

kl's post was pretty short, why not quote it all? Your point is null and void.

Our Governments do not care about those of us that have lived here their whole lives yet can't afford to buy a place to live. And no, moving somewhere else is not an option for those that suggest it. Instead it cares only about catering to rich millionaires.

I think the connection between the idea of building a 'resort' city and the activities of the local and provincial governments was entirely apt.

Who lives in resorts?

I can point out several in Indonesia and Malaysia where the citizens of those areans certainly don't.

Perhaps Tom Rennie sees 'that' kind of future for Vancouver.

Connections

The article is a about extraordinary high-end condos. The mention of Governments is not at all apt, GWest. These condos are built on private land by private developers for private purchasers.

Another thing, GWest, kl referred to governments, you refer to provincial and local governments. How do you know kl means what you assume? Are you now kl too? It's also irrelevant to the story.

Many people like resorts and would love to live within one. One other thing, GWest, it's Bob not Tom.

Realisticman

Uhh, okay if I have to spell it out. I blame Governments, at all levels, for getting us into this housing crisis.

Municipal: Has done nothing to force developers to provide for some level of "affordable" housing within their developments. The city has been more concerned about sightlines and color patterns (Wall Center) than it has been with affordability. Has never looked at any ways in which non resident owners are charged higher property taxes. This is something Nova Scotia has done and it is something BC should look into.

Provincial: See last point above. Has completely abdicated any responsibility for funding any affordable housing initiatives.

Feds: Stopped funding affordable housing solutions such as housing co-ops which enable a number of different income levels to live in Vancouver much more easily.

So, yes, it is a developer who builds multi million dollar condos but ultimately it is the Government, at all levels who enable developers to get away with what they are doing.

Tom dick or harry He might as well be Louis XVI for all I care

Names don't matter a damn - Rennie builds and promotes high end crap for people with money they'd never have if we had a decent tax system that didn't reward waste, greed and irresponsibility.

kl was right on and you know it.

The fact people like to live in resorts all across the far flung world has nothing to do with the compromises with morals and ethics - not to say the environment - which they promote, celebrate and revel in. We've created a world where people are taught it is perfectly okay to have less than 5% of the world's people live off the other 95%. Resort culture is an expression of that kind of criminality in spades.

That is the fundamental reality you can't deny. [COMMENT OFFENSIVE TO ANOTHER COMMENTER. -TYEE EDITOR.]
Fact is, you can't support this system and be that. Not anymore. There may have been a time when the rich and the compromised could plead ignorance – that time is gone forever.

Bob Rennie - UDI AGM March '07

Oh Please

Come on, you honestly believe Rennie's little feel good speech? The guy is in the business of selling condo's. As many and as fast as possible. Why isn't he urging the city to push developers to include say 15% affordable housing (at a minimum) in their projects? Why isn't he pushing the Province give Municipalities powers to tax non resident owners at a higher rate?

Revitalization is just another word to disguise gentrification.

If you believe this speech then I have a 2000 sf condo in West Van to sell you for $50 000.

Most importantly

Are dogs allowed??

Ah well, when Mother Nature gets pissed, no one is immune, even those who can afford an $18 million condo.

KL- the government is the one who has the power to ALLOW private developers to do what they want, right??

Oh

I see that point was discussed already... I hadn't realized that- ha :)

Should of left it

Did you prefer Woodwards as it was before Bob became involved and put together the redevelopment plan that included the social housing, kl?

Why don't you muscle in and build something with affordable units?

Good one

Well gee, if I can't afford a crappy 500sf condo then how can I become a developer?

Let's not pretend Woodwards is some bold new project full of vision and compassion because it's not. No matter how Rennie tries to package it it's still small, expensive condos for the well heeled. So if the Woodwards project contained say 30% "affordable" housing then by all means I'd support it.

It's not a simple matter of having to choose between what was there and what will be there because that's a loaded proposition. Give me a third alternative, one in which includes affordable housing for everyone and I will support it.

kl

Well kl, the Woodwards development does include just over 27% social housing. Is that enough for you to support it, it's less than 3% short of your criterion?

As to how on earth you can become a developer, well - I can guarantee you that the developers don't use their own money. They put together a business plan and finance projects through banks. So can you.

30% Saleable?

Do you mean 30% saleable homes? Or do you mean 30% non market rental?

I would like to see 30% saleable condos at a subsidized price. Plus social housing on top of that.

If Whistler can offer affordable home ownership through the WHA then why can't Vancouver?

non market?

The Whistler project, as I said, is interesting and seems to be for employees that are needed there but in Vancouver the financing of this program might have to be different. How do you see it kl? If developers fund the program then the costs of market housing will rise even more. If Vancouver tax payers fund it then property taxes will rise. If the province funds it then out of towners will want it too.

On the subject at top, the super-condo lives in NY:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/skyline/2007/08/27/070827crsk_skyline_goldberger

Just stop selling to out-of-towners

Simple - they aren't needed here, contribute little to the economy (apart from financing developers' and designers' dreams) and they make the lives of the majority of Vancouverites (who can no longer afford to own their own homes) more stressful and less fulfilling.

Simply make what these people are doing illegal and then any assistance will go to the people who need it.

This is not rocket science except for an administration that thinks a 100% increase in the costs of a white elephant convention centre is good value for the taxpayer's dollar – your friends and mine, hardworking people who contribute to this country every day and whose loyalties have nothing to do with how much they can profit from property investments, deserve better.

Surplus revenue??

It would seem to me that as property values skyrocket, so too should property tax income to the city. Since city costs, plus inflation, remain much the same, shouldn't there be a windfall to the city in excess revenue?

In that case - it would seem to me - there should be surplus money to subsidise low-income housing, etc

If not, where is that money going?

Out-of-Towners

I meant out of Vancouver BCers. Since you, West, are talking about foreigners what percentage of sales goes to them?

I wish I knew

That's the problem - or part of it at least - more people would be apprehensive (not to say outraged) if they knew exactly how much of this goes on. There are registries of out of country (or out of province) ownership in some other jurisdictions. Why not here?

To do the necessary searches and investigations of land titles and BC Assessment Authority is beyond the average citizen. The government could require the information be made public by a simple regulatory change.

Instead, Campbell panders to foreign investors and Rennie crows about Vancouver the 'resort' city.

I think the people of BC - especially the ones who can't afford to buy homes (or condos) here anymore - should demand a registry and then they should demand a change in the law so these characters who aren't interested in anything more than a return on their investment have to sell and sell a loss if necessary.

By the way, I hope you saw Michael Smyth in the Province this morning.

In case you missed it, here it is:

Hey Gordo, remember torpedoing fast ferries?

Premier now open to same barbs over convention centre

Michael Smyth,
The Province - Sunday, October 28, 2007

Gordon Campbell's howls of outrage over the NDP's notorious fast-ferries fiasco are still echoing through halls of the B.C. legislature.

Campbell, then leader of the Opposition, blew his stack on a daily basis over the $244-million cost overrun on Glen Clark's kooky catamarans back in the late 1990s.

Oh, how the worm has turned! Now Campbell's Vancouver Convention Centre megaproject has soared $388 million over budget.

Good thing I saved the tapes of Campbell's fast-ferries fulminations. Time to hit the rewind button:

ALL-YOU-CAN-DRINK RED INK: The fast ferries were built via a "cost-plus" contract with no guaranteed costs -- and all overruns passed on to B.C. taxpayers. "If you can't guarantee the cost, I guarantee you it will go up," Campbell fumed at the time.

Now the cost of his convention centre has ballooned from $495 million to $883 million in just four years -- burning unprotected taxpayers again.

FISCAL SHELL GAME: Auditor-General Errol Price revealed last week how the Campbell government hid the exploding cost of the convention centre from the public.

The NDP played the same shadow game with the fast ferries -- to Campbell's fury: "The NDP have constantly stonewalled the public on the fast ferries. All of them should be required to testify before a public inquiry under oath."

here' the rest:

HACKS AT THE HELM: Campbell failed to appoint anyone with the "appropriate expertise" to the convention-centre project board, Price found. Instead, political hacks like the former president of the Liberal party were put in charge.

Clark appointed NDP hacks and insiders -- like union leader Jack Munro -- to the fast-ferries board, too, infuriating Campbell: "The board of directors should be people who actually know what they are doing. Their job should be public watchdogs."

POLITICAL RUSH JOB: Campbell rushed ahead with convention-centre construction -- without a proper business plan or architectural designs -- to get it built in time for the Olympics.

Clark, likewise, fast-tracked the fast ferries without a complete plan, bringing a blistering response from Campbell: "This is a devastating chronicle of mind-boggling incompetence, mismanagement and political interference."

FAMOUS WRONG PREDICTIONS: Clark insisted his three fast ferries would be built for $210 million and not a penny more: "This is the all-in price. Right down to the toilet paper."

Campbell feasted on the quote for years: "He doesn't even have the decency to say he's sorry."

In classical fashion, Campbell issued his own famous last words on the convention-centre budget: "Count on it. There are contingencies built into the project and it's going to be run professionally."

Who's sorry now?

WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN: When the fast ferries went over budget, Campbell said Clark should resign as premier.

After all, Campbell said, that's the way things are done in the real world: "There is no one in the private sector who could possibly maintain their job when one of their projects has doubled in price. They should be fired."

All of which begs the question: Will Campbell now fire himself?

NICE STUFF EH!

3 Ps

Next time it'll be PPP

With a little luck there won't be a next time

These characters need to be sent to pasture for good - to spend the rest of their political lives in a wilderness of broken dreams, lies and purloined booster seats. I hope you're following the latest from of the Basi Virk trial by the way.

Great openness there too.

Campbell should have resigned years ago - he is an incompetent, mean-spirited, shill for his business partners who, when they get the chance will fleece him as readily as they do the workers and homeowners in this province.

P3s are no guarantee for either cost or quality.

A380 uses 20% less fuel

800 passengers and 20% less fuel, not bad.

Everyone responsible? Won't slow down for quite a few years yet.

Some 2.75 billion passengers will take domestic and international flights by 2011, an increase of 29 per cent on the total passenger traffic in 2006, the industry body IATA said on Wednesday.

IATA, the Geneva-based International Air Transport Association, said the number of travellers taking cross-border flights would increase to 980 million from 760 million in the next five years, with average annual growth of 5.1 per cent.

On domestic routes, passenger demand is expected to hit 1.77 billion by 2011, compared to the 1.37 billion who flew in 2006, due in part to expanded flight traffic inside large countries such as India and China.

"The numbers show that the world wants to fly. And it also needs to fly," IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani told a conference in Damascus, where the forecast was released.

Yes! Everyone responsible

The A380 is much more than 20% larger, in terms of carrying capacity, than a 767 or even a 747 - as a world-traveller like you must know.

Therefore, it does precisely nothing to address the problem of high level pollution - in fact, it simply makes the problem worse.

The fact the world wants to fly notwithstanding, 'responsible', moral, ethical people should be cutting back and not flying - unless absolutely necessary. It won't be long before even the most Neanderthal of corporate entities will begin to realize this.

What would you expect IATA and Airbus to say?

Plus ça change et plus c'est la même chose!

Change, even change for the better, is going to hurt - all progress requires sacrifices and it is long past time the high-rollers and high flyers who've been treating the world like their private toilet for fifty years started sucking it up a little.

Cancel your next trip to wherever and do the world a favour folks. Your grandchildren will thank you for it.
[b]

More is Less

More capacity, less fuel consumption. Less aircraft flying and the new ones creating less pollution, a win-win for all. Clearly a bigger is better story. Crank 'em out Airbus, Save the planet!

Ground them all

Stay home and make a difference in your own backyard.

There's a motto for the 21st century - Change or die.

Perhaps you missed this from your UN friends R/Man:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2739926.ece

Grind them up into bits of carbon and sink 'em in the ocean.

So now Canwest is good?

I thought it was gospel that the Province was only good for toilet paper and Michael Smyth was a capitalist lackey running dog who lathers slavish praise on his Corporate masters and their friends

Aw happy!

Even a stopped watch is dead on twice a day. Smyth still can't actually criticize Campbell just for his own incompetence - he always has to draw a lame analogy with the past.

Just like someone else I run into from time to time.

Even so, it is nice to see that even the hopelessly compromised are beginning to see that the Emperor has no clothes!

Seems to me he tears into

Seems to me he tears into Campbell pretty good but thats not what I brought up. Everytime theres a Canwest article critical of lefty type issues its dismissed out of hand by yourself and others. So whats it gonna be going forward - is the Province a reputable news source or not. If not then show some priciple and don't cherry pick. Can't have it both ways

Murdoch too!

First it's kudos to Can West and now the gospel is coming from The Times, a Rupert Murdoch property. Egads!, what's next, the rehabilitation of Conrad? Full circle, the universe is in order.

Like I said - a stopped watch

Moreover, any time you see me giving kudos to CANWEST I'll eat my hat - I said one columnist wrote something that was critical of our much-compromised Premier at long last…

Although it’s better late than never the Province has a long way to go before either it or the Sun are reputable news sources. When Canwest stops making political contributions to ANY political party I’ll believe it has buried its bias and become an honest broker…I’ll let you know.

I'll have it any way I please happy because I'm an honest man. If you look around here a little bit, you'll see I took a strip off Carole James today as well.

Now did either of you actually have a point?

Never said you weren't honest

Hypocritical is more like it. Slag Canwest and Smyth 364 days a year and then fall over yourself to post an article that makes you warm and fuzzy.
So the Canwest sources are biased because they contribute to poitical parties.
Who bankrolls this site? Whats the difference?

Offshore and absent there too?

Did you have a point?

I think that kind of gilded age stuff is immoral - I don't care whether it is built in West Vancouver, Kerrisdale, Pt Grey, Uplands, Whistler or Rhode Island.

If you want to defend this kind of excess on any basis - have at it. That such greed and ostentation should be happening at the same time that middle class wages aren’t even keeping up with inflation and the poor are getting poorer is a sad testament to the morality of this nation. In 30 years we’ve turned ourselves into a joke country: Constantly moralizing about others’ behavior while we make a laughing stock of ourselves here at home.

happy

Please define how I was hypocritical.

It's same everywhere, except Montreal and Warsaw

Montréal is still cheap, why don't more people move there?;

http://www.cbeurope.com/eu/top/news/Global+Metropolitan+Condominium+Home+Price+Comparison.htm

1,162 sq' in Stockholm for CAN $820,000;
http://www.remax-sverige.com/PublicListingFull.aspx?lKey=a731ba40-396f-477f-bd22-6b9ba0e1fcce&SearchKey=3B6FF1D56DF34E639BAE9EFAE2CF0260&Index=22&RNDIndex=633292531102553605

Lots of choices here;
http://www.forbes.com/realestate/2007/10/07/property-housing-deals-forbeslife-cx_mw_1008realestate_slide_4.html?thisSpeed=15000

London is worse than here. It's so tiresome:

http://www.foxtons.co.uk/properties/uk-london-apartments-290/apartments-for-sale-in-london.html

No doubt is...

Which only makes the argument for Canada - which, until 30 odd years ago, was a more egalitarian place - to get back to behaving properly and stop catering to the rich and the greedy and the compromised.

Time to make a change so that anyone who suggests any dwelling should be worth that kind of money would be laughed off the island and sent to the penalty box for a major.

Ah, the good old days.

30 years ago when False Creek was so cute with all those lovely timber mills and shacks, and Coal Harbour had all those pretty rail lines all along the waterfront. Ah, for the fragrance of those smoky tugboats and the clanging of those grinding rail shunters. The good old days when the corporations had proper control of the waterfronts, not these fancy schmancy dwellings with those wide promenades and cycle tracks. And all that grass!

Look at the surface realisticman

And ignore the reality that sweats and steams and rots below it if you like. At least in those days the industry along False Creek and on Granville Island provided decent jobs for people who could afford to buy homes IN VANCOUVER.

Now your foreign investors and speculators build fancy schmantzy stuff for guys like Ramesh Saxena and Vancouverites have to live somewhere else and pollute the atmosphere getting back and forth.

Not exactly my idea of 'progress'.

I don't believe

that a few foreign investors have caused the price of property to rise all over Vancouver; as it has. A strong market for luxury condos can hardly cause the average price of a house in East Vancouver to go over $500,000. There ain't no playboys snapping up cheap digs around Victoria and 20th.

Fact is, and I know you agree, when the idea of European 5-8 story density is raised for any neighbourhood the screams go out that the developers are moving in to make a buck and yet that is what's needed to bring prices down to earth.

I do agree with that...but

It isn't just foreign purchasers that bid up the prices that create the problems...problems we can't even discuss and quantify simply because there is no public registry of off-shore and out of province ownership. There should be, and I think the problem is a good deal more serious than you might think - this comes from people I know in the development industry by the way.

Foreign investors are also a huge problem in terms of bidding up land prices.

Design and zoning changes would certainly help but they're far from the only thing needed in Vancouver right now.

One thing we don't need is any more gold-plated crap for anyone.

Just spotted this - from tomorrow's NYTimes

No Emergency Room
By BOB HERBERT

Homeless advocates in New York are facing off against the Bloomberg administration in a fight that threatens to bring back the protracted court battles of a couple of decades ago.

There is no gray area in this fight. The advocates will tell you that a mayor with multiple billions of dollars and lavish homes here, there and everywhere has taken on the noxious task of throwing homeless families with small children out into the cold.

They will tell you that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with a bizarre new policy aimed at denying emergency shelter to as many applicants as possible, is forcing these families to spend long, harrowing nights riding subways, or sleeping in parks, or huddled in doorways, or camped out in hospital waiting rooms.

The city will tell you that’s nonsense, that a family might fall through the proverbial crack here and there, but that the mayor is not a Grinch, and that mothers with small children are not being left on their own in circumstances reminiscent of the Great Depression.

Well, some of them are. The question is, how many?

Diane Wilson, who was denied shelter and spent a weekend roaming the streets with her 7-year-old daughter, Jasmine, said she saw other mothers and children “scattered out there in the streets and on the subways in the middle of the night.”

And a number of homeless families have been sleeping on the floor at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in the Bronx.

When I started researching this column, it seemed very much like the mayor had in fact ordered a crackdown that was condemning large numbers of destitute families to the street.

Ms. Wilson and Jasmine were given the alarming news that they could no longer stay in the emergency shelters that had housed them since September. The city’s policy, they were told, had changed.

Until a few weeks ago, the city had offered emergency shelter on a night-by-night basis to families that had been found to be ineligible for longer-term help. This safety net was important because bureaucrats make mistakes.

If you have no place to go and you’re standing in the doorway of a shelter, holding two kids by the hand, and an intake official doesn’t believe that you’re homeless, you’re in big trouble. Which is why emergency placement, until the truth can be sorted out, is essential.

The Bloomberg administration, upset by what it said were people abusing this emergency system for families who might have incorrectly been denied shelter, ended it.

conclusion

Ms. Wilson and Jasmine were indeed thrown onto the street. Frightened and bleary-eyed, they tried to stay as long and as unobtrusively as possible at a McDonald’s restaurant. They rode the subways. They walked and walked and sometimes wept in frustration.

They thought at one point that they had found shelter — for at least awhile — in the waiting area of a hospital emergency room. But hospital officials, fed up with their presence, told Ms. Wilson that they would report her to the Administration for Children’s Services, which takes away the children of unfit parents.

Ms. Wilson and Jasmine hurried back outside.

So we are talking about an ugly situation here. But it’s not clear that it’s ugly in the same way that some homeless advocates are alleging. If you go on the hunt for homeless families in the street, you’ll have trouble finding any. There just aren’t that many out there.

And Diane Wilson’s initial application for shelter left a great deal to be desired. The kindest way to put it is that she made a few factual errors.

Despite that, the city took another look at her case. After two days, it again gave Ms. Wilson and Jasmine emergency shelter, and will most likely offer them more extended help.

So what’s the problem?

Steven Banks, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society and a longtime advocate for the homeless, is correct in his contention that the new Bloomberg policy is a step backward. There is no doubt that some families, probably a lot of them, have been improperly denied shelter.

There is no evidence, however, that most of them ended up on the street. The worst and most unscrupulous aspects of the homeless crisis are taking place out of public view — families being returned to homes that are inappropriate, and even dangerous; families being sent way out of state — to Florida, or the West Coast, or Puerto Rico, or the Dominican Republic — by city officials who just don’t want to deal with them.

It may be that the most dramatic examples offered by the advocates — mothers huddled with small children on street corners in the cold — are just the tiniest aspect of a much larger, much more tragic problem.

YOU WERE SAYING, REALISTICMAN, HOW THINGS ARE GOING IN THE SAME WAY EVERYWHERE - PITY ISN'T IT?

MULTI MILLION DOLLAR CONDOS ARE JUST A SYMPTOM OF THE ILLNESS.

I'll do my best

A hypocrite is a person who says one thing and then does another. Such as saying that any news report from Canwest is biased and can't be trusted, and then turning around 180 degrees and quoting that same news source to put forward your view. Just my opinion
, now tell me why I'm completely wrong and muddled in my thinking - as I know you will. And while you're at it you can answer my questions from that last post now since I answered yours in good faith

That's just baloney happy

My position has been clear and I've written (if you actually take the time to look) very very little about Canwest. They are enormous supporters of the Campbell government and the Campbell party.

There has never been anything hypocritical about my stands - anyone with any wit knows exactly where I'm coming from; as to quoting the occasional sensible thing from a Canwest source - why not? I'm a hopeful person, things can change, folks begin to understand what's happening to them and how compromised Campbell and his friends are. The future will be better as more and more people are raised from the ignorance of their current mind set.

Furthermore, I also gave the Federal Conservatives praise for changing the tax policy on Income Trusts - big deal. That hardly makes me a fan of pee wee Rambo.

The other questions:
I have no idea who bankrolls this site and I could care less - I assume it is at least partially paid for by advertising and I know they have a donation drive from time to time. You should consider contributing.

I had no idea you were addressing the question to me - coming, as it were, from left field and given the fact I’m nothing more than a reader and commenter here. Who did you think I was?

Last question: I don't believe it makes any difference.

Good enuf faith for you?

I stand corrected

So Canwest is acceptable to you then. Thats not going to go down very well with most of the gang here, they might start thinking you're a mole.

And I think you know very well who funds this site. Its been brought up enough times. Need any proof? How come the biggest news story last week that made the front page of every newspaper in Canada as well as CNN, BBC never rated a mention here. You know what I'm referring to of course. Thats what I call media bias

No you don't

Kindly just read, and try to understand what I actually write.

What I think of Canwest is clear - what I thought about that particular column was also clear.

I have NO idea who funds this site and I could care less. I haven't got a clue what you're talking about or what your 'impression' of the biggest news story last week would be. Please, fill me in.

If you have any accusations to make about bias in the way this site chooses its journalism then why not spit it out. I have problems with the management here too from time to time – what’s your beef?

Moreover, I'm neither aware of nor part of any gang...

Are you?