BC Political Discussion - BC Election 2017 May 9th

[Bcasey25raptor]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

If you think any of that is true what are the chances of Vision Vancouver winning the next election?

Theres no viable alternative so I'd say high.

[retro_orange]

Next Muni. election is only 15 months away, better start convincing your friends to not only vote this time but start to seed in relevant conversations that the Vision party has to go.

[Pinion]

Originally Posted by jollyburger

If you think any of that is true what are the chances of Vision Vancouver winning the next election?

City councils have no power over foreign money laundering. Vision is supported by people who buy into Gregor's biking/clean food/other "greenest city" 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 image. They're not involved enough to see he's playing them and in the pocket of developers like nearly everyone else in this city.

That said, the NPA are worse.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by retro_orange

Next Muni. election is only 15 months away, better start convincing your friends to not only vote this time but start to seed in relevant conversations that the Vision party has to go.

Why? What is the alternative, and what will they do? The NPA is the party of west side NIMBYs. Things will only get worse.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Pinion

City councils have no power over foreign money laundering. Vision is supported by people who buy into Gregor's biking/clean food/other "greenest city" 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 image. They're not involved enough to see he's playing them and in the pocket of developers like nearly everyone else in this city.

That said, the NPA are worse.

It's funny to me that municipal governments are the closest branch to everybody's day to day living, and yet they have the least power, and furthermore those elections see the lowest turnout.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Stingray2004

Honestly, anyone who believes that a political party or gov't can make housing "affordable" again either believes in unicorns or pixie-dust.

The seed for today's high housing costs was planted back in 1973, when the then Barrett BC NDP gov't introduced the ALR. In that vein they went wayyyyyyy overboard IMHO including not only Class 1, 2 and 3 lands but also Class 4, 5, 6, and 7, which represents mostly horse hobby farms today in large swaths of Langley today, for example.

As a result of the implementation of the ALR in 1973, Metro Vancouver residential building lot prices literally doubled overnight along with non-ALR land parcels, which then had/now has major implications on housing prices. So much so that in the following year, 1974, Metro Vancouver achieved the title, for the first time ever, as the "most expensive housing market in Canada". So much for social engineering.

BTW, back in 1973:

BC Population: ~2.4 million
BC Housing Starts: ~37,000

In 1980/1981:

BC Population: ~2.8 million
BC Housings Starts: ~40,000

In 2016, BC had a population of ~4.65 million. Using the same BC population to annual housing start ratio from 1973 or 1980/1981, for example, BC should currently have between 67,000 - 72,000 annual housing starts to maintain some form of market equilibrium. Actual housing starts over past few years:

2012: 27,465
2013: 27,054
2014: 28,356
2015: 31,446
2016: 41,843

Couple the foregoing with shrinking household size - the upward pressure on housing prices is not exactly rocket science.

Nope.

The creation of ALR doesn't explain housing prices at all. How could it, when prices were stable until roughly 2003? It was only the combination of Mainkand Chinese money and low interest rates that sent prices soaring.

[240glt]

Yeah I'm not buying that the ALR is responsible for housing prices either. Looking at the map, most of the ALR land in the lower mainland is up the valley, where prices are already lower. Vancouver definitely has a constrained footprint but it's not constrained by ALR land

In the interior, agricultural land owners close to vacation destinations have been fighting the ALR for years, trying to get land exempted so that it can be sub-divided. But they're not trying to sub-divide for affordable housing.

Frankly I think the ALR has done quite a bit of good in protecting agricultural land, which is important to BC's economy and food production, and it's also helped curtail sprawl to a degree in smaller centres. If Alberta had the foresight to do something like this a few decades ago maybe you wouldn't see areas like the Edmonton region being such a sprawlly mess

[LeftCoaster]

Originally Posted by Pinion

Wages that keep pace with prices? The ability to buy property? I own a condo but could never move within the metro now.

The economy blows, it has been terrible for 15+ years and has been propped up by real estate money. New high paying jobs are on temporary contracts with no benefits. Stats can be manipulated to say anything.

Sure, so then couldn't that be applied to any stats that we are being compared to? And when they're all being manipulated they are all equal relatively. So in that vein, stats-can measures stats the same way for all jurisdictions in which they operate and BC has been outperforming Canada handily for years now in both GDP and jobs and is expected to continue to do so.

As for what kind of jobs are being created? Well this is an issue worldwide, not something the BC Liberals have any control over. The decline of the middle class is a big issue but not one you can blame on the provincial government, whatever colour it may be. This is more the result of automation, free trade and global changes in consumer preferences.

An honest question, what kind of jobs do you think the NDP will attract that the libs did not? I personally think the Liberals have done a great job of attracting tech, film and other decent mid-income jobs that help people live here.

[retro_orange]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Why? What is the alternative, and what will they do? The NPA is the party of west side NIMBYs. Things will only get worse.

I'm still hoping someone good comes outta the woodwork sometime in the next few months...

[a very long weekend]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

An honest question, what kind of jobs do you think the NDP will attract that the libs did not? I personally think the Liberals have done a great job of attracting tech, film and other decent mid-income jobs that help people live here.

My friend and I were talking about Vancouver recently, and the thought that we had was that a really enterprising NDP provincial government would unilaterally upzone Vancouver single family homes districts to as-of-right mid- or hi-rise (cynically, this could be done just to ridings that didn't vote for them). Then seriously tighten up the rules at every link in the chain: title handlers, accountants, etc. The idea is to leverage the boom in value due to upzoning to funnel money into the homegrown professional services class, as the cash pours in from all over Canada and China.

Basically, do away with the moronic taxes and other disincentives to investment and just rezone at the provincial level. Gives cover to the city council to enact policy they know they should be doing, and nobody loses any money.

[Pinion]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

An honest question, what kind of jobs do you think the NDP will attract that the libs did not? I personally think the Liberals have done a great job of attracting tech, film and other decent mid-income jobs that help people live here.

I'm more interested in bringing cost of life in line with the local economy than expecting the NDP to do anything amazing to create new industry. As you say, it's a global problem and the damage has been done by the failure of trickle down economics and globalism already. If the economy continues to be poor, so be it, but local prices should reflect that so people don't have to leave the metro to survive like they currently do. Bribing industries with huge subsidies and allowing money launderers to run roughshod over the country is not my idea of good governance.

Originally Posted by a very long weekend

My friend and I were talking about Vancouver recently, and the thought that we had was that a really enterprising NDP provincial government would unilaterally upzone Vancouver single family homes districts to as-of-right mid- or hi-rise (cynically, this could be done just to ridings that didn't vote for them). Then seriously tighten up the rules at every link in the chain: title handlers, accountants, etc. The idea is to leverage the boom in value due to upzoning to funnel money into the homegrown professional services class, as the cash pours in from all over Canada and China.

Basically, do away with the moronic taxes and other disincentives to investment and just rezone at the provincial level. Gives cover to the city council to enact policy they know they should be doing, and nobody loses any money.

I'm pretty sure city councils control zoning? Not to mention almost the entire metro voted for NDP, besides a few Chinese-dominated areas, the conservative eastern valley suburbs, and the old money parts of the north shore.

[a very long weekend]

^ so maybe the NDP could rezone by sub-neighborhood. Empty houses, zones in which houses change hands at a frequency exceeding some number, districts adjacent to new skytrain line = rezone. Eased, of course, by vote patterns.

[Pinion]

Nope.

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by Pinion

I'm pretty sure city councils control zoning? Not to mention almost the entire metro voted for NDP, besides a few Chinese-dominated areas, the conservative eastern valley suburbs, and the old money parts of the north shore.

City councils (except maybe for Vancouver because of the Vancouver Charter) operate at the pleasure of the provincial government. The province could very easily rescind the ability of municipalities to control zoning within their borders, but that would be some kind of political suicide. No provincial government would ever do that.

What they can do is expand zoning to allow municipalities to zone, for example, rental-only zones. Currently cities can offer incentives to developers in exchange for a rental-only covenant on the land (this is what New Westminster does, for example) but they can't make rental-only properties more permanent through zoning.

[Stingray2004]

Soooooo.... incumbent BC gov't obviously will fall on non-confidence motion on Throne Speech on Thursday.

S. 43 of the BC Constitution Act clearly confirms that GreeNDP combo will be unable to pass budgets/bills at 3rd reading - by statute. IOW, if the GreeNDP are unable to pass budgets/bills, then they technically can't "govern".

Hansard minutes from last Thursday confirms that the Clerk of the House ("CEO" of legislature) is being advised by Ministry of Attorney General in terms of procedure under the BC Constitution Act in order that House remains within the law:

The Attorney General and Minister of Justice has just advised the House that pursuant to section 37 of the B.C. Constitution Act, the Legislative Assembly's first order of business, prior to the opening of a new parliament, is the election of a Speaker.

https://www.leg.bc.ca/documents-data/deb...ament/1st-session/20170622am-House-Blues

The BC LG is now apparently currently advised by 3 separate individuals experienced in constitutional law (legal) v. constitutional convention (poli sci) on the current BC political conundrum:

1. Ron Cheffins
http://www.revparl.ca/english/author.asp?au=136&art=163
2. Peter Hogg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hogg
3. Canada GG David Johnstone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Johnston

Over/under - so NDP leader Horgan sworn in Friday or Dissolution?

[Pinion]

Originally Posted by CanSpice

City councils (except maybe for Vancouver because of the Vancouver Charter) operate at the pleasure of the provincial government. The province could very easily rescind the ability of municipalities to control zoning within their borders, but that would be some kind of political suicide. No provincial government would ever do that.

OK, technically correct, but unrealistic, and Vancouver proper is of course the main problem regarding density. Most surrounding suburbs have densified as much as they can - north shore outside the CNV excepted, but we have a crippling infrastructure problem at the moment and no government plans to fix it even on the distant horizon.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Pinion

City councils have no power over foreign money laundering. Vision is supported by people who buy into Gregor's biking/clean food/other "greenest city" 🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵🞵 image. They're not involved enough to see he's playing them and in the pocket of developers like nearly everyone else in this city.

That said, the NPA are worse.

Yes, it's amazing that voters for fall for the bread, bike lanes and circuses that Vision throws them. For some reason that voter bloc isn't bright enough to see that Vision is just another developer-funded party, just like the BC Liberals. The NPA draws their backing from the same sources.

The only real hope is that the civic Greens mount a decent campaign and get the balls to run a mayoral candidate.

[a very long weekend]

Originally Posted by CanSpice

City councils (except maybe for Vancouver because of the Vancouver Charter) operate at the pleasure of the provincial government. The province could very easily rescind the ability of municipalities to control zoning within their borders, but that would be some kind of political suicide. No provincial government would ever do that.

why would it be political suicide? if the provincial government declared a "housing opportunity zone" and upzoned, say, 50 blocks of south vancouver, which is almost entirely single family homes, who would care outside of south vancouver? in the american system this would be impossible, but up there the province could easily do this.

people can talk about speculators and the chinese, but from where i'm sitting, the housing affordability problem up there is entirely created by the zoning. when 85% or whatever it is of a city's territory is zoned to single family homes, of course you'll see the cost of housing explode when demand is high. the provincial government should step in to save vancouver and its suburbs from themselves.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by a very long weekend

why would it be political suicide? if the provincial government declared a "housing opportunity zone" and upzoned, say, 50 blocks of south vancouver, which is almost entirely single family homes, who would care outside of south vancouver? in the american system this would be impossible, but up there the province could easily do this.

people can talk about speculators and the chinese, but from where i'm sitting, the housing affordability problem up there is entirely created by the zoning. when 85% or whatever it is of a city's territory is zoned to single family homes, of course you'll see the cost of housing explode when demand is high. the provincial government should step in to save vancouver and its suburbs from themselves.

How do you explain the explosion in condo prices then? No shortage of those.

[Jebby]

Originally Posted by whatnext

How do you explain the explosion in condo prices then? No shortage of those.

Shortage of SFH/townhouses forces people to buy into condos, driving prices up because it's the only type of housing really being built.