Cynicism? Krusty says, "Stand aside Moonbeam and hold my beer!"

Yesterday we made note of the cynical populist political shift of our beloved Village Mayor Gregor 'Moonbeam' Robertson as he responded to the 2016 Census Data revelation that there were twice as many 'unoccupied' homes in Vancouver as the City's survey had found in mid 2016.

Said Moonbeam, “Seeing data that shows there may be even more underutilized homes than BC Hydro suggests gives us more reason to aggressively move on the empty homes tax, and other measures that will help bring homes back within reach to residents in all corners of the city."

Giggidy.

Course, such exhortations are a little hard to swallow given his mid year pronouncement that he was against any suggestion of a housing tax targeting non-residents.

But is that real cynicism? Enter the BC Liberal's shouting "hold my beer!"

In July 2016 the BC Liberal's weren't afraid to support a housing tax targeting non-residents. In a surprising move, our beloved Premier Krusty Clark boldly declared a 15% tax targeting foreign buyers and implemented it without much warning.

Now everyone and their dog in the real estate industry (except this dog, of course) was feeding the public the line that foreign buyers were such a small portion of the market that all the fuss about them was a non-issue.

We all knew it was bullshit, but you have to wonder if the BC Liberals thought the tax would be a simple vote-getter without fully appreciating the reality of the situation.

Because the tax had an immediate impact.  A massive immediate impact.

By the end of January 2017, real estate sales in the Village on the Edge of the Rainforest fell off a cliff. Luxury sales were down 91% and Vancouver home sales plunged 40%. The market was cratering.

Did we mention a provincial election is less than 100 days away?

It didn't escape the attention of muckraking reporter extraordinaire Bob Mackin. Bob put his ear to the ground and heard that wealthy developer donors were letting it be known to Krusty, Shrimp de Jong et al that political donations would dry up if they didn't address this catastrophe.

Such news was highly disconcerting to the BC Liberal accountants.

And just who are these $100K+ donors from Feb 2016 that Mackin refers to?

In a recent article, Mackin outlines how the BC real estate development community funnels massive amounts of cash to the BC Libs.

Chronicling one fund-raising extravaganza in February 2016, Makin noted:

The Feb. 26, 2016 haul was thanks primarily to eight individuals and entities that kicked-in a whopping $1.1 million:

• $200,000 x 2=$400,000: John Redekop Construction and his cousin Peter Wall’s 2300 Kingsway Residences. 

• $100,000 x 7=$700,000: Peter Redekop, Peter Wall’s PWO Investments and Wall nephew Bruno’s BJW Investment; Townline Homes owner Rick Ilich; Rossano De Cotiis’s RPMG Holdings; Berts Electric; and Seaspan ULC.

Those high rollers are no stranger to writing big cheques to the BC Liberals. Six months before the last election, some of them also injected six-figures into the BC Liberal kitty.

Peter Redekop — whose donations since 2005 now stand unofficially at $609,800 — gave $150,000 on Nov. 8, 2012. His brother John Redekop ponied up the same amount on the same day as a similar windfall from other real estate and construction concerns. 

Also contributing to the party’s Nov. 8, 2012 haul of $833,728 were: Rob Macdonald ($101,200); Intertech Construction Managers/ITC Management/ITC Services ($75,000); Townline Homes ($55,000); Holborn Developments/TA Management and Dayhu Investments ($50,000 each) and Francesco Aquilini ($23,375). The Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel donated $4,700. 

Peter Wall and Bruno Wall each gave $150,000 on Nov. 23, 2012, when the Liberals counted another $829,780 in donations. Along with the $300,000 from the Walls came $40,000 from Hassan Khosroshawhi and $20,000 from Colin Bosa.

So it comes as no great surprise (albeit highly disappointing) that with the threat of having the taps turned off on this massive amount of cash that the BC Liberals blinked.

Thus, on Jan. 29, Krusty suddenly announced during Chinese New Year that the BC government would be amending its tax on foreigners buying property in Metro Vancouver. Clark says the levy will be lifted for "those who have a work permit and pay taxes in B.C., in order to encourage more people to come to the province."

The slight change to the Foreign Buyers tax was promoted as a minor adjustment to make the tax fairer so British Columbia can continue to attract the best and brightest to BC.

But given Mackin's revelations about the behind the scenes threats of withholding political donations as the province counts down to what could be another extremely close Provincial Election, it's hard to see the move as anything but selling out to the development community.

Next we will outline just how significantly the BC Liberals have gutted the tax.

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Email: village_whisperer@live.ca
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HouseGate: The logical mind asks - Is freedom of the press under attack from the Vancouver Mayor's Office?

Last Friday Frances Bula said:

Okay, this is Friday fluff, but whatever. I feel I must contribute to the ongoing deep investigations into Mayor Gregor Robertson’s change of abode... No one seems to see Robertson’s move, from a single-family house near Emily Carr elementary in central Vancouver to a smaller place in Kits near the beach, as symbolic of the prototypical Vancouver downsizing. Instead, it seems to have turned into massive theory-building about how it has something to do with the Point Grey bike lane. Or his federal-election ambitions. Or something.

This seemingly vacuous controversy spawned from our original post which simply made note of the fact that the Mayor's home was on the market.

It's important to note that in that post we only mused on whether our not his worship was cashing out of our City's massive housing bubble.

So how did this morph into a political controversy?

It was the Mayor's office who transformed this story into something to do with the Point Grey bike lane.  They responded the next morning with this press statement that directly tied the issue of the Mayor moving to the Point Grey bike lane:

  

Our post was made on Tuesday night.  The next morning, with lightening speed, the Mayor's office issues a press release confirming that the house was for sale and that the Mayor had already purchased a new house.

The Mayor's office then specifically linked the new purchase to the Point Grey/Cornwall bike corridor. So serious was this tie-in that the press statement came complete with a legal opinion from the City Solicitor and an admission that this announcement had been weeks in the making.

Then came the next domino.  The press release stated:

They recently purchased a new home in Kitsilano within a block of York Street. For security reasons we don’t disclose the specific location.

Security reasons? Naturally a media frenzy erupted trying to root out these reasons. Within hours Business in Vancouver newspaper was out with breaking news via this tweet:

BIV released a story which profiled the exact location of the Mayor's new house.

It was news because the location revealed that the Bike lane controversy was even greater than originally reported.  He wasn't moving "somewhere in Kits a block away from York Street." The Mayor was moving right next to the most contentious area of the Point Grey/Cornwall route - Point Grey Road - and it appears this info was known in advance of the public opeen house.

This was huge news.

News which the Mayor's office not only created, but compounded by waiting to reveal it.

Why had they waited to acknowledge what they themselves had deemed would be a potential conflict of interest weeks earlier?

Was this news held back so it wouldn't come out during the public information open houses meetings on the Point Grey/Cornwall Bike route proposal?

Was the news only acknowledged in response to our blog post because the Mayor's office hoped they would never have to actually acknowledge the moveuntil long after the fact?

The exact location of the Mayor's new residence has been transformed into an important component of the conflict-of-interest debate specifically because the Mayor's office was not forthcoming with the  news until they were forced to reveal it.

As such, the newsworthiness of the precise location of his new residence was deemed important enough by the media to outweigh any individual privacy concerns.

Thus BIV ran their story.

But then a curious thing happened to that BIV piece (hilighing a phenomenona that could never happen in the era of print of journalism).  

Did anyone notice?

On July 11th the online version of BIV's story was suddenly and quietly redacted.  All reference to the specific location of the Mayor's new residence eliminated.  Even reference to the general location was removed. 

Why redact the general location at the nexus of York/Stephens/Point Grey Road?  That's the heart of the whole story!

Was BIV pressured into censoring these details? Or did they remove that info of their own accord?

Curiously, despite the apparent censorship by BIV, the author of the article - Bob Mackin - published all pertinent details on his own blog: (see this screen shot taken on July 11th - we've blacked out the specific address)

This seems to indicate the censorship did not occur internally at BIV, at least due to any legal concerns.

If there had been legal concerns, presumably Mackin would have been advised of them and he wouldn't have posted those details on his own blog just as his own paper was censoring them.  

But then there's another twist, Mackin's article was updated July 15th and the specific details of the Mayor's residence removed:

So what gives? Several serious questions are raised here.  

The reasonable man/woman logically wonders what triggered BIV into censoring their original story.  It's also logical to wonder if the Mayor's office played any role.  

Before the move to Kits was even even announced by the Mayor's office (MO), the MO were citing 'security concerns.'  What security concerns?  There couldn't have been any documented issues prior to the press release because the news hadn't even been announced yet.

Was our Mayor was already receiving threats at his old residence at 912 West 23rd Avenue?

As we noted in our original post, the Mayor's home address is a matter of public record, available in online documents available from city hall. If there have been prior threats, why haven't we been told?  There is no place in our society for threats against our elected officials.  Whatever your position regarding our civic political debates, the idea that our Mayor may be at risk is totally unacceptable and cannot be tolerated. If there have been prior documented threats, was Chief of Police Chu notified? And what has he done to address them?

But there doesn't appear to be any record of prior threats, just concerns about what 'might be'.

And why wasn't just the specific address removed?  Why were all references to the general area of York/Stephens/Point Grey Road also pulled?

Various sources have suggested it might be extremely enlightening for the media to ask two specific questions:

• Why did BIV pull their story, and 
• Did the Mayor's office pressure a Vancouver news outlet to censor their reporting?

Anyone care to enquire with these two entities directly for the answers?

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Email: village_whisperer@live.ca
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