ACTIVELY PROMOTING LOW WAGES … IS ... SCUMMY.

Only one Canadian city, Toronto, made the shortlist announced last month. Its 192-page bid proposal similarly touted how its tech workers could be had for a “fraction” of the wage cost compared to other North American cities.

Vancouver’s proposal included to-be-expected references to the city’s natural surroundings, cultural diversity, socially progressive outlook, eco-consciousness and top-tier learning institutions.

Amazon was urged to think of Vancouver as Seattle’s fraternal twin — a “home away from home” whose close proximity would minimize Amazon’s carbon footprint.

The submission suggested four possible sites for a new Amazon campus — two in Vancouver and two in the cited an average salary for a software engineer in Vancouver as US$60,107 compared to $92,380 in Atlanta and $113,906 in Seattle.

“Actively promoting LOW WAGES … is nothing short of scummy and a disservice to ALL creative, tech & other workers trying to make a living in the #unaffordable city you’ve created,” one person tweeted to Mayor Gregor Robertson.

Another part of the bid package that drew guffaws was a section that touted how the region was “proactively leading the charge to tackle housing affordability” and that more affordable homes were “within reach.”

According to a recent report by the B.C. Real Estate Association, the average price of a home in Metro Vancouver was $1,036,968 in January.

Last month, a Royal LePage report stated that the median price of a condo in Metro Vancouver was $651,885 in the last quarter of 2017, an increase of 20 per cent from the previous year.

“We may be trying to lead in creating the affordable housing, but you know what? We’ve got an awful lot of leading to do before we get anywhere,” said Lindsay Meredith, a professor emeritus of marketing at Simon Fraser University.

Meredith said he can understand why members of the public might read the document and wonder, “‘Gee, I can’t afford to get anywhere near Vancouver and these guys are telling me they’ve got affordable housing.’ That’s the kind of stuff where you can get some backlash.”

Raymond said housing affordability is an issue facing many North American tech cities and that Vancouver officials wanted to highlight steps being taken to address it, such as the province’s introduction of a property tax on foreign ownership.

On the issue of salaries, Raymond added: “We know Amazon pays some of the best wages around, so bringing 50,000 jobs averaging US$100,000 would have been a huge boost to the salaries in our region.”

Based on feedback from the city’s Amazon contacts, Raymond said the bid proposal was “rock solid” and there is little he would change in hindsight. “We have some peace of mind knowing that it was the best possible proposal we could have put forward.”