West Kelowna irked by wait for tax info

City to write letter of complaint about B.C.’s freedom of information office

The City of West Kelowna will file a complaint against the provincial freedom of information office.

Council members are upset with the amount of time it’s taking for the office to respond to the city’s request for information on how the government devised the speculation tax.

“Boy, they’re going to string this (response) out, push it right to the end,” Mayor Doug Findlater said at Tuesday’s meeting, describing what he said was foot-dragging on the city’s request by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C.

It’s now expected by city officials the response won’t come until after details of the speculation tax are introduced this month by the NDP government in the legislature.

The first deadline for the response was early September. But council agreed to a request for a one-month extension from the FOI office, which cited the complexity of the work involved in responding to the request.

The reset deadline of Oct. 2 has now come and gone with no response received by the city, other than an email from the FOI office that states the request will be completed “as soon as possible.” There are said to be almost 2,000 pages of documents involved in processing the request.

Coun. Rick de Jong, the brother of Liberal MLA Mike de Jong, suggested the response to the FOI request was being deliberately delayed until after the tax is implemented.

“Freedom of information requests are supposed to be dealt with outside of the political process,” de Jong said. “Clearly that isn’t the case in this regard, or we would have more than we do, which is zip.”

Findlater said he had some hope, based on a conversation with NDP Premier John Horgan at the recent Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention, that details of the speculation tax will be adjusted to accommodate concerns raised by some local governments.

“We may see some changes to the spec tax that are positive, and let’s hope they go all the way and exempt West Kelowna,” Findlater said.

Green party Leader Andrew Weaver has said his party is opposed to the speculation tax as it was first presented.

“I don’t believe we should be punishing British Columbians or Canadians that happen to have a second place,” Weaver told reporters in mid-September.

The support of the Greens would be necessary for the tax to

We may see some changes to the spec tax that are positive, and let’s hope they go all the way and exempt West Kelowna.

be approved in the legislature.

Nevertheless, West Kelowna council agreed unanimously to write a letter of complaint to the privacy commissioner, which oversees the FOI office, about the delay in receiving a response to the request on what information was considered before the speculation tax was announced as part of last February’s provincial budget.

West Kelowna council says the speculation tax, which will apply at the rate of one per cent of the assessed value of some homes that are left empty for at least six months of the year, will slow new construction, deprive the city of development-related revenue and do little to actually provide new rental housing.

The government says the tax is a key part of its overall strategy to cool the real estate market and will have the desired effect of convincing absentee property owners to offer their homes or condos for rent.