Straight Talk

CITIZENS’ EMAILS BLAST ASIAN HOMEBUYERS

On July 7, 2016, the province released its first batch of data detailing how many B.C. residential properties were sold to foreign nationals. It was a move that British Columbians were begging the government to make for at least the entire year preceding that day.

The Straight filed a freedom-ofinformation request asking for citizens’ correspondence related to the issue of “foreign buyers, foreign owners, foreign money and/or foreign investment and Vancouver real estate” covering that 12-month period.

The response consists of 848 pages that include 526 emails from citizens on the subject of real estate. The vast majority of those letters express intense dissatisfaction with the B.C. Liberals’ long refusal to act on the issue of foreign money in B.C. real estate.

“You are elected by the people, but your job has given you enough wealth to disconnect from the middle class,” one reads. “You remind me of Queen Marie Antoinette when she learned that the French peasants had no bread. She said, let them eat cake.”

An analysis of these 526 emails, sent either to the premier’s office or the Ministry of Finance, revealed that a sizable minority—109 emails, or about 21 percent—were overtly racist.

“From reading all the news it is clear that the top one percent of Chinese are flocking to Canada,” one reads. “Future generations will suffer the consequences.”

“I heard that an Oriental man sat in his car, didn’t even look at the inside of some building at Salish Court in Burnaby, and purchased them,” reads another. “I am definitely not a racist. However, I feel very strongly that we need to make Canadians a top priority.”

And a third: “I am appalled at how the Chinese are literally taking over Vancouver, and in such sneaky, dirty, underhanded ways.”

Many of those emails expressed a belief that no money made in China was earned honestly.

“It is disgusting how this government will sell out the future of B.C. to the Asian hoards that are taking over our city with corruption, deceit, dishonesty,” reads one email typical of that sentiment.

The other 417 emails are not overtly racist, in that they do not express displeasure toward one identified country or ethnicity. However, the vast majority of them do express some sort of generalized anger toward “foreigners”, “foreign money”, or some variation of those terms.

“You have allowed foreign buyers, who are breaking Canadian laws, to make Vancouver a money laundering capital now populated by resentful, angry people,” reads one of those letters.

“Foreign investors are the ones buying up properties, tearing down great older homes and building giant homes as big as they can get away with,” reads another. > TRAVIS LUPICK

PROF SAYS B.C. NDP BLOWING THE ELECTION

A marketing authority says there are a lot of unhappy seniors in B.C.

With an election coming up, Lindsay Meredith suggested that these folks could actually make or break a party’s chances of winning.

“One of the biggest market segments in B.C. are geezers just like me, old people,” Meredith told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview.

According to the professor emeritus with the Beedie School of Business at SFU, the “geezer vote” is important for two reasons. “Number one, there are a lot of them. Two, out of all the voting segments that are out there, it’s old folks who vote the most,” he explained.

Meredith mentioned seniors because he wanted to give some free advice to the B.C. NDP. According to him, that party is in trouble, and if things go the way they’re going now, Premier Christy Clark and her B.C. Liberals will get another term.

“The Liberals are doing a very good job at nailing the NDP,” he noted.

As for the NDP, Meredith said he’s worried about the party’s marketing strategy leading to the May 9 provincial election.

“So what would the NDP want to do?” Meredith asked. “They got a ton of stuff they could attack the Liberals on with regard to health care, with regard to hospital lineups, waits, basically getting shunted sideways, lack of family physicians. There’s a ton of stuff there they could go after, and it would resonate with the biggest voter segment, the old folks, the geezers like me. And they’re just letting it walk right by.”

According to the Office of the Seniors Advocate, there are about 853,000 seniors in B.C., constituting 18 percent of the population.

On March 9 this year, the B.C. Liberal government announced an investment of $500 million over the next four years to improve care for seniors. The funding includes $275 million for home- and community-care services. In addition to the $500-million investment, the province also declared that health authorities will continue increasing their budgets for home and community care during the next four years. Those budgets will reach about $200 million above present levels by 2020-21.

The province also noted that more than $2.9 billion was invested in home and community care in 2016 throughout the province. The amount represents an increase of more than $1.3 billion from 2001.

A different picture is presented in a report released on March 27 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

According to Privatization and Declining Access to B.C. Seniors’ Care: An Urgent Call for Policy Change, access to residential care and assisted-living spaces declined by 20 percent between 2001 and 2016 for people aged 75 years and over.

The report, written by researcher Andrew Longhurst, also noted that there was a 30-percent decline between 2001 and 2016 in access by B.C. seniors to publicly funded home support.

In September last year, the Canadian Medical Association released a report titled The State of Seniors Health Care in Canada. According to that report, B.C. ranks seventh out of the 10 provinces in terms of longest wait for hip replacements for seniors.

In addition, B.C. ranks ninth in wait time for cataract surgery.

“If I was NDP, that’s where I would slam like mad on that issue, because right now, there are a lot of unhappy seniors who still have a lot of wait times,” Meredith said. > CARLITO PABLO