Vancouver is becoming more prominent on all our constitutional tiers because of the pervasive sense that Canadians are being driven out of the most prestigious, picturesque parts of the city by fast-rising prices. Which could just be a matter of Vancouver transitioning to the status of an expensive global alpha city like London — a hemispheric capital, a new Hong Kong to replace the now communist-dominated old one.
I say “just,” but not everyone wants Vancouver to be an offshore Chinese city.
It seems no-one has a clue anymore about the concept of “Private Property”.
Not all people in Greater Vancouver are upset about the inflation in property values.
“Not all people in Greater Vancouver are upset about the inflation in property values.”
Yeah. I’ve got mine, screw everyone else.
That said, is there a Lesser Vancouver or do Hongcouverites just tack ‘Greater’ on the front just because they’re ostentatious pedants?
Heh … so Canada becomes a trilingual nation … French, English, and Mandarin. Ohhhhh … so cosmopolitan … just like Brussels
Try this linky,
http://donsurber.blogspot.ca/2016/04/welcome-karl-rove-to-dark-side.html
Vancouver is a magnitude more Communist than Hong Kong.
Just start something like the “NDP Head Tax” on all the Chinese. Easy-peasy.
Apologies, the above comment should be attached to the Karl Rove post
OUCH ! … but if we “feel the Bern” down here … we will make you start to look like Adam Smith’s hometown
Just tell them that Just In plans to sign a tax treaty with China and then you’ll see Vancouver’s housing market crash
Colby is wrong.
Vancouver is not in its way to becoming like Hing Kong or London. Those cities perform important world-class functions in finance and other activities.
Vancouver is becoming more like a Monte Carlo or Marseilles – a city this is a bedroom community for the idle rich. Now that might change in time – especially if BC and Canada provide a fertile regulatory and tax environment for start up ventures for these restless uber-wealthy residents to play with. I don’t hold out much hop that that will transpire.
I had the impression that Vancouver was more of a money-laundering centre.
I started grad studies at UBC in the late 1970s and I remember what the skyline looked like as the last place where I lived had a nice view of the harbour and downtown. Several years ago, I had an interview there and, on the flight back, I remarked to the person sitting beside me about all the shiny new buildings that were there.
Her response was that they were all financed by Chinese “drug money”. I’m not sure if that was simply an idle comment or if, in fact, there was something to what she said.
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“all financed by Chinese ‘drug money’“
doesn’t have to be drug money, but you can read daily about the “new” city being bought up by offshore “asian” interests who don’t seem to mind paying way, way over already outrageous asking prices.
fact is, real estate is an easier and way more lucrative way to launder dirty money and offers the added advantage of a bailout bunker if the chicom politburo tumbles to your particular corrupt lifestyle.
wasn’t justin’s british columbia campaign being financed by one of these well to do chinese businessman/immigrants? i’m thinking the tax reform measures (or criminal extradition to china) may not be at the top of the liberal agenda.
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Part of the reason this issue will never even be looked at is because if happen to suggest that you prefer your city not be completely taken over by the Chinese and possibly a few other interests you are immediately called racist and shut down.
Thank you liberals for the political correctness, the multiculturalism and the ever popular, racism accusations every 10 seconds. You have doomed us all with that failed crap.
rise to the challenge, pussies…
Why is ex-Liberal MP Raymond Chan running away from a reporter?
Will party bagman have a role if Trudeau becomes PM?
http://bobmackin.ca/?p=3139
And when your property taxes are based on market value assessment, there’s no incentive to deal with the problem either. Who would want to kill that cash cow?
There is more to this than Chinese money laundering. Peking has a long term plan for the colonization of Canada. Canada is a vast land mass blessed with huge natural resources and agricultural land but with a tiny (compared to China) population. They encourage emigration of 20 million or so out of there 1.5 billion and presto; Canada is a virtual Chinese colony.
The entire ridiculous situation has been fueled to some extent by the SOCC ruling that lawyers have a de facto exemption when it comes to reporting suspicious financial transactions.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-10/how-vancouver-being-sold-chinese-illegal-dark-side-behind-real-estate-bubble
So our much-lauded FINTRAC legislation is nothing but a ******g joke – a useless exercise in keeping up appearances.
Yes, the Chinese are not stupid. They’ve undoubtedly noticed what has happened to SoCal (LA was 90% white in 1970) and the central valley to create “Mexifornia.” via immigration, both legal and illegal. Mao once famously stated that: “Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.” He was wrong. Political power comes out of a circular tube alright, but a much more flexible and softer one…reproductive rates in the 3rd world spell certain doom for white societies and Western Civilization all over the world. Worse, we are committing intellectual cultural suicide as well, e.g., Stanford U. just voted against re-instituting required courses in Western Civ (a Civilization without which Stanford would have never come into existence.) by a 6-1 margin.
Recently I read a piece in the New York Times about those pathetic ruined Chinese rich kids with super expensive cars: Maseratis, Bentleys, Lambourghinis.
On SW Marine Drive day before yesterday I encountered a confirming scene.
There were two stopped cars ahead of me.
As it turned out a rich Chinese boy in a Bentley had rear-ended a poor Chinese girl in a new Lexus.
Gord Tulk is right.
Some time in the future, a few cruise ships are going to disembark at Vancouver and the tourists are going to be soldiers of the Chinese army and their weapons will be with them. The perfect setting for a Trojan horse.
Yes,it is,and the communists are NOT the Chinese who live there.
They don’t have to have a “trojan horse”. Our government allows BC to be swamped with foreigners and encourages it.
Well, I live in the ‘burbs of Vancouver, and I love it here. I bought the house next door to mine for 505k in December of 2013, and comparable houses on my street now go for 800-850k. I love that prices are high –it helps keep out (or at least minimizes) the riffraff. In 1975, everyone on my street was of Scottish ancestry and were starting families; today it’s more or less the same, with a shade more diversity: one Asian and one Persian family. They are polite, their lawns are immaculate, and they behave like responsible middle class Canadians. The only first-hand complaints I’ve ever heard about Asians or Indians (dots, not feathers) is trouble with parking b/c of multi-generational homes. We have space in the ‘burbs once you get outside of Burnaby. And frankly, I’d much rather live next to an Asian family than the two white Canada Post workers near me who blow their lawn clippings onto the street for someone else to deal with.
We’re going to see a conservative renaissance in the lower mainland for one simple reason: unless you start saving early, get married young, keep your costs low and look to the future, you won’t be able to live here. Or rather, you won’t be able to own here.
All the others can suck it and rent out our basement suites. They can vote for all the lefty perks they want –I’m just going to roll the costs back onto them in rent. And if they don’t like it, they should stop pissing their money away on things they don’t need so they can scrape together a down payment.
And if by some socialist miracle overseas real-estate investment is limited by government, who is going to take advantage of it? The gender-studies majors who live on “the Drive” in East Van who work for tips and are 40k in the hole with student loans (and a trip to Thailand), or me with 1.6-1.8 million in assets to leverage?
There certainly is a City of Vancouver, surrounded by a much larger conurbation, and the interests of the one can diverge from those of the other. “Greater Vancouver” is not mere pretension, it’s a realistic and useful term.
I have fond memories of Vancouver in the late 80’s, but it was a hell of a place to find work if you weren’t in a service industry. Gord Tulk is right, it’s at least as much a resort as a center of business or industry.