Pete's Viewpoint

Go ahead, read his article here . The background here is that BC Liberal candidate for Nanaimo, Tony Harris was caught editing out the word 'speculation' on his bio page just ahead of his announcing of his candidacy. For anyone born yesterday or unplugged from the affairs of BC for the last 10 years, real estate speculation has turned the industry into a giant slot machine for developers and realtors. Its become a tough slog for first time home buyers as the average starter home has consistently and dramatically become more out of reach for average folks. None of which is directly to blame on Tony himself. But being given a front page exposure for apparently trying to hide his affinity to the speculation part of real estate seemed that it needed an explanation. So that's where we begin and that's where it gets awkward for Tony. Thing 1. Young people aren't tuning out of politics; they're tuning out of the big parties. Yes, your Trump/MAGA hat stunt wa...

Again, I don't want to minimize the struggle by middle and modest income earners who already struggle to pay rents in BC, but this call for a 'rent freeze' by some civic political candidates I believe is misguided and fraught with risks. A Rent Freeze by definition is a price control mechanism. BC already has a rent control device, which apparently is inadequate for it to allow a 4.5% annual maximum increase for 2019. Its true that the regulatory framework that the Residential Tenancy Branch uses to establish such rate controls could use some reform. But to arbitrarily freeze rates would open a can of worms that I believe are unintended consequences of their intended goal. In real world experiences where this has been done, its triggered an ironical result of higher rent increases and a drop in rental supply; almost the same result as general price controls in the early 70's in the OPEC Oil embargo, fuel shortages were triggered. I haven't signed up to the neo-...

Maclean Kay is a former speech writer for former BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark As it turns out, when a government that comes to office whose largest support base is from the centre-left including from organized labour, they may at times try to change the rules from the old regime whose support base comes from conservative and big corporate circles. Also, as it turns out, making changes to governing policy that takes advantage away from said corporate circles and advantages the many groups elsewhere, it upsets conservatives. Enter, the NDP's infrastructure policy . Under the policy, there's a heavy emphasis in skills training and apprenticeships, hiring from under-represented groups, and local hiring, and union labour. Completely objectionable in the eyes of the former government supporters who landed in a lot of hot water in their public spending policy over infrastructure. The notion of a 'project labour agreement' is reprehensible to BC Liberals. In elim...