Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams, this is the Red Eye Podcast, produced at the studios of Vancouver Cooperative Radio. You can hear our live broadcast on Saturday mornings from 10 till noon at 100 .5 FM. Today, City Beat and Ian Mast talks about the crisis that threatens the 110 -year existence of the P &E.
Speaker: The publically owned Hastings Park at the Pacific National Exhibition and over 4 ,300 unionized employees have been left out of Canada's economic recovery plan and subsequently out of work. Vancouver City Council finally paid some attention to this issue last week. To tell us more is Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass here with a City Beat report. Hi Ian. Hi Lorraine, how are you this morning? I'm good and it's really nice to talk to you again.
Speaker: Vancouver City Council do last week about the PNE, the Pacific National Exhibition? Well, they passed what they call an urgent motion to seek COVID -19 wage subsidy funding for the PNE from senior levels of government. All the other fairs across Canada, the CNE in Toronto, the Calgary Stampede, all of these major concert venues across Canada,
Speaker: are all receiving this wage subsidy, but PNE hasn't got a single dollar from any of the recovery programs. And that's a problem. And I'm not sure why it's become so urgent here in January when the QP union has been trying to get traction on this issue since last summer. Why isn't the PNE eligible for COVID economic recovery programs?
Speaker: Well, it comes down to one thing. We own it. The city of Vancouver owns the P &E Hastings Park and that excludes them from any of these COVID economic recovery programs. Governments are supposed to get out of this crisis on their own, including municipalities, although they're fed lots of money, but none of it makes it to the P &E. The P &E likes to say it's independent and that's at arm's length from the city.
Speaker: And it says it even has an independent board of directors, but six of the nine members of that board are actually city appointments. There's the chair is a city councilor called Lisa Dominato. The city manager sits on the board. The park board general manager sits on the board. So it's really a city controlled board. So this financial predicament that the P &E is in shouldn't be news to the city at all.
Speaker: What's the real and potential impact of this on the PNE? Well, the PNE operations, despite it being a part, are not funded at all by the city of Vancouver. The PNE pays all its expenses through revenue generation, you know, the fall fair, summer fair, play land, the racetrack, the casinos.
Speaker: All of those, as most of our listeners know, are closed. We're closed in 2020 and likely will be closed for the 2021 season. So last year it's a 10 and a half million dollar deficit. And more importantly, as we said earlier, it employs about 4 ,300 people at the height of its season each year. It's interesting. It's the largest employer of young people in the province, 52 %
Speaker: A P &E staff are under the ages of 21, and certainly thousands and thousands of kids have had their first jobs. East Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby kids have had their first job at the P &E, but 93 % of the full -time union staff has been laid off, and 50 % of the management team has also been laid off. And there's certainly talk in this motion about the long -term viability. Can the P &E actually survive without help?
Speaker: So what council did, which was kind of almost anticlimactic, is the motion said for the mayor to write some letters to the province and the feds, do some lobbying, ask for some rule bending, and I'd be surprised if that wasn't happening previously, but I guess they want to try to double down on it. They think
Speaker: Kennedy Stewart does a pretty good job at lobbying senior governments. There's a lot on the line here. There's the 4 ,300 workers we talked about. The P &E is 110 -year institution here in the lower mainland. And Vancouver taxpayers are on the hook here. We could be ultimately responsible for this deficit.
Speaker: It's kind of amazing. I mean, one of the areas where I've cycled a lot during the pandemic is up by the peony. And it's it's such a quiet, tranquil place now, except for people, you know, using the kind of park spaces on the outside of that. But it sounds like that was a long time getting on the radar for the city. It really was. And I don't know what I tried to find out what the delay was. And I don't know. It just was delay.
Speaker: Now you attended an online session just moving to a completely different area. You attended an online session called towards a more equitable housing system. Is Vancouver a city for renters event last week? Can you tell us about that Ian? Sure. This is part of the Vancouver planning process, which was supposed to be big, a big consultation with citizens developing
Speaker: a comprehensive plan for the city. The city's never had an official city plan. It's a whole bunch of quasi plans and policies and rezonings and all of that put together. But it's never had really a plan and a vision on what we want the city to look like over the next 20, 30, 40 years. So it's supposed to be big, but it's been really quite under the radar because of COVID and some budget cuts they've had to
Speaker: take on this. So this one was a pretty impressive online session with a whole number of impressive commentators to talk about renting in Vancouver. First up was a guy named Andy Yan, who's the director of city programs at Simon Fraser University. And he kind of gave us the overview of renters in Vancouver. 53 % of the people who live in Vancouver are renters.
Speaker: The highest number, as you would probably guess, are in Strathcona and Downtown Eastside and the West End. 81 % of the people who live there are renters. And the lowest, as you would probably guess, Dunbar at 22 % and Shaughnessy at 31%. 50 % of these renters earn less than $50 ,000 a year. So it's tight for more than 50 % of the people.
Speaker: And so what he did is he pointed out a really troubling trend that most of the rental housing being built now is being built with big tax breaks from taxpayers.
Speaker: given to private developers for renters who can afford market rent, which is not the 50 % who need it. In fact, only 11 % of the new renting buildings that are being built are for people earning less than a living wage, $19 .50. So barely 10%, even though that group who earn less than living wage are 40 % of the renters in Vancouver.
Speaker: Wow, those are some stunning numbers. What did the panelists think of that picture? Well, we had a real back and forth. It was interesting to watch. Some of them believe that any rental development is good. More supply stabilizes rent. At least that's the unproven theory. And certainly one of the champions of that, a guy named Evan Siddle, who's the president and CEO of Canada Mortgage and Housing
Speaker: He talked about being in charge of a $25 billion federal low interest financing plan for rental housing. They rent out money at great terms, but most of it goes to developers and much of it builds expensive market rental in return for small amounts of social housing. So although that's been some help in the market rental, it hasn't been a whole lot of help for this
Speaker: 40 % who are under living wage. Kasalem, a Squamish nation councillor, he's also a supply of building more housing no matter what the rent is. He actually thinks it'll stabilize. And he talked about the 6 ,000 units they're building beside the Burrard Street Bridge, which 90 % of those are going to be rental.
Speaker: And he's quite proud. He thinks that's going to pay the nation over the next 99 years. And he asked a simple question. Why don't governments build market rental? It pays off cost -wise and they're able to keep the land. A woman named Barbara Steinberger, who's with the International Union of Tenants, and she was calling in from Brussels, impressive, she had a different take on the whole thing. She said, you really need enforceable rental laws
Speaker: which put landlords and renters on equal footing. You can't have a good housing policy without some kind of enforceable rental laws. And you need to build this housing strategy on that kind of foundation. And the International Union of Tenants was really celebrating because just that day, the European Union had passed enforceable rental laws, promoting security of tenure, affordability,
Speaker: and the right to adequate housing. So that was a good thing for Europe. It hasn't come over here yet because a lot of owners vote in North America. Renters don't vote, at least at the same level. And so the whole idea of enforceable rental laws based on housing as a human right will be a struggle here for a long time, at least panelists thought. In the end, everybody seemed to agree that although Vancouver is a city of renters,
Speaker: It's not necessarily a city for renters, at least if you can afford it. Very thought provoking. I'm sure a lot of renters would agree with that. You've got three quick follow -ups on City Beat Stories that we've covered here on Red Eye in the last few weeks. Tell us about those. Yeah, it's always good. We do a whole lot of stories and sometimes I think we kind of lose them. So I thought I'd do a bit of a follow -up here. The first update is about the poor
Speaker: a very, very aggressive port of Vancouver expansion plan south of the Fraser. Richmond City Council voted 7 -2 back in the summer to oppose that big Roberts Bank port expansion that the feds are considering now. That's the one kind of north of the Ferry Terminal and their port is proposing to build a new terminal there about a third of the size of Stanley Park.
Speaker: by dumping, you know, megatons of fill on this migratory bird and fish habitat just there off the banks of the Fraser River. Now there's another proposed expansion of the port facilities in Delta. A company called Global Container Terminals Canada is proposing a 44 -hectare expansion. They want to put larger rail systems, a new barge, a berth there at the Delta port,
Speaker: And so Richmond's saying, look, man, you got to look at the cumulative effects of all of that you're putting down. Right now there's a jet fuel tank farm being built for the airport in Richmond, right on the Fraser, right across from that. And LNG export terminal is being considered. You've got the George Massey tunnel replacement project going on. And now you've got the proposed expansion. It's all happening on the Fraser and it's estuary.
Speaker: We'll keep you up to date on this one. Yeah, good one to keep our eyes on. The second story, last week we had an interview with Vancouver Board of Education Trustee, Jennifer Reddy. She had a motion before the school board that would stop any sales of parts of the school board lands. How did that turn out? Well, I did a quick interview with Trustee Reddy and she's pleased at least that this issue finally saw the light of day. Apparently it's been discussed
Speaker: in the back rooms and hasn't really come out into the public as a discussion. And the question is, what's been discussed is how can board raise the money to renovate the schools seismically? The province makes them put a fair amount of money into that. But the outcome of this whole motion wasn't what she hoped. The Green Party brought in an amendment that allows school sales to other public bodies, not to private developers, but to other public bodies like BC Hydro,
Speaker: or BC housing or indigenous nations. And they see this, greens see this as these kind of deals that give them a short -term infusion of cash to pay for the schools that are lining up to be seismically upgraded. The NPA backed the greens and this amended motion passed six to three. So Reddy's motion was watered down significantly.
Speaker: She really believes it doesn't address the issue of long term leases, which she wanted to talk about because she felt that there were a means to generate income in the long term and keep the school board property and school hands. But it didn't turn out that way. And the third follow up we want to talk about is the issue of Surrey City Council refusing to have territorial land acknowledgments at the beginning of their council meetings. What's happening now?
Speaker: Well, the issue hasn't gone away at all. It's actually heated up. This week, Grand Chief Stuart Phillip of the Union of B .C. Indian Chiefs wondered why Surrey would take issue with something like this. It's become the status quo at the highest levels of government across the nation. Surrey Board of Trade CEO Anita Huberman, who's no friend of Mayor Doug McCallum's, said acknowledging land is just the right thing to do.
Speaker: What's been lost in this is a bit of a context for the defeat of this motion, because in my mind, when I listened to the debate, it's really a partial political payback to Surrey city councilor, Jack Hundell. Hundell, who moved this original motion to have these land acknowledgments of council, in Surrey council, is a former RCMP officer and a big supporter of keeping the RCMP in Surrey. And that's certainly not Doug McCallum's vision.
Speaker: Late last year, it was revealed that one of the new Surrey police board members, Chief Harley Chappelle, who's the elected chief of the Semiamo First Nations, was photographed posing with two full -patch Hells Angels. Now, Chappelle has denied any association with the Hells Angels, but Councillor Hundell questioned the whole vetting process because the photo came up as a surprise to everybody.
Speaker: So when they were talking, when they were debating the land acknowledgement motion, one council member, and certainly wasn't contradicted, specifically mentioned that outing Chappelle with this Hell's Angels picture and really talked about is Hundell's acknowledgement motion inauthentic. Is he really just trying to make up? So what seems to be playing out here at least partially is political payback
Speaker: The defeating this motion is a political payback for besmirching the integrity of Mayor Doug McCallum's shiny new Surrey Police Board. So this whole lack of land acknowledgement is at least partially a victim of this mindless political fight with First Nations in the middle. Well, thanks for your City Beat report this week, Ian. Lots of food for thought in this week's report. Thank you.
Speaker: I've been speaking with Red Eye Collective member Ian Mass, who is here with his City Beat report. The Red Eye podcast is produced at the studios of Vancouver Co -op Radio. You can support us by supporting Co -op Radio. Go to coopradio .org and click on the donate button. Independent media relies on the support of people like you.
