Dirty water flowing through Vancouver’s taps in the aftermath of recent flooding is likely costing the local economy millions of dollars, according to David Park, chief economist for the Vancouver Board of Trade.
The area has been getting back to normal since last weekend, though some residents and businesses still had to boil tapwater. The overall impact is likely to be small given Greater Vancouver’s overall gross domestic product of about $90 billion, Park said.
British Columbia plans to lure more foreign students and encourage them to stay to fill the province’s employment gap.
About a million new jobs are forecast over the next decade, while only about 650,000 people are expected to graduate from the province’s high schools, according to the Vancouver Sun. The province wants the national government to let graduates from abroad stay in the hope that they will help build trade, investment and cultural links with their native countries, helping make B.C. North America’s “Asia-Pacific gateway.”
Immigrants are behind one in five U.S. startups (and about 40 percent of tech startups), according to a study last week by the National Venture Capital Association. Post-Sept. 11 rules have made it more difficult to enter the U.S. and there is vocal opposition to allowing more people with technical skills.
Meanwhile, Vancouver already has one of the world’s highest rates of foreign-born population, according to a survey in The Economist. Current rules allow graduates to work for a year in Vancouver or two years in the rest of B.C. after school. Plans call for extending that to two years for the entire province.
Metropolitan sprawl and public attitudes are bottlenecks for the region’s ports, according to speaker after speaker at a conference on the region’s economy last Friday in Whistler, B.C.
In Vancouver, housing development is spreading over formerly open land outside the city, devouring space for port-related and industrial use and making it harder to develop transportation infrastructure. Highway 1, the main arterial to eastern Canada, is frequently clogged and comes nowhere near the ports, yet there’s plenty of opposition to plans to connect them.
Vancouver Port CEO Gordon Houston said the Vancouver area may need to set aside “industrial land reserves” similar to conservation areas designed to protect wilderness. He called for tax changes to take away the incentive to build housing on open land. Seattle’s port has tried to deal with a lack of space by siting distribution centers far from the waterfront.
A bigger problem is a lack of appreciation of the importance of the ports to the region’s economy, according to most speakers at the Pacific Northwest Economic Region conference. An official of the Dutch consulate claimed that residents of Rotterdam, Europe’s biggest port, are actually proud of their 600-year-old trading history. By contrast, in Washington, trade is said to account for one in five jobs but most residents don’t see the connection.
The ports themselves need to build support. Larry Ehl, an official of the Washington Dept. of Transportation, said they should cooperate with conservation groups on new projects rather than trying to resolve protests later. They should make the case, for example, that railroad-expansion projects could take pollution-causing trucks off the road.
Houston said he deals with 17 municipalities who border Vancouver port facilities. “The sentiment ranges from ‘Let’s work together and move forward’ to ‘When are you picking up and leaving — the sooner the better.’ That has to change.”
The Vancouver area was starting to recover Saturday from a crisis that threatened the city’s lifestyle and an entire industry: a lack of coffee. A letter in the Vancouver Sun called it the worst day in the city’s history.
About two million people were warned to boil their drinking water, after brown, murky water began flowing from the city’s taps following last week’s storms. The warning meant the city’s coffee shops couldn’t brew coffee drinks. Crisis peaked when a fight broke out at a Costco over a shortage of bottled water.
Apparently the dirty water was caused by extreme rainfall that flooded the city’s supply, which isn’t thoroughly treated. Many Vancouverites blamed the city’s decision years ago to allow logging inside its watershed.
Vancouver’s massive new convention center wants financial help, making it the latest project to seek a bailout from British Columbia taxpayers.
Backers haven’t said exactly how much they need, on top of the C$362 million the province has already committed for the 1.1 million-square-foot waterfront project. The bill would follow rising costs for the Olympics and transit projects.
Though the convention center would surely provide future economic benefit, the city is currently considering stifling tax increases now.
A recent poll found that 85 percent of Vancouver-area residents support expansion of the city’s aquarium in Stanley Park, a project that would boost a major tourist magnet in time for the 2010 Olympics.
The poll, which was sponsored by the aquarium, paints a sharp contrast with Seattle, where activists are hamstringing the Woodland Park Zoo’s plans to build a 700-car parking garage to accommodate current visitors. A planned expansion of Seattle’s aquarium — also a tourist attraction — is years away, pending rebuilding of the waterfront viaduct freeway.
Vancouver Aquarium plans a 50 percent expansion that would include adding more whales or dolphins. Construction is supposed to start next spring and would cost 32 trees.
British Columbia’s ruling party announced plans to cut income taxes in order to retain talent in the province. The announcement didn’t provide details on the timing or say how to pay for the cuts.
B.C. reportedly has Canada’s lowest provincial tax rates for people earning up to $67,500. But taxes on income between $67,500 and $150,000 rise to a high of 14.7 percent. Neighboring Alberta taxes that income level at a 10 percent rate — and has both the country’s lowest jobless rate and highest wages.
A group created by Premier Gordon Campbell, the B.C. Competition Council, has urged lowering taxes to 10.9 percent for those earning between $77,500 and $150,000. Others point out that the soaring cost of housing takes more bite of personal income than taxes and is calling on the ruling party to act.
Cascadia’s newspapers are reporting sharp drops in circulation and the Seattle papers claim they can’t survive unless one disappears. But maybe the newspaper business isn’t so bad after all.
The circulation of Vancouver’s two dailies fell to below the level they had in 1957, when they began a profit-sharing partnership, despite at least tripling of the area’s population, according to The Tyee. But the company that owns both papers — and TV stations and newspapers in Victoria and across the Canadian west — generates profit margins of more than 30 percent on some of its papers.
Meanwhile circulation at The Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer is dropping, partly by choice. The idea is to put the papers in front of readers who advertisers want to reach; once statewide papers are now mostly found in three counties. Still, each claims it can’t go on with the competition. On Monday an independent group asked a court to let it in on negotiations that would probably close one of the papers.
Vancouver’s airport, which aims to be a larger hub of traffic from around North America to Asia, is being held back by Canada’s restrictive air agreements.
For example, Singapore Airlines wants to add direct daily service between Vancouver and Singapore (in addition to its current service via Seoul), but can’t because of government rules, according to the Vancouver Sun. Instead it may have to add service to Seattle, which is covered by a U.S. treaty that allows unlimited flights to Singapore.
“We don’t want to do that, but that’s just the business reality,” an airline vice president told the paper. “We want to be here another 20 years, but if we’re still restricted to three times a week, where do we go to grow?”
One victim of looser rules would be Air Canada, which benefits from restrictions on premium foreign carriers. The article points out that Vancouver’s long-term advantages include room to expand and lack of visa hassles that hinder travelers going from Asia to Latin America through a U.S. airport.
There seems to be growing support for congestion pricing and tolls in the Vancouver area, according to reports of a public forum on the area’s transportation system this week.
Current plans call for a massive series of roads, railways and overpasses designed to speed port traffic. Several opponents of major road projects spoke at the forum sponsored by the Greater Vancouver Regional District. What’s surprising is that representatives from local chambers of commerce advocated tolls on bridges, and even the head of the B.C. trucking association reportedly wasn’t opposed to the idea.
The question appears to be whether a series of congestion pricing rules should be imposed around the metro area simultaneously or incrementally, according to this article. Urban planner Gordon Price predicted an overnight change in sentiment, where the region signs up a private partner to collect tolls and use the proceeds for transportation projects.
He was quoted like this on plans to move ahead with traditional fixes like expanding roads: “It’s almost heart-breaking in a city like this,” Price said. “We somehow have the resources, measured in the billions, to do what we know isn’t going to work in the long run, and fail to do that which we know does.”
