Frankly Speaking

The shocking news that two masked men entered a Quebec City mosque Sunday night, killing six people and wounding another eight, is deeply disturbing. This shouldn't happen anywhere, but it seems particularly out of place in boring, peaceful Canada. It certainly proves that the events of the world as a whole can end up in our front yards when we least expect it. That this happened in Quebec is only slightly less surprising. Quebec is a peaceful and quiet province for the most part, although racial and religious intolerance was fanned several years ago by the former Parti Quebecois government under Pauline Marois. It tried to introduce a charter of Quebec values. Some of those moves were foolishly followed up by campaign statements by the Conservative Party under former prime minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 federal election. Interestingly, the only place in the country where the Conservatives gained seats in that election was in the Quebec City region. This shooting came at t...

Photo by Dan Ferguson/Langley Times The fire which destroyed a portion of the Paddington Station apartment block in Langley City on Dec. 11 has put even more pressure on the Langley rental market. More than 80 families will be out of their homes there for as long as two years. There has been a lot of focus on affordable housing in the past year, but much of the political attention and media coverage has focused on people who want to buy a home. Meanwhile, renters are facing many challenges, with some of the most significant ones coming at them in the next year or two. The skyrocketing price of real estate, which is reflected in the recent assessment notices, means that landlords will seek to boost rents as much as they are able to. Meanwhile, the supply of rental housing is not increasing at the level it should be in an area with steady economic growth and a growing population. This lack of supply also gives landlords another incentive to boost rents – they know they ca...

Portions of the twinned Trans Mountain pipeline have already been built. Whether the new pipeline will be built in the Lower Mainland of B.C. is still up in the air, largely due to court challenges filed by First Nations. The B.C. government’s recent approval of the Kinder Morgan proposal to twin the Trans Mountain oil pipeline doesn’t mean the pipeline will be built – but it is a significant step forward. The project now has the approval of the federal government and the provincial government, and Kinder Morgan has reached many deals with First Nations along the pipeline route. The existing pipeline crosses many First Nations reserves, and since it was built in 1953, First Nations have gained many more rights in relation to proposed resource projects and developments on traditional lands. If the project doesn’t go ahead, which is the outcome many B.C. residents fervently hope for, it will most likely falter over an unfavourable court decision. Several lawsuits are in th...

Assessments on Surrey homes rose dramatically, due to a red-hot real estate market in the first part of 2016. Assessments are based on the actual value of homes as of July 1, 2016. It is a rare occasion when the homeowners’ grant becomes a hot political issue, but it was shaping up to do so in the run-up to the May 9 provincial election - until today. The reason is that many Metro Vancouver home owners, including a substantial number in Delta, Surrey and Langley and an even higher percentage in high-demand areas like White Rock, South Surrey, Tsawwassen and Fort Langley, could have lost their homeowner grants due to soaring assessments. In many areas of the South Fraser region, assessments rose close to 40 per cent over the 2016 figures. Some homeowners saw their assessments rise by much higher amounts. On Tuesday morning, the provincial government eased that possibility. (In my own neighbourhood, assessments rose dramatically. Interestingly, on one side of the street, the...