Frankly Speaking

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...

Photo from @jwaldag Twitter account Ziggy Eckardt shows the massive ballot which German voters, who have proportional representation, have to fill out. He used it as a show-stopping visual aid at a town hall meeting on electoral reform in Cloverdale on Tuesday night. Eckardt has been active with the Conservative Party in Burnaby. It was fascinating to attend Cloverdale-Langley City MP John Aldag's town hall on electoral reform Tuesday night. The timing was questionable. Coming in the midst of the summer, when many people are away on vacation, and one day after a long weekend, it seemed very likely that it would be poorly-attended. Such was not the case. There were at least 130 people there, and several hundred more took part via Periscope and Twitter. The federal Liberals campaigned last year on changing the way Canadians elect MPs. Justin Trudeau declared that 2015 would be the last time MPs would be elected using the First Past the Post (FPTP) system. He said so when it s...

This photo of the original Port Mann Bridge, built in 1964, was taken by Stephen Rees in 2011. The photo is looking towards the Surrey side of the river. This was written for the 125th anniversary edition of The Chilliwack Progress , B.C.'s oldest continually-published community newspaper. It began operations in 1891. Chilliwack and the entire Lower Mainland began a period of transformative change when Highway 401 (now Highway 1, "the freeway") was officially opened in 1964. The changes related to the opening of that highway continue today. The anniversary edition of The Progress was published on April 29, and can be found here . Unfortunately, it did not have enough room for this article. Chilliwack was drawn irrevocably closer to Vancouver when the four-lane freeway, known at the time as the 401 Highway, was officially opened on June 12, 1964. “At $90 million, this was the most expensive piece of highway in Canada,” said Premier W.A.C. Bennett at the ...

B.C. Government photo The W.R. Bennett Bridge over Okanagan Lake at Kelowna is one of the few reminders of the 11-year reign of Bill Bennett as B.C. premier, from 1975-86. He died in Kelowna on Thursday at the age of 83. Bill Bennett, premier of B.C. from 1975 to 1986, died on Thursday after years of battling Alzheimer's disease. He was one of the most significant premiers of the 20th century in B.C., and he, along with his NDP predecessor Dave Barrett, brought B.C. into the modern era. Bill Bennett was a reluctant politician, at least at first. He was recruited in 1973 to run for the seat his father W.A.C. Bennett, B.C. premier for 20 years, vacated after losing to Barrett in the 1972 provincial election. The South Okanagan seat was a Social Credit bastion, but even before he said he would seek the seat, Bennett was under terrific pressure to take over as Social Credit leader. He had no political experience and had shown little interest in politics until that time. Bill B...