Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts’ strategy of using financial incentives and tax holidays to lure developers and entrepreneurs has been so successful that she’s extending them for another year.
Watts’ municipality is already the lowest business tax jurisdiction in Metro Vancouver.
In March 2009, Watts told developers that they had to break ground by the end of 2010 to qualify for new tax incentives. She is asking council to extend the perks until the end of 2011.
April 6-12
When Rick Doman sold his house last week, it marked the final curtain call for a prominent B.C. forest industry family. A few days later, Doman would announce his company’s near-$120 million deal to buy five sawmills from Domtar Corp. in Eastern Canada.
The acquisition means Doman, son of the late Herb Doman, will move his Vancouver-based EACOM Timber Corp. to Montreal.
He leaves behind bad memories connected with the collapse of his family’s once- billion-dollar forestry empire. “I had to watch the whole industry disintegrate,” Doman told BIV regarding his family’s ouster from Doman Industries Ltd.
April 6-12
New Westminster wants developers to build a high-density residential tower in tandem with the city’s proposed $35 million civic centre.
“This will be a landmark civic building for us,” said Lisa Spitale, New Westminster’s director of development services.
At a cost of approximately $4 million, the city recently expropriated several parcels of land for the project and has earmarked gaming revenue from casinos to pay for the civic centre.
Spitale said the civic centre could be anywhere from 50,000 to 70,000 square feet and contain a theatre, conference and convention spaces and other elements.
April 13-19
B.C.’s Health Services minister is threatening “unilateral action” to chop pharmacy costs in the province.
Kevin Falcon told BIV that if he can’t reach a solution with B.C. pharmacy executives and association heads, he’ll trim provincial health-care spending.
The move could result in a reduction in pharmacy’s main source of revenue – so-called “professional allowances.”
Generic drug companies pay pharmacists the allowances based on a percentage of the drugs’ total purchase price.
Falcon’s counterpart in Ontario, Health Minister Deb Matthews, announced on April 7 that her government will introduce a law that will halve the allowances.
Ontario generic drugs currently cost roughly 50% of what their brand-name counterparts cost.
April 13-19
The fate of Vancouver’s cruise ship industry is in the hands of the Alaska state government as it considers legislation to reduce its controversial cruise ship passenger head tax, which has been blamed for torpedoing the Alaska cruise market.
According to Greg Wirtz, manager of trade development for Port Metro Vancouver, Vancouver faces an “unprecedented” decline in passenger volumes this year as a result of higher costs and increasingly price-sensitive American travellers. He confirmed that passenger volumes are expected to drop to about 600,000 this season from around 900,000 in 2009.
April 20-26
Richmond-based pulp and paper producer Catalyst Paper Corp. has cut a deal with the City of Powell River whereby Catalyst will treat the city’s liquid waste and biosolids in exchange for lower property taxes.
Powell River has agreed that Catalyst’s annual property tax bill will not exceed $2.25 million for five years.
The solution reflects Catalyst’s demand for significantly lower property taxes in four coastal B.C. communities where it operates mills.
April 20-26
Northeast B.C.’s boom-bust markets are eyeing a boost from the news last week that the Site C dam project would be moving to the next stage of approvals.
Talk of the power project has been rife for years, and while flooding a vast swath of countryside is more suspect than in the 1960s when former premier W.A.C. Bennett envisioned five dams along the Peace River, the project is seen as a potential driver of the North’s resource-oriented economy.
The two-year approval process B.C. is undertaking promises to spur speculative activity, say brokers in Fort St. John and Dawson Creek.
April 27-May 3
More than a dozen flight schools and regional air operators along with the Air Transport Association of Canada are seeking compensation from the federal government for business lost because of Olympic security concerns that restricted airspace movements in the region.
The result of those restrictions: revenue for some operators nosedived as much as 80% compared with the same period in previous years.
But Ottawa has thus far turned a deaf ear to the request as various federal ministries point fingers at each other over who should pay.
Preliminary estimates indicate that collective losses could total more than $7 million.
April 27-May 3
The Musqueam Indian Band has filed a lawsuit against the City of Richmond over the sale of the 136-acre Garden City lands in the agricultural land reserve. The Musqueam, which sold the lands to the city for $59.17 million in March, claims it accepted the city’s offer under duress.
The band also claims the sale price was significantly less than the value of the lands were they to be developed according to an MOU the Musqueam signed in 2005 with the city, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Canada Lands Co. CLC Ltd.
April 27-May 3