Public meetings start discussion of choosing a sustainable future

Randy Shore
Sun

Metro Vancouver has a hit a wall.

Boxed in by parks, watersheds, mountains, ocean and protected agricultural land, the region faces a very different kind of growth and home ownership — landless and compact.

Metro Vancouver, that layer of government known until recently as the Greater Vancouver Regional District, is embarking on an extensive round of public consultation on a plan for the city’s next phase of growth, a period that will see changes in how we live, where we work and how we will get from one to the other.

The new growth plan under development is the successor to the Livable Region Strategy that has been guiding municipal decision-makers for the past decade.

The growth strategy amounts to a shared vision of the region we would like to live in and is used by municipal planners and councils to shape their land-use planning and decide how they will compel or encourage builders to create compact, efficient town centres and to limit wasteful sprawl.

The physical transformation started 20 years ago, at a time when 75 per cent of new homes could be described as a house with a yard and a fence — the homes that most of us grew up in. Today, only 25 per cent of new homes fit that description, said Metro Vancouver regional development manager Christina DeMarco.

The combination of increasing residential density and traffic congestion has already begun to shape the area in more sustainable ways. When getting around is difficult it has a number of effects:

– People take transit more, 26 million transit trips per month.

– Businesses and retailers move out to suburbs where people live.

– Demand for affordable living spaces close to jobs goes up, giving rise to high-density in downtown Vancouver and around Burnaby‘s SkyTrain stations.

Even Surrey, the bad boy of suburban sprawl, is changing its ways, according Mayor Dianne Watts. The city is reaching the edge of buildable space for single-family residential development and has taken steps to preserve its undeveloped industrial land.

“The future is going to look very different,” Watts predicted. Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford and Coquitlam last month signed a sustainability accord in an attempt to ensure that the last raw land in the metro area is developed sensibly.

“Those high-growth communities need to produce 250,000 jobs between now and 2031,” Watts said. “We need to resist the pressure to turn those industrial lands over to residential development.”

But people still need places to live. In Surrey that means developing their own little Manhattan, a still mostly unbuilt city centre that Watts envisions as a forest of office and residential towers with commercial space at street level. Fifteen such towers are already under application, she says.

The former GVRD and its predecessor organizations have stuck to the vision of “cities in a sea of green” since the 1940s, SFU lecturer and five-term Vancouver city councillor Gordon Price said, and every growth strategy since that time has been an iteration of that basic concept. “It’s a good one.”

But driving long distances for work and play on a daily basis is no longer a viable lifestyle.

“Climate change is the gun to our heads,” said Price. “And I guess you could say that peak oil is too.”

The province’s Gateway plan is the spanner in Metro Vancouver’s sustainable growth machine, he said.

The planned freeway expansion and the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge is meant to reduce traffic congestion and speed the movement of goods in the region. But it could undo the greatest achievement of decades of planning, Price said.

Traffic congestion has helped spur job growth in the outlying municipalities and regional town centres. Transit use is high, people are choosing to live closer to work and car ownership is actually decreasing in the City of Vancouver. Metro Vancouver is the only Canadian city to achieve a reduction in the length of the average commute.

Watts argues that Gateway, which includes a perimeter road intended to move truck traffic off Surrey‘s urban arterials, is needed to accommodate the movement of goods from the port, the border and across the Fraser River. And she says that Surrey is committed to halting the kind of sprawl that critics fear will result from the freeway expansion.

That light rail and buses across the Fraser could be incorporated into the bridge plan makes Gateway more palatable, she says.

How the municipalities that make up Metro Vancouver move toward greater sustainability is the subject of a just-released 24-page document called Choosing a Sustainable Future for Metro Vancouver and it will all be up for discussion at a series of public meetings to be held around the region beginning today through Dec. 11.

The guide is available at www.gvrd.bc.ca/growth/strategy-review.htm.

How the region will absorb one million more people and generate 400,000 more jobs is the topic. Discuss.

SAY YOUR PIECE

Metro Vancouver‘s Growth Strategy Review tours the region.

PUBLIC MEETINGS

Burnaby/New Westminster
Nov. 14, 7 to 9 p.m.
Metro Vancouver head office,
4330 Kingsway, Burnaby

Vancouver
Nov. 19, 7 to 9 p.m.
Vancouver Public Library
350 West Georgia St.,
Vancouver

Pitt Meadows/Maple Ridge
Nov. 21, 7 to 9 p.m.
12150 – 224th St.
Maple Ridge

Northeast sector
Nov. 22, 7 to 9 p.m.
Port Coquitlam
Recreation Complex
2150 Wilson Ave.
Port Coquitlam

North Shore
Nov. 28, 7 to 9 p.m.
Harry Jerome Recreation Complex
123 E. 23rd St.,
North Vancouver

Richmond
Dec. 5, 7 to 9 p.m.
Richmond Cultural Centre
180-7700 Minoru Gate
Richmond

Surrey/Delta/White Rock
Dec. 6, 7 to 9 p.m.
Newton Rec. Centre
7120 – 136 B St.
Surrey

Langley
Dec. 11, 7 to 9 p.m.
George Preston Recreation Centre,
20699 – 42nd Ave.
Langley

Special meetings
(registration required)

Future of the Region Sustainability Dialogue
Nov. 28,
11:30 a.m. – 2 p.m.,
SFU Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue,
580 West Hastings St.
Vancouver

Sustainability Breakfast
Dec. 5, 7:30 – 9 a.m.
Canada Export Centre
602 West Hastings St.
Vancouver
Source: Metro Vancouver

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Tax treaty with U.S. could come into play as early as next year

Province

OTTAWA — Employees, private contractors and companies are facing some changes to rules relating to cross-border activity as early as next year, and at least one professional-services firm says it’s worth getting up to speed now on the changes, even if they don’t come into effect for another few years.

A new tax treaty that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty signed with the U.S. in September is to take effect in January. It could come into play as early as next year if the two governments get it passed through their legislative bodies by then, though meeting that timeline is unlikely at this point.

“Even though the protocol may not come into force for another year or two, [individuals and companies] have to get ready to start recording the information to become compliant with these rules,” said Kerry Gray, a partner with Ernst & Young’s human-capital practice.

Some of the new rules on the way may benefit workers and companies involved in cross-border activity, though others will add to the homework required and possibly result in more expenses.

Some cross-border workers will be able to save more on income taxes when it comes to rules concerning pension plans. For example, Canadians stationed in the U.S. for up to five years will be able to deduct RRSP contributions from U.S. tax returns.

The agreement is reciprocal in the sense that Americans working in Canada contributing to a U.S. plan will be able to do the same.

As well, cross-border commuters — such as Windsor, Ont., residents working in Detroit — contributing to a U.S. pension will be allowed, under the new rules, to deduct some of those contributions from their taxable income in Canada.

But on the other hand, workers based in Canada and paid by a Canadian employer can currently avoid paying U.S. income tax if they work less than 183 days in the U.S. during a calendar year. Under the new agreement, that will change to 183 days within a 12-month period.

“What it’s doing is it’s broadening the number of people that might be taxable in the other jurisdiction,” said Gray.

He added that companies, which avoid paying taxes in the neighbouring jurisdiction on projects that last less than 183 days in a calendar year will also have that allowance changed to within a 12-month period. But Gray said this requirement will not kick in until the third year of the agreement.

Independent contractors who do work in the neighbouring country, who get more than 50 per cent of their revenue in the other country, are facing a similar change in the 183-day rule before taxation requirements in the neighbouring country kick in, Gray said.

Gray said Ernst & Young is making an effort to inform affected parties of the coming changes because it represents potential business growth in the firm’s global-mobility unit and its affiliated law practice in the area of business immigration.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

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Province

Name: Tania Tompson

Business: Rover’s Makeovers Mobile Pet Grooming, Vancouver

Contact: 778-834-3649; www.roversmakeovers.com

Number of employees: One

Time in business: Four years

What is your business? I have a mobile pet-grooming business across the North Shore, Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster. I provide all services from a simple bath and blow dry, nail trimming and ear cleaning to full pet styling. I bring all my own equipment and set up in my clients’ homes, then clean up everything. I even bring my own vacuum cleaner.

How did you get started? I was working at a doggie daycare and the owner had a mobile pet-grooming service come to bathe his dogs. After a couple of years, I called and asked the groomer if she would train me. I worked in the van for five years, then the business closed. When I was calling clients to tell them the service was closing, they begged me not to go away — it’s kind of like having a hairdresser you like decide to leave town.

Are the dogs happy to see you? Some of them run, but most of them are torn — they want to hang out with me, get the pats and attention, but as soon as I start heading for the bathroom, they head for the back door. But they know the routine — they recognize the different steps and they get really happy when we’re almost done. They are much more relaxed being in their own home.

What do you like best? I get to spend my time with dogs, and the people I spend time with are dog people.

Hardest learned lesson? Pace yourself. I spent years working 10- and 12-hour days trying to help everyone I could, but you can’t keep it up. It becomes work and your passion for it goes out the window.

Future plans? Just keeping going. The good thing about this business is, there’s always another dirty dog.

© The Vancouver Province 2007