One of the greatest side effects of the Olympics is the sleek and silent 26-minute marvel transporting passengers from YVR to downtown

Barbara Yaffe
Sun

It surely is an unusual occurrence to become besotted with a municipal infrastructure project.

But there you have it: I’m in love with the Canada Line.

While never particularly enthusiastic about Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics bid, I now believe the associated inconvenience, costs and even a few minor infringements on civil liberties will have been worth it — because, as a result, we were able to finance the sleek and silent 26-minute marvel that, since Aug. 17, has glided effortlessly from YVR to the downtown harbour.

The city that never had freeways within its limits now, at last, is possessed of the healthy pumping artery it has long needed through its core area, providing a robust 19.2-kilometre, 16-station rapid transit experience that rivals counterparts in Toronto and Montreal.

Our line arguably is more boast-worthy, featuring a link to an international airport; Vancouver is the first Canadian city to offer this convenience.

My initial Canada Line experience came last month when I set off from home to catch a transatlantic flight.

The journey to YVR, by bus and Canada Line, was effortless, saving me $22 over cab fare.

My second flirtation came during an October downpour, waiting too long for a regular bus. I hopped aboard an alternative which took me to the Oakridge Station.

I then zipped — yes, zipped — to the Waterfront terminus, discovering I’d shaved 15 minutes from my commute.

I was hooked.

More recently, I’ve come to appreciate the quiet of the ride — for some reason, passengers are less inclined to use cell- phones — and the complete cleanliness.

A transit official this week appeared on a train, requesting proof of tickets. Everyone complied.

After experiencing rapid transit in Paris and Rome where hideous graffiti is scrawled everywhere — on cars and between stations — the spotless grey Canada Line reveals an impressive civility.

It’s not surprising that just two months after its opening, the Canada Line is at 80-per-cent capacity — 82,000 passengers daily.

This augurs well for future stations, planned at West 33rd, West 57th and Sea Island.

While governments sometimes waste taxpayer dollars, this $2-billion project, four years in the building, shows off government expenditure and cooperation at its best.

The feds anted up $450 million, which arguably they might not have, had Vancouver not snared the Olympics.

B.C. kicked in $435 million and the city, $29 million.

Other contributors: YVR: $300 million, TransLink: $334 million and private partner InTransitBC, owned by SNC-Lavalin, the Investment Management Corporation of B.C., and the Caisse de Depot et Placements de Quebec: $750 million.

The Canada Line came in three months ahead of schedule and on budget, albeit hurting Cambie Street’s business owners.

If there’s a quibble, it’s that the stations, signage and South Korean-built cars are too plain, giving no sense of what sort of city Vancouver believes itself to be.

Subway lines can make valuable contributions to urban personalities.

Toronto, with clean and functional signage and stations, says “I am a clean, safe city.”

Paris, with its curly-Q wrought-iron “Metro” branding, flashes its style.

The Canada Line’s lack of charm results from the fact that “everything was cost-driven,” according to Mayor Gregor Robertson, who came to office confronting a big unanticipated tab for Olympic Village construction.

Once the Games conclude, Robertson should assign a task force to develop a civic-identity branding for the Canada Line, which is fast becoming a terrific source of pride for this city.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Small and medium firms must choose

Jim Middlemiss
Sun

As of Jan. 1, 2011, small and medium Canadian companies will have to decide what standard to use in reporting their financial statements.

They must choose whether to stick with Canadian Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) or adopt a global initiative known as the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS).

Publicly-traded companies don’t have an option: They will be required to use IFRS.

While 2011 might sound far away, it’s not. The real legwork for those who want to — or must — adopt IFRS will take place in 2010, say lawyers and accountants.

That’s when companies must start tinkering with their accounting systems and preparing to produce statements that meet the seal of approval created by the International Accounting Standards Committee and adopted by the International Accounting Standards Board in a bid to bring harmony to the world in financial reporting.

“The next six months is pretty crucial for a lot of private companies,” said Tahir Ayub, leader of the Alberta private company services practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“A lot of private companies who haven’t really thought about this should be talking to service providers to discuss which option best fits their circumstance.” Robert Young, a partner in KPMG’s national assurance and professional practice, said the changes will be noticeable.

“IFRS is going to be a more expansive accounting framework to maintain. There are more fair value measurements. It’s more complex and expensive to generate financial statements under IFRS. They are much more detailed than they are under private Canadian GAAP.” Whether or not a company should convert depends on who it does business with and who uses its financial statements, experts say.

“If you are doing business domestically only at this point in time, I don’t see any economic or business factors that would drive you to adopt IFRS,” Mr. Young said.

If you have operations across the globe or are doing business offshore, the standard provides “a common accounting language that is streamlined and makes it easier to assist you,” said Sal Bianco, a partner at PwC in Toronto.

“If you expect to be accessing capital from lenders other than in North America, there is a much stronger probability that the only accounting framework they will find suitable is IFRS,” Mr. Young said.

Adopting the standard may also be beneficial to firms that benchmark themselves against public companies or European or Asian companies, he added.

Simon Romano a lawyer at Stikeman Elliott in Toronto, said a company’s holdings should also be a consideration. Adopting IFRS now “may assist with the future sale of a business by a buyer who uses IFRS,” he said. It may also help if “you later go public.” Mr. Romano also noted that companies may be required to adopt IFRS if they want to continue doing business with lenders, customers, suppliers or credit parties that are adopting it.

But he warned that adopting IFRS is complex and companies will incur transitional costs.

Mr. Young agreed, adding that companies might need to renegotiate some contracts or bank covenants. For example, a company bonus plan for employees could be affected.

“Net income will probably be more volatile than under historic Canadian GAAP,” he said. “I would only go there if I perceive a business benefit of doing it.” In the end, the switch might be inevitable even for small businesses, Mr. Young said.

“In 10 years, I would expect that Canadian private companies will be using an accounting framework that is going to be a lot closer to IFRS than it is today.

How close, time will only tell.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

The land reserve is more about preserving real estate value than ensuring we have things to eat

Steve Lornie
Sun

As governments and citizens of the world endeavour to find ways to lessen our carbon footprint on the planet, there is a tendency to blur the distinction between local food supply as a carbon reduction strategy and that of local supply as a food security issue.

And while there is robust and informed debate on all sides of the carbon reduction issue, food security often gets superficial, though impassioned, treatment, but the signficance of the issue certainly warrants its own informed analysis.

Thanks to reduced protectionism, efficient transport, and competitive markets, Canadians have never had better food choices at lower costs than we do today.

The fact that (to quote Peter Ladner from Business in Vancouver) “the world’s supply of available food has shrunk from a year’s supply a couple of decades ago to five weeks today” shows just how efficient and balanced our free-market system has become.

No longer do we put food in tin cans to sit in a grocer’s warehouse for a year, or rely on turnips moldering in the root cellar.

Instead we can buy fresh food in January, grown in a local greenhouse, or produced by a farmer in a warmer climate.

Like Toyota with their “just-in-time” inventory, we food consumers have enjoyed the benefits of modern cost-effective production and efficient low-cost delivery.

We must stop pretending that “food security” is achieved by growing our own food.

It is not.

Food security is achieved when societies such as ours become wealthy, and it eludes those which do not.

True food security requires free and open markets, accessible by both consumers and producers wherever they may be.

We must also stop confusing the concepts of food security with food safety.

There are only two things these subjects have in common: Both are used by the left to attack free markets, and neither one is a problem worthy of more than our passing attention.

Serious food safety issues are rare, and food security is a cover for other issues (such as protectionism, rent-seeking, land-use issues, etc.) completely unrelated to food.

Those who indulge in an obsessive focus on food security should not ignore the harm it causes others, especially the young and the poor in this country.

One of the most damaging of the food security arguments is the one that supports the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).

This 35-year old legislation has less to do with food security than it has to do with protecting high real estate values and controlling growth in semi-urban areas.

It is a sacred cow that has managed to avoid serious examination.

One can speculate that the popularity of the ALR is due to the fact that 70 per cent of voters in the Lower Mainland are homeowners whose homes have been artificially inflated by the ALR-caused land scarcity.

The other 30 per cent of our citizens (predominately made up of young couples, single-income families, and new arrivals) have been priced out of home ownership, in a large part directly due to the ALR.

True food security comes from having many producers around the world supplying our needs, not from an artificial propping-up of inefficient and non-competitive at-home production.

Don’t slam the door on the struggling farmers of the Third World.

Let them play a role in our food security.

Open access to free markets and free trade is what keeps our food costs low and our supplies secure, not subsidies, tariffs, marketing boards, and poorly thought out land-use restrictions.

Steve Lornie is president of Stonecroft Management, a Vancouver construction management company.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Farmers, local politicians argue report is ideological and full of errors

Brian Lewis
Province

The right-wing Fraser Institute unveiled a shocker yesterday — any time your tummy rumbles and you satisfy that craving with locally produced food, you are contributing directly to B.C.’s high housing costs.

No kidding, the think-tank’s news release on its latest study didn’t mince words: “B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve a Costly Failure Responsible for the Most Expensive Housing Costs in North America.”

According to study author Diane Katz, not only has protecting B.C. farmland from housing and industrial development for the past 35 years triggered very high housing prices, but she says the whole idea of the benefits in producing food locally is a crock anyway.

“The policy failures of the Agricultural Land Reserve and its costly consequences supply ample justification to dismantle the program,” the author writes. “The restoration of property rights and economic freedom to B.C. landowners would have immediate and long-lasting benefits . . . Ultimately the preservation of farmland should be relegated to the private sector.”

As you can imagine, reaction to this study was predictably brisk and brutal in some quarters, and that’s not surprising, given the Fraser Institute ‘swell-earned reputation for never letting facts get in the way of its ideology.

Garnet Etsell, for example, simply laughed when first asked about the paper. He’s chairman of the Abbotsford-based B.C. Agricultural Council that represents the province’s food producers.

“I think there’s a lot of ideology talking in this report,” he said, while trying to suppress a chuckle.

“It says B.C. has the most strict agricultural land regulations in the country but we also have the most mountains and less than five per cent of our land mass is arable,” Etsell tells me.

“Agricultural land here is scarce and, if we don’t protect it, the land will be lost to development. While the Agricultural Land Commission isn’t perfect, we also know that building houses is easiest on farmland.”

Etsell also slams the paper’s views on locally produced food and points out that it conveniently ignores the fact that local producers, such as those in the Fraser Valley, also export just over half their total production.

The chairwoman of the Fraser Valley Regional District, Patricia Ross, wasn’t impressed, either.

“Sure there are some problems with the Agricultural Land Commission, but this study suggests we throw the baby out with the bath water,” she says. “It’s essential we keep the Agricultural Land Reserve, but it does need fixing so it’s less politicized.

“Don’t forget that the Fraser Valley has some of the richest and most productive farmland in the world.

“Unfortunately, this study makes an assumption that the housing market is more important than producing food — and that doesn’t make sense.”

And Rhonda Driediger, who owns the 64-hectare Driediger berry farm in Langley Township, also doesn’t buy the Fraser Institute argument.

“I think the Agricultural Land Reserve is doing what it was designed to do,” she says. “Of course consumers buy local and imported food but there’s a nice balance between the two.

“Nor is everything that’s produced locally consumed locally,” she adds. “I’m actually a net exporter.”

There you go, Fraser Institute — a little food for thought.

© Copyright (c) The Province