Sun

German carmaker BMW and the Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat and Flos have collaborated in commissioning a unique sculpture called “The Dwelling Lab”.

The resulting auto-art was produced by Patricia Urquiola, award-winning Spanish designer and architect, creator of what has been described as sensual and compelling furniture, and Giulio Ridolfo, a distinguished Italian designer and colour expert with a strong background in design, fashion and accessories.

The BMW 5 Series Gran Turismo, designed by the team of BMW Group Design Director Adrian van Hooydonk, brought together elements that are part sedan, part sport activity vehicle, part coupe for the exterior design, while creating an interior that is intended to be as luxurious as it is modern and functional. Urquiola and Ridolfo then translated this concept into a design sculpture featuring huge cone-like structures that seem to be growing out of the car’s body, drawing the viewer inward just as they reveal the usually sealed-off interior to the outside gaze. Urquiola describes her inspiration for the design: “Usually we perceive cars from the outside, and then the inside follows. However, our direct interaction is with the inside: it is the core that protects and comforts us, the space in direct contact with our bodies and our functions and needs in the process of travelling. I investigated this interface and tried to understand the possible evolution as a softer, dwelling experience.”

The colour concept for the four geometrical structures -frames with stretched fabric by Kvadrat -was created by Giulio Ridolfo. They seem to grow out of the car’s body like huge loudspeakers, beckoning onlookers to come closer and peer inside. For Giulio Ridolfo colour is more than a “colourful” selection -neither random nor simply decoration -but, rather, a form of applied art. After he selects a tone, he examines many similar shades until he has narrowed it down to one.

He explained further: ‘To enhance the spirit of the BMW 5 Series Gran Turismo, we have integrated several unexpected details and accessories to create sensory experience and a mood of leisure and gentle surprise. Textile is the fundamental material: the geometrical cones are coated with 700 metres of Kvadrat’s “Max” in an special designed colour, and the car’s interior are upholstered with various other Kvadrat fabrics.’

The design installation “The Dwelling Lab” is on show at the shared Kvadrat / Flos Showroom, in Milan.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Vaughn Palmer
Sun

One year after Premier Gordon Campbell won a third term by promising to make the economy the No. 1 priority, he can point to some encouraging news on that front.

“B. C. and Ontario will lead all other provinces in economic growth this year,” the Conference Board of Canada reported Monday.

“The economic impact of the Olympics will add roughly 0.7 percentage points to the province’s bottom-line growth this year. But it is the vast improvement in the forestry, manufacturing and construction sectors that will solidify the economic recovery.”

Almost simultaneously comes news that for the first time in four years, U.S. lumber prices have recovered sufficiently to eliminate the export tax penalty on shipments from Canada.

The recovery in forestry, like other sectors, is expected to vary widely across the province, nor is it sure to last. Sporadic and iffy would be more like it. Still, the evidence to date supports the narrative that Campbell offered to voters a year ago.

“The most important election in a generation,” he called it. “On May 12 you will choose whether to build confidence in B.C. that will provide more opportunities for our citizens, or whether to choose an Opposition that will destabilize our economy and cost jobs in every region of the province.”

Campbell thus seized on the one issue that the opinion polls had consistently identified as his strongest suit in running against the New Democratic Party. Moreover, by the end of a losing campaign, NDP leader Carole James came to agree with the B.C. Liberal leader about the deciding factor.

“I think it’s clear the economy was an issue,” she told reporters as the votes were still being counted on election night. “People felt they wanted someone with experience who had been in the premier’s chair already. I think that’s very clear.”

So Campbell won an election on the question of who could best preside over the economy. A year later, B.C. is poised to lead the country in economic growth. And if that were all that counted in the intervening 12 months, the premier ought to be on top of the world, never mind the opinion polls.

Except, of course, it hasn’t worked out that way.

One year after the election, the B.C. Liberals are racking up their worst polling numbers in years, the New Democrats their best.

Most astonishing of all, the 2010 Winter Olympics, far from generating the anticipated multibillion-dollars‘ worth of good news for the premier, appears to have had zero impact on his political fortunes.

Campbell waved the flag at every opportunity, wore his mittens everywhere, shouted himself hoarse, and nevertheless emerged from the Games spotlight with some of the most wretched leadership ratings in a generation.

In the most recent Angus Reid survey, respondents branded him as arrogant (72 per cent), secretive (56 per cent), dishonest (55 per cent), and uncaring (51 per cent). ( “But other than that, how did you like the premier?” one wanted to ask the panel as a followup).

Not much doubt about what placed him on this apparent road to ruin. Scandals, program cuts, an electorate grown weary of an overbearing leadership style are among the signposts. But the turning point was the decision, announced just weeks after the election, to reverse B.C.’s long-standing opposition to harmonizing the provincial sales tax with its federal counterpart.

The surprise change of direction — a sneak attack on the electorate, no less — set in motion a taxpayer revolt that is still growing in strength.

Witness the announcement Monday from organizers of the anti-HST petition drive. After just five weeks, they are already claiming to have gathered the signatures of some 400,000 British Columbians. If all those names check out, it would be half as many people as voted Liberal in the last election.

Increasingly, the petition drive has been personalized into an attack on Campbell’s continued leadership of the province. The leader of the anti-HST campaign, Bill Vander Zalm, made that explicit when asked what would be the next step if the government doesn’t back off the HST.

Recall, he replied, but recall aimed at vacating the seat of a single member of the legislature. “The member for Vancouver-Point Grey,” meaning Campbell himself.

Intriguing. The New Democrats have talked about recalling enough Liberals to strip the governing party of its legislative majority and forcing an election that would bring the NDP to power.

Vander Zalm suggests more of a targeted approach. No need to risk opening the door to an NDP administration at this point. Rather, recall Campbell, then see if the other Liberals, once freed of the heavy hand of his leadership, would execute a change of direction on their own.

Pure mischief on the part of the former premier, to be sure.

But given the growing mood of discontent over Campbell in the governing party, I expect some Liberals might support the idea of recall, providing it were confined to a surgical strike on the premier and party leader.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Unlike other gangs, the thieves who want to rip off your debit card information prefer to keep a low profile.

Matthew Claxton, Langley Advance
Sun

They’re organized criminals, but they don’t tattoo gang names on their bodies, they don’t wear colours, and they don’t come up with snappy names.

Cst. Steven Kuan of the economic crime section of Langley’s RCMP spends his time tracking the gangs who want to steal the data from your debit card and empty your bank account.

“We’re finding very organized crime groups behind it,” Kuan said.

Langley officers recently arrested a man from Montreal who had withdrawn money at four local banks. He was carrying numerous blank cards, each one labelled with a PIN number and a serial number.

The man was on his cellphone when police caught up with him.

Within hours, all the fake debit cards had been duplicated and were being used to withdraw money from other cash machines across the country, Kuan said.

Kuan said criminals have spent the past several years improving their techniques for ripping off Interac and similar card systems.

The scam begins with a stolen or purchased PIN pad, the sort used in countless businesses. The crooks will take them apart and add their own components.

The device still works, but it also records the magnetic strips of your card, along with your personal identification number.

A member of the organization will enter a restaurant or store, usually close to closing time, and while the clerk isn’t looking, they will swap out the store’s PIN pad for their own modified version.

“Now it’s a full-fledged skimming operation,” Kuan said. If the store’s employees don’t notice the swap, they’ll continue to swipe every card through the machine.

In the past, the criminals would leave their machine in place for about a month, then steal it back to get at the PIN data.

Now, they don’t ever have to touch it again.

“They now have wireless chips installed,” Kuan said.

A crook will approach with a Bluetooth-equipped PDA or computer and simply download all the stolen numbers.

Next, the organizers of the gangs will make up new cards with the same information, and send out their low-level runners to extract cash from ATMs.

“These guys are just recruited on the street,” said Kuan.

The organizers use some unusual methods to control their runners. In some cases, the organizers co-ordinate a spree of debit fraud by giving the runners small safes packed with debit cards. At the appointed hour, the runners are sent a text message with the safe’s combination. They open it and set off to get as much cash as possible, moving from bank machine to bank machine.

The runners must keep the cash and receipts from the ATMs they hit, Kuan said.

While police haven’t had any reports of violence in these groups, it’s possible that violence is used to keep the runners from ripping off the organizers, Kuan said. A runner beaten for skimming money wouldn’t come forward to police.

Some of those arrested have police records for violence, although not linked to the skimming operations.

At least three separate groups are operating right now in Canada, with between three and 30 people involved at any one time. Many seem to be based out of Montreal, but the criminals will fly their whole gangs around the country, ripping off small towns and big cities alike.

Unlike a drug-running gang member, most of the debit scammers have a fairly high level of education and are skilled with computers and electronics.

While they could get legitimate jobs, they find crime more lucrative.

The best way to protect yourself against the PIN-thieving gangs is to change your PIN on a regular basis, Kuan noted.

For businesses, the RCMP is running programs such as Project Protect, which involves training employees to check the serial number on their PIN pads after stores close.

© Copyright (c) Lower Mainland Publishing

After nearly 40 years, the iconic band still gets a rush from fans’ energy, Don Henley says

Graeme McRanor
Sun

Where: GM Place/Pacific ColiseumWhen: Sunday, Monday at GM Place/ Friday at Pacific Coliseum

—

Few working bands can conjure up time and place quite like the Eagles. And with a back catalogue that includes hits Life in the Fast Lane, Hotel California, Witchy Women, Take It Easy, Desperado and One of These Nights, there’s little doubt that the band’s best work is behind them.

“I had hoped that we could go for two more years and reach the 40-year milestone,” singer-songwriter Don Henley told The Vancouver Sun in an exclusive interview. “But it’s looking more and more like the end of the trail is imminent.”

Henley has eaten his words in the past. He once famously quipped post-breakup in 1980 that the Eagles would reunite “when hell freezes over.” Fans will remember the band’s 1994 reunion tour and live album, fittingly called Hell Freezes Over. Still, with the key members of the group now in their early 60s (the band is collectively 247 years old), this tour will surely be the Eagles’ final flight.

It’s a ride that, starting in the early 1970s when the Eagles first became birds of a feather as a band, hasn’t always been smooth. Like Life in the Fast Lane, there was turbulence along the way, not much noticed by an increasingly hooked fan base.

“We weren’t the Stones, but we weren’t the Osmonds either,” founding member Glenn Frey told 60 Minutes in November 2007 after the release of Long Road Out of Eden, the band’s first all-original studio album since 1979. “Closer to the Stones than the Osmonds.”

Yet, save for the band’s breakup, that self-described “14-year vacation” from 1980 to 1994, internal power struggles and some well-publicized controversy with former member Don Felder — he was fired, subsequently sued Henley and Frey, they countersued, then Felder wrote a tell-all book called Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles — the band has endured.

So, too, has the music. “Every time we play a concert, we are reminded of how much these songs mean to people,” says Henley. “Some of this material has held up for almost 40 years, and obviously we feel good about that and we’re grateful.

“It’s very satisfying, I think, for any artist who has created a body of work to see that work become a part of the culture. For us, the songs have always been first and foremost; the rest of the backwash from success is a side-effect that we don’t much care for.

“We don’t actively seek publicity, and basically live quiet, low-profile lives. We’re not in the tabloids and rarely in the music magazines. It’s always been primarily about the songs — the writing, recording and performing — and our fans know that we make an effort.”

So kudos to the boys — the current lineup is Frey, Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit -for touring on a new album. With its legendary status, the band could easily have coasted into the sunset playing best-of concerts for the sentimental set.

Fair to say, though, that this tour, which officially kicked off in 2008, still leans heavily on the hits. The lengthy, two-act set list (three hours, according to Henley) also includes Henley’s seminal solo hits Dirty Laundry, Boys of Summer and All She Wants to Do Is Dance. (Though cheesy soundtrack aficionados will be left with hanging heads, as Glenn Frey’s ’80s solo hit, The Heat Is On, from the film Beverly Hills Cop, is mercifully not on the to-do list).

“It remains important to all of us to include several of the tracks from the Long Road Out of Eden album in the show, plus a couple of other songs that we don’t normally do,” said Henley. “We put some thought into the set list and came up with what we think is a good balance of old and new stuff.”

All of which will be played with vigour by a band that Henley says is much better today than the original version. Though one thing hasn’t changed: the pleasure the group gets from playing for an audience.

“The songs move the fans, the fans give us their energy, and we give it back to them,” he said. “It’s a beautiful, symbiotic relationship.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Students imagine the historic Chinatown

Claudia Kwan
Sun

When, last fall, Bob Rennie formally reopened the 120-year-old Wing Sang building in Vancouver’s Chinatown, as the corporate office for his real estate companies’ and a gallery for his art, Jonah Lee-McNamee and his mom were among the guests at the Saturday evening gala.

The building, accordingly, was an easy choice when 12-year-old Jonah selected a school project for entry in the 2010 B.C. Historical Fair.

“I got interested because my mom [broadcaster Mi-Jung Lee] got invited to the opening and took me,” Jonah says. “I’m glad it was saved instead of being torn down. I like the mix of modern architecture and design with the old parts.”

He researched the building with traditional and new-age methods. He and Lee walked around the building, he taking notes, she shooting photographs. He also used Facebook to find descendants of Yip Sang, the builder and his four wives and 23 children who resided in the building.

“I interviewed (descendent) Mel Yip, who said each wife had her own floor in the six-storey building in the back, and they were exactly the same,” Jonah reports.

“Over the years hundreds of people lived there, and there were schedules for everything — going to the classroom, even going to the bathroom!”

This year, the historical fair’s Vancouver competitors participated in a workshop with students from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

The Emily Carr students had also taken on a Chinatown project. The artwork they created for that project is on display until the end of May in the City of Vancouver Archives in Vanier Park.

The exhibit is called Chinatown Past Present and Future and is sponsored by the city archives, ECU, the heritage fair and the Canadian Society for Asian Arts.

The ECU students’ teacher and the exhibit’s co-curator, Sheila Hall, says she wanted the students to get out and experience the sights and sounds and smells of Chinatown rather than only doing research online or in a library.

“It’s a project to connect with the community,” she says. “It’s about learning that you’re part of a city or community that exists together, and you have to investigate that in your work.”

Claire Robinson’s work is a pair of poppy-red ladies shoes atop two grey paving stones, which themselves sandwich a historical photo under a glass block.

She hopes it invokes the glass and cement sidewalk in front of the Sam Kee building. It’s the narrowest building in the world.

“I called the work Defiance because the owners had protested paying fees to the City of Vancouver,” says Robinson.

The building’s six-foot depth came from a dispute where the city expropriated land for street-widening, without compensating owner Chang Toy. He went ahead and used the remaining strip of land anyway.

The glass sidewalk covers an underground space that historically was believed to have been a tunnel for users of opium dens to escape police raids.

The site also had bathhouses, which were believed to be linked to prostitution.

In later years, there were shoe repair stands outside, as depicted in a photo dating back to 1936.

Robinson incorporated all of those possibilities in her project.

“The cement and glass are meant to look like the narrow building. The red ribbon on the shoes was tied to look like poppies, as a reference to opium,” she explains.

“The copper and steel on the heels are because of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which is why a lot of the immigrants came here from China.”

Robinson has gained a lot of respect for that cultural and historical legacy.

“The community in Chinatown has embraced everything new, without forgetting the past. They stand strong no matter what happens, while sharing their history,” she says.

Dawei Wang came to Canada from Shanghai in 2007. He knew very little about early Chinese immigrants and their experiences in B.C.

“When I immigrated, I was given a booklet from SUCCESS (an organization that helps new Canadians),” says Wang. “I had no idea Chinese Benevolent Associations had existed for so long here.”

His project, a drawing of the CBA building at 104 –108 East Pender, looks at a timeline of business activities in the building, and how the benevolent associations helped mediate conflicts and advocate for equal rights for Chinese-Canadians. For many years, the proprietors of a silk business lived upstairs.

“I want to tell people how much of a story can happen between two brick walls,” he says simply.

Hall, the instructor, seems pleased by the results.

“This is about engaging with the area, not just going down there to buy something,” she says.

“The students have begun to do that investigation, and I hope visitors [to the exhibit] can learn they can do this too.”

It’s a lesson Jonah Lee-McNamee has already learned at a young age. Now he’s waiting to see what grade he’ll get on his project.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Claudia Kwan
Sun

Stephanie Yuen remembers well the bustling streets of Chinatown 35 years ago where pedestrians stood elbow to elbow on Pender Street, shoppers jockeyed for position to get the best fish, fruit and buns and the click click of abacus beads calculating prices.

“Now, it’s definitely slowed down during the day,” the food writer and Vancouver Sun contributor says. “Some of the empty stores have been closed for more than a decade. We’ve lost a lot of variety in businesses.”

Chinatown‘s future worries many people.

Its original residential purpose is much diminished, with the descendants of the original residents and new immigrants residing in the suburbs. As a residential neighbourhood, it is a community of older men and women.

Its retail purpose, too, is slipping away. The heavy competition from the businesses that serve them and relatively high property taxes and rents have made it hard for Chinatown’s stores to survive.

Andrew Yan, an urban planner at Bing Thom Architects, says he’s shocked by the level of poverty he’s seeing in the population of Chinese seniors.

“I saw an old lady take a rice box right out of the garbage and start eating from it,” he says. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Chinese seniors are a common sight in the lineups at neighbourhood soup kitchens.

Yan thinks Chinatown is struggling because it hasn’t diversified enough to deal with the drastic reduction in industrial and manufacturing jobs. Shifting its focus to tourism and retail isn’t enough, Yan says.

“We need to reintroduce an economic foundation for this area,” Yan believes. “We need to encourage young entrepreneurs, craftspeople, artists to come in.

“We need to use all of the buildings -after they’re modernized -not just the first floors.”

He says governments might have to give tax breaks to attract entrepreneurs to the neighbourhood.

Linton Chokie also thinks new blood is essential for the area. He’s the secretary and events director for the Vancouver chapter of the North American Association of Asian Professionals.

“I think we need to maintain development that caters to youth, with art, culture and food,” he says. “Chinatown is viewed as a historical place. We need to create the future with innovative socially responsible businesses where young people can start a career.”

For her part, Yuen would like to see more traditional restaurants that offer a wider range of regional Chinese cuisine. That could include Xinjiang lamb, Shanghai-nese juicy dumplings, and Hong Kong-style jalapeno garlic Dungeness crab -all concentrated in one area to give people the flavours of China.

But bringing a lot of new residents and businesses in means the very real possibility they won’t be Chinese. Would it still be Chinatown if the population base shifted significantly?

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Don Cayo
Sun

I’ve been travelling for most of a month, and had a lot to catch up on when I got home. Reading the pronouncements from critics of the harmonized sales tax (and they are legion), I’ve been struck by how much they say against this tax plan and how little they say about how the B.C. government ought to raise revenue instead.

I didn’t need much persuading, but a thoughtful piece by Jonathan Kesselman, a clear-eyed and even-handed tax guru at Simon Fraser University, convinced me that the status quo — the current PST — isn’t worth fighting to retain.

It is well documented that this kind of tax stifles economic growth, and this particular tax is rife with ambiguities and inequities that result from a complicated web of exemptions and exceptions. (For example, my shirt would be PST-exempt if I lied when I bought it and said it was for a teen. Or I could get a provincial tax break on a red raincoat, but not a yellow one. And on and on …)

And even though I’m somewhat persuaded by those who argue we are taxed too much, I can’t ignore that there have been substantial tax cuts both provincially and federally in recent years. My colleague Craig McInnes made an interesting case last week that the real tax burden — as measured by how much discretionary income we have left after paying the unavoidable bills — has gone down, not up, over recent decades.

Bill Vander Zalm, the self-styled knight in shining armour who’s leading the anti-HST charge and a former premier who knows a lot about spending money, acknowledges that the government needs sales tax revenue.

“British Columbia could easily make the provincial sales tax work the same way as a value-added tax,” he wrote in a letter to the editor last week. “It could apply it to all goods and services.”

In other words, B.C. could have its own GST. (This might not be a bad idea, except that it would be dumb to administer and collect the tax independently of the feds. Two bureaucracies to do the work of one, which is what we have now, is not a step forward.)

Still, efficiency aside, Vander Zalm seems to have come around to the mainstream economists’ view that a value-added tax is better than our old PST.

Yet in what follows the snippet I’ve cited, he strays into Fantasy Gardens.

He wrote not only that the B.C. government could apply its own VAT tax to all goods and services, but also “reduce it to three or four per cent and provide input tax credits to business. It would then be essentially revenue-neutral for government and consumers, and business wouldn’t pay — a win-win-win situation.”

If only that were possible, tax policy would be so easy. But if business inputs are exempt — as they would be under both the HST and the Vander Zalm idea — then somebody (you and me and about four million other consumers) must make up the difference. And that won’t happen — indeed, government revenues would take a major hit — if there is, as the former premier proposes, a three-or four-point drop in the province’s VAT rate.

I personally favour the HST not only because it’s more efficient and fair than the clunky system we have now, but also precisely because it reduces business costs. I don’t own a business and I don’t plan to, but I do expect to see more business activity — and hence more jobs and prosperity — as a result of this tax shift.

I also know the extra strain that the HST will put on my personal budget won’t be excessive — about $200 a year, by my calculation — thanks to a simultaneous income tax cut and prospective savings as business costs decline.

I do have concerns about both the terrible hit the HST will add to the cost of many new homes, and the sneaky way the provincial government is using a nose-stretching loophole to gouge people who park in downtown Vancouver. But these are details that can be fixed, not inherent flaws in the tax method.

I don’t expect all readers to agree. But if you write to tell me I’m wrong, I’m interested in hearing just how you think the provincial government should raise the money it now gets from the PST, and why you think your idea is better than the HST.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Thousands of delegates will spend millions of dollars over four days, Tourism Vancouver says

Jeff Lee
Sun

More than 7,500 pediatric experts, from doctors to social scientists to clinical researchers, will be in Vancouver this week for the first major post-2010 Olympics convention using the new Vancouver Convention Centre.

The Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting is so large that it will, for the first time, require both the new west wing convention centre and the historic five sails convention centre to the east.

The agenda for the four-day conference is extensive, dealing with everything from new research in stem-cell therapies for childhood diseases to challenges in dealing with vaccine-preventable diseases in the developing world, to the impact of endocrine disrupters on child health.

One of the major issues also being discussed at the convention is the rising issue of child obesity.

Several workshops and discussion groups will look into how to deal with a worldwide rise in obesity and the root causes behind it.

On Sunday, one of them will explore whether obesity is a personal responsibility or whether it is a societal problem that requires government regulation and intervention, much like what is done with alcohol and tobacco.

There are also debates about the impact of climate change on child health, including a keynote address by Dr. John Balbus, the senior adviser for public health at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Shinya Yamanaka, the Kyoto University professor who discovered how to turn human skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells — and thereby untangled the thorny ethical issue around stem-cell collection from embryos — also will give a lecture on his findings.

He was awarded the 2010 March of Dimes Prize in developmental biology for his discovery in 2007.

The conference also will see the delivery of more than 3,000 scientific abstract presentations.

As conventions go, the PAS conference will be the largest in Vancouver in 2010.

Tourism Vancouver estimates the conference will generate $62 million in economic activity, including $19 million in direct delegate spending.

But it will be followed over the next seven or eight months with six other major conventions that could not have been held here without the new convention centre, according to Dave Gazley, vice-president of Meeting and Convention Sales for Tourism Vancouver.

“We normally have about 90,000 room-nights per year in citywide major conventions. This year, even excluding the Olympics, we will have 170,000 room-nights. We’re getting bigger conventions, and more of them.”

Gazley said the message is clear: “It means our convention centre expansion investment was a good idea,” he said.

The province spent $883 million building the new convention centre and refurbishing the existing five-sails centre.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

‘If you just want to avoid creditors, use a saftey deposit box’

Andrew Allentuck
Sun

It is not hard to hide money where no one — creditors, former spouses or tax collectors — can find it. Writing manuals on how to do it is a cottage industry all of its own.

But the wisdom of squirrelling money away in distant places and making it hard to reap one’s profits and dividends is questionable. Worse, if you don’t tell executors where the money is, it may be lost forever. And some banks in so-called havens are flyby-night operations. They are happy to take money on deposit but reluctant to give it back.

There is no need to troll for hideaway banks in places that keep secrets.

“If you just want to hide money to avoid creditors, you can use a safe deposit box or your mattress,” says Gena Katz, executive director at Ernst & Young in Toronto.

It’s harder to hide money intended to generate returns, she notes. Governments have been more vigilant in creating anti-tax legislation. Rules on use of foreign trusts and captive foreign entities have been tightened.

“The days of hiding money are long gone,” says Paul Lebreux, a lawyer who heads Toronto’s Global Tax Law Professional Corporation. “Now the better way is to choose to live in a country such as Barbados that does not tax foreign-source income.”

Tax avoiders can still move their money or themselves offshore or create a legitimate business that operates in a haven country. “You can move your head office to a foreign country and operate a legitimate business there,” Mr. Lebreux says. If you want to operate within the confines of the rules, then it is better to pay your taxes and be honest.

Though it is simpler to make use of tax preferences and credits within Canada’s tax system, tax havens continue to beckon to those who think themselves overtaxed. But the traditional ones have tightened their rules. The United States has curbed Switzerland’s preference for bank secrecy. Rogue employees have given certain client names to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Canada is seeking similar information.

Liechtenstein, a feudal principality sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria, has also fessed up. As well, Andorra, famed as a haven for discreet banking and artful customs clearing, is ending its rule of silence.

Caribbean havens, including the Turks and Caicos and the Caymans, are also moving toward co-operation with various tax authorities. A few island republics that used to sell banking licences for the price of a quickie vacation under the palms are also moving toward compliance.

Panama remains a holdout. It has treaties that require it to share banking and tax information, but tax evasion is not a crime per se in Panama.

Rather than seek to avoid all taxes, one can instead choose a jurisdiction of moderate taxation. The world standard of high taxation is Europe. Tax rates in the Netherlands, for example, rise to 52% of income.

In the United Arab Emirates, by contrast, income tax rates are zero. There is a levy of 5% for social services. There is a large expatriate community providing investment service to the local economy.

Should one hasten to the Middle East or to a Central American republic to reduce taxes?

Information assembled by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development shows Canada’s tax rates average 31.6% for a single person and 21.5% for person who is married and has two children. These rates are below average on the scale of taxes in countries that are members of the OECD.

Canada‘s taxes are far less than the 55.4% rate on a single person in Belgium, but higher than the average 29.1% rate on single incomes in the United States.

Anyone contemplating use of tax havens to hide money should include the cost of being able to return to Canada if one is charged with tax evasion. Lawyer bills could exceed the amount of taxes due. From that perspective, it pays to stay honest.

Of course, diehards can also move to our own internal haven, Alberta, which has a top 39% income tax rate compared to 46.4% in Ontario. In the West, the locals are friendly and speak English and the tax system holds few surprises.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Mitch Joel
Sun

For a long while, the consensus was that Facebook was the place where high school and university students go online to hangout, hook up, post drunken photos of themselves and act mischievous until the harsh realities of a cold world break their spirits into suits and boring 9-to-5 jobs that suddenly have them driving minivans, listening to James Taylor and reading columns like this (a fate worse than death itself).

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Facebook continues to grow across all demographics and psychographics (from boomers to business people) as online social networking becomes one of the primary ways that people stay connected and communicate. Their latest statistics (according to the Facebook website) paint a very different picture from the general public’s perception of what Facebook is. In short, most people see the site as a fad or trend and think it’s filled with nothing more than individuals whose sole interest is in creeping on those they went to high school with as some sick psychological game that makes them feel better about themselves and their lot in life. The reality is that Facebook has well over 400 million active users, of which 50 per cent log onto the site every day, resulting in over 500 billion minutes per month. The average user has over 130 friends, is connected to 60 pages, groups and events, and creates over 70 pieces of content each month.

On a global level, Facebook has been translated into over 70 languages (with the help of over 300,000 Facebook users), and 70 per cent of users are from outside the United States. If Facebook were a country, it would now be the third largest in the world based on population (behind China and India but ahead of the United States).

With this many people connected, sharing and creating (according to Facebook, users are currently sharing over 25 billion pieces of content a month), all eyes are on Facebook. Some wonder if this growth can continue, others wonder what the big business model will be, and most brands and businesses are still trying to figure out what the marketing opportunities are in an environment where individuals are primarily there to connect with friends and acquaintances.

Last week, Facebook held their F8 conference in San Francisco. The news of changes happening at Facebook have created shock waves (not ripples) throughout the business world. Facebook is beginning to spread its tentacles far beyond their own platform by enabling website owners to exchange information about Facebook users and their preferences. Many tech bloggers and columnists have lauded this move as a first step toward better organizing the Web based on the people who are using it. Others are raising security and privacy concerns.

“The idea for such a reorganization has been around for a long time,” states the article “How Facebook Could Organize the Internet,” published on The Atlantic’s website last week. “Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, years ago envisioned the next stage in the Web’s evolution, calling it the Semantic Web. It would, he wrote, ‘bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages,’ enabling computers to understand that content and how it relates to other sites and information across the Internet. Change has been slow because standards are hard to set and enforce, but Facebook’s scale could accelerate the transformation.”

Here’s how this plays out: About a month ago, you could “like” what people were saying and doing on Facebook and you could also “become a fan” of pages (which may have been created by individuals or brands). Facebook recently changed this, so now you can “like” individual pieces of content, brands, pages and groups. All of this information is displayed on your profile and can be seen by everyone connected to you.

At the F8 conference, Facebook announced that an individual’s ability to “like” something is now going to extend all over the Web. So, if you like a movie at IMDB, you can “like” it right there on the IMDB site. If you like a restaurant on Yelp!, you can “like” it right there. Not only are you giving content throughout the Web your own personal thumb’s up or down, but you’re also able to discover which of your Facebook friends are on the site and what they like (or don’t like).

This new platform from Facebook, called Open Graph, allows developers to exchange this information as well, so that they can create content around people’s interests, and allows them to exchange this information between one another. This, in the end, sounds like the ultimate word-of-mouth marketing mixed in with an all-powerful recommendation engine based on an individual’s friends and connections.

Last week, I spoke at the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit in Austin, Tex. The intersection of social media and e-commerce is one that concerns many online merchants. How much commerce versus how much loyalty and community building is the right mix? During a panel discussion that saw a handful of Digital Millennials (those born between 1982 and 2000) talk about their media and shopping habits, it became abundantly clear that they live on their mobile devices and spend an active amount of time in online social networks. Pinny Gniwisch, cofounder of Montreal-based Ice.com,asked the panel if they would like to be able to shop directly in Facebook, to which the entire panel (made up of young men and women) sat up and unanimously said, “Yes!”

In February of this year, Web analytics firm Compete announced that Facebook surpassed Yahoo! to become the second most popular website after Google. Now, as Facebook allows users to connect back to them while being practically anywhere on the Web, imagine what Facebook was versus what it is about to become.

Mitch Joel is president of the digital marketing agency Twist Image and the author of Six Pixels of Separation.

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