Ian Austin
Province

Condo owners near Vancouver‘s impound compound want to give Busters the boot.

For years the city has been discussing moving its bylaw impound yard from under the Granville Street Bridge, where it once was in an industrial area but is now ringed by residential highrises.

“It’s going to happen with the emergence of the residential area around the lot,” admits Busters Towing spokesman Vern Campbell.

“The city owns the lot.

“It really boils down to being in the hands of the Vancouver engineering department.”

Condo buyers were assured the lot was on the move, and checked the city archives to find out the lot’s fate.

“It operates 24/7, and there are car alarms going off all night long,” said Jennifer Myers, whose home overlooks the lot situated under the north end of the bridge. “We did our due diligence, we made sure that it wasn’t just a developer’s promise.

“We all did our homework.”

Their homework showed them the city has been discussing a move to the False Creek flats near Terminal Avenue since 1997, and even voted on a move in 2006.

“They told us it was going to be gone,” said Bob Chapman.

“If a tow truck comes in with a car-alarm going, it sets off other alarms — it’s like a chain reaction,” he said.

While the location is inconvenient for neighbours, it’s convenient for the city and for Busters.

Each morning and afternoon rush hour, Busters clears parked cars ignoring the no-parking signs on nearby commuter arteries such as Howe, Hornby, Seymour and Richards.

“It’s convenient for us and it’s also convenient for the people who pick up the cars,” said Campbell.

But the neighbours are tired of waiting, and have a petition with 250 signatures.

“Everyone knew it was going to take time, but we just didn’t expect it to take them forever,” said Louise Labuda.

© Copyright (c) The Province

 

… And what they must do to set it right

James Bagnall
Sun

In September 2008, Liaquat Ahamed had just finished the manuscript for his first book, Lords of Finance.

He was 55, a former investment banker and economist with the World Bank. Ahamed had spent nearly a decade — the previous four years full time — studying the Great Depression through the eyes of the world’s top four central bankers.

It was history, obviously. But as Ahamed pulled together the various strands of research, he was struck by two simple, yet profound parallels with today’s economic mess.

The first was that the health of even very large economies depends on the actions of a small number of individuals. The central bankers of Britain, France, Germany and America in the late 1920s and early 1930s made decisions that unnecessarily consigned a generation to penury. There’s a distinct possibility that similar mistakes in policy could extend or deepen this year’s troubling economic contraction.

Ahamed’s second over-arching insight had to do with the fragility of the financial system itself. Since 1870, he learned, there have been more than 60 instances in which countries experienced at least a 15-per-cent drop in per capita GDP from peak to bottom. Many of these economic collapses resulted from failures of banks.

In the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, these financial spasms became fewer. Banks were tightly regulated institutions with a focus on taking deposits and lending money. Those deposits were insured, and the relationships between lenders and borrowers were clear and direct.

But Western financial markets seem predisposed to the formation of bubbles. It starts with what seems healthy optimism, which intensifies gradually into cockiness, then mania. The boom phase — in stocks, real estate or commodities — often stretches for years. Invariably it ends with a shock that seems to come out of the blue — at which point mania transforms overnight into panic.

Ahamed concludes that it is up to the small cabal of central bankers to stop bubbles from forming or, when that fails, to maintain faith in money.

“The goal of a central bank in a financial crisis is both very simple and very elusive,” Ahamed notes, “to re-establish trust in banks.”

Ahamed grew increasingly disturbed in the 1980s and 1990s by the frequency with which this trust was violated. There were currency meltdowns in Mexico, Asia, Russia and Latin America. Ahamed puzzled over many instances of failed financial institutions — from U.S. savings & loans firms to hedge funds.

“These crises had become endemic to capitalism,” Ahamed says. “So I began reading up on the mother of all crises, the Great Depression.”

Ahamed had completed most of his manuscript by August 2007, when the context for his book began to change dramatically.

BNP Paribas suspended withdrawals from three of its investment funds, which held financial products based on the health of America‘s mortgage industry. Later, the industry would come to see the BNP Paribas suspensions as the start of the great global credit crunch. Not at the time, though.

“Never in my wildest imagination did I think [US. mortgage] loans would threaten the whole Western financial system,” Ahamed says. His thinking, and that of many others, underwent an epiphany on Sept. 15, 2008, when Lehman Brothers, a mid-sized investment bank, filed for bankruptcy. This apocalyptic event ushered in an era of fear that has yet to abate. Ahamed likens it to the 1931 failure of the Credit Anstalt, the largest bank in Austria.

Like Lehman Brothers, the Austrian bank had invested directly in industry — borrowing short-term money to finance longer-term, riskier investments. Adding to the potential danger, Credit Anstalt’s balance sheet was stuffed with foreign borrowing. The bank’s failure prompted a run on all Austrian banks, creating a contagion of fear that destroyed financial institutions around the globe and extended the Great Depression for at least another two years.

Austria‘s experience in 1931 was very fresh in Ahamed’s mind last September, when former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke declined to rescue Lehman Brothers. “It was astounding what a shock to the system it was and how much panic it caused,” Ahamed said. “Much more than anyone realized.”

Obviously a great deal more than either Henry Paulson or Bernanke had contemplated. For the past six months, top financial officials have moved aggressively to counter the loss of confidence in financial institutions. The effort continues today in Britain. Finance ministers from the world’s top 20 economies will try to agree on Saturday on a plan for infusing economies with enough liquidity to reverse the slide.

“I believe we have avoided another Great Depression,” says Ahamed. “In the 1930s the central bankers gave the patient the wrong medicine. Today we know what medicines to give, we just may not be giving high enough doses.”

Eighty years ago, the prevailing wisdom was that economies should be anchored by gold — the idea that paper money should be convertible into gold wherever people travelled and did business. The system was incredibly precise, and rigid. The British pound was worth 113 grains of pure gold while the U.S. dollar was valued at 23.22 grains. This meant the pound was worth exactly $4.86 as long as both countries agreed to back their currencies with the precious metal.

But Ahamed points out that imbalances in the supply of gold — with Britain and Germany relatively short of the stuff, and France and the U.S. holding generous quantities — proved unhealthy. Britain, for instance, was forced in the 1920s to keep interest rates high in order to keep gold supplies from dropping.

At the same time, the U.S. held its interest rates low. This action contributed to the 1920s stock boom in much the same way that Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan’s low interest rate policy helped to inflate Internet stocks in the 1990s, then housing prices after 2001.

In 1929, the real damage done by adherence to the gold standard was simply this: It prevented governments from implementing new spending that might have helped to offset the damage done by a contracting world economy.

Ahamed maintains that the beginning of the end for the Great Depression came as soon as countries took themselves off the gold standard. Britain made the break in 1931 and the U.S. and Canada followed suit.

The trouble was, these moves came only after years of exceptionally painful economic contraction. The value of America‘s gross domestic product slumped 26.5 per cent from 1929 to 1933; in Canada, the fall in economic output was an even deeper 27.7 per cent. From these depths, it required another half decade of real economic growth to return to the levels of 1929. However, the hard lesson that financial systems require determined oversight by central bankers or regulators did not take hold.

This much became clear as Greenspan and other central bankers allowed housing markets, and related financial products, to gather phenomenal heft.

Governments were unwilling to regulate the emergence of a virulent new financial industry — what became known as the shadow banking system. Investment banks, hedge funds and other unregulated institutions grew rapidly, fuelled by sales of financial products that depended on rising house prices and a healthy flow of mortgage payments.

Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for economics, frames the danger succinctly in The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. “The crisis hasn’t involved problems with deregulated institutions that took new risks,” he wrote. “Instead, it involved risks taken by institutions that were never regulated in the first place.”

The shadow banking system, in other words. The fact that so many of these mortgage products were not insured contributed heavily to the panic of last September.

And so, the credit crisis leaked with surprising force from the financial sector into the regular economy. The assets attributed to the shadow banking sector plummeted, along with the value of the mortgages that underpinned them. Hundreds of billions of dollars were sucked out of the economy as the sector shrank. Regular banks — deposit-taking institutions such as Wells Fargo — could not make up the difference. The next stage came quickly. Regular businesses — manufacturers, retailers — were either starved of capital or cautiously shelved plans to expand.

Central bankers now are trying desperately to arrest their economies’ downward momentum.

Canada‘s $1.6-trillion economy contracted 0.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008 (in real terms, after inflation, compared with annualized GDP in the third quarter). The consensus is that the rate of decline in GDP will pick up slightly in the first quarter of 2009, then gradually diminish.

A return to growth by the second half of this year is considered likely.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Other

Jayne Clark
USA Today

VANCOUVER, B.C. — As the Olympic countdown clock outside the Vancouver Art Gallery struck 6 p.m. on Feb. 12, exactly one year before the kickoff of the 2010 Winter Games, air horns blasted from the distinctive white-sails rooftop of Canada Place convention center. A squadron of celebratory torch-bearing skiers hurtled down Grouse Mountain above the city. Diners in restaurants laid down their forks and applauded. And a few hundred street protesters torched an Olympic flag.

Naysayers notwithstanding — after all, any civic bash with a price tag in the billions is bound to attract some critics — Canada‘s stunning glass city is ready for its close-up as host of the next Olympics.

The sporting venues already are up and running. An expanded road dubbed the Sea to Sky Highway leading 72 miles to Whistler, the host mountain resort, is nearing completion. So is an expanded waterfront convention center. A rapid-transit extension due in November will whisk visitors from the airport to downtown in 25 minutes. And commemorative T-shirts, hockey pucks and stuffed Migas (the odd-looking 2010 mascot) are flying off the shelves at the city’s landmark Hudson‘s Bay Co.

But while Vancouver may be enjoying the spotlight that inevitably shines on host cities even before the Games begin, this town has long been a perennial on top-destinations and livable-city rosters. Readers of Condé Nast Traveler, for instance, awarded it Best City in the Americas for three years running. And no wonder. With its dense forest of gleaming skyscrapers wedged between the Coast Mountains and the Pacific, it is a spectacular sight. In winter, the heart of downtown is just 30 minutes from the ski slopes. In summer, sun seekers crowd its beaches and seaside promenades. And despite a rain-prone climate, it displays a perpetually sunny disposition.

Consider it the supermodel of North American cities. In fact, given Vancouver‘s already considerable natural assets, can 17 days of Olympic Games really enhance its image?

“Can it ever hurt?” responds Suzanne Walters, spokeswoman for Vancouver‘s Olympic organizing committee. “I think Canada is still somewhat a mystery to many. People know it’s cold and the people are nice. But we can show that it’s cosmopolitan and that it’s diverse.”

Vancouver‘s previous highest-profile event, Expo ’86, changed what up till then had been a somewhat provincial city. After that, an influx of international newcomers flocked here, spawning a multicultural boomtown.

“The world came and saw that Vancouver was beautiful, and it put us on the map,” says John Evans, a real estate developer and hotelier. “For Vancouver, the Olympics are the next big step. There’s no question they are going to be significant. They can’t not be significant.”

Of course, 22 million attended the six-month ’86 World’s Fair and a mere 350,000 spectators are anticipated during the relatively brief Olympics. Still, civic movers and shakers hope the Games will boost winter tourism in years to come.

In reality, however, most visitors, including thousands who embark on Alaska-bound cruises from Vancouver‘s port, visit in summer. What they find is a compact, walkable city of about 600,000 that blends urban sophistication with a freewheeling outdoors sensibility. Even brisk winter days find Vancouverites out in droves strolling and cycling along the seawall in Stanley Park, a forested waterfront oasis at the edge of downtown.

The city’s ethnic diversity is dizzying. A short stroll along Commercial Drive, an area east of downtown once known as Little Italy, now presents a global pastiche of restaurants serving tandoori chicken, Japanese sushi, Greek tapas and so on, along with homegrown coffee shops that hold their own against the ubiquitous corner Starbucks.

“Vancouver is really coming of age now. From all these groups, we’re creating our own identity,” says Mexico native Rossana Ascensio, a chef and tour guide with Edible British Columbia.

She is showing visitors around Granville Island‘s Public Market, where food stalls brimming with poblano chiles, fresh turmeric and Shanghai noodles also reflect the city’s cultural melting pot. The area is a former industrial zone rehabbed in the 1970s. Colorful water taxis ferry visitors on False Creek between downtown and Granville Island (really a sandbar). It retains the corrugated metal buildings of its gritty past, but has been re-imagined as a gathering spot with eateries, live theater and art galleries.

Nearby, the once down-and-out Yaletown neighborhood, Vancouver’s “little Soho,” has more recently undergone a transformation from warehouse district to hipsters’ enclave of trendy shops, restaurants and condos, also thanks, in part, to post-Expo ’86 development.

Even Gastown, the neighborhood where modern Vancouver took root in 1886, is gaining new momentum with one-of-a-kind design shops opening after decades of being primarily relegated to souvenir-seeking tourists posing for photos under its signature steam clock. Gastown gets its name from John “Gassy Jack” Deighton, a talkative Englishman and city father. It had fallen on hard times before preservationists rallied to save it in the 1970s. Similarly, activists have fought to save parts of Chinatown, North America‘s third largest.

“There was a time they were going to put a freeway through, and the people rose up and said, ‘No you won’t,’ ” says local historian Chuck Davis. But then, Vancouver has always had an activist streak, he adds, from the radical labor movements of the 1930s to the founding of environmental group Greenpeace in 1972.

Chinatown, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, remains a bustling commercial hub, even though much of the huge influx of Chinese immigrants who arrived in the 1990s settled in suburban Richmond. But even this traditional neighborhood is gradually changing. Some condo construction, rehabs of old buildings and non-Chinese businesses are bringing new diversity. They include shops such as Funhauser Decor, where Peter Lisiecki stands amid rumpus-room-chic trappings and reflects on what the Olympics might mean for the city. Like some other Vancouverites, he has mixed feelings.

“We had the World’s Fair and it put Vancouver on the map, and certainly the Olympics are a great commercial,” he says. “But great as it is, there’s a lot of money being spent, and Vancouver has a lot of social problems that need to be fixed.”

Those problems are acutely visible a few blocks away on East Hastings Street, where drug addicts, the mentally ill and other walking wounded populate the sidewalks. Guides warn tourists against venturing there. The day after the one-year Olympics countdown, Canada‘s largest national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, published a front-page story dubbing it “Our Nation’s Slum.”

The Olympics won’t be a panacea for urban ills as grave as those, but it can be a unifying force. Down the street from Lisiecki at the design shop Peking Lounge, owner Michael Bennett has his own take on how the Games might play in Vancouver.

“This is a young city with a bunch of people from somewhere else. There’s been no defining moment, nothing to bring this city together,” he says. “Maybe the Olympics will do that. I mean, you can’t help but be inspired by something like this.”

Metro Vancouver homeowners turn to U.S. advocates for help

Christina Montgomery
Province

Homeowners from Surrey, Richmond, Burnaby and West Vancouver have joined a flood of callers to a U.S. consumer group investigating highly-toxic Chinese drywall that has sickened North Americans.

Thomas Martin, president of America‘s Watchdog, said yesterday that in the past two weeks about a dozen Metro Vancouver callers have all reported experiencing the same nosebleeds, breathing problems and allergy-type symptoms that have affected homeowners across the U.S.

Continued exposure could result in severe health problems, says Martin’s group.

“It’s scary, it’s a nightmare,” said Martin. “We think we are looking at the worst case of sick houses in U.S. history. Toxic Chinese drywall is the worst environmental disaster ever to be faced by U.S. homeowners.”

A copy of one home-inspection report obtained by The Province on a Florida home where Chinese drywall was installed reads:

“This type of drywall was produced with materials that emit toxic hydrogen-sulfide gas and other sulfide gases alleged to cause serious health conditions and illnesses, such as shortness of breath, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, insomnia, eye irritations and respiratory difficulties.”

Martin said he likens the effects of the drywall “to the problems you find in a meth house [where an illegal drug lab has been operating].

“If you’ve had any experience with a meth house, you know it will have to be bulldozed. Like in a meth house, the emissions permeate everything, the two-by-fours, the tresses, the fabric in your furniture, your clothes.”

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said last week it was investigating complaints about the Chinese-made drywall.

Martin, whose California office phones rang constantly during a Province interview, said the group has also fielded calls from worried Canadians who bought property south of the border — such as in Blaine and the Skagit Valley in Washington state — some time ago when the Canadian dollar was higher.

At issue is drywall imported from China between 2001and 2007.

According to Martin’s research, at least 929,000 square metres were imported through the port of Vancouver between 2001 and 2006, all bound for Canadian destinations.

So far, research shows some appears to have landed on the Prairies and some in Toronto.

The Chinese drywall appears to have been made using gypsum that was first used in slurry containing carcinogens to de-sulphur coal. It was later used in making wallboard.

Chemicals remaining in the wallboard are sufficiently toxic that as few as three sheets of drywall may be enough to contaminate a home sufficiently that it requires bulldozing, Martin said.

All houses affected have shown a common symptom — blackened, scorched wiring behind switchplates and wall plugs.

Martin said supplies in the U.S. can be tracked where they were used by licensed builders, and insurance may pay for the damages. But anyone using small firms or paying for renovations under the table will be difficult to help.

Few Canadian labour or industry officials contacted by The Province yesterday were aware of the issue.

Tiziana Baccega, public relations manager for Home Depot in Canada, said the chain has never sold Chinese-made drywall in any of its Canadian or U.S. outlets.

Several lawsuits, including one by a group of Florida homeowners, have been filed against German drywall maker Knauf Gips KG, its Chinese plasterboard units and several U.S. homebuilders.

© Copyright (c) The Province

Take note of 10 tips that can help you detect and avoid a scam

Hannah Yacobi
Province

OTTAWA — When Richard Saxton got a phone call a year ago while relaxing at home with his wife, he was pleasantly surprised.

Saxton, an Ottawa executive, heard a ship horn in the background and an automated announcement saying he had just won a cruise. He was connected to a company representative.

It was an all-expenses-paid, week-long cruise for two, from Miami to the Bahamas and back. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a prize at all, but a travel scam aimed at getting Saxton’s money.

Thousands of Canadians fall victim to mass-marketing fraud every year and government, business and travel officials agree that it is very important to be aware of such fraud.

“The vacation and travel scam is any false, deceptive, misleading solicitation in which an advance fee is required to secure and hold a vacation,” says Cpl. Louis Robertson, co-ordinator of criminal intelligence for the Canadian Anti-Fraud Call Centre, also known as PhoneBusters.

PhoneBusters deals with Canadian fraud cases, as well as others around the world that have a link to Canada. Robertson says they receive about 145,000 calls a year, and between 30,000 and 35,000 e-mails a month from concerned Canadian and American consumers.

In a typical scam, “administration fees” may vary. For instance, Saxton was asked to pay $500 in port fees. Having gone on cruises before, he knew that port fees are included in the cruise price. He was also told he had filled out a contest ballot, which he didn’t.

One way to avoid such scams is to verify the agency through the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies’ website. Only accredited agencies can become its members, and ACTA represents over 3,000 companies.

Checking if the agency is registered with a provincial consumer protection bureau, such as the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Authority of B.C., can be useful. PhoneBusters and Competition Bureau Canada can also be called to report a scam.

Here are 10 expert tips to detect and avoid a scam:

– A prize is free. There are no fees associated with it.

– The caller should not sound too excited or have a sense of urgency.

– If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

– Don’t send money to somebody you don’t know. Always pick a reputable agency that you are familiar with and one that is local.

– Verify that the company is, in fact, registered with their provincial organization or has a legitimate affiliation.

– Refer to the Better Business Bureau to determine if there have been complaints made against the firm.

– If you are thinking of going ahead with the offer, bring it to the local travel agent to get some advice.

– Request any information in writing, such as cancellation and refund policies.

– If someone is calling you, you can’t be sure where the phone call is coming from. Get their phone number and address. This can help verify if the company is legitimate.

– You do not win anything unless you enter a lottery, a promotion, or a game of chance.

© Copyright (c) The Province

Knowing the signs can save headaches

Hannah Yakobi
Sun

When Richard Saxton got a phone call a year ago while relaxing at home with his wife, he was pleasantly surprised.

Saxton, an Ottawa executive, heard a ship horn in the background and an automated announcement saying he had just won a cruise.

He was connected to a company representative.

It was an all-expenses-paid, week-long cruise for two, from Miami to the Bahamas and back.

“The man on the phone asked if I was interested,” remembers Saxton. “And I said, ‘Of course, I am!’ “

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a prize at all, but a travel scam aimed at getting Saxton’s money.

Thousands of Canadians fall victim to mass marketing fraud every year and government, business and travel officials agree that it is very important to be aware of such fraud.

“The vacation and travel scam is any false, deceptive, misleading solicitation, in which an advance fee is required to secure and hold a vacation,” says Cpl. Louis Robertson, co-ordinator of criminal intelligence for the Canadian Anti-Fraud Call Centre, also known as PhoneBusters.

PhoneBusters deals with Canadian fraud cases, as well as others around the world that have a link to Canada.

Robertson says they receive about 145,000 calls a year, and between 30,000 and 35,000 e-mails a month from concerned Canadian and American consumers.

In a typical scam, “administration fees” may vary.

For instance, Saxton was asked to pay $500 in port fees. Having gone on cruises before, he knew that port fees are included in the cruise price. He was also told he had filled out a contest ballot, which he didn’t.

Robertson says these signs are a warning.

“All people see is, ‘I’m in Saskatoon, it’s -45 C, a guy is calling me out of the blue, stating that I’ll be spending the next two weeks in the Dominican Republic. And all he wants is $500? Yes!’ “

“If you’ve won something in Canada, there is no fee that has to be paid,” adds Dermot Jardine, assistant deputy commissioner for the Atlantic region of the Competition Bureau of Canada.

“Under our legislation, we have a section that deals with misleading information and misleading advertising, and also deceptive telemarketing, and deceptive notice of winning a prize. The telemarketing provisions and the deceptive notice of winning a prize are both criminal offences. The misleading advertising can be either criminal or civil.”

According to Jardine, fraudulent travel activity can also result in the direct loss of consumers, an anti-competitive effect on the travel industry, and a negative message about telemarketing.

For instance, Saxton’s callers were generally unpleasant. When Saxton said he would pay any port fees at the port, he was transferred to the agent’s supervisor, who was quite aggressive and got really upset, before saying “never mind” and hanging up.

“It was frustrating,” says Saxton, who got the same phone call three weeks later.

“I was a bit angry at the fact that my wife and I almost fell for it.”

Unlike others, Saxton was lucky to figure it out. Robertson says his worst case was a New Jersey woman with Alzheimer’s disease who was in a seniors’ home.

She lost $750,000 by forwarding money to Toronto on a monthly basis. Her family had to move her because they had no money left to pay for her supervised care.

One way to avoid such scams is to verify the agency through the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies’ website. Only accredited agencies can become its members, and ACTA represents over 3,000 companies.

“We get about 300,000 hits on our website every month,” says Mississauga-based Donavon Gaudette, ACTA’s communications manager.

“We are also constantly updating what travel watches are being issued by the federal government, so people use us as the source of information.”

Checking if the agency is registered with a provincial consumer protection authority can also be useful. For instance, in British Columbia, companies register for a licence number with the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Authority of British Columbia.

“If a consumer purchases travel services through an agency that is not licensed with the BPCPA, then the transaction is not eligible for protection under the Travel Assurance Fund,” says Sarah Head, BPCPA’s public relations manager.

PhoneBusters and Competition Bureau Canada can also be called to report a scam.

Reporting fraud is a responsible approach, but Canadians need to be cautious. Robertson says that if the credit card is charged, “it will be between you — with no protection at all — and the bank.”

Saxton, who never gave the caller his credit card number, says he is now very skeptical of such “prize announcements.”

“Whenever anybody calls and starts some kind of a spiel, I just hang up.”

Ten expert tips to detect a scam:

1. A prize is free. There are no fees associated with it.

2. The caller should not sound too excited or have a sense of urgency.

3. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

4. Don’t send money to somebody you don’t know. Always pick a reputable agency that you are familiar with and one that is local.

5. Verify that the company is, in fact, registered with their provincial organization or has a legitimate affiliation.

6. Refer to Better Business Bureau to determine if there have been complaints made against the company.

7. If you are thinking of going ahead with the offer, bring it to the local travel agent to get some advice.

8. Request any information in writing, such as cancellation and refund policies.

9. If someone is calling you, you can’t be sure where the phone call is coming from. Get their phone number and address. This can help verify if the company is legitimate.

10. You do not win anything unless you enter a lottery, a promotion or a game of chance.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Province

Anyone phoning or e-mailing Telus customers for personal information should raise a red flag.

Telus spokesman Shawn Hall said yesterday the company has recently received 100 customer complaints about scams, a “fourfold increase” in the frequency of such complaints.

Callers are asking customers for names, addresses, birth dates, account numbers, credit cards and passwords. Three top scams are:

– Social Engineering: The fraudster phones as a legitimate caller, trying to trick the customer into disclosing personal information, such as credit-card numbers.

– 809 Caribbean Scam: Fraudsters try to get you to call a number starting with 809 to win a prize or find out about an injured relative. The number is the area code for the Dominican Republic, which has weaker phone laws. When you phone back, you’re kept on hold, racking up to $7 a minute.

– E-mail Scam: Fraudsters will send an e-mail to Telus customers, asking them to fill out a form asking for information on their user name and password.

“If you have any concerns, hang up,” said Hall.

If you feel you’re been scammed, call 1-877-567-2062.

© Copyright (c) The Province

Take the 50-per-cent discount instead of hoping for leniency

Chad Skelton, with files from Denise Ryan
Sun

For years, it was the secret parking enforcement the city didn’t want you to know: Fighting your ticket in court was worth it.

Not because you had much chance of winning — parking enforcement has a conviction rate any gang prosecutor would envy — but because, even if you lost, you could make a case for a reduction in your fine.

People put forward their best excuses — they were poor, they never had a ticket before, they’d learned their lesson — and the judicial justice of the peace would often give them a break.

Many people had $90 tickets knocked down to just $10 or $20. Others had their fines waived entirely.

Fine reductions became so easy to get that many people stopped bothering to fight their tickets at all, agreeing to plead guilty as long as they got to argue for a reduced fine in a process known as “disposition.”

Unfortunately for illegal parkers in this city, the party’s over.

Last year, the City of Vancouver changed its bylaws to create mandatory minimum fines for any municipal-offence ticket written after April 15, 2008.

In the case of parking violations, those minimums are the same as the face value on each ticket: $60 for sitting at an expired meter, $90 for stopping in a no-stopping zone and so on.

In other words, the best fine you can hope for by going to traffic court now is the same one you’d have to pay anyway. A fine, by the way, that is twice as high as the discounted rate if you pay your ticket voluntarily within the first 34 days.

Under the new bylaw, JJPs still have discretion to reduce a fine in cases of financial hardship.

But the onus is on you to prove it and it’s a tough case to make.

On a recent day in traffic court, JJP Colleen Proctor explained it to a roomful of defendants this way: “I’m talking about someone who lives on the street and has no ability to pay, not generally someone who owns a car.”

And if that’s not enough, while JJPs have more or less lost the discretion to reduce your parking ticket, they still have plenty of discretion to increase it.

Under provincial law, JJPs can increase any fine up to $2,000.

A fine that high for a parking ticket is almost unheard of, but it’s not unusual for someone — especially a repeat offender — to get dinged $100 or $150 a ticket.

Since last summer, the city has begun sending a court liaison officer to court with a printout of each offender’s history, so they can ask the JJP for higher fines for those with a history of parking illegally.

The new bylaw, combined with the court liaison program, has turned traffic court from a place where people once got a break to one where they often get stung for more than they bargained for.

Indeed, a review by parking enforcement of 587 guilty pleas in December and January found that, on average, drivers left court with a fine 15 per cent higher than they walked in with.

The change has been so sudden, and dramatic, that it has taken many people by surprise.

At traffic court on Feb. 11, May Joan Liu tried to explain away the eight expired-meter tickets her Hummer got in December, saying heavy snowfall and a flat tire made moving it impossible.

JJP Ken Yamamoto patiently explained to her that, no matter what her excuse, she’d have to pay the minimum fine on all eight: $480 in total, or twice the $240 she could have paid when she got them.

“I was given bad advice that if I went to court I would get a reduction or have it wiped out,” said Liu. “Now I wish I hadn’t come. I would have just paid it.”

Upset to learn the rules had changed, Pierre Nasr, in court on six separate tickets, asked Yamamoto if he could at least get a no-stopping ticket from January reduced from $90 to $45, the amount he could have paid without coming to court.

“The only time you get a 50-per-cent discount is when you pay it up front and that’s because they don’t have to do all this paperwork,” Yamamoto replied. “Coming to court and thinking you’re going to get a break on a fine is a fairy tale.”

(As it turned out, two of Nasr’s six tickets were from before last April, so he did get a small break on those: from $90 to $60 on one and $60 to $50 on the other.)

Aside from hoping for a break on your fine, the other reason for going to traffic court is that you believe you’re innocent of the offence, or are hoping the parking officer doesn’t show up.

Parking enforcement manager Ralph Yeomans said his department works hard to coordinate its staffing schedule with traffic court to make sure officers are working on the days they’re due in court.

Overall, the department has a no-show rate of about 10 per cent, Yeomans said.

But that doesn’t mean 10 per cent of offenders get off scot-free.

If someone has a dozen tickets, it may be impossible to find a day when all 12 officers who wrote the tickets are on shift. In such cases, the trial may go ahead with only 10 officers available.

Two of the tickets may be dismissed, said Yeomans, but the rest go ahead. And when a case goes ahead, it usually results in a conviction.

Statistics compiled by the city suggest fewer than six per cent of those who plead not guilty are successful in having their tickets overturned.

“Most of these people convict themselves when they get on the stand,” said Shayne Jankowski, parking enforcement’s court liaison officer.

That’s because many people confuse an excuse — they just ran into the store for some milk, they didn’t have change on them — with a defence.

On Feb. 12, Alan Katowitz, caught parking in a permit zone in Kitsilano, told the court he had lived in the area for more than 20 years and, while he usually has a permit, he couldn’t afford one this year.

Katowitz said he was just dropping off some groceries and wasn’t planning to be in the spot for very long.

Verdict: guilty.

Joseph MacKinnon, facing a ticket for an expired meter, said he didn’t think it was right that parking meters didn’t take nickels or pennies.

Verdict: guilty.

Every so often, though, someone does win a case.

Contractor Dragan Milovanovic got ticketed and towed after being caught in a temporary no-stopping area near the Shangri-La construction site last September.

Milovanovic told the court the temporary signs weren’t there when he parked his truck in the morning, and he suspects they were only put up that afternoon.

“My personal opinion is I’m not guilty,” he said, since he had no way of knowing what he was doing was illegal.

The officer who ticketed him couldn’t say exactly when the temporary signs went up.

Proctor, the JJP hearing his case, said she couldn’t convict him if he had no way of knowing he was parking illegally.

“There aren’t many defences to traffic tickets,” Proctor said. “However, what you’ve told me certainly raises a doubt in my mind.”

JJP Joanne Arnsten, meanwhile, acknowledged that the bigger picture is that parking generally is a problem in city cores, but added that the position of the bench is that “you need to address that with the city, not in traffic court.”

Arnsten said that, in many cases, she thinks people just want to be listened to.

“People genuinely want an opportunity to explain why they got that ticket,” said Arnsten, whose case list averages between 60 and 70 per day. “They often take it as a personal affront.”

She suggests alleged offenders try to have a conversation with the parking officer who gave them their ticket before entering court. Whoever ticketed you will have the opportunity to make a recommendation to the judge, to corroborate your story, even to suggest an outright dismissal.

Parking Secret No. 12: Just because there’s no chalk on your tires doesn’t mean you’re necessarily safe in a two-hour parking spot. Instead of chalking, some parking officers log the position of each car’s tire air valve in their hand-held computers. If the position hasn’t changed by the time they come back around, they know your car hasn’t moved. Other officers put a small stone on top of each tire or check tailpipes for signs of condensation.

Parking Secret No. 13: When the time runs out on your parking meter, you always get a two-minute “grace period,” regardless of whether you paid for four minutes or an hour. During that grace period, the meter will display a solid “000” instead of a flashing “0000” and you will not receive a ticket. However, the grace period also means if you tell an officer the meter just ran out, they know if you’re lying.

Parking Secret No. 14: You can get a ticket even if your meter is fully paid. Along several rush-hour routes, such as Robson, a meter will accept your change even though you’re not allowed to park there between 3 and 6 p.m. Stickers on each meter warn parkers of this fact, but dozens of paid-up parkers are still ticketed and towed every weekday.

Parking Secret No. 15: There are no parking enforcement officers working on either Christmas or New Year’s Day. Vancouver police will respond to complaints about serious safety violations, but your chances of getting a ticket for anything else on those two days are virtually zero.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

 

Chad Skelton
Sun

Most people who get a parking ticket in Vancouver — 73 per cent, in fact — pay it, usually early to take advantage of the lower fine.

Others decide to fight their tickets in court, convinced either that they’re not guilty or that they have the perfect excuse that will get them off.

But every year, thousands of people decide to take another approach to their parking tickets: Ignoring them.

In fact, about 75,000 Vancouver parking tickets a year — one in every five — are unpaid.

So what happens if you don’t pay your parking ticket?

The city has a few options at its disposal.

If you don’t pay your ticket — or arrange to dispute it in court — the city will eventually send someone out to hand-deliver you a court summons.

If you then don’t show up in court, it’s technically possible that a warrant could be issued for your arrest.

More likely, however, is that the judicial justice of the peace will hold the trial in your absence, usually resulting in a guilty verdict.

The city will then send you a demand letter, warning you of legal action if you don’t pay your fine. This letter alone is enough to make nearly half of people pay up.

If you still won’t pay, however, the city files a case in small-claims court, which can affect your credit rating and lead to things like having your assets seized or your paycheque garnisheed.

When it comes to legal action, the city said repeat offenders are its first priority. But it said it also goes after people for only a few unpaid tickets, or bundles together a number of unpaid fines into a single legal action.

By the time all these measures are taken, the city gets paid in about 70 per cent of cases.

According to the city, one of the worst cases of unpaid fines involved a resident with 223 tickets totalling more than $16,000 in unpaid fines.

After going to small-claims court, the city eventually garnisheed his wages and seized his vehicle, eventually recouping 100 per cent of the fines owing, plus interest and court costs.

In addition to legal action, the city has one other weapon it can use against scofflaws: towing.

The city can’t tow your car away for simply not paying your tickets.

But parking officers have the discretion to order a tow for any violation they wish.

And if you’ve got a ton of unpaid tickets — something the officers know as soon as they punch your plate into their hand-held computers — chances are you’re getting towed away.

That means $59 to get your car out of the impound lot and, if you’ve been avoiding getting served with your court summons, parking enforcement now knows where to find you.

One enforcement weapon the city doesn’t have at its disposal is the Insurance Corp. of B.C.

Unlike speeding tickets, which ICBC makes you deal with before getting your licence renewed, you can renew your licence no matter how many unpaid parking tickets you have.

Last year, Vancouver‘s Civil City report recommended ICBC start enforcing municipal bylaw fines as well.

However, ICBC poured cold water on the idea, saying it had no interest in becoming the city’s collection agency.

Despite the number of unpaid tickets on the books, the city still rakes in a healthy $12 million a year from parking ticket revenue, about twice the $6 million it spends on parking enforcement.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun