Chantal Eustace
Sun

Delta resident Darren Stevens said he was happy when he learned someone stole $200 from his bank account in what he believes to be debit card fraud.

As co-founder of MySpy — digital software that keeps people updated on their bank activities through e-mail and text messaging — he said, he was armed and ready for a virtual attack on his finances.

“I was excited,” he said, chuckling. “We were really wanting to catch some criminals with this.”

On March 23, his MySpy software sent him a text message alerting him that someone at a Vancouver automated teller had withdrawn money from his account. Since he was at home at the time, not at a bank machine, he knew something was wrong. He believes someone used a counterfeited debit card.

Stevens said he immediately called police, alerted his bank and nipped the problem in the bud.

But most people don’t know they’re being robbed.

On Friday, Vancouver police alerted the public to a debit card skimming scam. They said thousands of people in the Lower Mainland could be affected by “parasite” handheld debit machines used to create counterfeit cards.

Members of an Eastern European crime gang were alleged to be surreptitiously switching debit pin pads with ones implanted with a parasite device. The only way to know if you’ve been targeted is to check your bank account, police warned.

Debit card fraud is on the rise, according to the Canadian Bankers Association.

In 2006, out of 35 million cards issued across Canada, about 119,000 were impacted by skimming — up from about 72,000 in 2005.

“It’s going up slightly,” said Caroline Hubberstey, a spokeswoman for the association.

Hubberstey said new technology is being considered in order to help protect consumers against this type of fraud. In the fall, micro-chip debit cards — like ones used in Europe — will be tested out in Waterloo, Ontario, she said. If this pilot project goes well, she said, these cards and card readers will be rolled out across Canada.

But local fraud specialist Jeff Burton, of the BC Crime Prevention Association, said customers need to take more responsibility for protecting themselves because technology alone can’t solve the problem.

“The bad guys are only a couple of steps behind any new developments in technology,” Burton said. He recommends people look at their online financial statements daily.

“There’s no way the consumer will know, until it’s too late, that their debit cards have been compromised,” Burton said.

As for Stevens, he said he blames the convenience of online banking, direct deposit and debit machines for making people complacent. “People are getting out of touch with their money,” Stevens said. “It’s all taking place electronically.”

He hasn’t had any updates on his case from police, he said, adding he doesn’t know where the fraud occurred. “The police told me [my card] was skimmed.”

The cash was returned to his account through his bank 24 hours later and he got his debit card replaced, he said, so no harm done.

Most of all, Stevens said, it was a good learning experience: “I take money out all the time. I don’t know if I ever would have noticed.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Company uses Web to attract authors, illustrators

Michael Kane
Sun

Once upon a time there was a little girl who delighted in splashing around in the mud wearing brightly coloured gumboots, a frilly pink party dress and a baseball cap over her pigtails. She was almost never without a book in hand.

Fast-forward a couple of decades and Crystal Stranaghan has a double major in English and psychology from Simon Fraser University, has worked as a behavioural therapist with autistic kids, as a pre-school teacher and a fundraiser for a variety of non-profits, and is the author of Then it Rained, a book for four-to nine-year-olds that reminds us all about the joy of running free when the skies open.

She’s also the founder of Gumboot Books, an innovative Vancouver publishing house that uses the Internet to attract authors and illustrators from around the world, as well as stretch the limits of traditional marketing.

Rather than pay for conventional promotion, Gumboot invites non-profits, charities and community groups to sign up on its website and receive 10 per cent of every sale they generate. The more buyers the groups send to the Gumboot website, the more books are sold and the more money they raise. Book buyers choose which cause will benefit.

While nobody associated with Gumboot is rolling in the dough, and most have day jobs, Stranaghan says that’s in line with the Gumboot credo of going out and actually experiencing life, not sitting around waiting for the perfect conditions.

“Sometimes that means getting a little muddy,” said Stranaghan, 28, who pays the bills by serving tables at Steamworks Pub in Gastown. Here she met Jen Loffree, Gumboot’s 34-year-old distribution manager, and bartender Nick Gladding, a 26-year-old graphic designer from New Zealand, who dreamed up Gumboot’s distinctive logo showing the silhouette of a young girl in red gumboots reading a book under an umbrella. Stranaghan’s stepdaughter Mikayla was the model for the logo.

Pub connections led to Vancouver illustrator and animator Izabela Bzymek, 27, and Carrie Loffree, a 37-year-old mom living in Hungary who doubles as a translator and editor.

A friend also referred Stranaghan to North Vancouver’s Eleanor Rosenberg, a 26-year-old graphic designer currently living in Germany. Rosenberg did the quirky illustrations for Stranaghan’s second children’s book, Vernon and the Snake.

Other members of the team include co-owner and accounts manager Jared Hunt, 31, a server at the Fairmont Waterfront; Tsugumi Kibe, 27, a Japanese student interning as a translator; and Rosa Espadaler, 24, an illustrator in Spain.

Stranaghan says Gumboot is free to operate internationally because it is not dependent on government grants. Instead, the Internet holds the operation together. In fact, Stranaghan met Espadaler, the illustrator of Then it Rained, online.

“We both had blogs on the same site — hers was all artwork and mine was all writing — and as soon as I saw her artwork, I knew it was what I wanted for my story,” Stranaghan said.

“I sent her an e-mail asking if she might be interested in illustrating a book, and she said sure. We didn’t know each other at all when we started the project, but her English is great, and we corresponded almost every day by e-mail for the nine months it took to put the book together.”

When the book was done, Espadaler flew to Vancouver for the launch party in March.

Editor Chandra Wohleber, 33, who works as resource development coordinator for the United Church, contacted Stranaghan after seeing her first two books in her office in Toronto.

More than 20 titles are posted at gumbootbooks.ca, and Stranaghan says the company is seeking new talent.

“While many publishers focus on experience, we’re looking to help people get a start in the industry: fresh voices, talented young people. Generally, doing things a little differently are what we’re all about.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Sun

Shell Busey
Province

Q  We’re having problems with mould growing around our caulking and in the grout between the tiles in two of our bathrooms. Both bathrooms have exhaust fans which are run for at least 45 minutes each time someone showers or bathes. I’ve been spraying a combination of bleach and water, which helps a little bit, but then it reappears and now seems to be even tougher to get off. My in-laws lived in this house for 20 years before us and as far as I know never experienced this problem. Where we have peeled away some of it, there is black mould firmly in place that can’t even be scraped off.

— Walter

A  The black spore that grows or forms in and around a bathtub is caused by a lack of drying the shower and bath after each usage. A good practice is to towel or squeegee the entire area down after every shower. Then leave the bathroom fan running for at least an hour per bath or shower with the door open to the bathroom. Timers or de-humidistats are a great investment for the proper operation of your bathroom fans. To get rid of the spores, you must keep the moisture down and use proper ventilation.

Clean the area to be recaulked using the It’s Just That Easy Grout & Ceramic Cleaner available at Windsor Plywood or Home Hardware. Once you’ve scraped off the old caulking, use a silicone-grade bathroom caulking. Fill the bathtub with water and let sit overnight as the caulking dries.

Q  We just bought a home that was previously owned by heavy smokers. We are removing all the carpets and repainting before we move in. What else can we do to get rid of the cigarette-smoke odour?

— Shelly

A  A new carpet and washing down your walls with TSP before painting will help. As well, contact Medallion Healthy Homes for a treatment that will completely eliminate any odours. They can be reached by calling 1-866-633-2554. Also, change your furnace filter and have your ducts cleaned.

Shell Busey can be heard every Saturday morning from 5 to 8 a.m. on Vancouver’s CKNW AM980. To send in your home improvement questions, go to www.askshell.com. Include name, city and phone number.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

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Capitalism is alive and well, despite dire predictions to the contrary

Miro Cernetig
Sun

HONG KONG – If anything symbolized the jitters surrounding China taking over Hong Kong a decade ago (on July 1, 1997), it was the urban legend surrounding the 369-metre, silver phalanx constructed by the Bank of China.

It was said the austere skyscraper, with its windows of silver mercury that let Chinese bankers see out but nobody in, had been deviously designed by a Communist-friendly feng-shui master. Its dagger-shaped corners would supposedly rain negative energy down upon British-ruled Government House, the epicentre of colonial power, a sort of invisible Chinese death ray to neutralize Hong Kong’s colonial overseers and their evil capitalist ways.

It was a good story, and a perfect metaphor capturing the zeitgeist of “The Handover” — when the People’s Liberation Army was about to roll in from across the Chinese border to take over Hong Kong 160 years after China’s rulers lost the Opium War.

This tiny capitalist city-state of seven million was doomed, the conventional wisdom held, to become just another Chinese city. The old, British Hong Kong, with its ultra-rich tycoons and impeccably connected British bureaucrats and bankers clad in Saville Row suits, could not survive for long under the vengeful grip of a nation whose ethos was created by Chairman Mao.

Some heavy hitters staked their reputations on that theory, including Fortune magazine. Its doomsday article, “The Death of Hong Kong,” is still not forgotten here.

Oh, the old British colony might remain a regional business hub, a convenient shipping and business port into China, Fortune sniffed. But its ambitions as a world financial centre? Kaput. It would surely shrivel under the Communist regime’s authoritarian grip.

“What’s indisputably dying,” declared Fortune, “is Hong Kong’s role as a vibrant international commercial and financial hub — home to the world’s eighth-largest stock market, 500 banks from 43 nations, and the busiest container port on Earth. What will change after midnight on June 30, 1997? Everything.

“Within months of the transition to Chinese rule, the now dominant use of English, the universal language of business, will give way to far more extensive reliance on Cantonese and Mandarin,” Fortune decided. “Troops of the People’s Liberation Army, which has already formed links with the powerful local criminal gangs known as ‘triads,’ will stroll the streets. From Beijing, whichever faction emerges on top in the post-Deng Xiaoping struggle for power will control every branch of Hong Kong’s government — replacing elected legislators with compliant members, selecting cooperative judges, and appointing the chief executive.”

Scary stuff, some of which also prompted hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents to seek other passports, many of them to get into Canada. But a decade later, Fortune’s crystal ball-gazing seems hopelessly inept.

“Fortune was wrong,” says James Tien, the leader of Hong Kong’s pro-business Liberal Party, who serves as an elected member in the former colony’s legislative council. “Look around you. Things still work. Hong Kong is still here.”

Indeed, as the Brits might say.

On a macroeconomics level, Hong Kong’s bottom line looks pretty good: The Hang Seng, the stock exchange that is now a bellwether of both China and Asia’s financial health has been booming. It hit above 22,000 points earlier this week, a record that many predict will be broken again.

The local real estate market is once again nearing the stratosphere. And the international bankers and financiers haven’t been in as festive a mood since before the handover. Last year, more IPOs were done in Hong Kong than Wall Street, meaning lots of big bonuses and a run on luxury cars.

The only downside in terms of figures, notes Tien, is that the per-capita income is still about $27,000 US, roughly what it was a decade ago. It is largely high-end real estate, owned by the foreign bankers and those of the tycoon class and their ilk, that is booming.

“Still,” says Tien, “Fortune was wrong. Hong Kong is doing pretty well.”

That is also the conclusion of James Forder, the Oxford economist and author of Hong Kong, Ten Years On, a report commissioned by the powerful business group John Swire & Sons Ltd.

“For many businesses, Hong Kong is now a more attractive place than it was when under British control,” Forder concludes in his independent study. “The old business conditions have largely been retained, but the Hong Kong economy is now better integrated with the Chinese, and the rapid development of that country makes for a huge additional opportunity.

“The ‘One Country, Two Systems’ approach to maintaining the capitalist system in Hong Kong has been almost completely successful. Despite the reversion to Chinese sovereignty, in Hong Kong it is business as usual.

“Capitalism remains alive and well, and just as welcoming to the foreigner as it has ever been. . . . Hong Kong is blessed with just the right separateness from China to maintain strikingly superior institutions, but just the right kind of integration to make use of them to the full.”

The question, of course, is what happened to Shanghai? Another theory that reigned supreme a decade ago was that the Communist regime was intent on eclipsing Hong Kong as the star of high finance in southeast Asia.

Billions off dollars had been pumped into Shanghai, to bring it back to its glory days before the 1949 Communist revolution. There were new elevated roadways, a profusion of five-star hotels, a massive new stock exchange and, most tellingly, Pudong. Almost overnight, central planners had turned the rice paddies and villages on the other side of the Huangpu River into a massive real estate development that was to be China’s gleaming version of Manhattan.

Shanghai’s destiny to replace Hong Kong seemed further assured by the events that rocked the former British colony to its core after the handover.

Within days of the Union Jack coming down, the Asian currency crisis hit, causing the Hang Seng to plummet. Then there was the worldwide burst of the tech bubble. Then came a plunge in real estate, a bird flu scare, and then the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which started just across the border in Guangdong and spread to Hong Kong, causing foreigners to stay away. At one point, the famous Peninsula Hotel had only six guests.

“It was like something out of the Bible,” recalls Mike Rowse, Hong Kong’s director-general of investment promotion. “It seemed we were being hit with everything that could possibly happen.”

But Rowse now says Hong Kong — positioned on China’s edge at a time when that country is booming, and sitting on $1.2 trillion US in foreign reserves that grow by the day — is joining London and New York as one of the world key financial centers.

It’s a view that is heard often these days in Hong Kong, and it’s largely fueled by one fact: Shanghai, despite its ambitions, has profound limitations. While it may have begun to look a lot like Hong Kong on the surface, it still remains Chinese: Its financial system is based on the renminbi, meaning it lacks a fully convertible currency; the city still has a paucity of English speakers; and, perhaps most troubling of all, it suffers from endemic corruption that seems to go to the highest levels.

“What caused the reversal of fortunes? Shanghai wasn’t ready for the big-time,” concluded a recent analysis by the Wharton business school. “Its financial services companies — typically state-run — and stock brokerages were unsophisticated. Shanghai stock brokerages went bankrupt after promising returns on stocks that tanked. Big-money investors weren’t comfortable with weak accounting rules and Chinese market regulation.”

Also, Shanghai fared poorly in the shift in Beijing’s national power structure. Former President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji — both previously Shanghai mayors — had a sweet spot for the city and a desire to see it restored to its status before the revolution as China’s financial hub.

But current President Hu Jintao has no such political powerbase there, and many think he seeks to reduce the influence of Shanghai’s top officials as he consolidates his rule. In fact, China’s leader seems to be taking a deep interest in anti-corruption measures in Shanghai.

“A political backlash in the form of an investigation into local corruption has snared local political bosses,” notes the Wharton analysis. “In September, [2006], the central government fired Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Liangyu for his alleged involvement in the mismanagement of the city’s social security fund. Many others are being investigated.”

That scandal has set Shanghai’s international reputation back, and helped Hong Kong cement its status as one of the world’s best and most-regulated places to raise capital.

Even China’s “red chip” companies seem to agree. Last October, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China floated the largest IPO of the year, raising $19 billion. Hong Kong’s share of that pot was $13.9 billion; Shanghai raised just $5.1 billion.

That trend is likely to continue for years to come. In 2003, foreign direct investment into Hong Kong was $13.6 billion. Last year, it was $42.9 billion. And in the first quarter of 2007, $15.4 billion has already flowed in, suggesting another record year ahead.

Positioned on the edge of China, between the west and east, Hong Kong is also likely to be further bolstered by the mainland’s desire to become a more aggressive player on the world stock exchanges. Just this week it announced that a new investment agency would be getting $200 billon US to invest in foreign ventures, much of which will likely flow through Hong Kong.

Canada’s man on the ground in Hong Kong is Consul General Gerry Campbell, a veteran diplomat who came to the colony 30 years ago and is now on his third posting here. He reckons that, aside from Hong Kong’s deeply ingrained culture as an international financial centre, what the doomsayers missed when they predicted its eclipse by Shanghai was the nature of China’s economic transformation.

“Hong Kong is riding on the China wave economically,” he said, sitting in an office that overlooks Hong Kong’s busy harbour. “That’s what few people foresaw.”

Canada, while certainly not in the league of the biggest players in Hong Kong, seems to be holding its own.

The latest figures show Canada received $6.3 billion in foreign investment from Hong Kong in 2005, while Canadian companies invested $3.8 billion into the city. The Canadian consulate estimates 15 Canadian companies have regional headquarters in Hong Kong, another 29 have regional office, and that there are about 150 Canadian companies with some sort of offices.

But Campbell, who is from Vancouver and sits in front of a painting that shows our city’s harbour, agrees that more inroads could be made by Canadian business. There are, according to recent estimates, about a quarter-million Hong Kong residents with Canadian passports. They form a network of potential business partners, about 3.4 per cent of Hong Kong’s population, yet to be fully explored.

“That’s where I think we haven’t made the link,” said Campbell, although he added more efforts are underway to connect Canadian businessmen with their compatriots.

Bernard Pouliot, the chairman of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, whose 1,000 members make it the largest outside of Canada, has spent 29 years in Hong Kong. He agrees the former British colony has emerged as China’s business capital, and urges Canadian small- and medium-size businesses to look to Hong Kong as the launching point into China. That, he says, is easier than before 1997, because 10 years after the handover, after enduring their repeated crises, Hong Kong’s business players are more down to earth and open to joint ventures with outsiders.

“In the 1990s, these guys were rolling in gold,” said Pouliot, who runs the financial services company Quam. “They thought, ‘Why do I need China? Why do I need anyone else? We’re doing great.’ But the Asian financial crisis and SARS, well, it humbled them.”

“Hong Kong is New York, it’s the place to be,” he said. “Shanghai is okay, too, but is more like Chicago or Los Angeles.”

But he offers a caveat: “This will change in time. Shanghai will become China’s New York. Hong Kong more like Chicago or L.A.”

How much time?

“Ten, maybe 15 years,” he estimates. “Hard to say. But it will happen. That is what the Chinese want.”

One thing that won’t be disputed, is that if China’s boom continues there will be enough wealth and financial deals for both Hong Kong’s and Shanghai’s financiers to share.

Hong Kong’s destiny may be to be another Chinese city, but it will be one of the richest.

HONG KONG’S FORTUNE

Fortune magazine, writing just prior to the July 1, 1997 handover of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, warned of calamity. How wrong it was.

“Within months of the transition to Chinese rule, the now dominant use of English, the universal language of business, will give way to far more extensive reliance on Cantonese and Mandarin. Troops of the People’s Liberation Army, which has already formed links with the powerful local criminal gangs known as ‘triads,’ will stroll the streets. From Beijing, whichever faction emerges on top in the post-Deng Xiaoping struggle for power will control every branch of Hong Kong’s government — replacing elected legislators with compliant members, selecting cooperative judges, and appointing the chief executive.”

The city, in fact, suffered far more in the coming years from the Asian currency crisis, the tech-bubble collapse, and the SARS outbreak. But Hong Kong has recovered, and is again a leading engine of economic growth for the entire Asia-Pacific region.

PEARL OF THE ORIENT

Hong Kong’s economy, especially its financial services industry and role as a regional corporate centre, rivals that of most countries:

– GDP: $189 billion US in 2006 (6.8% growth over 2005)

– Per-capita GDP: $27,500 US in 2006 (compared to $38,888 in Canada)

– Total exports: $315 billion US in 2006 (up 9.4% over 2005)

– Total exports to Canada: $1.59 billion in 2006 (up 11.1% over 2005)

– 15th-largest Canadian export market ($1.59 billion in 2006)

– In 2007, Hong Kong will raise more money through IPOs than London or New York

– Second largest stock market in Asia (after Tokyo)

– Largest investor in mainland China

– Ranked as world’s freest economy every year since 1970

– World’s busiest airport (in terms of international cargo)

– World’s second-busiest container port

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

New president asks company’s suppliers to cut costs to share pain

Gordon Hamilton
Sun

The subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S. is ready to send the Canadian lumber industry into an even deeper financial trough likely to last another 18 months, Canfor Corp.’s new president forecast Friday.

Veteran business leader Jim Shepard, who took over the reins of Canfor only seven weeks ago, said in an interview that the company is facing a $200-million loss in 2007, largely because he believes banks will foreclose on one million American homes this year.

“This is the worst I have ever seen,” he said of Canfor’s financial situation.

The company’s balance sheet is sound, thanks to a $551 million softwood lumber refund at the end of 2006 but it is bleeding cash and has asked its suppliers to share the pain by cutting their own costs by 15 per cent.

Further, Canfor announced Friday that its senior vice-president of operations, Patch Bonkemeyer, has left the company. Bonkemeyer had only been with Canfor since last August.

In an interview with The Vancouver Sun, Shepard outlined his thoughts on what he sees as a deepening financial crisis that is causing the Canadian forest giant to hemorrhage money with every carload of lumber it ships south.

The subprime crisis is depressing housing starts even further than would be the case in a cyclical downturn as banks foreclose on homeowners and put their houses on the market.

The crisis stems from banks approving mortgages at rates below prime to people who would not otherwise qualify during the period when housing prices were going up. Those mortgages are now coming due at a time of higher interest rates, resulting in a growing number of homeowners unable to meet their payments.

“The projection is — and this is the really scary one — that by the end of the year there will have been one million home repossessed in the United States,” Shepard said.

“One million homes will go back on the market. That’s one million homes that will not be built.”

U.S. housing starts have already plummeted from a 2005 high of more than two million to 1.48 million in 2007. Lumber prices have followed starts down, closing Friday at $311 US a thousand board feet.

The crisis for B.C. sawmills has been building for the last nine months. Canfor lost $42.7 million in the first quarter of the year and there’s no relief in sight, Shepard said.

“We are on a trajectory to lose the best part of $200 million this year.”

The growing subprime crisis, coupled with other domestic issues — softwood lumber taxes, increased costs associated with the pine beetle infestation and a rapidly escalating Canadian dollar — means Canfor might as well be stapling $100 bills to every carload of lumber it ships into the United States, said investment analyst Paul Quinn of Salman Partners.

Quinn agreed the Canfor president has correctly sized up the the industry outlook.

To stem the bleeding Canfor has taken the drastic step of asking suppliers to cut their own costs and has approached unions about cost-cutting. Shepard sent out a letter dated June 20 to suppliers seeking the 15-per-cent saving.

“I am doing the best I can to be fair and at the same time to be as efficient as we can to get our costs down so that we can survive in the difficult 18 months ahead,” he said of the letter.

Rick Publicover, executive director of the Central Interior Logging Association, said if the savings can be made by better programs to improve delivery of products and services, then it is a positive move.

But for those suppliers who have fixed costs, options are limited.

“If they just come to them and say we are going to take 15 per cent off the top of your price, that’s definitely not going to work.”

Publicover also noted that suppliers feel Canfor “always wants to share the pain but not the gain.”

If the company intends to reward those who make the cuts when markets improve, Publicover said the promise needs to be formalized.

Shepard is sharing the pain personally. Along with all other salaried employees, he has taken a 25-per-cent salary cut himself, dropping his pay from $650,000 a year to $495,000.

Quinn said that’s a positive goodwill sign, but wondered what the reaction to the drive to reduce costs would be from workers.

“It’s just not the same as the guys working in the mill who have taken out a large mortgage themselves,” he said.

Shepard is not the first to sound the alarm about the impact of the housing crisis on B.C. lumber companies.

Hank Ketcham, president of West Fraser Timber Co., the country’s largest lumber producer, said April 24 that the industry downturn is the worst he can remember in his 34-year career.

Shepard acknowledged that he is a newcomer to the forest sector. But he has considerable business acumen — including nine years as president of heavy equipment distributor Finning International — and was brought on by the Canfor board as interim president to steer the company through the downturn.

“I have only been in this business seven weeks. My disadvantage is I don’t know anything about this business. My advantage is that I am not carrying any baggage, preconceived notions or thoughts that I have seen it all happen before because I don’t know what is going to happen. I am just listening,” he said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Commodity prices lower overall as demand falls off

Province

TORONTO — The Toronto Stock Exchange suffered a decline yesterday as key commodity prices fell and the cost of oil fluctuated wildly.

The S&P/TSX Composite Index — made up by more than 45 per cent of energy and materials stocks — fell 144.17 points, or one per cent, to close at 13,841.86. That left it 2.4-per-cent short of its record close of 14,176.42, reached a week earlier.

The Venture Composite Index was down 45.2 points, or 1.4 per cent, to 3,189.89 while the dollar declined nine basis points to 93.40 cents US.

U.S. markets were down. The Dow Jones declined a modest 8.21 points, or 0.1 per cent, to finish at 13,352.05. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 11.88 points, or 0.5 per cent, to 2,577.08.

“Overall commodity prices were low . . . reflecting some concern about weakening in China and demand for commodities” said Benjamin Tal, senior economist with CIBC World Markets in Toronto. “We’re talking about silver, copper, aluminum.

“Also, gold prices were a little bit weak and oil prices were kind of volatile this session because of what’s going on in Nigeria.”

The price of oil closed at $69.18 US a barrel, up four cents a day. It was down more that $1.50 at one point following the end of an oil workers strike in Nigeria, the biggest petroleum producer in Africa, easing supply concerns.

Natural-gas prices fell for the sixth straight day on Calgary’s Natural Gas Exchange, declining 10 cents to $5.79 per giga-joule on forecasts of moderate temperatures in the coming days, easing the demand for energy-consuming air-conditioning.

The Toronto energy index fell 1.9 per cent yesterday. Leading the downward drive was EnCana Corp., Canada’s biggest natural-gas producer, which dropped $2.71, or 3.9 per cent, to $67.34.

The TSX materials index was down 1.5 per cent. Contributing to the decline was Teck Cominco Ltd., which lost $1.57, or 3.3 per cent, to $46.63. As well, Barrick Gold Corp. fell 86 cents, or 2.7 per cent, to $30.94.

Tal said other factors contributing to the TSX’s overall decline was continuing problems in the U.S. with regard to the housing market and problems for financial firms caused by the issuance of sub-prime mortgages.

However, this same aspect helped ease declines in interest-sensitive stocks in Canada, Tal said.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Study says commitment to protect people from social impact may be too costly

Frances Bula
Sun

It’s highly unlikely that the housing promises made during bidding for the 2010 Olympics will be kept, according to the first-ever progress report from city, provincial and federal governments, and Vanoc.

The Olympics are the first ever Games to have made a commitment to protect people from the social impacts of such a mega-event. A Vanoc housing committee made 25 recommendations in February on the specific requirements to protect existing inner-city housing and create more.

But the draft response from the four bodies and a separate city report going to Vancouver council on Thursday say it’s “questionable” whether the province can find the money to build 3,200 units of social housing by 2010.

It is also too late to build 200-250 units of temporary-worker housing that were meant to ensure low-income people weren’t displaced by incoming Olympics workers.

And rising construction costs at the Olympic village mean that it’s not clear whether any more than 10 per cent of the 250 units of social housing at the site can be reserved for the very poor.

The one commitment the B.C. government will meet is the purchase of 800 units of rental housing. The province bought 915 residential hotel rooms this year.

The report points out that the province has committed, with partners, to build 1,100 new units of social housing since 2003, and has committed to creating 2,300 units of housing with social staff support throughout B.C.

The city has also moved to meet the Olympic promises by putting a temporary moratorium on the demolition of older three-storey apartment buildings and increasing the penalty for converting residential hotel rooms to other uses.

But overall, say critics, the response is disappointing.

“There’s no clear commitment from the provincial or the federal governments to fund the housing that’s needed,” said David Eby of Pivot Legal Society, a a major advocate for improved housing in advance of the Olympics. Eby said it’s encouraging that all levels of government actually accepted the recommendations. But, he said, they are mostly playing with numbers to make it look as though they’ve done more than they have. Many of the 2,300 supported-housing units are simply units that are being removed from existing social housing and dedicated to people with mental-health and addiction problems, he said.

“It’s this shell game. But the people in the Downtown Eastside know that nothing is being done. Things are not getting better.”

The bid book from the three levels of government promised to create an affordable housing legacy, protect rental stock and ensure people did not face homelessness, unreasonable rent increases, eviction or displacement as a result of the Games.

In order to meet those broad and somewhat vague goals, Vanoc set up a housing committee that issued a report last February with recommendations on the exact number of housing units needed, along with new policies required.

There were 25 recommendations in all, saying the governments needed to:

– build 3,200 units of new housing by 2010;

– buy 800 units of existing rental housing;

– increase the number of units in the Olympic village that would go to the very poor;

– build 200-250 units of temporary-worker housing that would become social housing after the Games;

– increase welfare rates;

– make welfare easier to get;

– change a number of policies that would help protect low-income tenants.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Staff members are being instructed on how to spot and deal with incidents of sexual exploitation by guests

Gerry Bellett
Sun

VANCOUVER – Vancouver’s hotel industry is supporting a program to prevent the sexual exploitation of children and youth by guests seeking to hire prostitutes.

Delta Vancouver Suites Hotel general manager Murray Kelsey said Friday his hotel and others in downtown Vancouver are backing a training program for staff designed by the Vancouver police and the Coquitlam-based Children of the Street Society.

The program is being pushed in the buildup to the 2010 Olympics, which Vancouver police have warned will likely result in a large increase in the numbers of prostitutes working downtown.

A training video has been produced by the police and the society that informs hotel staff how to spot possible incidents of sexual exploitation and how they should deal with guests who might want to take prostitutes to their rooms, or seek information on where to find them.

“We’re proud to be affiliated with this video,” said Kelsey whose hotel at 550 West Hastings was used to shoot it.

“We want to make sure hospitality employees are aware of sexual exploitation issues,” he said.

Kelsey said having guests using hotel rooms for prostitution purposes is “bad for business.”

“In terms of economics it’s bad. Most of our guests are from group tours, business travellers, family travellers and they don’t want to be around sexual exploitation and don’t want to be exposed to it,” said Kelsey.

The video will be used as a training tool for all downtown hotels, he said. Doormen and other staff will be told not to offer information to guests seeking prostitutes and how to act when they find someone in the hotel who might have been assaulted or in need of help.

Children of the Street Society executive director Diane Sowden said training sessions have already been held in a number of downtown hotels and more are planned.

“We’ve been working hard for the past two years to increase awareness within the hospitality industry about what sexual exploitation means to children and families. We know that when you get a hallmark event like the 2010 Olympics there’s an increased demand for sex trade workers,” said Sowden.

She said the average age of a child recruited into the sex trade is 14 years.

“What we are trying to do is prevent children being sexually exploited,” she said.

The Children of the Street Society is the leading non-profit agency in B.C. battling the exploitation of children by the sex trade industry. The society uses public education and various school-based programs to cast a light on how the industry operates. Sowden is an internationally recognized expert.

Next on the list for attention are the taxi and airline industries, she said.

“We’d like to work with taxi companies and airlines to alert them to the issue. The more people who are aware of the problem the more we can keep kids safe,” she said.

Vancouver vice squad detectives Oscar Ramos and Raymond Payette were instrumental in forming the partnership with Children of the Street and the hotel industry, said Sowden.

Ramos said some hotel employees would give information to guests on where to find prostitutes because they were afraid they’d be fired if a guest complained about them.

“If you’ve got some big spender or regular guest in the hotel and he wants that information, the doorman would have to think twice because he could lose his job if he refuses and someone complains. Now that management is supporting this they won’t have to worry,” said Ramos.

Sowden said she wasn’t sure if there was any similar program in North America but she has been asked for information from a child protection agency in Alberta.

“It could be used across the country because the problem is everywhere,” she said.

Payette said the police are reluctant to say how many children they believe are involved in the Vancouver sex trade.

“If we overestimate it causes panic, if we underestimate it does a disservice to the people who are actually there,” he said.

Insp. Scott Thompson, who is in charge of the police’s youth services section, said anyone who drives around the city can see numbers of young people involved in the sex trade.

“But this program is for hotels which are potential locations for this to happen. If hotels don’t provide a vehicle for it to take place then it will definitely have an impact on their industry,” Thompson said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007