Paper might be passe but now you have to be able to navigate the Internet, and getting there will just be a few clicks away

Andy Riga
Sun

I love poring over my maps — street, country, provincial and state maps, even subway maps. Collected over 20 years, there are dozens of them, each conjuring up memories of past trips.

The collection is ironic, considering a colleague once dubbed me Wrong-way Riga because of the amount of time I spend lost at the wheel. These days, however, thanks to increasingly sophisticated online map sites, there is no excuse for getting lost. There is also less need for paper maps.

Today, interactive online maps offer precise, door-to-door directions, plus aerial photos and 3-D views of buildings to give you a feeling of where you’re headed. They’ll help you find hotels, restaurants, hairdressers, dry cleaners, whatever, along your road-trip route or near your destination. Some will alert you to potential delays on the road.

With laptops getting cheaper and smaller, and more hotels offering free in-room high-speed Internet access, more of us are travelling with computers.

THESE ONLINE MAP SITES CAN ACT AS OUR PERSONAL CONCIERGES:

– Windows Live Local (http://local.live.com) from Microsoft combines driving directions with local searching, Yellow Pages listings and satellite photos.

On this site, you don’t even have to know the address of your destination to figure out how to get there. Simply click on two locations — where you are and where you’re going — and the site offers up turn-by-turn directions, then allows you to search for nearby businesses along the way.

For U.S. cities, maps can indicate traffic jams and construction zones.

You can customize and save your maps, adding “pushpins” and text to particular spots — places to stop along a route, for example. They can be shared with others via e-mail or instant messages.

It also offers what it calls “bird’s-eye-view imagery” — crisp aerial photos taken at an angle that make it almost feel like you’re there — for parts of several big U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas.

– Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) has an approach similar to Windows Live Local — combining local business listings with street maps and satellite imagery.

With fewer bells and whistles, Google’s site has a cleaner layout and is easier to use.

Google also offers Google Earth, a virtual globe that provides driving directions with a difference. First, you’ll have to download a piece of free software that is available (http://earth.google.com) for Windows and Mac computers.

Click on “Directions” and type in start and end points. The software will plot your route and show it to you using satellite images. Then, you can follow the route from the air: Click the play button and you’ll feel like you’re flying there.

– MapQuest.com, launched in 1996, is the granddaddy of Internet mapping sites and still the most popular. It has added a few innovations of late, the most useful of which is its “multi-stop route builder.”

Road trips are rarely A-to-B affairs. There are often stops to make along the way or particular routes we like to take.

The new MapQuest features allow you to add up to 10 destinations along your route, making it easier to precisely plan your voyage. A few clicks and you can re-order your stops, with driving directions quickly recalculated. The multiple-stop feature is available only for Canada and the United States.

– Yahoo Maps is experimenting with a new version (http://maps.yahoo.com/beta) that lets you plot routes with multiple stops and includes a mini-map that makes navigating easier.

Yahoo has also integrated its mapping technology into its FareChase travel search engine.

When searching for a hotel, for example, you can scan the neighbourhood using satellite images, use an interactive map to get driving directions and instantly see whether your accommodations would be close to local attractions and restaurants.

– A9 Maps (http://maps.a9.com), by the people behind the Amazon.com online store, offers a neat service that combines clickable maps and driving directions with street-level images of streets in 24 U.S. cities, including New York, Boston and Miami.

Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, it took “BlockView” photographs of businesses around those cities and tries to give you the feeling you’re walking or driving on the streets.

– National Geographic’s online MapMachine (www.nationalgeographic.com/maps) is a must for anybody who is entranced by atlases.

It has interactive street and physical maps, as well as “theme maps” that overlay information about topics such as population density, habitats, temperature and environmental threats.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Province

TORONTO — Canadians looking to wrap up new-home purchases might find that life insurance is a more flexible and less pricey alternative to mortgage insurance obtained through a bank, say personal-finance experts.

While most agree it makes sense to cover large debts with insurance, some argue that when it comes to mortgages most consumers treat it as an afterthought and don’t realize that buying through a bank can be a “costly mistake.”

“It is important that people know that mortgage insurance is just another piece of a comprehensive financial plan,” said Mark Halpern, a certified financial planner and founder of insurance website Illnessprotection.com.

“When you are not dealing with a professional, unfortunately you can have surprises, and those surprises can come up at the worst time.”

Part of the problem, he said, is that most consumers take out mortgage insurance when they close their financing deals with the bank without doing any price shopping ahead of time.

“And the reason is because [the banks] ask the questions at the time of the purchase: ‘Would you like to have your house paid off if you die? Would like to have your house paid off if you get sick?'” Halpern said. “And who is not going to answer ‘yes’ to that?”

That emotional response, coupled with a lack of knowledge about alternatives, means that some consumers could be shortchanging themselves in the long run.

With mortgage insurance obtained from a bank, coverage decreases with every mortgage payment but the premiums show no corresponding decline, Halpern said.

“The amount of coverage of their mortgage protection decreases as the mortgage is reduced; however, the premiums stay the same,” he said.

“That means their cost [per $1,000 of coverage] actually goes up as they bring down their mortgage debt.

“Whereas the amount of protection when you own personal life insurance remains fixed throughout the term.”

Additionally, while mortgage insurance pays off the loan’s outstanding balance, only the bank gets paid.

In contrast, life insurance will relieve that debt while often leaving something for loved ones.

“Owning your own life insurance, you have options,” Halpern said, noting the leftover money could be used to pay for items such as a child’s education, taxes and other expenses.

It’s also “portable,” meaning that consumers don’t need to requalify for coverage during the term if they buy a new home or switch mortgage providers.

By contrast, those who purchase mortgage insurance through a bank would likely need to requalify with the new financial institution.

“Potentially, when they do this, they could be older, they could unhealthy and rates could be higher. Which means they may not even qualify,” said Halpern.

Homeowners who are healthy and have a good family history can also receive discounts of up to 25 per cent on life-insurance premiums. A renewable and convertible term policy can be converted to a permanent product at any time without a medical exam.

Moreover, life insurance is not subject to provincial sales taxes the way that mortgage insurance is.

“Going apples for apples, life insurance owned personally is less expensive,” Halpern said.

“That’s why people really need to go to a professional to see how the insurance fits into the overall plan.”

© The Vancouver Province 2006

 

RETIREMENT I Canadians longing for endless beaches and friendly people are increasingly heading south

Helena Zukowski
Sun

When Christina and Robert Stobbs of North Vancouver first visited Mexico 20 years ago, they fell gobsmacked in love with its white-sand beaches, rich culture, climate and, most of all, Mexico’s “wonderful, friendly people.”

Like other frost-bitten Canadians, they began flying south regularly to seek warmth in the winter. While soaking up the country’s history and traditions they checked Mexico out from stem to stern so when the question of retirement started to loom in their lives, Mexico looked as if it might be more than just a temporary escape from the weather.

“About five years ago we started thinking about buying something there instead of just being snowbirds,” says Christina. “Every time we left to come home we were sorry because we love the people and the culture.”

Last weekend, the Stobbs were among more than a hundred other Vancouverites looking for answers at the first “Canada2Mexico” seminar held in Vancouver for people considering Mexico as a retirement destination. Event planners say that the seminars at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus Sept. 30 were the first in what will be a series of annual seminars in major cities across Canada to examine the options and benefits of retiring to Mexico.

Seminars on a variety of subjects were headed by experts in the fields of finance, taxation, immigration, real estate and health with a look into all the problems, benefits and formalities that need to be considered before heading for “offshore” retirement.

Garreth Westwood, a specialist in international relocation consulting, unravelled a web of visa formalities anyone thinking about lengthy or permanent residence in Mexico needs to consider.

There are essentially three types of visas; the FMT, the FM2 and FM3. “Snowbirds” only require the FMT tourist visa which allows a 30- to 180-day visit, but limits the amount of household goods that can be brought across the border. For retirees, the FM3 visa renewable annually is the most flexible allowing long-term residence and the possibility of converting to Mexican citizenship after five years in the country.

There are a number of categories and sub-categories, each with its special requirements depending on the professional status of the new resident, if he wants to invest in the country or establish a business. The FM2 visa is primarily for investors.

Reg Cyr, a Toronto-based financial planner, pointed out that by retiring in Mexico you not only get a warmer climate you can also reduce your cost of living and taxes. “Mexico is one destination where this works for many Canadians because Mexico can be called a tax haven,” he says. “By moving to Mexico the bottom line is that you can eliminate or mitigate most taxes while still collecting RRSPs, RRIFs, CPP and OAS.”

While Canada will withhold 15 per cent from these payments as a non-resident tax, Canadians on an FM3 visa are not required to fill out tax forms in Mexico.

“Mexico wants us there,” says Cyr. “Because they’re developing and growing their country, they want foreign currencies.”

Cyr said it was mandatory to plan carefully (especially when your net worth and assets are high) and to work with an experienced financial planner in preparing your exit. Revenue Canada has a long list of requirements that need to be met to avoid later complications.

One of the major concerns with visitors to Mexico is reliable health care since language barriers and cultural differences can make illness a frightening experience for anyone travelling outside his own country.

Dr. Robert Page, an Arizona-based physician, has lengthy experience and an understanding of medical issues in Mexico from which he has built MedToGo, an advisory website (www.medtogo.com) and series of books for travellers who want trustworthy advice on hospitals and physicians in Mexico. In his talk, Dr. Page covered a variety of issues including health insurance available to long-term residents in Mexico ($250 US a year), cited examples of serious problems that have occurred and how they were dealt with by Mexican doctors and gave specific “dos and don’ts.”

For snowbirds who have decided to put down roots, Luis Brasdefer, a consultant based in Canada with expertise in acquiring Mexican real estate, outlined how to buy property legally and safely. Among a number of differences involved in land purchase in Canada and Mexico is the legal requirement that Canadians looking to buy near Mexico’s beaches or borders do so through a bank trustee. Brasdefer cautioned that buyers should do their homework and laid out some of the procedures to follow, the legal issues involved and cautions about purchasing special land categories that affect title.

Safety on the road is one of the major concerns for Canadians who drive to Mexico and stories galore circulate about bandidos and corrupt traffic police.

Rocio Morales with Sanborn’s Insurance described in detail what visitors need to do or take with them before crossing the border with the family car, road conditions, insurance and safety. He also introduced a Vancouver couple, Laurie Moffat and her husband Walter, who are regular visitors to Mexico and always drive.

“There are just so many misconceptions about Mexico,” said Moffat. “We’ve never had any problems and we’ve never felt unsafe, even walking around town at night.”

Morales ended with a final assurance: “If you do get into trouble at night on the highway, you’ll have Green Angels to help.” These are trained mechanics who patrol at night on all major toll roads and always help motorists.

For more information on the specialists who were speakers or future seminars, contact Canada2Mexico Marketing Inc., 400 — 1681 Chestnut St., Vancouver V6J4M6. Tel: 604-733-8242; www.retire2mexico.info.

Helena Zukowski is a West Vancouver freelance writer.

RETIREMENT TO MEXICO

Canadians thinking of retiring to Mexico need to consider:

– Visas: “Snowbirds” need one kind of visa, the FMT, while those living there year-round need another, the FM3.

– Taxes: Experts say most Canadians moving to Mexico will save on taxes, as Canada charges only 15 per cent on income and Mexico collects nothing.

– Health care: Health insurance and directories of English-speaking doctors are available. Visit www.medtogo.com.

– Information: www.retire2mexico.info

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

The Vancouver Foundation finds us wanting in some areas

Randy Shore
Sun

OUR VITAL SIGNS

B+ The Good

– A desirable place to live

– Ethnic diversity

D+ The Bad

– Homelessness and addiction haunt our streets

Your grades are in, Vancouver, and you’ve got a few things to work on.

The Vancouver Foundation today releases Vital Signs 2006, a report card that rates the Greater Vancouver’s performance in 12 key indicators of livability, and it finds us wanting in our treatment of our poor, our new immigrants, and the affordability of our housing.

The Vancouver Foundation will use Vital Signs as a tool to hone the effectiveness and impact of its community grants process.

“It’s a measuring point we can use to look at what it is we are funding and maybe reallocate some of that money into areas where the need is greater,” said Faye Wightman, president and CEO of the Vancouver Foundation.

But Wightman says the report can also be a valuable tool for broader change.

Politicians and officials at every level of government can expect a visit from the foundation’s brass, report in hand, Wightman promised. While the foundation distributed $35 million last year in endowments and grants that target services for children, health, arts and education, that is a pittance compared with the power of governments to effect change.

Vancouver’s Vital Signs 2006 is based on a project started five years ago by the Toronto Community Foundation dubbed The City’s Annual Check-up. The Vancouver version takes Toronto’s medical motif and puts a pedagogical spin on it, adding letter grades.

The report is published in a language and format that is easy to read and understand, with the idea that it can be used to stimulate debate in any setting. Each category in the colourful booklet includes an overview of the subject, a letter grade and three priorities for change as identified by the foundation’s 200-member citizens’ consulting panel.

STARTLING GRADES

While Vancouver usually shows very well in livability surveys — we were named the most livable city by The Economist in 2005 — the panel handed out some startling grades.

We received a D+ in Housing: It’s too expensive for those who can pay and leaves few palatable options for those who can’t, said the panel. The ratio of house prices to median income, one of many statistical measures employed by Vital Signs, rates Vancouver as “severely unaffordable.”

The Gap Between Rich and Poor garnered only a C- for Vancouver: Nearly one in five people in this city lives below the Low-Income Cut-off (LICO), a formula used by the federal government to measure poverty. The foundation’s polling found that alleviating poverty is a top priority for people who live in Vancouver.

“For the Vancouver Foundation, that means the people of this city don’t think we are doing a good enough job of dealing with this and we need to start talking with people who are interested in making change happen,” Wightman said.

Even though the Vancouver Foundation is the biggest community philanthropic organization in Canada, Wightman said, “there’s no way we alone can address this issue.”

So, who is going to help?

The most influential of those consulted for Vital Signs is the foundation’s leadership advisory group, which includes: Vancouver superintendent of schools Chris Kelly, Heather Redfern of the Greater Vancouver Alliance for Arts and Culture, Bruce Dewar of 2010 Legacies Now, Ida Goodreau, CEO of Vancouver Coastal Health, United Way CEO Michael McKnight, VanCity CEO Dave Mowat, CanWest MediaWorks president Dennis Skulsky and Vancouver city manager Judy Rogers.

Kelly loves the transportability of Vital Signs and envisions it being used by school administrators, trustees and even students.

“I can take that document into all kinds of settings and use it as a reference point to create plans of action,” said Kelly. “The objective of the document has to be that it is translated into tangible things.”

What Vital Signs makes clear is that educators can’t confine their actions to the single narrow band of education. To learn, people have to be fed, healthy and housed, “or they fall between the cracks,” Kelly said. “[The Vancouver school board] has a formal responsibility to education, but in behind that we have a broad responsibility to serve learning.

“Unless we do connect ourselves with health and people’s lives and industry and commerce we aren’t doing our job.”

The absence of As on the report card didn’t bother Kelly: Like any good student Vancouver needs something to strive for. “While there is room for improvement, each of the areas showed real strengths and a great foundation” Kelly said.

Rogers sees the document as a vindication of the work the City of Vancouver already does in social development and housing. “It really complements the work we have done and where we are moving. It will influence all our planning going forward.”

In creating and releasing Vital Signs with many of the city’s most powerful people and organizations, Rogers was able to reinvigorate existing partnerships and start to forge new ones. “It’s really a chance to coordinate our work together.”

Goodreau used the experience to get direct feedback about the role that health care providers can play in the larger community.

“I like the immediacy of it; this is what people are really thinking as opposed to this is what we think people might be thinking,” she said. “There was enough specificity — clear signals — that we can use it to zero in on actions.”

Of the 12 Vital Signs the report tracks, 10 are shared by the other participating cities. Two are unique to Vancouver: Diversity and The Livable City.

“We consulted with more than 200 people in Vancouver to find two categories that are important to us and that really help tell the story of Vancouver.”

Diversity and how newcomers are welcomed into the community are unique issues in Vancouver, she says, and do not come up at all in the foundation’s outreach dialogues with people outside the Lower Mainland. But as Vancouver’s populace edges closer to 50 per cent visible minorities, our ability to tolerate and celebrate each other becomes one of the central aspects of the city’s life.

TORONTO‘S TRACK RECORD

Toronto’s success in bringing about concrete change is a legacy the foundation hopes to emulate.

A page in Toronto’s Vital Signs 2005 posed the question: “Where are the opportunities for Toronto’s youth?” It made note of several disturbing trends: dropping enrolment in organized sports; high youth unemployment; and an eight-year increase in violent crime by youth and against youth.

“It was the single biggest thing that the media asked us about,” said May Wong, vice-president of community initiatives. “It stimulated a lot of discussion.”

But it was more than just talk.

Concern over a record number of gun-related crimes in Toronto last year was impetus for a partnership between the Toronto Community Foundation, parks and recreation, the public and Catholic school boards, the United Way, the Toronto Blue Jays and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. They created the Toronto Sport Leadership Program, which started in January, just three months after the report came out.

The program helped 120 young people from the city’s most troubled neighbourhoods train for national certification as lifeguards and coaches for basketball and soccer. By the end of April 90 per cent of the kids had certified in at least one level of coaching or lifeguarding and many got jobs with the YMCA and the city’s recreation service, Wong said.

Not only are those kids in sports and employed, but they are great role models for the other kids in their neighbourhoods, she said.

“We looked at what Toronto did and how they were able to use it, promoting discussion and citizen engagement and change on these issues,” said Wightman. “We thought, ‘Gosh, let’s learn from what they did and let’s do it.'”

Vital Signs will be produced this year in Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa and Montreal. The project is spearheaded by the Community Foundations of Canada, the national network of community foundations of which the Vancouver Foundation is a member.

[email protected]

– – –

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

Vital Signs is a snapshot of our city’s livability produced by the Vancouver Foundation, backed by a thick sheaf of statistical data from the city and the region, as well as opinion surveys undertaken in the City of Vancouver. Greater Vancouver, the area stretching from Langley Township to Bowen Island, is assigned a letter grade for its performance in each subject area as graded by a panel of 200 community stakeholders from around the region. The panel’s priorities for change were collected before any of the report’s data was presented. Not a single A was awarded, according to Vancouver Foundation CEO Faye Wightman, so improvements are expected. The 35-page Vital Signs 2006 is a colourful summary of a massive program of analysis and consultation; a more detailed online version is available at www.vancouverfoundation.bc.ca.

B+ THE LIVABLE CITY

This category is unique to the Vancouver version of Vital Signs and acts more like an overall grade for many of the project’s other key issues than a single subject area. Livability is defined by the city’s performance in such areas as green space, public transit, recreational opportunities, mix of housing types and access to waterfront, in short, a compendium of all the things that make Vancouver a desirable place to live.

Top priority for improvement: Public transportation

B+ DIVERSITY AS WAY OF LIFE

Nearly everyone in Vancouver comes from somewhere else. That diversity is reflected in everything from our cultural festivals and multilingual services to the city’s mind-boggling array of ethnic restaurants. A staggering 44 per cent of Vancouverites speak a language other than English or French at home at least some of the time. When it comes to diversity, we revel in it: Diwali and Lunar New Year events draw hundreds of thousands of people.

Top priority for improvement: More cultural events

B WORK

If numbers don’t lie, then Greater Vancouver is a workers’ paradise, with thousands more jobs than workers. Demand for skilled labour is being driven by preparations for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The employment rate is flirting with record highs. The numbers also show real incomes have shrunk since 1999, average household expenditures exceeded household incomes in 2004 and Vancouver is Canada’s second most expensive city to live in.

Top priority for improvement: Increase minimum wage

C+ GETTING STARTED

Greater Vancouver is a main entry point for new immigrants to Canada, and those that arrive here tend to stay here. Despite our proliferation of services for immigrants, new arrivals have difficulty finding meaningful employment, with women having a particularly tough time entering the job market. Those who do crack the job market are being paid less than previous waves of new immigrants and their earnings are slower to catch up.

Top priority for improvement: ESL classes

C- RICH-POOR GAP

The gap in earning power between Vancouver’s poorest earners and its richest has grown steadily for the past 25 years, with the top 10 per cent of earners making more than $10 for every $1 dollar earned by the lowest 10 per cent. The proportion of new immigrants living in poverty has more than doubled since 1980, while the number of seniors in “straitened circumstances” has dropped.

Top priority for improvement: Homelessness

D+ HOUSING

The worst grade on the city’s report card, it is also one of the toughest to address. The number of shelter beds is greatly exceeded by the number of people living on Vancouver’s streets. Housing them is complicated by issues of addiction and mental illness. Even those with homes spend more than other Canadians for shelter and because the Greater Vancouver is an attractive place to live, the demand for — and price of — housing is high.

Top priority for improvement: Low-cost housing

B- SAFETY

Vancouverites generally feel safe walking their city’s streets and most don’t worry about letting their children play in the neighbourhood, but all is not rosy. We don’t feel as safe as other Canadians and almost one in 10 will be a victim of property crime. After a decades-long, slow decline, violent crime has inched upward since 2002. We do keep an eye out for bad guys; by the end of this year there will be 557 active Block Watch groups.

Top priority for improvement: More police officers

B LEARNING

Opportunities for education abound for people who speak English. Vancouverites are highly educated with more than 60 per cent of us holding at least a college diploma or better; another seven per cent hold trades certification. But new immigrants are putting a strain on the existing ESL services and new data shows that four in 10 immigrants who start high school will leave without a diploma.

Top priority for improvement: ESL classes

B ARTS AND CULTURE

Performance, literature and the arts are an important part of public life in Greater Vancouver and showcase the region’s ethnic diversity. The arts are also becoming a significant source of employment. The arts labour force in the region grew an astonishing 57 per cent between 1991 and 2001 and still lagged most Canadian cities. In B.C., only Victoria employed a greater proportion of its labour force in the arts.

Top priority for improvement: Funding for the arts

B- BELONGING, LEADERSHIP

Examining a hodgepodge of volunteerism, personal philanthropy, local government and high voter turnout paints a picture of community involvement, civic pride and caring in Greater Vancouver. While fewer of us give to charity than people in other Canadian cities, those who do give are more generous than other Canadians. Nearly half of adults report donating their time to a cause.

Top priority for improvement: Increase volunteering

B HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Clean air, clean water and a favourable climate make Greater Vancouver one of the healthiest jurisdictions in the world. We exercise more and live longer than most Canadians. We have access to 70 per cent more doctors per capita than the rest of Canada. The region is also home to 12,000 injection drug users, 4,700 of them in the Downtown Eastside, who die by the dozens every year from overdoses.

Top priority for improvement: Reduce drug addiction

B ENVIRONMENT

Our attitude toward the environment is a study in contrasts: We recycle in huge numbers and huge amounts, but we also throw away enormous quantities of trash. We boast some of the finest parks and value protected habitats, and yet we use water as though it is an unlimited resource. We have strict emissions standards and maintain them through AirCare, but emissions continue to rise along with the number of cars of the road.

Top priority: Air quality

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

Gordon Hamilton
Sun

A Conference Board of Canada report released Monday is forecasting an escalating decline in U.S. housing starts in 2007 severe enough to hurt Canadian forest products companies but not enough to send the U.S. economy into recession.

In its Autumn U.S. Outlook, the conference board forecasts a 10-per-cent decline this year in housing starts and an additional 18 per cent in 2007.

The conference board position on housing is considered dramatic by industry analysts. The board states that it is basing its forecast on past downturns, where slowdowns have been deeper than most predictions.

“Homebuilder confidence is plummeting, the stock of unsold homes is soaring and house prices are either flat or declining in some regions of the country,” the report says of the U.S. market.

Using housing sales as gauge, the conference board notes that slowdowns in the 1970s and 1980s lasted for around four years with drops of more than 50 per cent for both new and existing home sales.

Sales declines in the last 12 months have averaged only nine per cent to 16 per cent so far, the report states, indicating “that there is still plenty of room for this market to correct over the next few months.”

At the same time the conference board released its forecast, Barron’s reported an increase in construction spending in the U.S. of 0.3 per cent to $1.2 trillion US in August over July, beating expectations of a 0.4-per-cent decrease.

Mark Bishop, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said no matter whose numbers prove to be most accurate, the trend is negative for U.S. housing into 2008.

“I don’t think we would be as negative as 18 per cent, but certainly the trend is negative throughout 2007 and into 2008.

“We would expect ’08 to be the bottom for housing and in terms of the average we would expect to see ’08 to be weaker, but in the second half starting to show some reasonable potential for increases,” Bishop said.

Bishop said share prices of publicly traded U.S. homebuilding companies have stabilized after a drop earlier this year, an indicator that investors do not see a disastrous decline in starts. Bishop’s own forecast shows a decline in lumber consumption in the U.S. from 64.6 billion board feet a year at the market peak in 2005 to 57.2 billion board feet in 2007.

That will mean curtailments across the country, he said, with Eastern Canadian companies being hit hardest. He singled out pulp and paper companies, saying the sawmills they own and rely on for wood chips will have to take downtime, hitting their lumber revenues and boosting chip costs.

Analyst Paul Quinn, with Salman Partners, issued a research paper Monday forecasting that when the shutdowns begin, they will be swift and brutal.

“Declining lumber consumption in 2006 and 2007, led by the much softer housing market, will continue to play havoc on the profitability of lumber producers,” he said in his report. “However, we suspect that the market correction will be quicker than usual as the current situation places many Canadian operations in the red. We expect prices will rebound slightly in mid-2007 after the expected closures become felt through the distribution channels.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Michael Ignatieff
Sun

Canada is the most successful and enduring multinational, multilingual liberal democratic federation on Earth.

The paradox of our identity is that our divisions are a source of strength, not weakness.

We have built a common life of equal citizenship among peoples who speak different languages and who come from different cultures. We are among the most equal countries in the world. We are among the richest.

Yet hope and opportunity are not equally shared in Canada. There are regions of our country where hope is in short supply, and where opportunity is fleeing to the cities. The growing divide between urban and rural Canada, between Canada’s metropolitan areas and her regions is the great undiscussed national unity challenge of our time.

About 70 per cent of Canadians live in just six cities; 30 per cent live in farming communities, single-industry towns, fishing communities and aboriginal settlements.

In many of these communities, there is anxiety. The local population is aging. The tax base is eroding. It is hard to attract and retain doctors and nurses.

The young people want to stay, but they are forced to leave for the city, because that is where the jobs are. Local manufacturers are hanging on: If the dollar increases further, they may go under.

On the farms, record indebtedness and declining incomes forces families to work at other jobs to make ends meet. On aboriginal reserves, there is sometimes despair.

We don’t call this a national unity issue, but we should. We do not want a Canada where hope has fled our regions to the big cities. We do not want any region of our country, north or south, east or west, to be left behind.

We have spent the past 40 years working to ensure that no Canadian is denied health care on account of income. We now have health outcomes dependent on where in the country you live. If there’s two-tiered health care in this country, it’s not between rich and poor. It’s been urban and rural. This is unacceptable.

Improving education in Canada’s regions and in the north is the key to economic development outside Canada’s major metropolitan areas. This is crucial if young Canadians are to remain where they grew up and to create new opportunities for their children.

We need to build on success: On the development of wind power in Matane, and the new jobs it brings; on the potential for our farmers to develop new biofuels and biopharmaceuticals; on the capacity of our forest industries to develop new products for the housing market; on the capacity of rural communities to become telemarketing and call centres; on the willingness of our medical schools to train doctors and nurses for service in the regions.

There are regional development strategies that work. In Kamloops, partnerships between municipal government, the local university and the Kamloops Indian band have brought new opportunity to the city and its region; in Sydney, the Cape Breton Development Corp. has invested in call centres and software development companies, and a city has survived the closure of its steel mill and coal mine.

The development strategies that work are ones that are created at the grassroots, by partnerships between all orders of government, local business leaders, community organizers and local stakeholders.

The federal government can become the national clearing house of best practice in regional economic development policy.

It should provide national infrastructure to assist regions to grow, and it should bankroll research in environmental and technological innovation that creates jobs and opportunities. It should sustain income and price supports for farmers and fishermen, and to fight for fairer conditions of trade against our heavily subsidized partners.

We need a national food policy, to bring consumers, producers and processors together to coordinate strategies for reviving Canada’s ocean regions and our agricultural sector.

Farmers, fishermen, forestry workers need to know they have a friend in the federal government of Canada.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

 

City police target the worst property offenders for face-to-face interviews

Chad Skelton
Sun

In a small, windowless interview room at the Vancouver lockup, a police officer and a suspect sit down for a chat. On one side of the table is Clinton Dreyer, a crack addict and petty thief with 80 criminal convictions, who was picked up the night before for shoplifting.

On the other is Det.-Const. Rowan Pitt-Payne, a longtime investigator with the Vancouver police.

“I’m not here to talk about what you’re in here for,” Pitt-Payne tells Dreyer. “I’m here to talk about how we can stop you from coming back.”

MIND-BOGGLING IN SCOPE

Greater Vancouver has one of the worst property crime rates in North America — fuelled in large part by drug addicts hungry for their next fix. Last year alone, this region’s thieves broke into more than 25,000 homes and businesses and 40,000 cars — stealing millions of dollars worth of stereos, CDs and jewelry.

Lower Mainland residents are more likely to have their cars broken into than residents of any other major Canadian city — four times more likely than those in Toronto.

It is a problem so mind-boggling in scope that police forces have become desperate for solutions.

In Vancouver, one of the things police are trying is the chronic-offender program.

Criminologists have long known that a majority of property crime is committed by only a small number of criminals — chronic offenders who break into cars or homes virtually every day.

For the past 18 months, four Vancouver police detectives and one civilian have been assigned to identify and crack down on the city’s worst property offenders.

And while that mission involves a lot of traditional police work — like surveillance and arrests — it also has, at its heart, a notion almost radical in its simplicity.

“We’re getting to understand our offenders face-to-face,” said Pitt-Payne, one of the detectives with the unit. “What we’re interested in doing is identifying what makes this person tick — what is making this person a criminal? And trying to deal with the roots [of the problem] rather than keep on arresting him over and over again.”

Which is how Pitt-Payne came to be talking to Dreyer one morning last February. (Pitt-Payne invited this reporter to sit in on that interview and Dreyer agreed.)

As the interview began, Pitt-Payne asked Dreyer about his education (he finished Grade 10) and his mental health (he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and often forgets to take his medication).

“What kind of drugs do you use?” asked Pitt-Payne.

“Coke.”

“You smoke it?”

“Yeah.”

“You inject at all?”

“No, I quit a couple of years ago.”

Dreyer, who lives in the Portland Hotel in the Downtown Eastside, told Pitt-Payne he knows the impact his drug addiction is having on himself and others.

“I like to smoke it. I like being high,” he said. “But I don’t know if it’s worth it because you end up stealing again and pissing people off. I’d like to be clean.”

Pitt-Payne asked how much he’s usually paid for the things he steals.

“Maybe 10 per cent of the [true value],” said Dreyer. “At first, some guys give you half price or a third. You’re supposed to get a third. But you don’t. Because they know you want the coke.”

And how much does he spend on cocaine each day?

“My drugs end up costing me about $500 a day,” he said.

Pitt-Payne, thinking out loud, said that means Dreyer has to steal about $5,000 worth of goods every single day to feed his habit.

Dreyer admitted he does several thefts a day. His specialty, he said, is stealing liquor from restaurants or paintings off the walls of hotels. “It’s good, valuable artwork,” he said. “It’s more respectful than breaking into some old lady’s house.”

Finding someone to buy the stuff he steals is easy, he said.

Usually all he has to do is walk into one of the Downtown Eastside’s seedy bars and someone will call him over to haggle.

Christmas is the busiest time in the bars, he said, when people come down from the suburbs to shop for deals.

In some cases, he said, he can barter directly with the drug dealers.

Pitt-Payne asked Dreyer what it would take for him to stop committing crimes.

“I’d have to control my cocaine habit,” he said.

And is he willing to quit drugs?

“I’m willing to try,” said Dreyer. “But it’s not going to happen in this neighbourhood.”

Pitt-Payne reached his last question, the one he asks every chronic offender.

“What can I do to help you?” he asked.

“Get me bail,” says Dreyer, chuckling.

But Dreyer is probably out of luck.

Pitt-Payne said officers in his program do everything they can to get “their guys” into drug treatment or mental health programs — in the hopes such assistance will stop, or even slow down, their criminal activity.

Starting this past week, a social worker with Vancouver Coastal Health was assigned on a temporary basis to the program to help place such offenders in treatment and housing.

But the other main goal of the program is to get Vancouver’s chronic offenders put behind bars for as long as possible.

The reason, said Pitt-Payne, is that offenders in the program are so prolific that getting them off the streets for even a few weeks can have a significant impact on crime.

He said officers also believe a lengthy prison stay may be the only way for some of these people to turn their lives around.

“These guys do remarkably well in a structured environment,” said Pitt-Payne. “When you see them in prison, they’re totally different.”

It’s also often easier for offenders to get clean and access drug treatment in jail than on the streets, said Pitt-Payne.

“The longer the sentence, the better your chances of accessing programs,” he said. “The happy endings we see are in prolonged incarceration.”

Dreyer himself illustrates the point.

When Pitt-Payne interviewed him on Feb. 16, Dreyer was in bad shape

His hands were filthy, as if he had been binning for bottles and cans, and he wore a tattered blue sweater and stained blue jeans.

He looked incredibly tired, struggling to keep his eyes open as he answered Pitt-Payne’s questions.

The next day, Dreyer was sentenced to 20 days in jail and sent to the Fraser Regional Correctional Centre in Maple Ridge.

On March 9, shortly after Dreyer was released, The Sun caught up with him again at his room at the Portland Hotel.

He was clearly still struggling — his shoes were soaked through and his clothes were dirty — but he looked healthier than he had a month earlier and said his time in jail had been good for him.

“I got my sanity,” he said.

MAKING THE CASE

To try to keep people like Dreyer in jail, the chronic-offender program keeps detailed files on all its targeted offenders — about 70 at the moment.

When one of them comes before the courts, either for bail or sentencing, detectives write up a brief report on the offender and e-mail it to the Crown attorney’s office.

That report includes the offender’s criminal record, but also information gleaned from interviews like the one with Dreyer — such as the nature of his drug addiction.

Stan Lowe, spokesman for B.C.’s criminal justice branch, says prosecutors find the reports useful in making their arguments to judges.

One of the main legal grounds to deny people bail is that they are likely to commit another crime if they are released.

Knowing that someone has a $500-a-day drug habit — and no visible means of support — makes it a lot easier to make that case.

“Unless there’s an immediate plan for rehabilitation or treatment in the works, it assists the Crown in being able to point out that this is a significant risk factor,” said Lowe.

When the chronic-offender program began, one of the first tasks was to make a list of all such offenders in Vancouver.

The typical definition that criminologists use is someone who has been charged five times in the past year — on the assumption that if you’ve been caught five times, you’re committing dozens more offences.

But as the unit started making such a list, it soon ran into a big problem: there were just too many people that fit that description.

“It was ballooning,” said Pitt-Payne.

When they got to 800 offenders, they stopped counting.

WORST OFFENDERS BEHIND BARS

Eventually, just to keep things manageable, the unit had to limit itself to about 70 offenders with 12 or more charges in the past year — a category one criminologist dubbed “super-chronic offenders.”

Pitt-Payne said that when he talks to police officers in other cities, they can’t believe such criminals even exist.

“Other police forces get slack-jawed when they hear how many chances you get in Vancouver,” he said.

“They laugh at us — ‘What is somebody with that number of charges still doing on the street?’ “

No detailed study of Vancouver’s chronic- offender program has been conducted yet. But there are some hopeful signs it is beginning to make a difference.

As of February, there were 72 people with 12 or more charges on the unit’s list. As of this week, that’s down to nine.

Pitt-Payne said the reason is simple: many of the worst offenders are now behind bars.

“We’ve been running long enough [now] that we’ve incapacitated and disrupted some of them,” he said.

That’s allowed the team to move onto the next tier of offenders — those with five to 10 offences over the past year — and to take more “special requests” from senior officers to target criminals who don’t have enough charges to make the grade but are still considered a problem.

Included in the list of chronic offenders now behind bars is Dreyer.

Since The Sun spoke with Dreyer in early March, he’s been picked up for theft four more times — most recently on Aug. 6. Dreyer pleaded guilty to that charge and was sentenced on Aug. 21.

This time, the Crown had a fresh report from the chronic-offenders program. The judge gave him 90 days.

That’s 90 days that Dreyer won’t be stealing, Pitt-Payne said. “For a Vancouver court, that’s a big sentence.

Scott Simpson
Sun

Over the past seven days, Vancouver Sun readers have heard from a vast array of commentators, ranging from raw recruits in the northeast gas exploration industry to Canadian elder statesmen, about the present and future prospects for a secure and steady supply of energy, here at home in British Columbia, throughout the country and around the world.

Today, as the series draws to a close, we look at what appears to be an unsustainable appetite for electricity, locally and internationally. We’re also going to suggest some solutions, as reporters Scott Simpson and Larry Pynn invite experts to come into their homes and cast a critical eye on their own energy consumption behaviours.

Our conclusion is that consumers can save money and make small changes that place less of a burden on the environment — while reducing the pressure on industries and institutions to bring new energy supplies onstream.

If Gary Hamer had a set of worry beads right about now, he’d be rattling like a rusted pickup racing along a gravel road.

The source of his anxiety is the digital cable box glowing underneath a television in the living room of a nondescript home in Port Moody. The box is lit up, even though the television is off.

Over the next 12 months, this box will consume $10 worth of electricity — 85 per cent of that power being consumed when nobody is watching TV.

For Hamer, BC Hydro’s senior energy management engineer, the box is not only an example of wasted energy.

It’s the manifestation of a developed nation’s faith that another source of energy is always around the corner to sustain our infatuation with technology.

That faith may be ill-founded.

The world’s primary energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency, noted in a recent report that the planet faces a “severe” challenge in securing a clean, sustainable and affordable energy system.

It says electricity generation for lighting is a “major source” of greenhouse gas emissions — equivalent to 70 per cent of the annual emissions coming from the world’s automobiles.

The low cost of electricity is identified by the agency as the single largest disincentive to consumer pressure to make changes such as adopting energy-efficient lighting, or energy-smart electronic devices.

For example, the agency says a typical British person uses 12,000 times as much light as 200 years ago — although the share of disposable income necessary to buy that light has stayed the same.

Hamer believes there would be more pressure for change if only consumers recognized the scale of the challenge ahead.

Just consider what is expected to happen to our already overstressed energy grid as the popularity of digital TV boxes increases.

Each little box consumes 155 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. Nobody turns them off because it takes a couple of hours to reboot all the guide information they contain.

Hydro estimates 500,000 B.C. households have these units. By 2010, there will be 2.2 million.

Unless manufacturers find a way to curtail the amount of power the boxes consume, B.C.’s 2.2 million units will devour 350 gigawatt hours of electricity per year.

That’s enough power to annually meet all the residential electrical needs of Greater Vancouver’s sixth-largest city, Delta.

You’d have to add another hydro facility the size of Hydro’s Buntzen Lake system — or eight Alouette Lake systems — to create the extra power required.

That’s just the B.C. picture.

Across Canada, 22 million digital boxes will be in use by 2010 — consuming enough electricity to otherwise supply every household in Vancouver and Surrey combined — to keep Canadians up to date with their TV listings and pay-per-view channel access.

To create that much power, you would need an additional hydroelectric facility the size of the Peace Canyon system in northeast B.C — the province’s fourth-largest system.

Take a broader view, and you begin to appreciate the size and scope of the problem that Hamer is looking at.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission has given U.S. TV broadcasters a deadline of 2009 to convert all of their broadcasts to high-definition TV.

That means about 220 million of those digital boxes — eating up enough electricity to light 3.5 million homes, or four times the number of households in all of Greater Vancouver.

They will consume 2.6 times the power coming from the No. 1 source of electricity in all of British Columbia, the Gordon Shrum Generating Station at W.A.C. Bennett Dam on the Peace River system.

You’d have to flood a region with a surface area of 4,680 square kilometres to meet the demand from all those boxes.

That’s more than twice the surface area of the largest body of fresh water in B.C., the Williston Reservoir that feeds the Bennett/Shrum system. You could fit Stanley Park into it 1,170 times.

BC Hydro’s internal culture has developed a name for appliances that consume power while on standby. They are called “vampire loads” because they drain energy out of the electrical system without returning any value to either the consumers who own them or the economic life of the province.

Their continued and expanding use compels electricity providers to accelerate development of new supplies.

Hydro’s Hamer sits on a Canadian Standards Association technical committee that is preoccupied by digital signal boxes.

“It’s kind of funny sitting around the table,” says Hamer, “because the manufacturers say, ‘We only build what the cable companies tell us to build.’ The cable companies say, ‘We only build what the customers want to bring in.’

“Nobody is concerned about the power consumption.”

There’s more to this impending horror story.

In a typical home, the array of devices adds up quickly — computers, printers, second and even third TVs, modems, cellphone chargers and many others. Even regular incandescent lights, as the International Energy Agency noted, are a threat to future energy security.

The agency says switching to energy-efficient lighting such as compact fluorescent and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) would save the world $2.6 trillion US by 2030.

Meanwhile, the scramble to keep pace with demand continues.

Ontario has the most ambitious plans in Canada — $70 billion to upgrade and expand its aging electricity system.

The scale of the problem is smaller in B.C., due to a legacy of high-quality hydroelectric resources, but the province is no longer independent of volatile North American electricity trading markets that can add tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars to the annual cost of providing electricity in B.C.

Last July, Hydro announced it was accepting private-sector bids for $4-billion worth of new electricity projects over the next four years — and that’s barely enough to cover the shortage that will emerge from growth in electricity demand over the time it takes to build them.

In spite of all the new projects, BC Hydro’s consumer rates for electricity remain third-lowest in Canada. Only Manitoba and Quebec, also blessed with sprawling hydroelectric resources, are lower.

In British Columbia, the biggest challenge may be changing the habits of consumers.

According to the International Energy Agency, each Canadian annually uses 17,290 kilowatt hours of electricity compared to 13,066 in the United States, 6,231 in Great Britain, and 1,379 in China.

“Getting people focused on how they use power is a real challenge,” Hamer says.

With that in mind, two Vancouver Sun reporters arranged home energy audits — hoping to cut down on their own household energy costs, but also to pick up tips useful to other consumers.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Twinning and road widening at odds with ‘livable region’ intent, motion tells province

Gerry Bellett
Sun

THE REGION I Provincial government plans to spend $1.5 billion twinning the Port Mann Bridge and widening Highway 1 were strongly opposed by the Greater Vancouver Regional District Friday.

Over the objections of Surrey, Coquitlam and other Fraser Valley communities, the rest of the GVRD directors approved a motion — stretching over two pages — that told the province that increasing traffic capacity into the Fraser Valley under its Gateway Program is fundamentally at odds with the GVRD’s Livable Region Strategic Plan.

The regional plan calls for new housing to be concentrated in existing urban areas and discourages urban sprawl into the Fraser Valley.

Fears were expressed by some GVRD directors that the plan for twinning the bridge is silent on what effect it will have on urbanization of the Fraser Valley.

Surrey Coun. Marvin Hunt said Surrey — which wants the bridge project — is opposed to the livable region plan.

He said a third of the traffic now using the overloaded Port Mann Bridge is commuter traffic between Surrey and Coquitlam, making the bridge an arterial route between both communities.

“It’s a community route between us and Coquitlam,” said Hunt.

The GVRD’s land use and transportation committee produced the motion that asked the government not to make any final decisions on twinning the bridge or widening Highway 1 until a comprehensive review of traffic movement in the Lower Mainland is completed and alternatives to the projects had been considered.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan, the committee chairman, conceded Friday the government can just go ahead and ignore the GVRD’s objections and do what it likes.

However, he hopes the government would keep the project within “the spirit” of the regional plan so that it would be a “positive force in building the region.”

The motion began by saying the GVRD board wants to work cooperatively with the transportation minister “to ensure provincial and regional interests” are aligned in the planning and implementation of the Gateway Program.

However, it asked that a number of measures be taken before any final decision is made, including a regional goods movement strategy and a transportation management strategy for the Lower Mainland, including lane allocations and priority access for transit and high occupancy vehicles.

The motion also called for a provincial commitment to share the costs of linking local roads to the Gateway Program and asked for a meeting to discuss the traffic implications in store for the Fraser Valley.

The motion ended with the GVRD saying the expansion of “general purpose traffic capacity through the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and widening of Highway 1 … are inconsistent with the Livable Region Strategic Plan and therefore the GVRD board strongly opposes” them.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Jim Jamieson
Province

Robert Allen had a great idea one day in 2001 when he was driving away from a jobsite near Qualicum Beach.

It occurred to the construction contractor that he could tell from a distance which patio doors and windows weren’t locked and they would be easy pickings if he were a burglar.

“All it takes is one unopened window that a guy can see from the street to be the sole reason your house is burgled,” said Allen, who’s based in Parksville.

Allen’s great idea was to design and market a sophisticated type of “stick” that would do the same job as the piece of wood his customers often asked him to cut for them, to fit in the window or door’s metal channel and act as a low-tech burglar deterrent.

Five years later, Allen and his business partners — his wife, Jackie, and Ray Therrien — have invested more than a half-million dollars in the three-person company and now have their WindowStick device sold in 207 Wal-Mart stores across Canada.

The company got its first big break last fall when Wal-Mart OK’d demos in five of its stores.

The WindowStick (www.windowstick.com), which retails for $25 to $30, adjusts to fit any size sliding door or window and gives off a 110-decibel alarm when someone tries to dislodge it.

“Sales are great, better than anticipated,” said Allen, 47, who couldn’t disclose numbers.

WindowStick also is being sold at independently-owned stores. Allen said he’s about to receive delivery of his third 15,000-unit shipment from his Chinese manufacturer — three months ahead of schedule — to satisfy demand.

Turning an idea into a product on store shelves was challenging.

“We started in 2001 defining the product, going through the patent process, making it affordable, sourcing out manufacturing, setting up the company, doing test markets,” he said.

Allen tried to keep his contracting business going, but had to quit to work on his new venture full time.

“I’ve got more than one mortgage on my house now, you give up holidays, you give up a lot to build the dream,” he said.

© The Vancouver Province 2006