Yay! We voted Christy out! We got Trump in, but hey, A-B-C!!!!!

You're voting for "anyone but Harper" because we have a balanced budget and it's perceived the cons are doctoring the books to have a balanced budget.

The "anyone but" vote now has a liberal leader who's spent a years budget in 1.5 months and has put us in billions of dollars of debt. However, I -guarantee- you no one who voted for Justin simply because "anyone but Harper" is better off in the slightest.

Voting for someone because they have a Chinese name is even better than the "anyone but" vote.

Wild Rose party split the vote from PC enough in the last provincial election that the NDP ended up getting in last year. So you are right... Alberta was doing great literally right up until they got in. You can blame oil prices for the downturn, but there was a similar drop in late 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, again then in 2008, and with low provincial taxes and no carbon nonsense, the industry easily bounced back each time.

The other problem is they are going so crazy spending, that in 4 years they are projected to be in more debt than BC (over 60 billion). Which is insane given that up to that point, the province never carried debt.

So in a year they broke one of the strongest provinces in Canada.... just like they broke the previous strongest province in Canada back in the 90's. BC actually had a stronger economy than AB before the NDP got in here.

If you have a job... you are benefiting from the liberals, both through lower taxes and the fact that the company you work for isn't being taxed to death so they can keep you employed.

Besides, BC still hasn't been able to get out of the huge debt the NDP stuck the province with last time around. We literally can't afford the NDP, unless you actually want a ~17% provincial tax.

Yeah, I realize I am pretty biased... but I won't ever forgive the NDP for what they did to this province.

:troll:

:troll:

imo Clark is not the reason BC is in the positive position it is in..

however the alternative will worsen the province.

the choice to me is simple.


and another thing, why is it people are more concerned with how they are "offended" than how they are "affected"?

Douglas Todd: Government must crack down on dark money to create housing affordability in Vancouver | Vancouver Sun

This has happened on Krusty's watch and it's probably filling her off shore accounts.

The question is, if you own property do you want a crackdown or do you want business as usual so your investment continues to go sky high?

It's easier to turn a blind eye and just say "sucks for the rest of them".

This is an issue that is fairly time sensitive, the longer it goes on, the hard it is going to be to make policy changes later.

For the moment, I think the majority of actual Vancouverites that live and work here that are not mega-millionaires likely purchased their homes a while ago, and for less than half of what they are worth now. If they really bring the hammer down and the market falls back 30-40%, you haven't really hurt this group... although they may be pretty annoyed that they didn't get a huge winfall by selling.

As time goes on, these people will sell and maybe decide to take some low interest equity loans out on their massive asset. Meaning new buyers are leveraging hard to get into the market, and many existing buyers are also leveraging to try and enjoy their new found wealth in a more tangible way.

If this goes on too long, then you have a huge number of people that are going to be financially ruined by a 30-40% drop.

I don't think there is a clear answer. My personal feeling is that we are coming off a massive jump in only the last 2 years and that the window for immediate heavy handed action is going to be closing soon.


In terms of political parties, if you put aside bias and just be totally objective about it:

Liberals:
Likely they will take additional action by applying the Foreign Buyers Tax (FBT) to the rest of the province. It probably won't do shit for cooling the market at this point, and I don't think they will really do anything about it.

NDP:
Although they haven't committed to it in their platform, Horgan has alluded to spreading the FBT to the rest of the province as well. They also have a speculation tax of 2% annually. Again, I don't think this is going to really do anything to the market. The problem with the speculation tax is it will end up being applied to middle class Canadians instead of the people it needs to be going against... and those people will just skirt it anyway. I don't see them taking additional action on housing beyond that, honestly their platform is a little weak when it comes to tackling the housing crisis given that they are the opposition and not the incumbent.

Green:
The Green party has the strongest platform stance on this issue. The are planning to double the FBT, change the transfer tax so it will really hurt for people buying 7 figure+ homes (while reducing the taxes for less than that), introducing a much better thought out speculation tax, income based property taxes, revamped home owner grants... I mean it is a total socialist overhaul.


So basically if you have two very modest approaches that will probably do nothing to even cool the market, and a crazy extreme option that will punish anybody who attempts to use their home as an investment.

Suck it for the rest of them.

Is not like much can be done. Too many people coming to BC, not enough supply. Even if you put a 20% tax on top. People will still need somewhere to live. Instead they gov should build better infrastructure for long time, easier access public transit across BC and better zoning and planning so business want to expand outside of Vancouver, Burnby, Coq, Surrey. BC is huge if only the gov have better planning people wouldn't want to live in Van or any nearby cities. But all of these require long term planning which none of the gov party are willing to do this since it takes too long to show its benefit. So they came up with all these band aid policy which doesn't do anything.

This is the reason they don't really want to tackle it. Over a billion in revenue just from home transactions. That's a huge revenue source.

'A substantial revenue source': But B.C.'s property transfer tax barely mentioned in campaign - British Columbia - CBC News

An NDP government won't make homes more affordable, at least not in the short term. You might get more co-ops in a generation though, which I guess for some people is a way for them to build wealth through the stock market while singing kumbaya with their neighbours.

What people want is housing that is some reasonable multiple of median income, say 3 times. Those days are long gone in Metro Vancouver. Housing hasn't been 3 times the median income since the year 2000.

I don't know how anyone can vote NDP after hearing Horgan talk about the plans to remove the tolls from the port Mann. Essentially taking the 500m reserve for LNG development to pay for the first 3 years of toll free crossings and then after that essentially no long term plan with interest on the remaining balance skyrocketing.

Rather have the devil krusty clark i know in office than the devil i dont know in NDP.

I think the thing we need to remember here is that while yes, CC is a shitty person and probably getting pretty wealthy off her position, voting her out wont positively change your life.

No party will ever really put any money back into your pocket. They can all make pre-election promises for whatever they want, but the reality is that when the time comes to put those promises into action, hardly any change in political party has every really made your day to day life better or made you more money.

The province and country has a significant fixed cost to run year to year. Removing MSP, or removing tolls, or increasing childcare, subsidizing housing, all of that money has to come from somewhere.

To me, it is very clear that 2 of the parties are going to significantly add to the money they take out of my pocket to hand out to others. And lets be honest, Im sure the majority of the people in this thread are in the middle class and working full time. Neither of the 2 parties that lean towards redistributing money are going to give you any more.

They're all taking money out of your pocket. One party at least lets me choose where Im spending some of it.


Lower tax and higher user fees is a better system than higher tax and lower fees. It lets you prioritize where to direct your money instead of spreading it over areas you don't plan to use.

While I agree with RRxtar's points, I think you have failed to mention how Crusty and the Libs have been selling our province out, in terms of both education and home ownership. These are 2 qualities that will take a much longer time to observe the negative impact.

On this front, the Green's platform is really the strongest. Unfortunately, they have no hope of winning the election, so the next best option falls onto the NDP.

If the province continues to vote for Crusty, in the short term, we will see a little more money in our pockets. But in the long term, home ownership (in the Lower Mainland) becomes impossible. Our education gets fxxked. Is that what the province wants to see?

In response to Hondaracer's comment here, it seems pretty easy to come up with an equivalent example for the Liberals as well. After seeing the Liberals donor list and how the associated corporations have all "coincidentally" won massively lucrative contracts from the province, I don't know how anyone can still vote for the Liberals.

At the point, I'm sure we've all made up our minds, and we all know our choices are just bad vs horrible vs shxtty. The important thing to do is to come out and vote, and remind others who have seriously considered the voting process to come out and vote as well.

God bless BC tomorrow.

^^ That is a fair point Traum, and I don't doubt that favoritism comes into play when big money is being put up to fund these huge campaigns

However, the NDP are not exactly any better when it comes to handing out favors to doners when it comes to big contracts. When they were in power in the 90's and they built the inland highway on Vancouver Island, they actually made it a mandatory requirement that you had to be unionized to get any of that work. There were a lot of people from the Island that were counting on putting their equipment to work (mostly because the NDP had collapsed the forestry industry with massive taxes in the form of stumpage fees) that felt betrayed by the NDP by that decision. The Fast Cat ferries, all built by union workers... ditto on half dozen other mega special projects they did.

The only major difference is that when unions get involved, the tax payers tend to get screwed even more on the price.

I don't know how many people on here would remember, but there was a rally of over a hundred thousand people in Victoria at one point trying to get Harcourt the fuck out because of the insane taxes on forestry. You see protests on TV these days, and they pail in comparison to the public anger at the NDP back then. At one point, for certain species of tress... if you cut it down, you owed more taxes on it than it was worth. It bankrupted most of the small operators. Luckily Harcourt got caught stealing money from charity that was generated by Bingo and had to resign. Glen Clark was better, but he also had to resign because he approved a casino licence for free renovation work... good ol' NDP.

I still remember the 2001 election... NDP went from 39 seats to 2 seats overnight. People were unified, and you don't see that very often unless there is something very wrong. I guess a lot of new voters are just too young to remember how utterly terrible they were.

MrPhreak, I was too young to know anything that Harcourt has done (I only knew he was the Premier), but I do remember some of Glen Clark's stuff.

I think most / all of us who have seriously thought about the election know our primary choices are all shxt. It is depressing to see that is how things are, and that is why I seriously pray that God would bless BC tomorrow for the best possible outcome out of these 3 bad choices.

Yeah I can agree on that for sure

I kind of wish we had another option, something that better represented the values of BC. I generally feel like people in BC are sincere in their effort to look after those that need it, but we still have that wild west spirit and value hard work, spending responsibly, and those who earn their way in this world.

Now there's barely a forest industry to speak of thanks to deregulation and raw log exports.

Look is not as hard as people think to own or buy a property. At least your first property is going to be an apartment. Lot's of people I know already bought one. They do not work jobs with 6 figures they save by getting what they need and work 2 jobs or even 3 jobs. Save up, buy in.

I love to be able to get that awesome cup of coffee from the cafe near my office for $4 everyday. The office coffee is crap but hey is free. I love to be able to try fancy restaurants or even go out for dinner at least once a week. Guess what? It cost $40+ VS cooking at home for less than $10 and I usually have left over. I love to get new clothing every season. Guess what? It cost hundreds of dollars at least while the clothing I have is good enough. I love to get the new limited edition runners but that will run a few hundred or even more which I don't need since I already have a few pairs of regular runners. I love to go several trips a year instead of going on one trip every few years. The list can go on and go and go.

Why do you think people who made just above min wage can afford to buy into the market while people who made way more can't. Is coz the people who made less actually have porities rather than just spending the money on worthless crap. That's the reality people have to see and stop asking for gov to fix it. Coz it won't get/can't/will not get fix. There is too much depending on the housing market. Real estate agent, mortgage brokers, banks, counstruction field, raw material market etc etc. If the market goes down or even come to stall there is going to be massive layoffs and people aren't going to like it one bit.

if you're poor it doesn't matter who you vote for, you're still going to be poor, and it's still going to suck.

Thus the stupidity of building your economy on real estate.

As the GZA would say, you need to diversify yo bonds.

Sean Cooper pays off mortgage in 3 years and earns online hate - Business - CBC News

This guy save up $170,000 down payment and pay off his mortgage of $255,000 in 3 years by having 3 jobs, working 100+ hours a week and life as a no lifer for a few years. All I am saying is is not hard to save up if you have the will power to do it. Yes you scrafice your social life, you have no time to relax, can't buy what you want but that's only for a few years then you are free. Of course people don't have to go his extreme route. I mean start maybe saving bit by bit. It all adds up. Instead of complaining and demanding someone to help you, do it yourself.

I don't a lot. But I manage to save enough for put a large down payment for my apartment by saving. People in Van CAN do it too but they rather not and complain.