Moose Trip 2015
Camp:
6 point bull down!
It took all day to pack this bad boy back to camp, and camp is pretty much in the background of this picture.
We also had to pack it out.
Some freinds came up and saved us.
Smaller pics:
Harper Knew…
Stephen Harper is the most widely and obviously hated prime minister in Canadian history. How many stop signs have been modified with the Harper sticker? What other prime minister has a derangement syndrome named after him?
Over the last few days a new poster has cropped up. When I first saw it I wondered “Knew what? That 9-11 was in inside job?” It’s not that I’m out of the loop and have never heard of Nigel Wright. I just never bought the story that the PM didn’t know about Wright’s payment and I kind of assumed most other people thought the same way, so the sign made me chuckle in a Master of the Obvious sort of way.
Did he know? I’m sure he did, but I really don’t care. It’s a typically Canadian scandal in that we’ve got a public official paying money into the public treasury and we spend millions getting to the bottom of the whole mess. Other countries with real scandals must look upon us with envy (and please don’t read any of this as an apology for the PM or the CPC).
But the phrase “Harper Knew” resonated with me because of a campaign promise made a week or two earlier. Real estate prices are very high in Canada, and foreign investors are a favorite target (as opposed to a decade of near zero interest rates, growing population and relaxed mortgage rules). MacDonald Realty released a report on their experience with foreign buyers, making a media splash, and provoking calls for more data. The PM followed up with a promise to get to the bottom of the issue and track foreign real estate investment in Canada, provided, of course, that we all vote for him. (Although Cameron Muir, referenced in the article, says the report findings are based on last names, its much more likely they are based on MacDonald’s Fintrac forms – more on that below).
At first I made the same mistake with Mr. Harper that I made with the guy who posted “Harper Knew”. I assumed that the PM already knew that Realtors already collect that information under pain of substantial fines and actual imprisonment (that’s right, I can go to jail if I don’t collect that info for the federal government). I concluded that the PM was being unbelievably cynical, promising to start doing something that he was already doing in return for votes.
And then it occurred to me: Stephen Harper likely does not know that the Harper government requires that data about foreign investors be collected. It’s also likely that his handlers, or brain trust, or inner circle of fellow baby-eaters doesn’t know that their government already requires the collection of this data.
Because here’s the best part – Realtors must collect the data on pain of fines and imprisonment, but the government doesn’t actually collect the data. It’s up to Realtors to report suspicious transactions and maintain specific policy books on how they do so, but the federal government doesn’t actually ever look at the whole picture. They’ve set up the system to essentially outsource one part of anti-terrorist policing to…real estate agents.
(You might know that your government is too big when the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing).
Sam Cooper has written about Fintrac and foreign real estate buyers in the Province, but I’m not convinced he’s made the picture clear enough: for every real estate transaction, whether the Realtor acts for the buyer or the seller, Fintrac paperwork is filled out wherein government issued identification is verified. Realtors know where buyers and sellers come from, and maintain records to that effect under pain of $500,000 fines and up to 5 years in jail. What Realtors don’t do, as a general practice, is accept cash in amounts exceeding $10,000. Regardless of how expensive a house is, the buyers almost always pay that money to a lawyer, not a Realtor.
My, How Time Flies
If you come from Canada you’ll know the are Naked Ladies song “If I Had $1,000,000”. It’s a cute song, but what’s cutest about it is that in the late 80s, when it was written, a million bucks still meant something. Nowadays a million bucks won’t get you much of a house in Vancouver. There’s a bittersweet nostalgia floating around there somewhere.
I heard another classic song this morning on CBC2 with Tom Powers. I’m not a fan of government radio, btw, but Classic Rock is so brutal that I, like many, listen to CBC in the morning on the way to work. Anyway, Tom played Talking Heads, and it brought back memories and that same bittersweet nostalgia. I first heard about Talking Heads in Rolling Stone in the late 70s, I remember them being described as looking like Young Democrats. (At the time I didn’t know the difference between Democrats or Republicans – I now know that there is no substantive difference). The song was “Life During Wartime”.
The bittersweet nostalgia? These lines:
“We got computers, we’re tapping phone lines,
I know that that ain’t allowed”
Remember when air was clean and sex was dirty?
Remember when computers were rare and tapping phone lines was illegal?
Now James Clapper collects everything, lies to Congress about it on TV and we live with it.
Lessons From Ferguson
Much is made of violence and property destruction in Ferguson.
Much is made of Michael Brown’s alleged crime (he was never charged nor was he tried).
Much is made of the mountain of evidence the grand jury waded through.
Much is made of the calls for calm.
Not as much is made of obvious conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence we see each night on our television.
We see large numbers of peaceful law-abiding citizen who are very upset. They are obviously upset about something.
We see the government trying to suppress public demonstrations of anger, even when the majority of those demonstrations are legal and peaceful.
We see the government deploying tear gas against non-violence citizens. This is violence perpetrated by the government against peaceful citizens.
We see police in military equipment on top of armored personnel carriers behind sandbags pointing automatic weapons at protesters who have their hands raised in the air.
We see heavily armed men dressed in black marching through clouds of teargas under a banner which reads “Seasons Greetings”.
We see the President of the United States, the commander in chief of the largest military in the world history saying there is never an excuse for violence. Does the man not grasp the irony, does he think the audience is stupid or does he simply not care?
We see unarmed citizens confronting armoured police vehicles with nothing more than raised hands in a scene reminiscent of Tienanmen Square.
We do not need to argue the specifics of the Brown-Wilson shooting. We can ignore the amazing way in which shooting evidence was handled immediately after the incident. We can ignore how the grand jury process was handled. We can assume, for the sake of argument, that Darren Wilson was an angel in every regard and that Michael Brown was a devil.
What we can’t ignore is what is right in front of us. The citizenry is upset and takes to the streets to protest poor police practices. They aren’t protesting just the killing of Michael Brown, but heavy handed policing in general.
The police respond with a heavy hand. Do they not grasp the irony?
Dan Carlin, of the Common Sense podcast, tells a story about working in the news business in LA. He says that he would receive calls from women asking that he report on the police beating their son. He would, as he puts it, ask for context. They would point to evidence of a beaten son and he would have to explain that the evidence wasn’t sufficient. The woman’s son, he would explain, could have received the injuries in any number of ways. He could not, as a professional news man, report that the police had beaten the son without better evidence or more context.
When the Rodney King video came out Dan Carlin wasn’t surprised. He had heard the reports of many beatings prior to King’s; the problem had been that there wasn’t enough evidence to put the story on the airwaves.
His conclusion, and its a reasonable one, is that “spontaneous eruptions” of civil disobedience aren’t completely spontaneous. They take time to build up. Otherwise law abiding people don’t suddenly rise up in opposition to well regarded local police forces. Human beings just don’t act that way.
There has been looting, violence and property damage committed by some of the Ferguson protestors, but if you take a step back and compare it to other riots we’ve witnessed it is very minor. The crowds have been remarkably well behaved. The police have not. Starting with the pointing of automatic weapons at unarmed people through the arrest of journalists to the intimidation of citizens in ways that occupying US forces seldom us in actual wars, they have been heavy handed.
Ferguson may calm down and sputter out, but the government shows no signs of changing it’s values. It Ferguson dies with a whimper the anger we’ve seen there will erupt again somewhere else.
The police and their superiors (political and otherwise), as well as most of the mainstream media, are missing the point. What we are seeing on our TV screens is something quite remarkable, if only we choose to recognize it. Just over 151 years ago at the height of the Civil War, the greatest bloodbath the United States has ever experienced, before or since, Abraham Lincoln closed his dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with the hope that the soldiers buried there had not died in vain “and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.
A government that deploys heavily armed police with military equipment against peaceful citizens in time of peace is not a government of the people, by the people or for the people. It is something very different.
Justin Trudeau’s Pro-Choice Mistake
I continually find myself struggling with a way to describe my gratitude to Twitter as a thought provoking, dot-connecting, consciousness raising machine. I suspect my appreciation of it rests with the people I follow, because they are the ones doing the provoking, connecting and raising.
Tony Sowan, of Red Deer, is a great example. He and I agree on at least one big thing, but I think we disagree on the wisdom of Justin Trudeau, at least in regard to Trudeau’s recent pronouncement on enforced MP consistency on abortion. Tony thinks Trudeau is doing the right thing. I think Trudeau is making an unforced error.
This isn’t about abortion. Its about playing politics well and its about displaying character.
For what its worth, I don’t have a strong position on abortion. I believe life starts at conception, but I don’t believe life is sacred. I eat, and so am part of a machine that kills animals and plants, and through my taxes and commercial activity I support a wide range of policies that kill a certain number of people.
Trudeau identifies as a Catholic. The Catholic Church is not pro-abortion, never has been, and it’s hard to imagine they ever will be. The Archbishop of Ottawa has, predictably, circulated a letter re-affirming the Church’s stance on abortion, and re-affirming that one can’t be a good Catholic without following the Church’s teachings. That’s pretty straightforward stuff.
Tony wants to keep delusional religious beliefs out of government, which is fair enough. I agree with him on that score. But that doesn’t mean I side with Trudeau.
Justin Trudeau is in politics, not philosophy. By deciding to make abortion an issue he exposes himself needlessly – he’s creating a battle rather than joining one that already exists, and he’s not creating the right one. It seems as if he’s likely to cost himself support rather than gain more.
In the first place, there is no abortion law in this country. Like it or not, there is no legal restriction on abortion. No one can make the argument that access to abortion is unreasonably restricted in Canada. Even Sweden has more restrictive laws, and nobody’s decrying the Swedish war on women.
The issue is divisive, but not in a way beneficial to the Liberals.
There doesn’t seem to be anyone among the Conservatives or NDP who wants to take the opposing side of the issue. It’s clear that Stephen Harper wants nothing to do with abortion legislation. Any Tory backbencher who tries to bring up anti-abortion legislation will be (as they have been in the past) shut down.
In fact, the opposition that has arisen to Trudeau’s diktat comes from his own party. Long time Liberals have complained that they no longer have a home in the Liberal Party of Canada.
What’s more, the archbishops of Toronto and Ottawa have condemned Trudeau’s position. They’ve pointed out the obvious: good, observant Catholics believe the Church’s teachings on abortion (along with everything else). Does Trudeau want to pick a fight with Catholics? After the headway that the Conservatives have made with new Canadians (a traditional Liberal cadre) this can’t be wise. Apparently Trudeau isn’t happy with the Church’s position. That’s fine. There are a long line of good people who haven’t liked the Catholic Church. Most stop calling themselves Catholics, however. It displays a certain amount of ego to argue with a professional Catholic that you’re right on matters of Catholic dogma.
This isn’t Trudeau’s only example of unbridled ego. Disagreement seems to be acceptable to Trudeau, as long as you don’t disagree with him. Open candidate selection is fine, as long as ridings choose the candidates he wants. This behaviour pushes people away and reflects badly on his character and judgement.
There is a parallel and a double standard: Stephen Harper was rightly castigated for not allowing free debate when Tory backbenchers wanted to raise this issue. The Prime Minister wisely sees abortion as the third rail of Canadian politics, recognizes that it will stick to the Conservatives, and wants nothing to do with it, regardless of the merits of the issue.
It was right to castigate Harper for quashing free and reasonable debate in Parliament (after all, the name of the place is rooted in the verb “to talk”). But at least he was wisely avoiding an issue his enemies would club him with.
Why is Trudeau is quashing debate? Is there a secret cabal of Liberals with a secret agenda to outlaw abortion? Unlikely. Will the Tories campaign on restricting abortion? Even less likely. Worse, the double standard won’t last. Honeymoons never do. Even Barack Obama is learning this.
It is another fact that the components of the abortion debate have changed substantially since the Supreme Court of Canada threw out the old law. In those days abortion was illegal and unsafe. Women had demonstrably fewer rights than men. Life was considered to begin at live birth, but that was (and is) a holdover from Medieval times.
Women and their rights have come a long way. Abortion is legal and accessible. It is used to avoid birth, birth defects and even to avoid female embryos coming to term. At the same time medical science can deliver babies that are unbelievably premature by the standards of my youth.
It is also clear that abortion is not generally a necessary medical procedure. Pregnancy is not an illness.
Nor is the fetus part of the woman’s body, strictly speaking. It has it’s own unique biological code.
That doesn’t make abortion wrong, but it does mean that there is room for reasonable people to have a reasonable debate about it.
There is always going to be tension between killing something and forcing someone to do something. The problem with rights is that they often conflict with each other. The old system was bad method of reconciling this conflict, that does not make the new system right.
So, Trudeau has pre-emptively quashed a debate that was unlikely to arise, and would have broken along party lines anyway. There appears to be little profit in it, and some downside. Perhaps he thinks it makes him look strong. I think it betrays a misunderstanding of politics, and I think that’s very dangerous when he faces a man who has faced and defeated Stockwell Day, Joe Clark, Stephan Dion and Paul Martin on his way to a majority government. By the time the next election comes around Stephen Harper will be the 6th longest serving Prime Minister in Canadian history. He is not a man to take lightly. He is certainly not a man to hand extra votes – he’s demonstrated that he’ll take them.
And so, if you support Trudeau’s tactical choice (as opposed to his philosophy), what exactly are you arguing for?
How Many Vacant Condos Do We Have Downtown?
A recent twitter post by @unlivablevancou claims:
“Current estimates are that 25% of #condos downtown #YVR vacant. Owned by off-shore interests. Does @CityofVancouver intend housing policy?”
with an implication that vacant condos are a problem.
One response by @lavrys suggested:
“@unlivablevancou Triple their property taxes, see how quickly @CityofVancouver becomes affordable! #vanpoli”
Source? It’s kind of tough to find where someone who owns property in BC lives. You could check tax rolls, but that’s probably $2.50 per query. You could check non-resident tax records from CRA, but vacant properties don’t pay tax on income they don’t receive. We simply don’t track where property owners in BC reside (one of the problems with living in a Western liberal democracy).
Full disclosure: I like Twitter and get inspiration from it and don’t mean to attack or flame anyone I write about. I just like challenging assumptions. I find most of the people I interact with on Twitter and the net in general to be pretty good people.
The 25% number seems to come from a study conducted by UBC Adjunct Professor Andrew Yan, based on census figures. Francis Bula wrote about it here. Professor Yan’s numbers were based on “…isolating the census data on dwellings that showed up as either “unoccupied” or occupied “by a foreign resident and/or by temporarily present persons” on Census Day 2011, which was May 10”.
Strictly speaking, that’s not “unoccupied”. It’s unoccupied continuously by a non-Canadian resident. A non-Canadian resident occupying the property could include a new immigrant, a short term-renter or an owner who only resides in Vancouver part time. The Yan data also captures an investor owner with a one month vacancy, new units not yet occupied or someone who is just not home on census day.
What’s the problem? There are, conceivably, a few. Richard Wozny is quoted as describing the problem as “cancer” (hyperbole much?) but points out that vacant units distort density numbers and can delay the impact of actual residents, while Tsur Somerville is quoted as saying that demand for housing that doesn’t actually house people is a bad thing. Francis Bula opines that skewed density figures can distort perceptions of how much business a neighbourhood can support.
Of course, its not hard to find people who think of privately held real estate owned by individual humans who bought and paid for it as “a scarce public resource”, but I don’t think we want to go down the road of defining private property held by individuals as a public resource (Am I wrong on that? Go ahead, lay some mad Prudhon on me).
as I said, it’s hard to get hard numbers on individual activity in a free country. Yan recognizes that, and I have to say, his approach is better than the old “Haven’t you noticed how many lights are out in Downtown apartments when you walk the streets in the evening?” (as if Powersmart commercials are pointless). I thought I’d go to my most accessible source of hard numbers, the market.
There are, at the time of this writing, 919 active attached listings in the Coal Harbour, the West End, Downtown and Yaletown sub-areas of the REBGV. Of them, 278, or 30.25%, are vacant. If I remove all active listings that are 1 year old or newer the number of vacant listings drops to 194 (21.1%).
Coal Harbour alone? 151 actives, 40 vacant, 35 vacant and more than 1 year old. That’s 26.5% and 23.2%.
West End? 193 actives, 55 vacant, 47 vacant and more than 1 year old. That’s 28.5% and 24.4%.
Downtown? 377 active attached listings, 138 are reported to be vacant and there are 72 that are at more than one year old. That’s 36.6% and 19.1%.
(Out of 38 one-year old vacant properties for sale 12 (32%) belong to individuals and the balance are for sale by the developer/builder).
Yaletown? 199, 46, 41 = 23.1% and 20.6%.
If you assume that the rate of vacant units is higher among properties for sale then you’d conclude that 25% of all Downtown units is high. That might be a bad assumption. I’ll leave you to judge for yourself.
Are vacant units a cancer? I can’t see it. They’re the subject of a legal arm’s length transaction between two parties in which both think they gain an advantage (and in fact probably do). With the amount of building going on we can’t argue that a 25% or less vacant units rate results in a restriction in supply. there are 919 active listings in the 4 sub-areas that make up the Downtown. Just over 130 sold in the last 30 days. Unless I’ve got bad numbers or can’t do math that’s 7 months worth of inventory.
Do skewed density figures mislead business? Let the market sort that out. If a business fails to critically evaluate its market it’s going to fail anyway.
Do buyers who leave property vacant increase demand? Of course. Do they do it enough to falsely inflate values? That’s debatable, and right now we’ve got….low demand.
How about delaying the impact of residents? That’s accurate, as Wozny says. Residents who aren’t actually residents don’t have an impact on infrastructure. Their toilets aren’t the ones over-flowing the sewers.
What’s that mean?
It means that City Hall should look into it and plan for the day when people occupy those units. In the meantime it means that City Hall is getting full fare for someone who isn’t riding the bus. That ain’t a bad deal as far as I can see.
What about tripling the tax rates of non-residents? Would it force them to sell? Perhaps, but they’re already forgoing income (that’s a real dollar cost), and if they’re doing it on a discretionary basis (that is, they aren’t between tenancies, etc) there’s no saying that they won’t continue. If they’re speculating then property taxes come off potential capital gains.
If they do sell it just adds more supply to an already over-supplied market. We’ve got lots of stuff for sale already. Would prices drop significantly if we forced people to sell their property as a result of punitive taxes levied on them because…they aren’t living here and are presumably from somewhere else and aren’t costing us more in terms of service? Maybe. Maybe not.
If it worked we’d of course see an increase in owner occupiers paying the same taxes as are currently collected, but using more services. Tax profitability would drop. We’d have to do more with the same revenue.
Is the problem (if it exists) worth the solution? I don’t think so. Your mileage may well vary.
FWIW, there are 7,834 attached units for sale in the REBGV, 2,936 in the FVREB and 10,770 in both boards.
Vacant?
3,257 total in both boards, of which 2,313 are at least more than one year old. That’s 30.2% vacant and 21.47% vacant and more than one year old.
2,350 in the REBGV of which 1657 are at least more than one year old. That’s 30.00% vacant and 21.2% vacant and more than one year old.
907 in the FVREB of which 656 are at least more than one year old. That’s 30.9% vacant and 22.34% vacant and more than one year old.
Again, the sub-set of properties for sale is not the same as total properties in existence. You have to decide for yourself whether the 25% figure seems reasonable or not, and then decide if it’s a problem.
George Carlin on Losing Your Head
George Carlin is an interesting cat. When I first heard of him it was about the time of the 7 words you can’t say on television routine. He already had long hair and a beard, because hey, those were hippy times. Media was starting to change and you could hear outrageous stuff on TV, and then hear even more outrageous stuff on records (round flat pieces of vinyl that sold for $4.99 a pop that made sounds).
He’d been around longer. In fact, at the time he was appearing on TV talk shows with long hair and a beard you could catch him on re-runs of black and white shows like Dick Van Dyke.
The point is, he was an old comic by the time he left us, and most of his work that he’s remembered for is from after his awakening. Comics are, by definition, smart, and old ones are experienced in life. You might find Carlin’s remarks above a bit inflammatory, but remember that Carlin witnessed everything from World War 2 to Iraq and Afghanistan, including, importantly, Vietnam.
His inflammatory remarks are informed.
Carlin through the years:
Arrest in in 1972:
7 Words You Can’t Say on TV:
On TV in 1967:
Airforce picture and discharge papers:
My name is Rob Chipman and I’m a realtor, pilot and all around Curious George. I really enjoy flying, playing guitar and hockey, real estate and the Chilcotin. I think the internet and Web 2.0 offers all of us a great opportunity to communicate more, and improve the world by calling bullshit on bullshit whenever we are able. Do not hesitate to contact me by email if you have something to tell me, especially if its likely to be interesting.
Guns and Weed…and Porn
Michael W. Dean and Neema Vedadi are a couple of troublemakers that I enjoy listening to. They have a podcast/radio show called “Freedom Feens” (I listen to the podcasts but they’re on radio 2x a week as well), and Michael used to have a podcast called “Anarchy Gumbo”.
They’re anarchists, and by “anarchist” and “troublemakers” I don’t mean black hoody wearing goofs who throw cement blocks through the Starbucks window in pursuit of world revolution. They’re real anarchists (they believe humans should self-order themselves) who respect property rights and other people’s right to freedom exercised under the Non-Agression Principal. I call them troublemakers because all smart anarchists cause trouble by posing important questions to which they require thoughtful answers rather than the regular reflexive answers. They also connect the dots in some pretty nuts and bolts ways – meaning they give you stuff you can use.
From the very first time I listened to MWD’s podcast I heard about his and Neema’s project “Guns & Weed: The Road to Freedom” 
The idea behind the work is that stoners and gun nuts have over-lapping interests and enemies. They both want to do something that doesn’t in and of itself harm other people, and the some other people want to use the government to stop both stoners and gun nuts from doing what they want to do. The Feens point out that there should be an alliance between the two parties, even though they may seem poles apart, based on their common enemy. As MWD often comments: “Gun nuts who support the war on drugs should recognize that the guys breaking down dope smokers’ doors are just training for the day they come to take gun nuts’ guns”.
The idea makes a lot of sense, but it was reinforced for me this week on Twitter. Someone started one of those Twitter games where you write a tweet on a certain subject in a certain number of words. In this case it was “#libertarianismin4words”.
There were some good answers, like:
Individually nullify unjust laws #libertarianismin4words
— John Yowan (@Yowan) January 2, 2014
Free people terrify Leviathan
#libertarianismin4words
— Jeffrey A Tucker (@jeffreyatucker) January 1, 2014
Hey, stop killing people. #libertarianismin4words
— Julie Borowski (@JulieBorowski) December 31, 2013
and, of course:
Don't tell me how many words I can use! #libertarianismin4words
— Jacob Grier (@jacobgrier) December 30, 2013
I tweeted my own:
@jeffreyatucker Mind your own business. #libertarianismin4words
— Rob Chipman (@robchipmannet) January 1, 2014
You can see I got a re-tweet and was also favorited. Guess who by? @shaggyxangel
@shaggyxangel’s Twitter profile doesn’t say if shaggy is a he or a she, nor does it tell where he or she lives. It says
“My avatar is Juno Temple. I am not. #NSFW. +18 only.
angelicshaggy.tumblr.com”
Shaggyxangel doesn’t appear to like either weed or guns, but does appear to like naked women, sex and fantasy. And libertariansim or anarchy, perhaps? Who knows? You can’t judge a person by their followers or by who they follow, can you?
The point is that a lot of us with diverse interests also share a common one: we don’t want other people telling us what to do when we aren’t hurting anyone. Gun nuts, stoners and porn loving kinksters have reason to cross support.
How about you? Are you doing something harmless that some Puritan wants you to stop doing? Find a friend.
My name is Rob Chipman and I’m a realtor, pilot and all around Curious George. I really enjoy flying, playing guitar and hockey, real estate and the Chilcotin. I think the internet and Web 2.0 offers all of us a great opportunity to communicate more, and improve the world by calling bullshit on bullshit whenever we are able. Do not hesitate to contact me by email if you have something to tell me, especially if its likely to be interesting.
