VANCOUVER — Pat Carney is spitting mad about the provincial government’s proposed speculation tax.
The former Conservative senator and cabinet minister has written Premier John Horgan about the damage she expects the tax will level on people who live in rural B.C. and also have properties in the Lower Mainland or the Greater Victoria area.
“Your proposed tax misses the target of limiting real estate speculation by foreign investors in specific regions of the province and lands a bull’s eye on Canadians, including British Columbians, who support our rural economies,” she writes in her letter.
Carney, 82, was first elected as MLA for Vancouver Centre in 1980. She served in the cabinet of Brian Mulroney from 1984 to 1988 and in the Senate from 1990 to 2008.
She said she was motivated to write the letter because no one else was speaking up for rural B.C.
“Why are you taxing us and for whose benefit?” Carney said Tuesday from her home on Saturna Island.
“We’re entitled to live in rural B.C. without being taxed for it.”
People see the Gulf Islands from the ferry but often forget that what they’re seeing are rural communities that are light on services, she said.
Since Saturna has no medical facilities, Carney maintains a second residence in Vancouver, and as a result is going to be hit by the two per cent annual tax, which Finance Minister Carole James has said is meant to encourage people to rent homes out in low-vacancy-rate areas of B.C.
Making a daily commute to Vancouver or Victoria to deal with a lawyer or a doctor isn’t feasible from Saturna and many other of the Gulf Islands, Carney said. Such trips take eight hours; keeping a residence in Vancouver has been her solution. That may not continue to be so, she fears.
“We’re the silent minority, everyone thinks we’re rich Salt Spring Islanders,” she said.
“The issue is fraudulent corrupt speculation which is destroying our cities … that is who he is targeting and it shouldn’t be rural British Columbians.”
She says she’s spoken with many neighbours, both young and old, who are so wary of how the tax will be implemented that they are already looking to sell their Gulf Island properties because they feel they’re going to have to make a choice.
“The proposed tax on secondary residences would force me to make a difficult choice; give up my Saturna home, where my parents are buried, or sell my Vancouver condo, assessed at more than $1 million, since strata rules do not permit rentals and I cannot afford the punitive tax proposed,” she writes in her letter.
Further, she says she worries how the 60 per cent of homeowners on Saturna who are part-timers — “some third and fourth generation” — will react, calling them vital to the economy of her community.
“We rely on these families to support our small business community and cultural events and help keep our school open by employing full time residents,” she added in her letter. “People talk to me, they are in a panic … (the tax) will completely de-populate the island.”
Going after speculators is clearly the right issue, but the tax misses the mark, she said.
“It is going to squarely harm those of us in rural British Columbia who don’t have access to city services,” she said.
James said earlier this month that she’s heard the complaints from people in places such as the Gulf Islands, like Carney, and is looking at tweaks to the legislation.
But Carney dismisses the idea of tweaking the legislation — “this legislative proposal is so flawed it cannot be tweaked,” she writes.
“That is the premier’s problem, that’s not my problem.”
And she also questions how the tax will be enforced.
“Every foreign investor who is money laundering in the Vancouver real estate market is not going to be affected by this tax,” she argued. “Are they going to hire armies of bureaucrats? Are they going to put little gadgets on our wrist to track where we are six months of the year?
“How are they going to monitor us?”
