Two B.C. landlords whose costs have skyrocketed – due to their variable-rate mortgage – have been allowed to impose huge rent hikes on their tenants to offset their financial losses.

In a recent ruling, an arbitrator with the province's Residential Tenancy Branch approved increases totalling 23.5 per cent over two years for each of the landlords' four rental units.

That's on top of the 3.5 per cent annual increase previously approved by the B.C. government for 2024.

"The landlords experienced dramatic interest rate increases which have made managing the property unsustainable," reads the ruling, which was published in May.

The Calgary Humane Society is investigating after a dead kitten was found in the southwest community of Kingsland on Monday.

Peace officers found the feline zip-tied to a fence.

A necropsy determined the animal suffered blunt force trauma to its head and abdomen.

Officials say seven kittens in total, all in the range of six to eight weeks old, have been found in public spaces in "various states of distress" since May 30. Of those, two are dead.

"In several of these cases, kittens’ paws have been bound and they have been covered in a tar-like substance," said the humane society.

The Jasper re-entry on Friday will now be for residents only, officials announced Wednesday.

Previously, the incident management team had said there was no way to keep non-residents from returning to town on Friday.

They have now walked that statement back.

"Re-entry on Aug. 16 is for residents only," Parks Canada said in a post on its website on Wednesday.

"Resident security concerns have been heard. Your safe return is our priority. We are in this together."

Labour Minister Randy Boissonnault is considering "a refusal to process in the low wage stream if the abuse and misuse does not improve," said labour ministry spokesperson Mathis Denis.

Considering eh?

When the NDP government came into power in 2017 and committed to raising B.C.’s carbon tax, it made special provisions for industry. Their increased carbon taxes would be fully returned to “best-in-class” companies and through supporting projects advancing industrial decarbonization.

As of April, a new system — the output-based pricing system — is in place.

The name is somewhat confusing, but the key point is that it is a system of managing carbon pricing for big polluters by exempting a portion of emissions from taxation.

This new system exempts 65 per cent of industrial emissions from the carbon tax.

Canadian emissions rose for the third straight year in 2023, according to the seventy-fourth edition of the venerable “Statistical Review of World Energy” report. The reason I’m turning to data in this report is because Canada won't release its 2023 numbers until next year. This delay, which can exceed two years, keeps Canadians in the dark about where we are and where we are headed.

Many of Canada’s peers in the Group of Seven (G7) nations have already published their 2023 emission estimates — including the United States (U.S.), European Union (E.U.), France, Germany and the United Kingdom (U.K.).

So, to try to provide some current insight into where Canadians are now in the climate fight — and what it will take now to hit our 2030 climate target — I’ve gathered all these numbers and created a series of charts.

The dizzyingly steep path to Canada’s 2030 target
.

Fossil fuel companies and their industry associations lobbied the federal government an average of five times per working day in 2023, according to a new analysis from Environmental Defence.

The environmental watchdog tracked 31 companies and industry associations over the course of last year and identified 1,255 separate meetings. The top lobbied departments were Energy and Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and Finance Canada, with 313, 253 and 118 meetings respectively.

It’s no surprise the three departments most responsible for the country’s emission reduction efforts are the target of intense lobbying, according to the study’s lead author, Emilia Belliveau.

For anyone not keeping up, BC is about to have a election in 2 months. The current opposition party/previous incumbent party is currently polled to be almost completely wiped out in the election by the BC Cons. so this seems like a go for broke maneuver.

A B.C. United government would eliminate the provincial income tax on the first $50,000 earned by every British Columbian, Leader Kevin Falcon announced Tuesday.

The move would save British Columbians an average of $2,050 a year each at a time when people are struggling to afford the rising cost of living, Falcon said.

The tax cut would cost the province $5.4 billion in tax revenue, B.C. United says.

Contraceptives and the morning-after pill will be free for women in Canada as part of the National Pharmacare Program.

Daly told the committee that she was seconded to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) while ArriveCan was being developed. She said she had no authority to make decisions about the contracting process and insisted that her role was largely an administrative one.

“The underlying problem here is that the RCMP is presuming that a person who is engaged in environmental activism, necessarily, is a higher risk for engaging in criminal behaviour — that somehow, that you're voicing dissent, that you pose a risk of criminality,” Jack said, “and that that gives the police the authority to be investigating you, following you, collecting information about you.”

THE MEETING HOUSE, formerly one of Canada’s most prominent evangelical megachurches, may now only be able to offer its popular Sunday ministry online instead of in person. In June, in the wake of numerous sexual abuse and misconduct allegations against church leadership and facing several multi-million-dollar civil suits, the church announced that it had been denied abuse insurance coverage and was therefore deciding to “pause” its in-person services, including Sunday worship. Without this insurance, the church has been forced to restructure how it offers ministry—and raises questions about the church’s future.

The moment comes as the Meeting House, which once peaked at more than 5,000 members, nineteen satellite sites, and around 200 “home churches” across Ontario, has been reckoning with accusations that it failed to protect its parishioners, including children, from abuse by church leadership over many years. The ministry became embroiled in scandal in 2021 after a wave of sexual assault and misconduct accusations emerged against former lead teaching pastor Bruxy Cavey, resulting in his resignation from the church in early 2022. That year, Cavey was charged with one count of sexual assault against one woman, and the following year, he was charged with two additional counts of sexual assault involving a separate person. Cavey’s first sexual assault charge was dismissed by a Hamilton judge in July due to delays at court. Proceedings for the two outstanding sexual assault charges are ongoing.

The federal Liberals and Conservatives want to "solve" the housing crisis by making it easier for builders to build new units.

Sadly, with interest rates and construction prices at current levels, it seems unlikely that private companies will be able to provide the 3.5 million houses we need to restore affordability.

We need all levels of government to start building housing, not just wait for white knights from the private sector to ride in and save our middle class dreams.

Residential property developers are facing rising insolvencies as they struggle with higher borrowing and construction costs – and industry experts warn the trend is likely to worsen as interest expenses remain elevated.

...

At this pace, Canada is on track to reach about 240 real estate insolvencies this year, which would be 57-per-cent higher than 2023 and 13-per-cent higher than 2009, when a wide swath of businesses ran into problems owing to the financial crisis and global recession.

...

And that does not include the number of developers and projects that have been forced into receivership for not paying bills. The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy does not include receiverships with its publicly available bankruptcy statistics. However, insolvency experts say they are seeing more projects go into receivership.

So far this year, the real estate sector accounts for 55 per cent of the receiverships recorded by Insolvency Insider Canada, a website that tracks the largest insolvencies in the country. That compares to 30 per cent last year and 33 per cent in 2022.

...

Today, the cost of residential construction is 81-per-cent higher across Canada’s major cities compared to 2017 and more than double – up 107 per cent – in the Toronto region, according to Statscan data.

The company at the heart of the travel-nurse controversy is now the subject of a complaint over unpaid wages under New Brunswick's Employment Standards Act.

A nurse who moved to the province from France to work for Canadian Health Labs as a personal support worker says the company turned his life upside down when its contract with the Vitalité health authority expired in May.

Youenn Siviniant was still on the job in mid-June when Vitalité told him to stop coming to work. He is still officially an employee of the company but has not been paid since June 19.

"It further demonstrates the depth of the problem that we're facing with CHL, not just gouging the taxpayers with these exorbitant contracts but also with respect to the way it treats its own employees," said Liberal MLA and health critic Rob McKee.

"That's the problem with privatization."

TLDR: BC NDP gets 68 rental housing built in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Canada for 10 Christy Clark(Previous BC United leader) yoga events i.e ~1.5m and people are not happy.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ndp-housing-hub-program-under-fire-over-claim-of-affordable-rentals-1.7288112

The NDP government provided a $31.8 million low-interest loan to Vancouver developer Jameson Development Corp. for the 68-unit rental building through the HousingHub program

His ministry said in a statement that the financing used to build the project at 1807 Larch St. will be fully paid back to the province, plus interest

The problem starts here where CBC did a segment that just interviewed a bunch of people to see what bad things they had to say about the project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfpEXRjpybk

Deranged person A)

B.C. Green party leader Sonia Furstenau said that's "infuriating."

"People who need housing are not the people who can afford $4,200 a month in rent," she told CBC News

Deranged person B)

Andy Yan, an urban planner and director of Simon Fraser University's City Program, asked what the public interest was in subsidizing developers who are still charging rents that are out of reach for 75 per cent of Vancouver renters.

"It's an issue of what you're paying for versus what you're getting," Yan said.

The BC Conservative that used to be a Vancouver councilor: I genuinely can't make sense of whatever this person was trying to say. It was pretty much a human equivalent of someone slamming their keyboard a few times.

https://news.bchousing.org/new-affordable-rental-homes-on-the-way-in-kitsilano/

80% of units, totaling 54, will target at- or below-market level rents restricted to middle- income households within the provincial middle-income limits. Floor plans and prices.

20% of units, totaling 14, will be tenanted at moderate-income rent levels and to households earning less than $80,000 per year.

I haven't been able to find the exact figures but I've largely seen numbers like 2-3% better than market rates. I'm going to just be generous and round it up 5% accounting for some level defaults, that's 1.6m to produce 54 market rate rentals plus 14 below market rentals. People spend more than that on a single duplex.

If we scale that out to the original 2B program that would be 3,780 market rentals and 980 below market for only 5% opportunity cost of 2B. As someone who's gone over how hard it would be to build truly low cost housing that about as close as it gets.

$2,000,000,000 * 5% = $100,000,000

$100,000,000 /4,760 = 21k per unit