Category Archives: Government

Land assembly speculators shadow flipping to skirt foreign buyer tax

By ThinkPol Staff International speculators are buying up Vancouver properties to put together land assemblies that they then shadow flip to avoid paying BC’s foreign buyer tax. A real estate industry whistleblower sent ThinkPol one such example of an attempted

Don’t privatize Canada’s airports ‒ Commons committee

By ThinkPol Staf A Parliamentary committee is recommending against the Liberal government’s plan to sell off Canada’s airports to raise billions in capital to be used towards other public infrastructure projects. “Limit rising passenger and operational costs by preventing the

Krishna’s report to the Council on short term rentals, Airbnb-commissioned report done by her former lobbying company show similarities

By ThinkPol Staff ThinkPol has obtained an unpublished report by Kaye Krishna’s former lobbying company that show similarities to the report the Vancouver official presented to the council on the impact of short term rentals. Vancouver’s General manager of Development,

Wanted: Rusty RV to run Airbnb outside Vancouver Mayor’s house

By Lisa Tanh A Vancouverite has put up a Craigslist ad for an RV or trailer to rent outside of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s house because they want him to understand how legalizing Airbnb hurts residents in the city. The

Pressure mounts on City of Vancouver’s Kaye Krishna to resign over Airbnb fiasco

By ThinkPol Staff Pressure is mounting on Kaye Krishna to stand down as the Vancouver official responsible for the Airbnb file. Critics allege that she has not done enough to crackdown on short term rentals mushrooming in a city grappling

Liberals, Tories unite to kill right to housing bill

By ThinkPol Staff The Liberal and Conservative parties voted together on Wednesday in Canada’s House of Commons to kill a bill that would have added the right to housing to the Canadian Bill of Rights. Bill C-325, An Act to

Vancouver official denies Airbnb involvement, defends decision to stop taking Twitter complaints

By Lisa Tanh The head of Vancouver’s Development, Buildings, and Licensing department says tweeting about illegal short-term rentals in the city raises security and privacy issues. As of yesterday, the city of Vancouver’s VanConnect[1]http://vancouver.ca/vanconnect.aspx desktop and mobile app, added a

Halfway between elections, Canadians unsure of new federal leaders

By David Boughton At the midpoint of the 2015 and 2019 elections, Canadians continue to approve of Justin Trudeau, while they’ve yet to form much of an opinion of the other two leaders. A recent Abacus Data poll shows the

Canadian Government pressured to recognize human rights abuses in Mexico

By David Boughton The government of Canada came under pressure last week to increase its response to the escalating human rights crisis in Mexico. Nine Mexican human rights experts were in Ottawa outlining the problems and looking for support. The

Canada lagging behind other countries when it comes to science and technology

At a recent presentation to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) the case was presented that Canada’s competitiveness in terms of research and development in science and technology has declined markedly over the past 15 years.