BC Housing reboot: there’s a lot of catching up to do

Image: BC Housing

BC HOUSING CORPORATION is suffering growing pains and no wonder. After years of neglect in building affordable housing, there ís a lot of catching up to do.

The provincial housing agency’s budget has increased 140 per cent from five years ago to $2 billion. It ís expected to rise to $7 billion in the next decade.

I’m not surprised that BC Housing would require review but the shakeup was dramatic. The government fired the entire board after an independent probe of BC Housing uncovered serious problems.

Not only was the board fired. The CEO of BC Housing, Shayne Ramsay, announced his retirement in a rambling statement. “I no longer have confidence I can solve the complex problems facing us at BC Housing,” he said.

Ramsay added that he’s been watching with growing alarm at violence perpetrated against homeless people. He said “something shifted” for him in May as he watched police converge on a Downtown Eastside park where a man lay fatally stabbed, an incident that occurred just minutes after Ramsay had left the area while walking his dog.

The independent probe by Ernst & Young found the agency had grown exceptionally fast and was handing out multimillion-dollar contracts without rigorous review and no clear documentation for why some contracts were awarded.

Included in the top 10 funding projects in 2021 were Coast Foundation ($10-million); Pacifica Housing ($9.4-million); Affordable Housing ($9.1-million); ASK Wellness of Kamloops ($7.8-Million); and More Than a Roof ($7.5-million).

The probe found two programs in particular as being notable for unclear documentation or criteria for awarding contracts. While the review did not name one of them specifically, Atira is the largest provider of those programs.

The executive directors at Atira were earning substantial wages considering that they are non-profit society.

An investigation by the Globe and Mail found that, according to 2021 Revenue Canada reports, Atira’s top-paid executive was making in the $200,000-to-$250,000 range, while the next two highest-paid staff were in the $160,000-to-$200,000 range.

It’s no accident that there is a shortage of affordable housing. The shortage of affordable rental units is the result of deliberate government policy starting with the Mulroney Conservatives in the 1990s and carried on with the Liberals.

Governments stopped investment in affordable rental units for a number of reasons: strong wage growth from 1996 to 2006 coupled with declining interest rates and modest housing prices enticed more renters into home ownership.

That period also saw a shift in politics in which government off-loaded the building of affordable housing to the private sector.

However, all that changed by the mid-2000s. Stagnant wages and the growth of low paying jobs along with escalating housing prices pushed people out of home ownership and into rentals.

A half-century ago, governments got housing built. The mid-1990s austerity ended all that. Since then, the private sector has failed to meet the needs of low to moderate income earners.

There’s a lot of catching up to do and BC Housing needs to refocus to the task. B.C.’s premier-apparent, David Eby, is determined to get affordable housing done right. His board replacements are competent former deputy ministers and bureaucrats with financial expertise.

It’s time to get B.C.’s housing in order.

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Too much carbon dioxide here, too little there

In a world awash in too much carbon dioxide, it’s remarkable that some places have too little of the stuff.

Britain recently warned food producers to prepare for a 400-per-cent rise in the price of carbon-dioxide because of a shortage.

image: The Guardian

Carbon dioxide is important to food producers because it’s used to put the fizz into beer and sodas and stun poultry and pigs before slaughter. Some producers warn that there could be a (gasp) shortage of Christmas turkeys.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson brushed aside worries over a lack of turkeys. His government has extending emergency support to subsidize the increased cost of CO2 and avert a shortage of poultry and meat.

The shortage of CO2 has been triggered by soaring costs of natural gas.

What has the shortage of natural gas got to do with the shortage of C02?

Well, it turns out that CO2 is a by-product of the European fertilizer industry which uses natural gas as an input. They make it by combining nitrogen in the air with hydrogen from the natural gas to produce ammonia. Ammonia is then used to create fertilizer, and CO2 is left over.

Why is the cost of natural gas soaring?

Natural gas prices have spiked this year as economies reopened from COVID-19 lockdowns. The high demand for liquefied natural gas in Asia pushed down supplies to Europe, sending shock waves through industries reliant on the energy source.

Inventories of natural gas are low because production hasn’t caught up with demand. Uncertainties that occurred during the global pandemic made producers reluctant to invest in new drilling for natural gas.

Canadian natural gas inventories are at five-year lows. Exports from North American LNG facilities are also running at peak volume to meet global demand, draining supplies.

This is bad news for B.C. users of natural gas as prices will increase an average of $8 per month in the Interior starting in October.

This is good news for investors in B.C.’s proposed Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) projects for export to Asia as a cleaner alternative to coal.

But isn’t the use of natural gas to produce fertilizer a dumb idea when natural gas is a valuable source of heating for homes?

Yes, it is a dumb idea because fertilizer can also be made from potash. Potash is abundant in Saskatchewan, one of the largest sources in the world. Potash deposits are left over from a large inland sea that once filled North America. 

However if CO2 isn’t produced as a by-product of making fertilizer, where will  the food industry get CO2 from?

Good question. With all of that CO2 in the atmosphere and a shortage on the ground, there must be a way to take it from the atmosphere.

There is. It’s called carbon capture and it works by passing air laden with CO2 over chemicals. The problem in the past has been that the cost of production of CO2 exceeds the price it can be sold for. But with the price of CO2 soaring, carbon capture could be profitable.

And why should I care about the price of CO2?

Because I use it for making beer.  Good thing I topped up my tank before the price hikes.

Doctors’ cozy club limits our health care system

Canada doesn’t have a shortage of doctors; we have a closed shop that prevents foreign-trained doctors from practicing. The medical establishment prevents them from relieving our doctor shortage.

Image Stat News

About 5 million Canadians don’t have a regular family doctor. As a result, hospital wait times continue to grow. One study revealed that Canada has fewer physicians per capita than comparable nations: 2.7 per 1,000 people.

That puts us at 26th in countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

It’s not a lack of trying from foreign-trained doctors. They spend thousands of dollars to become certified as doctors.

To become licensed in Canada involves verifying one’s medical degree and previous practical experience, passing a language-proficiency test, and completing a Canadian medical residency or practicum. This can take up to a decade to complete and can cost as much as $28,000, including lost income from when they could be working.

Despite the effort, about one-half of the 1,000 doctors who immigrate to Canada every year abandon their medical careers (Walrus, May, 2021).

Doctors are retiring at an alarming rate. By 2026, 20 percent of Canada’s doctors will be 65 or older, according to the Canadian Medical Association.

The medical establishment ensures that Canada is short of doctors. The number of residencies for foreign-trained doctors is limited. And even when a foreign-trained doctor gets one of the rare positions, the chances of getting a license is low. Last year, Ontario had licensed only about two dozen spots — a negligible sum in a province with 31,500 practising physicians. British Columbia licensed zero.

The method of determining the number of residency positions is arcane. According to the Canadian Federation of Medical Students, “Provincial and territorial Ministries of Health determine the total number of residency positions available, the specialties in which they are available, and the proportion open to CMGs [Canadian medical graduates] versus [foreign-trained doctors].”

Investigative reporter for the Walrus, Jagdeesh Mann, attempted to find out how the quotas are calculated in B.C.:

“But attempting to understand how exactly quotas are calculated each year in B.C., for example, proved to be Kafkaesque. Starting from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C., I was redirected to CaRMS and the University of British Columbia, then to the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, and finally to B.C.’s Ministry of Health.”

Meanwhile, the already limited number of residency spots granted to foreign-trained doctors has declined since 2013.

The problem is about to get worse. By 2026, 20 percent of Canada’s doctors will be 65 or older, according to the Canadian Medical Association. Many doctors will be retiring soon.

When my doctor retired two years ago, I went without a doctor for over a year. I only got one after a referral from a friend.

The medical establishment is racist. Of the residencies that did go to foreign-trained doctors, most went to doctors from Europe. Only 15 percent went to those from Asia and another 15 percent to Africa. This, despite the fact that many immigrants would like to have doctors who are familiar with their customs and language.

Doctors hold a lot of power in determining the number of residencies. A doctor shortage ensures that they are in demand but they could loosen their grip on the number of foreign-trained doctors without damaging their fragile egos.