View on Politics: Cowichan decision one year later & Forestry struggles

0:00I'm impressed to break down what's going on in BC politics this morning with the help of Vom Palmer for the Vancouver Sun. Good morning. Good morning, Jimmy. All right. Let's start with more. I guess fallout or continuing developing story of what's going on with this cowuchin decision. Yeah, I'm reading a just an interview that the BC Business Council put out this week with Paul Sullivan, who is one of the leading property appraisers in British Columbia. And what he says, Jimmy, is shocking. And it flies in the face of a lot of the resurances we've heard that, oh, well, you know the cowuchin decision. Yes, they recognize Aboriginal title of land out there. But you know, the first nation isn't actually trying to take the land and the court shall sort this out. Sullivan weighs out what's actually happening out there, particularly in Richmond, but spilling over to the whole province. So here's one of the first things he says he's talked to homeowners out in that area in Richmond.

1:05They've tried to sell their property. They can't. No takers. They've lowered their ask. Still no takers. Sullivan says he's talked to developers and, you know, realtors and so forth. Would you buy land there? No. No. You can't buy property when you don't know if you have clear title. And the fundamental thing that happened here, Sammy, is the court for the first time unprecedented. He's able to recognize to titles over the same piece of land. There's Aboriginal title, which is the senior title. And then there's private free fee simple title, which still exists, but the judge in effect left it to everybody else to sort out what the hell it means. says, nobody really knows what it means, but it has raised a cloud over that land. And the implications

2:12are spilling out across British Columbia because who knows what other property in BC, a court might say, not all this is actually Aboriginal title then. And so how are appraisers dealing with Well, it's interesting that's a great question. So appraisers again, as Sullivan explains, you've got to look at the implications of title. How is title incombert? So it gives an example. We know about this environmental concerns. You know, you're selling, for example, let's say you're selling a piece of property that had a filling station on it for years. You want to develop it. Well, there's a whole issue of the oil that spilled into the ground and that has to be calculated into it. And there's a method to do that. Appraisers aren't experts in environmental assessment and so forth. So they put an asterisk on the title and everybody knows that's full disclosure. And the buyer,

3:14you know, runs the risk. What will it cost to clean up the site? He says, what are appraisers doing with the problem of two titles? He says they really don't know. There's no precedent for this for the court saying there's actually two titles over this land. There's Aboriginal title and there's fee simple private title and you figured out what it means. So he says, what are appraisers you're doing? Is they're putting in to the appraisal of the property the uncertainty? Frankly, be aware this, if you're buying this property, it may not actually be yours. It may belong to the Cowardton First Nation. And he says in addition, and this is the really disturbing implication I say for the whole province, he said appraisers are starting to do this elsewhere. They're recognizing that, you know, you should be aware that a First Nation may be claiming this property and to which I would add, Cindy, the judge in this case did not accept the argument

4:19made by one of the property owners out there. She threw out the argument. Montrose said, you shouldn't have done this without inviting us to present to the court and defend the implication for our property rights. She said, the judge said, no, you know, you should have been aware this is going on and not my job to tell you and tough, basically. So this is spilling over into the chance of selling your property in Richmond. That's immediate and real. It's spilling over into whether or not developers would buy the land and try to develop it with that much uncertainty. It's spilling over into evaluations of the property. And in the long run, Cindy, it may affect the value of any amount of property in British Columbia. I guess I'm a little bit confused, Vaughn, by why appraisers are doing this outside of that area. Like I can understand, there's some

5:23confusion, perhaps around the Cowardton area, that area that's directly impacted. But why would appraisers bring other land into question where that hasn't come up yet? Like it seems to me, they're putting the cart before the horse here. Why are they injecting that confusion in? The federal government, we reported it, signed an agreement recently with a muskweum, recognizing the potential of a claim of Aboriginal title over Metro Vancouver. There's the case out in Port Coquitlam. There's a first nation in Camelops that's claiming all of Camelops. And I would say, if you're being prudent about this as an appraiser, you don't know what a judge is going to do with a claim like that. First nation says, well, we're not trying to take the property, right? That's what the Cowardton nation says. That's what the judge says. But if you quote that passage from the judge, they are not seeking ownership of the property,

6:25she added two words, for now. And any idea that down the road, they might change their mind and try to get clear title to the property enrichment, she says, well, that's speculative. Well, yes, it's speculative. But if I'm buying a piece of property in Metro Vancouver or Camelops or Port Coquitlam, it's another place this has happened. You're going to go, well, you know, yeah, I'm going to live there, okay. But if you're a developer, you're going to go, am I going to develop that property and then discover that I don't even have title to it down the road? I mean, I think this is a genuine problem in the province. And Sullivan has really underscored it. Now we're at the front end. The implications are still coming out. One of the things he says very interesting is BC Assessment Authority. So BC Assessment Authority assesses the value of property, which is what they're supposed to do. And they're saying no change. And Sullivan says there's a

7:26reason for that. They base assessments on property sales. There haven't been any enrichment for all the reasons we now understand who in their right mind would buy a piece of property where they don't even know for getting clear title. But he said the problem with that is the assessments for that property enrichment are based on the situation that existed and the evaluations that existed before the court case. So you're being taxed, your property taxes, on the basis of an evaluation that now has a big question mark over it. Assessment Authority can't come in and say with no changes with no transactions and no sales, they can't figure out either what the value of the property is now because there's been a huge change in circumstances. So if you're out there, not only can you not sell your property because there are no takers, even if you lower your

8:27assessment, but not only can you not sell your property, but you're being taxed on a value that it probably doesn't have because of this court decision. With Vom Palmer for the Vancouver Senate, now Vom, let's talk about this forestry issue. We are also going to be discussing this later on in the show, but this open letter is interesting. Yeah, there's one thing about it that I think is worth noting is nobody can recall the last time that basically every industry association in the province in the forest sector and still a lot of them out there got together and agreed on one plan of action, which is what they've done here. They've put it all on a five-page letter to Premier David E.B. They sent it to him last week. They sent it to him because they think that his own government is all over the map from responding to this challenge. So they went straight to the Premier and I gather the Premier has agreed to meet with them. So this is a an ambitious agenda, but there's a long list of changes that they say need to be done because

9:30the industry is in crisis. It's at the brink and you read all this list of stuff. They're also saying don't kid yourself that you can blame all this on Donald Trump because a lot of these problems predate his government Trump and his tariffs and these are all changes you could make in British Columbia that would improve access to fiber, increase the harvest and bring the industry back from the brink. Okay, can we just run through then some of the details of this letter? If there's a plan, what is their plan and how is it so different from what we're doing right now? Well, the biggest one and this has gone on for a while and the government acknowledged it. When did Democrats took office in 2017, the annual harvest in the BC forest? So going to saw meals, going to pulp knows all of that was about double what it is today and the new Democrats David E.B. acknowledged that. When he became Premier, he made Ravi Parmar, his forest minister, reappointed him

10:33and his mandate letters said increase find ways to increase the harvest by 50%. So that increase of the harvest would take the province halfway back to where it was when the new Democrats took off. So there's a whole bunch of changes that could be made but the main one would be find ways to increase the harvest and that target was given to them two years ago and it hasn't happened. I mean, the problem is the number, the target is 45 million cubic meters of harvest, we're still back down at 30 million cubic meters. That number hasn't budged in the last two years. All kinds of reasons why but basically that's it. And then you run down the list of things, a lot of these ideas have knocked around for a while but basically semi the problem is getting the permits to actually harvest the wood, getting through all the consultations and the conflicting silos of different ministries

11:38who have a hand in this and harvesting wood the economic. So we are the highest cost jurisdiction in North America and we were before Donald Trump got to be president so that's where we're going. That's what they say. You can go through the long list of things but that's basically the story. Do what you said you were going to do two years ago, increase the harvest halfway back to where it was when you took office and make sure that we're actually getting the permits to harvest the wood and then in the long run you'll get the investment and everything else close in that. Okay and then I have to ask why why haven't we done that? If we talked about it two years ago and if it keeps coming up what has been the hold up? Well you go to the news conference yesterday with Randy Parmont, the forest minister and he said yeah yeah I've seen the letter and I know what the premium premium is going to meet with these people next week. Okay and then he starts talking about Donald Trump and tariffs right that that's basically the NDP's response is too full. The first

12:41one is blame Trump and the tariffs even though we've had all kinds of reports saying a lot of these problems there was a federal provincial task force that reported out in June that said Canadians should stop kidding themselves. The problem of productivity and harvesting in the forest industry is home grown. It's problems that should have been dealt a long time ago and we should do it. The other thing Parmont says is there's a problem that dates back 50 years. Well yes it does. There's these problems have been developing over decades but what you need to hear from the NDP is we know what we need to do now we know what we can change now we can change because you can't back up 50 years and you can't do anything about Donald Trump. So really Simea the credibility issue is the question you ask you have acknowledged the problem you've set a target of increasing the harvest by 50% and the harvest hasn't budged according to their own reports. All right Vaughan thank you.

13:48Bye bye Simea.