14 BCBUSINESS APRIL 2014
Rental Racket
I have to take issue with your story about
the scarcity of o ce space in Vancouver
("Demand Outpaces Supply of Vancou-
ver Ofice Space," bcbusiness.ca/real-
estate). There is plenty of commercial
space available in Vancouver well-suited
for small businesses, but landlords are
being much too greedy in their lease
rates. There are a ton of "for lease" signs
around Robson, Broadway and Granville
streets and in Yaletown, and most of the
leasing available is perfectly suited for
small business. Soon there will be a lag
in the market, forcing landlords to nally
get fair market value, which means $22
per square foot, similar to prices in sub-
urbs such as Surrey and Abbotsford, and
not $70 or higher often seen downtown.
Danielle Murray
Vancouver
Until the Cash Comes Home
I agree with your story's claim that a
skills shortage may contribute to our
economic challenges, but in ated resi-
dential real estate prices lie at the cen-
tre of our problems ("B.C. Held Back
by Few Jobs and Even Fewer Workers,"
bcbusiness.ca/your-business). Housing
should be considered a place to live, not
an investment. Real estate has long been
sold as the most sturdy investment, but
in B.C.'s resort towns, locals live in mil-
lion-dollar homes on the side of ski hills
and can't a ord the lift ticket. What's the
point? If just one per cent of the money
spent on real estate were injected into
startups and research and development,
our province would ourish for decades
to come.
Craig Cherlet
Squamish
The All-seeing Taxman
What a relief to nd an article which tells
it like it really is ("Canada Capitulates
on
FATCA Agreement," bcbusiness.ca/
nance).
FATCA is a worldwide extortion
racket. The U.S. could never enforce its
obtuse, outdated and onerous citizen-
ship-based taxation on its diaspora so
it resorted to threatening all nancial
institutions into becoming enforcement
arms of the
IRS. I am outraged by Cana-
da's capitulation. It could have said no
and stopped this
FATCA monster, but it
chose to back the banking industry and
show its everlasting obeisance to the
bully over the border. Canada betrayed
over one million tax-paying Canadian
residents, their families and their associ-
ates and has yet to even o er an apoloy.
M.H. Rocknest
Nanaimo
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