AUGUST 2014 BCBusiness 13 bcbUSineSS.cA
engineering in the industry ("Jessica
McDonald Named New BC Hydro
CEO,"
bcbusiness.ca/people). Lately, it has
become a refugee camp for entitled gold
diggers: pretty much everyone with a polit-
ical connection is a director or above, with
100K-plus salaries and vague job duties.
Bobby Macnutt
Coquitlam
Following the Wealth
I'd be interested to know how many
of these baby boomer homeowners
in the $160 billion pool of asset-related
wealth can actually afford to "move" the
funds while living ("Realtor Bob Rennie
Delivers Provocative
UDI Speech,"
bcbusiness.ca/real-estate). My expe-
rience has shown that a lot of these
homeowners are in a "house-rich/
cash-poor" situation. It'll be tough for
a financial institution to approve an
equity draw with someone making $400
a month on Old Age Security. I'm not
saying this is reflective of the entire
population, but it must represent a
strong percentage. I also believe that the
sentiment to be mortgage-free still reso-
nates with the baby boomer generation
and is contributing to the reluctance to
"move" the wealth.
Curtis Scott
Vancouver
The Sony Math
So let me get this straight—we are
getting a company to move to Canada by
offering to pay the wages of its
employees ("Sony Pictures Imageworks
to Move its HQ to Vancouver," bcbusi
ness.ca/tech-science), many of whom
will be brought in from another country,
and then letting the company keep the
rights and royalties of all the intellectual
property created? Another genius plan,
Canada.
Chuck T.
Surrey
I think you should revisit the economics
or look at other industries we subsidize,
and see how they create local jobs and
how it contributes to the economy
("Sony Pictures Imageworks to Move
its HQ to Vancouver," bcbusiness.ca/
tech-science).
The key here is that Sony is subsidized
to hire local artists, which puts money in
local pockets. In addition, foreign work-
ers still purchase local goods and contrib-
ute to the economy—not to mention how
this will attract other
VFX companies to
look at Vancouver as well and hopefully
amplify what is happening.
Logan Connor
Vancouver
LNG Promises
If the argument is that B.C. has cheap
hydroelectricity and carbon taxes and
that this combination gives us a struc-
tural advantage in producing
LNG that
imposes a lower environmental cost
than some of our competitors ("The
Business Case for Clean
LNG in B.C.,"
bcbusiness.ca/natural-resources).
This might be true, but it would be
more compelling if the alternatives
were actually called out. One of the
failings of B.C.'s
LNG strategy is that it
seems to have been concocted in a vac-
uum without any meaningful investiga-
tion of the alternatives and competitive
dynamics.
The promises that the government
is making about the long-term eco-
nomic impact of
LNG development are
not credible and have not been sup-
ported by any serious analysis. So in
chasing this dream, what other options
are we shutting off ?
Steven Forth
Vancouver
T W I T T E R
@BCBusiness
FA C E B O O K
BCBusiness
Please include your daytime
phone number and city of
residence. Letters may be edited
for brevity, clarity and taste.
CorreCtion: The Prince George
Airport Authority has not started
construction of a cargo facility and is
not doing any business with Western
Star Ventures. Incorrect information
appeared in the June issue of BCBusiness.
