Mind the Gap | Is Vancouver too tough for doing business, other than being the ideal retirement place?

Economic history turns in cruel cycles. A decades-old problem (familiar to many in Hong Kong) has finally peaked in Canada, as real estate critics and citizens who cannot afford to live in Vancouver are demanding every kind of restrictive policy against foreign buyers to control prices.

But the emerging political and economic policies of the New Democratic Party-Green Party provincial government in British Columbia could actually worsen housing affordability and business development.

While the outgoing provincial government seemed tired of governing, the incoming NDP-Green government represents the most socialist, anti-business policies in North America. They have not advanced a single new idea for economic development.

Instead, the party is dominated by environmental activists, social welfare advocates and professional protesters bent on strangling and taxing small and big business for the sake of advancing a radical environmental agenda with the fervour of scorched earth economic jihad.

Premier John Horgan recently completed a 10 day trip to meet with governments in China, Korea and Japan to back projects for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Yet, his Green Party counterpart Andrew Weaver has explicitly tweeted that “the NDP government will fall in non-confidence, if after all that has happened, it continues to pursue LNG folly.”

The province is embroiled in a struggle over LNG development and global warming. And Horgan needs Weaver’s support to stay in power.