September 27, 2016

Tsawwassen Mills, mega mall, mega staffing problem

tsawwassen-mills

Opening on October the 5th the huge Tsawwassen Mills mega mall (and we are talking 1.2 million square feet, or over 17 football fields side by side) with 6,000 parking spaces and 160 of 200 stores needs employees to staff the place. There have been several job fairs as merchants scramble to find 3,000 employees to staff their stores. In fact the Bass Pro Shop needs 400 people  for a 148,000 square foot operation. 

For some reason there’s not great public transportation for employees that will work at the mall. But think of this-if minimum wage is $10.85 an hour,and a monthly bus pass is $90.00 to $170.00, a full day’s wage or more is eaten up pretax just in  public  transportation.  There just are not a whole bunch of folks willing to work minimum wage who also have access to a car for the commute to this mega mall near the Tsawwassen ferry. This mall on the  former farmland floodplain is approximately 30 kilometers from the Scott Road Skytrain Station. Coming from Vancouver or Richmond potential employees will have to use the Massey Tunnel, and deal with single lane access through the tunnel going southbound mornings to work. There is an express bus from Bridgeport Station in Richmond to the ferry terminal, a slower bus that has more stops, and a local bus that connects Tsawwassen. From Surrey to the new mega mall? Nothing.

Quebec based Ivanhoe Cambridge  who are building this monolith are betting on the formulaic model of “destination” shopping like their Vaughan Mills Toronto and Cross Iron Mills location near Calgary. Glen Korstrom in Business in Vancouver  notes that the  mall has decided to operate a daily employee shuttle service to connect the Scott Road SkyTrain with the mall 14 hours a day. While such a service would make sense for transit users too especially at the proposed $2.00 a ride, its for employees only and will involve a 25 minute trip to the mall from the SkyTrain Station.

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Quoting one business owner who manufactures and sells bean bag chairs who has had no luck finding employees for the new mega mall, “Metrotown is not a problem for hiring,  we get tons of resumés. It’s easier for more people to commute with SkyTrain. Burnaby is also a more populated area than Tsawwassen.” 

The Bass Pro shop has raised their minimum wage offer up by  5 per cent to attract employees at $12.00 an hour, with a few dollars an hour on top for commission. But with no public transportation and no car share planned, potential employees have been hard to find. There are eight days left until Tsawwassen Mills mega mall goes live, with or without staffing.

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  1. This situation was just so predictable.
    The authors of the feasibility studies obviously neglected to fully account for isolation, affordable public transport alternatives for lower-wage employees, an already saturated market in distant urban populations, and analysis of the rampant success of malls that are well-served by transit and dense commercial retail locations.
    Who wrote the negligent RFP for this one, banking only on a supercilious “destination” factor?

  2. “a local bus that connects Tsawwassen. From Surrey to the new mega mall? Nothing.”
    Not quite right: there is still the 640 from Surrey to Ladner. So yes, like a lot of trips, you have to transfer. At one time I used to commute to the then headquarters of BC Transit in Gateway at Surrey City Centre and the 640 then went right to the ferry.

    1. But for a teenage girl at 9:00PM in the winter- it is very different than your experience! Look at the unprotected bus stops and where they are located on a four lane divided highway.

    2. I think that Sandy may have jumped the gun on implying that Translink is at fault for not providing adequate transit service to the mall site. The way that translink works, they definitely do not provide a service for a new site that HAS NOT OPENED YET. Let’s give Translink a few months, anyway, and see if they figure it out and get with the program.

  3. Staffing is NEVER a problem. Pay scale is. I bet of they offered $60-100,000/year they’d be swamped with employees. The wages are far too low, for the location !
    Oops. The human factor matters.

    1. Find me a mall retailer that can afford to pay employees what it would take to attract them and I’ll show you a retailer on the fast track to bankruptcy. Unless you’re Apple or a shop selling ultra high end fashion the revenue per square foot simply isn’t enough to afford much above minimum wage.
      An isolated mall that’s having trouble attracting employees is likely to have trouble attracting clients, making it even more risky to pay employees enough to lure them to the edge of suburbia.
      I don’t think the Tsawwassen First Nation did their due diligence on the mega mall concept.

      1. Also see the request to raise minimum wage in a number of provinces and US states that will cause many layoffs as restaurants and retailers close as wages go up 50% from $10 to $15. Unaffected, OF COURSE, are civil servants or those masquarading as such such as unonized BC Ferries, City of Vancouver or BC Liquorstore employees at almost TWICE the going retail rate.
        Private business can go bankrupt, and many do, but not governments. We shall see how this mall ends up doing financially.
        Perhaps less retail, and more industrial or housing would have been a better choice ?**** This last sentence has been deleted as per editorial policy.****

        1. If some restaurants & retailers close . Then others will need more staff to serve their new customers . No shortage of retail & restaurants in Australia & countries with livable minimum wages.

        2. Plenty of debate and mixed opinion about this minimum wage issue in Australia: http://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace-relations/fair-work-commission-rules-australias-lowestpaid-workers-to-receive-1580-a-week-minimum-wage-rise-20160531-gp84tp.html and in Seattle: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/18/the-rumpus-over-seattles-15-minimum-wage-and-restaurant-closures/#336f6acb15be
          Higher prices usually implies lower demand. A 50% increase will mean a lot less demand. The most marginal will suffer the most, as a chain that has to layoff 50 out of a thousand will not pay off the most productive 50, but the weakest, those that we try to help the most: the disabled, the recovering drug addict, the stressed out single mother ..

      2. I don’t think it can really be said that the Tsawassen First Nation was the “developer” here. Sure, they provided the land, and they used their FN status to over-ride the ALR, but Ivanhoe Cambridge was the decider on this big development. Maybe they misjudged the local situation. We will see.
        TFN just wanted to work out a land lease deal with SOMEBODY with deep pockets. As far as other uses for the land, such as residential or business/industrial, they HAVE done a residential development deal with Aquilini just a stones throw away from the mall, and they did an industrial business park project on the other side of the reserve, and it looks to me like a big failure.

  4. I’m not convinced that shoppers are going to be any more motivated to go out to the boondocks to shop at this mall than the employees are. Once the curiosity seekers have had their fill, who exactly is going to sustain the place?

    1. Not quite. UNLIKE $12/h employees all shoppers have a car. See also success of new airport mall. This mall is very convenient for car users as it it right off SFPR, Hwy 99 and ferry route with little congestion around. Go to the ferry an h or 2 earlier and shop for many too. Anyone south of Vancouver will go there at least once in 2016, and if deals are good and atmossphere great they’ll be back. They might even organize seniors’ bus tours from Victoria. Will there be restaurants or even a movie theatre ?
      Public transit: so overrated in less dense communities !

      1. Everything we need is within walking / biking / transit distance, or at most 15 minutes by car. The exception is work, which is 25 minutes away. Car ownership is no guarantee that people are going to devote any significant time to drive to this mega mall for stuff one can get almost anywhere.
        How much is your time worth?

      2. Thomas Beyer said: “UNLIKE $12/h employees all shoppers have a car.”
        Tell that to the hordes of shoppers who flood out of and into the Skytrain at Metrotown, about half of whom go into the mall (as opposed to the bus loop).
        And the Airport mall is served by Skytrain as well.
        And although car-borne shoppers can drive all the way out to Tsawwassen Mills, why would they bother? Do you really think an adequate number people traveling to the Island will leave two hours earlier just for the privilege of shopping at that mall? Or add to hours to their return trip to do so? I can’t see it happening, especially when they could nip to a more local mall in far less travel time.
        Time will tell which one of us is right, and I for one am going to be watching closely.

      3. All shoppers have a car? I do almost all of my shopping by bike. And what about the 30% of Millennials who are car free? And what about the employees? Do they never shop? They may shop more if they were paid a decent wage.

        1. Few from downtown Vancouver, N-Van or W-Van will shop there. We all get that Arno. It is targeting folks in Surrey, Delta and east. Some folks from Richmond, too. MOST of these potential shoppers have cars. If you do not have a car, of course you will not shop there. Many folks who have no car are not big shoppers, and the tiny affluent non-car clientele will shop elsewhere. The mall owners get that.
          South of Fraser is fast growing, and with new Massey bridge even faster. One day we might even have a bridge to Gulf Islands and V Island. We might even have housing west of this mall, or south in Boundary bay. Many growth opportunities for the next 20-50 years. Likely a loss in the first year or 3, until Massey opens. It’ll be worth a lot, in a decade, and some REIT will buy it and feed your pension !

        2. Ha! They cruise along the HOV lanes with the top of their convertible down and make sure to fill-up with gas for the week, on the way back.

        3. I think it is probably correct to say “All shoppers at this mall will have a car” … with the implied ‘must have a car to get there’ thrown in … I don’t have a car, so will never shop at this odd place.

  5. The employee shuttle makes sense for the mall businesses. This is what Cypress Mountain and other resorts do to get service employees to their far flung job site.

    1. This is a great model of how the cost of commuting is being dealt with by business – as it should be. Curious to know how they’ve worked out the cost structure. When do employees go on the clock? Is their commute time a free benefit to the business? Is the cost of the shuttle internalized, or do employees pay for the ride with cash, as well as with their time?

  6. Likewise, GWL Realty provides a shuttle bus for its tenants’ office workers from its business park, Crestwood Corporate Centre (Knight & Westminster in Richmond) to the Canada Line. It was implemented in 2012.
    This CBC story describes similar services in Toronto for office employees:
    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/stuck-in-traffic-private-shuttles-in-place-of-transit-1.1401500
    It’s really a means of being competitive with jobsites that have easy transit access.
    This BIV article also discusses the shift in Richmond office occupancy/development from office parks to “downtown” Richmond along the Canada Line:
    https://www.biv.com/article/2016/8/canada-line-driving-richmond-office-development/

  7. Retailers use a large amount of public infrastructure – roads, energy, sewerage etc. They have replaced resource extraction and processing as the largest employers in the economy as we shift to a post industrial first world. They pay some of the lowest wages in the economy. In the end their workers will be subsidized to live – through the tax system. We need a labour code that pays closer to a living wage for this province, if businesses can’t afford $15 per hour perhaps they should close, and get off the welfare train.

    1. Retailers pay rent, property taxes and utilities which covers civil infrastructure costs, incl roads, water and sewer costs. We can debate higher road use fees, of course, as gasoline taxes might be insufficient to cover them.
      Perhaps we should lower taxes instead, and as a result, civil servants’ salaries and benefits as they are utterly unsustainable in a low interest rate world ? Salaries and benefits make up over 75% of all taxes collected. That is where we have to start.
      Minimum wage makes no sense as any retailer will be forced by the market to pay adequate wages otherwise people quit or don;t even bother to apply as we see here in this new far away mall ! That is why hardly anyone works for minimum wage these days.
      This study shows that you have to save 22% of your salary to get a decent pension, starting at age 25, which coupled with low risk of layoff, lower hours worked and better benefits means civil servants need to be paid 30-35% below comparable private sector jobs if they get a DB pension. Are they ? http://business.financialpost.com/personal-finance/millennials-may-have-less-time-on-their-side-u-s-retirement-study-shows Excessive taxes is the reason many can’t save enough. Public sector spending belt tightening is where it ought to start.

      1. Excessive taxes is the reason many can’t save enough. Public sector belt tightening is where it ought to start.
        Hogwash.
        Many can’t find work because of the circumstances set up by the US private sector banks to rook the global economic system through CDOs and toxic mortgage-backed debt and sometimes outright fraud (see Wells Fargo corruption case for the latest in many stories in that vein), which cause planetary recessions and rampant worldwide unemployment. Like clockwork, the call then goes out for government bailouts to “cushion the blow”, but which effectively means keeping the CEO bonuses and squirreled away millions intact while employees are laid off and millions of clients default. Sometimes they still collapse even after the bailouts and the execs have long left the scene, or ended up in prison.
        Eric Reguly, Report on Business columnist, recommended the resurrection of public banks to counter the sleaze, citing Wells Fargo, one of the largest banks in the world, and a number of other examples including the presence of private money from vested interests that have corrupted public policy through political donations.
        Your narrative on “high” public sector wages amounts to three beans and a teaspoon of vinegar compared to the Everest, K2 and McKinley of the financial cost of the radical actions, mismanagement and outright corruption of too many investment banks and Enrons to count. The next round of bailouts may not materialize in the US because of existing bailout-caused trillion-dollar public sector debt. The resulting bankruptcy’s will not leave Canada untouched.
        Regarding public sector belt tightening, no one would argue with rational and justified fiscal conservatism. But the slash and burn practiced by the likes of Mike Harris and Bill Bennett were nothing more than very damaging acts based on ideology. The economic and administrative damage is far from healed. California fire fighters and paramedics are still struggling with understaffing and equipment shortages by referenda-crazed mobs ever since Proposition 13 was heavily promoted by business interests decades ago.
        There is an argument to strengthen the public sector so it can adequately counter some of the terrible economic practices of the private sector. Paying mall crawling workers poorly, subsidizing public services and utilities to remote suburban developments, lowering wages in either the public or private sectors, and taxpayers rescuing well-enriched CEOs from themselves are not answers to this dilemma.

        1. @RV: We are not the US. We are also not (yet) like Europe, but are heading that way far too fast.
          We can all agree that some form of taxation and some form of pubic services is required. The question is: how much, or “when is it too big”. Only more capital, ingenuity and innovation provides growth and employment. Tax too much, or stifle innovation with too many rules and folks will not invest.
          Public sector spending needs to be more efficient and targeted, for example subways or roads, or allow dual track healthcare that is now imploding. Public sector employees need to be paid in line with private sector. Overall public sector spending has to decline somewhat. Affluent immigrants pay not nearly enough taxes, as incomes are overtaxed in Canada and properties under-taxed.
          http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/jack-mintz-wheres-the-growth-governments-promised-canadians
          Key sentence here “We don’t really need more public spending, but rather better targeted and more effective spending. Gold-plated public employee compensation, featherbedded hiring practices and inefficient procurement policies increase public sector costs without delivering better services to Canadians. As some economic studies have suggested, including work by the IMF, it is not clear that governments need to take up more than a third of a country’s economic resources to carry out their functions properly (Canadian public spending is now more than 40 per cent of GDP).”
          Higher taxes, as advocated by NDP governments everywhere ARE BAD: http://globeinvestor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/GAM/20131112/RBECONLABRAGANTAX1111ATL

        2. Governments never invest or improve efficiencies. Only a competitive market place does that.
          Government merely re-distributes what is privately produced. Since there is no competition and governments can’t go bankrupt they can afford to grossly (!!) overpay their workers. BC Ferries cafeteria workers at $70,000, BC Liquorstore employees at $30/h, police, Translink security personell or firefighters at $100,000+, Busdrivers at $75,000+, City of Vancouver secretaries and entry level jobs @ $65,000 .. give me a break. The total wage packages are OUTRAGEOUS. DB pension ought to be illegal. It is theft of the tax payer. No wonder our taxes are so high. Try running a restaurant, an airline or a manufacturing company on these wage packages. Even GM now finally instituted a non-DB pension for new hires. Who on this blog actually runs a private company (like I do) ?
          Undiscussed is the issue of undertaxation of foreign owned real estate. In the US their property taxes are generally far higher than here AND you can deduct interest and property taxes fm your taxable income, essentially slashing in half the holding costs of a $2M property of locals vs. foreigners. That is missing in BC and that is teh #1 reason why sp much foreign money comes here as it is so cheap to hold real estate. Poorly enforced capital gains, too ! That model is s.th. BC should study: lower incomes taxes, perhaps to 0, like TX, but raise consumption taxes and property taxes.
          See our crumbling healthcare now that the feds admitted the cash isn’t here and provinces need to admit that more money, i.e. private money, like the school system, is the only way to reduce wait times and improve efficiencies ! Unconstitutional too ! http://www.charterhealth.ca/case/
          The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. As we see right now in Ontario, with double the debt of California and 1/3 the population, the highest per capita debt in the world of any sub-nation !
          re Denmark: Canada is like Denmark: high incomes are taxed at 50%+ plus PST, GST, property taxes on stuff you buy with the rest of the money. Denmark (& Holland and N-Germany) where bike use is widespread is flat. Vancouver is not, btw.

        3. Crumbling healthcare? I have always had excellent healthcare. Furthermore, in terms of population health we are way ahead of the US. From Wikipedia:
          In terms of population health, life expectancy in 2006 was about two and a half years longer in Canada, with Canadians living to an average of 79.9 years and Americans 77.5 years.[119] Infant and child mortality rates are also higher in the U.S.[119] Some comparisons suggest that the American system underperforms Canada’s system as well as those of other industrialized nations with universal coverage.[120]

        4. Thomas, you have a lot of misdirection here.
          Yes, property taxes in the us are tax deductible, but watching my family purchase a us property (as resident foreigners), the property tax deduction is a % or two. The mortgage rate is also a % higher. So the total carrying cost on the mortgage is the same, just the bank makes more. And maybe they use that extra cash to employ more people in some benevolent corporate method, but trickle down hasnt worked well in the past.
          As an engineer working in the private sector, the employment available with government agencies involves a very extended application process and offers 20-40K less than comparable private sector work and less future top end income. The DB pension is the only draw!
          Again my family works at a company manufacturing in the US and Canada. Even when the dollar was at par, their Canadian employment costs were 10-20k cheaper per person for Canadian manufacture mainly because of health care. The difference then came out of employees pay with the average us employee making 40k and the Canadian ones making 60K. Id rather see money in the pockets of Canadians and in the hands of the government. In my opinion they do far more for the people of this country than the average corporation. I dont think my tax burden is unfair, and I believe I receive fair value it in general. Id rather overpay the guy at a government road works department than a private contractor who “finds efficiencies”(pays staff way less) and pockets the rest.
          We likely need to re-jig our investments in health care, and our taxation of your generation as you age and expect a smaller population of young people to pay for your significant under-investment in the past. And we can figure this out. We dont need to be america. I dont think many in this country would trade places with them.

        5. Healthcare is unsustainable in the current form. Even Cuba has a two their system as does every country in the world, except Canada. Time to wake up and smell the roses. Study most European models and find one that suits. Sweden. UK. Germany. Holland. Whatever. (not the US) All have two tier. Already healthcare is 40% or so of provincial budgets, climbing to 100% with current immigration, spending and baby boomer growth rates. Unsustainable. Either accept top pay far more or get worse and worse service as you age. People are dying while waiting for procedures. Of the 6 people as part of the Cambie Clinic lawsuit two have since died. Our healthcare laws are unconstitutional. They were ruled unconstitutional over 10 years ago in Quebec, but due to their different legal system that ruling by the Supreme Court was not applicable in the rest of Canada.
          In time, not only healthcare, but also schooling, “public” transit and other government monopolized businesses will be more and more private. Why is the BC government in the insurance and liquor distribution business, for example ? Why is the City of Vancouver in the garbage or street cleaning business, for example ? Why is there no Uber yet ? It makes no sense, except for unions and left wing money wasters running our city. Unclear why CC hasn’t privatized ICBC or the liquorsystem yet. It is far too expensive and inefficient.

        6. We are not the US.
          Agreed. But we are, and always have been, quite close to being the 51st state, notably in raw resource extraction and export with few if any value-added escalators for Canadians who happen to own them.
          More than two-thirds of all oil sands production in Canada is owned by foreign entities, sending a majority of the industry’s profits out of the country, says a new analysis […] 71% of the ownership of oil sands production was foreign, while the foreign-based companies controlled 24.2% of the sector’s production.
          “Some notably Canadian oil companies, such as Suncor, Canadian Oil Sands and Husky, are predominantly owned by non-Canadians,” said the report. “The data also shows us that more than half of Canada’s oil and gas revenue goes to foreign entities.”

          http://business.financialpost.com/news/majority-of-oil-sands-ownership-and-profits-are-foreign-says-analysis
          Only more capital, ingenuity and innovation provide growth and employment.
          Partially agree. However, it is not private capital that negotiates trade deals, but governments, which are only too easily manipulated by industry to slant trade negotiations in particular directions. The upcoming TPP is being pushed in Canada by the US, but without any recognition here of the necessity of governments to foster and support innovation and protect intellectual property rights through patents. Google lobbied the US government hard on the TPP to keep other Internet search engines from being developed by US trading partners. There are very few innovation labs at our public universities, the best place where industry and government can come together not just to develop products, but to stick it out through the long haul of commercialization and continuing R&D.
          This means our economy is still in the back woods, drawers of water and all that. Just ask Jim Balsillie, co-founder of RIM and inventor of the Blackberry, who has written several op-ed pieces on this issue. Overpaid public sector workers, taxes too high … I think he would laugh at this extraordinary simplistic characterization knowing intimately the value of public investments in public educational institutions and R&D, even at the historically paltry levels.
          How many PT readers own a business like I do?
          Have you ever set foot in a municipal purchasing department to debate your views? These are some of the most conservative, bottom line folks you will ever meet. The managers do not take risks, and are always asking where the value for money in public procurement and contracts rests.
          I’ll also bet that more readers than you think work or have years of previous experience in the private sector and have owned businesses. The public sector comprises 60% of the national GDP (need to check that, but it is certainly higher than the 20% related to resources that gets all the attention). So that’s bad is it? How? Economic activity is economic activity, and it always has had all the time tested multipliers. Dollars cycle through the system over and over and over, and they can change from public to private and back again many, many times.
          If you hate the public sector so much, then start a lobbying firm with a mandate to break up unions and rip up their fairly negotiated contracts, privatize healthcare, roads, transit, sewers, potable water systems, health inspectors, paramedics, police forces, electrical grids, the courts, etc etc. Let’s see how far society would go in supporting your views.

      2. Tax cutting has been going on for 35+ years back to the Mulroney/Reagan/Thatcher years. In that time, economic growth has been well below the post WW2 era of the 50’s – 70’s. Tax cuts and deregulation have simply not stimulated economic growth. They have exacerbated income and wealth inequality. Why continue to pursue a failed policy, or at least adjust it to targeted industries where there is potential for job growth, instead of across the board cuts.
        Public sector wages reflect the reality that private sector union density has declined, with devastating effect on compensation, as well as the reality of mature collective agreements. It’s true that entry level public sector jobs pay higher wages than the private sector. That is due to privatization (e.g. hospital cleaners) to employers where wages fell by 50%. It’s also due to bargaining tactics by employers who will spend say 3% on a compensation increase, but put the majority of the offer into the lowest paid job categories in order to get enough votes to pass the collective agreement. Higher level workers get a smaller rise in pay. The civil service has many bargain priced employees, specifically managers who earn under 100k who in many cases would earn much higher compensation in the private sector. I would wager that in the last 35 years the public sector, with the many years of pay freezes, has earned less than the cost of living for a pay rise. The private sector, in that time period has as you point out has had pay cuts in real terms, lost benefits and significant layoffs. We need to reverse that ugly trend.
        Providing incentive to private sector workers, business people, corporate bosses by getting lean and mean in the workplace has been an abject failure. Public services have been slashed, real wages have been stalled for thirty years, pensions have disappeared or been replaced by a failed time bomb of DC plans Poverty rate is at 20% in the lowest income tax province in the nation, and Vancouver ranks 22nd! in Canada for median family income. Very few people work for minimum wage? Try 120,000 in this province, I wouldn’t call that very few, especially since that doesn’t cover the underground economy accurately. If low taxes worked, incomes in Vancouver would be higher, and the poverty rate in this province would be the lowest in Canada.
        We need to accept that the situation for our poor people, unemployed, workers and professionals is far worse today than it was for previous generations. We need to look at what has changed. Weak economic growth, increased income and wealth inequality, persistent poverty and chronic underfunding of public services. Denmark has the top marginal tax rate in the western world of 60% and has the happiest population. I haven’t been there, but I bet they have fewer billionaires than many western countries.
        I want to close with a note on capital, and innovation and incentive, and read this carefully. I hear huge concern from folks like yourself on taxation and regulation that will destroy, destroy! innovation and incentive. The welfare of the rich has been a mantra I have heard for my entire adult life. Well let me tell you something, the rich have always been among us. No matter what you do to treat workers fairly, or provide quality social programs for the vulnerable in society, there have always been rich people. No matter what system you set up, there will always be people with a sociopathic need to accumulate money. Perhaps by working longer hours, perhaps by innovation, perhaps by miserly behavior. We cannot spend too much of our resources worrying about the rich, despite electing socialist governments from time to time, Jimmy Pattison has never moved away from Canada or B.C. When asked why, he said my mother lives here. So even for the super wealthy, it’s not always all about the money. Maybe they had it right in the 60’s with 5% + GDP growth year in and year out, top marginal tax rates of 90% yet no financial crises like dot bombs, long term capital and 2008. Innovation in Wall Street finances is what we’ve gotten with low taxes and deregulation, with taxpayer financed bailouts of banker bonuses. Free enterprise my ass.

        1. Thanks for taking the time to write that up Keith. Bayer-nomics is b.s. esp when you consider the individual in question thinks it’s perfectly reasonable to attract investors with claims of doubling their money in only a few years. The greed is palpable and toxic.

        2. Thomas Beyer I clicked on your Globe and Mail article, which is sourced from an economist Christopher Ragan from the hardly unbiased CD Howe institute, and I quote:
          First, all firms are ultimately owned by individuals. When profits get remitted to shareholders as dividends, they are fully taxable as personal income, and thus the “fair share” is being paid by the shareholder.
          If you’re going to cite biased research, they should at least get their facts straight. I’m sure you’re aware that dividends are not taxable at all in tax free accounts like TFSA’s, they are tax deferred in RRSP and outside those vehicles they are eligible for a very generous dividend tax credit. For a professor of economics writing on behalf of a prominent think tank in a top tier newspaper, this is a giant misrepresentation of the facts and has no place being citied in a discussion on tax policy and economics.

  8. Perhaps it’s time for Translink to plan extending the Canada Line down No 3 Road, across the new bridge and on down to the main ferry terminal.

    1. Translink will not be extending the Canada Line that far south any time soon. Too expensive and too little ridership. The bus service to the ferry terminal is quite terrible. If there was a strong demand for transit to the ferry, Translink would have already added buses. They always say that they want to shift from poorly used routes to well-used routes.

  9. I am familiar with the locations of these other malls in Vaughan, Ontario and Calgary…latter not accessible by transit –unless something has changed. The Cross Irons Mall I believe had tried their own shuttle bus to run from 1 of the transit stations. I saw the mall once passing by in someone’s car and was amazed at the stupidity of its location.
    It’s not appropriate to keep on talking about shoppers with cars when the minimum wage workers at this new mall, don’t all have cars/may not be able to afford it. I’m not sure why there is a debate over this. You need workers..a reliable stable of them with regular transit service.
    It’s reality. Sometimes I get the powerful feeling some people on this blog, have never grown up without a car for a long time. I have …for the first 14 yrs. of my life. My family was very poor..with 6 children. So parents made sure a home was always within 15 min. walk of transit and services… Back in the 1960’s -1970’s.
    Same idea now in the 21st century. Certain things don’t change.
    Just to give an idea: please take the Toronto Transit bus from Islington subway station to the airport. It runs every 10 min. ….tons of people who are NOT plane flyers. They work at the airport. It’s an incredibly busy bus route. and often packed all hrs. of the day. It’s regular fare than the new express train that’s still abit expensive from downtown.

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