West Vancouver Councillor Marcus Wong made a cringe-worthy performance when he succumbed to pressure from his fellow Councillors to publicly report that the removal of discriminatory language from West Vancouver’s land titles would be a waste of money, despite the fact that he was the one who, more than 2 years prior, brought forward a much publicized motion that the City of West Vancouver would begin the process of removing these offensive land-title clauses.
The fact is that the District of West Vancouver and the West Vancouver Council, for more than 2 years, failed to do anything about the racist land titles, despite the public commitment of the West Vancouver Council. This is evident when one reads the West Vancouver District report and reads the back-of-the-envelope cost calculation which led to that conclusion. The West Vancouver District has more than 750 full-time well-paid employees who can arrive at no greater depth than simply multiplying the number of properties in West Vancouver with the standard LTSA fee to retrieve a land title. This back-of-the-envelope calculation is then used to justify the conclusion that there is nothing the District can do at the municipal level because it is too expensive.
While taking the media attention and credit for being a progressive municipality 2 years ago, what we are seeing today is that the same Mayor and Councillors are saying that their hands are tied, while demonstrating that removing racist language is not worth more than 15 minutes of their costly time. 750 employees and 8 City Councillors can only spend 15 minutes to act on a Council Motion which got them press coverage across all major media.
West Vancouver is in a unique position relative to all other municipalities in the province, because the colonialist pioneers, who took the unceded territories from the Squamish Nation, still exist and conduct business in West Vancouver today. In fact they are likely the largest business in West Vancouver even 60 years later. Not only has this developer embedded hate speech into all the land titles, but they are still very closely aligned with the District and Council of West Vancouver, who is preparing to grant them permits to develop an additional 3,700 new homes, which they plan to sell to the people they once discriminated against. They are literally getting away with their colonial style of business and being encouraged and enabled by the current West Vancouver Council and District. The only conclusion is that the West Vancouver and District are not only condoning racism, but that they are actively encouraging it. West Vancouver does not need legislative change to remove the stain that the British Pacific Properties has put on our Canadian history. The British Pacific Properties, being the original land developers that wrote the hate speech on their land title covenants, could work with current owners to delete the discriminatory clauses. This can be done without any changes to the legislation. It just costs money, money the British Pacific Properties can easily afford. In a time of reconciliation, how can we allow companies like this to not take responsibility for their shameful role in the history of our community? The British Pacific Properties takes no responsibility for their past white supremacist policies. They don't even apologize to the people they discriminated against. They do spend a lot of money marketing new properties to these same people. What you see today are West Vancouver Councillors that continue to insist they have no jurisdiction, thinking that they can wave their hands in the air, free and clear or their responsibilities. We have the same West Vancouver Councillors that motioned (Marcus Wong) and seconded the motion (Craig Cameron) to remove these discriminatory languages, who continue to support the British Pacific Properties and who want to grant them permits to develop thousands of new homes. Environmental law requires that companies that spew toxic chemicals into an environment to clean it up. Why are our governments not forcing the British Pacific Properties to comply the same standard? Is it because they are not Canadian? Why does a British owned company get away with this in Canada? Instead of taking their responsibility the City of West Vancouver has taken the position that these issues are out of your jurisdiction, when in fact they have direct control over the issuance of new permits to these foreign colonialists who have tainted our legal documents with hate speech. Foreign investors that should not even be allowed to invest in Canadian real estate under new rules put in place to reduce property speculation. Are the BPPs even paying an empty land tax? Given the size of their land holdings such a tax could easily cover the municipality's cost to identify all land titles with offensive language? The BPPs should be held both financially and legally responsible for their social toxic waste that has permeated their developments before the 1960s. Mayors and Councillors should be held responsible and uphold their positions of Duty of Care in protecting its citizens to ensure that they are not subjected to the humiliation of submitting offensive/discriminatory covenants to permit applications today. The Mayor and Council of West Vancouver should not be allowed to pass the buck and say that they have no jurisdiction. The Mayor and Council are in fact responsible for ensuring that their citizens live in a safe environment, instead they are not taking the responsibility and shy away from forcing foreign investors to clean up the social toxic waste in our community. Instead they work hand-in-hand with our former colonial masters who permeated our society with racist language. What we are witnessing are local government leaders that are encouraging and enabling colonialist white supremacy by foreign investors. The same local government leaders try to blame the rule of law for not standing up for their citizens. They seem to think that West Vancouver citizens are too dumb to notice.
This is a disgrace to our legal and democratic system and this nonsense and excuse making needs to stop now. Michele Tung
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