The Secrets Of Vancouver BC, Canada

All You Can Eat Sushi

photo credit: insk0r

All you can eat sushi is one of the great benefits of living in Vancouver. Sushi for reasonable prices and not crappy buffet quality. Enjoy…

Here are my top 4 (excluding Richmond):

Robson Sushi Japanese Restaurant

1542 Robson Street, Vancouver – (604) 684-3778
2 reviews, directions, and more »

Tsunami Sushi

238-1025 Robson Street, Vancouver – (604) 687-8744
10 reviews, directions, and more

Tomokazu Japanese Restaurant

20-1128 West Broadway, Vancouver
(604) 677-0426
Links: Map

Shabusen Yakiniku House (Burrard)

755 Burrard St, Vancouver
Tel: (604) 669-3883
Links: Map

Whew! Canada Gets a Couple of Medals

photo credit: Shutterhack

I was getting tired of email coming in each day…

email like:

Mongolians rejoice at first-ever Olympic gold

Then Canada finally snagged 1 of each today… vaulting us to 29th spot.

A couple more and we’ll pass Georgia if they are still a country by the end of next week.

Something is wrong with Canada’s Olympic program – at least from a return on investment basis.

I’ve heard that we are more of a Winter Olympic country – so why is Norway, Switzerland and even the Netherlands blowing us away.

Lets go Canada…

85 Million for Homeless

photo credit: Laura Grace

According to this Globe and Mail article, the government will be spending another $85 million on helping the homeless with shelters – and this is only the amount listed and doesn’t include welfare already given (average $969/person), or existing project costs.

So let’s say conservatively they are spending $100 million on new projects.

Divide this by the estimated number of homeless in the east side – 2,592 – according to this count.

This works out to $40,000 per person.

Average salary in Vancouver = $51,628 (family).

Interesting…

The average Canadian spends $11,200 a year on housing. Government-run supportive housing where residents get social services, such as counseling costs $28,000 a year.

You’d think that with the kind of money they throw at the problem, there would be a decline in homelessness…

You’d be wrong.

In the US, homelessness has been in decline. The number of chronically homeless people living in the nation’s streets and shelters has dropped by about 30 percent — from 175,914 to 123,833 — from 2005 to 2007.

The US project called “Housing First” is working… I’m hoping that Vancouver is going in this direction.

Vancouver is doing at lot in preparation for the Olympics – hiding the embarassment of the homeless situation seems to be top priority now.

Need a $77,000 Pay Raise?

photo credit: estherase

Gord Campbell’s Liberals showed their true Liberal roots this past week… slipping in a pay raise on a late Friday afternoon, so the media coverage would be muted by Monday.

For the better part, it worked.

It’s enough to make the average BC resident wish their was a Conservative party in the province.

Seems it takes a pay raise of 43% to “keep the brightest minds”. With decisions like this, one wonders if there are any bright minds in this government.

Liberals gave B.C. members of the legislature salary increases of 29% earlier. Front-line provincial government workers in B.C. won 2% raises this year.

Try to defend this when contract time time comes around.

With Health Care costs running at 50% of the provincial budget, one wonders where this money will all come from.

Maybe a Carbon Tax?

We Pay For Fox News

photo credit: Ben Werdmuller

In Vancouver you must pay extra to watch Fox New channel – despite it having more US viewers than all other cable news channels combined.

CNN is free – along with BBC and Al-Jazeera, making you wonder why the political bias is so pronounced.

Fox’s airing of right-wing viewpoints could be the problem… but even Venezuela carries the channel, so one needs to wonder if the CTRC is afraid of any viewpoint other than CBC’s.

It’s time to free information in Canada, and with Canada’s shift towards the center, Fox should be part of the same basic cable package as CNN. If anything, it woud raise the bar on news in Canada, and force the other news channels to raise the bar on their news.

Coquitlam And The 3 Bears

photo credit: wildphotons

The Three Bears aren’t so friendly these days:

Bear attacks Coquitlam woman in her garden

Bear shot after breaking into Coquitlam home

Third bear shot in BC city in a week

Our garbage pick-up is so bad here, that it’s cost us three bears and almost killed a woman. How it got to this point is a good question, and  how to fix it is even a better one.

Maybe people will stop putting the garbage out at night… and maybee the garbage pickup will get done a little quicker.

The odd thing is that we really aren’t allowed to throw most things out. The recycling Gestapo has really tough rules, so we try to follow them the best we can.

Unfortunately, the recycling pick-up may or may not happen on any particular day. This is from the company we pay huge fees to.

So don’t blame the bears – the crappy weather this year has really lightened the berry supply. 

Blame the garbage men.

Save Money By Buying Gas At Night

photo credit: richpix 

The gasoline price gouging has gone on long enough in Vancouver – stations raise the price each morning and drop them later in the day. The average increase is 16-20 cents a gallon surcharge for the convienience of buying gas in the daylight.

I asked a sampling of station managers why they do this, and all replied that they are instructed to by head office. This happens at all stations and defies any kind of logic.

The only way to stop the oil companies from ripping us off (as if $6 a gallon isn’t a rip off on its own) is to let them know this unethical practice is common knowledge – don’t buy gas during the day.

Plummeting revenue from the lack of sales during their daylight rip-off will get their attention…

By the way, the same goes for beer – did you know they charge more for cold beer? Buy the warm only.

H&M and Boobs

photo credit: Chim Chim

Today Vancouver moms visited into H&M -a fashion clothing store – to breastfeed in support of Manuella Valle.

Manuella was breastfeeding her two-month-old child, Ramona, when a store employee asked her to use a fitting room.

“She told me to mind that there were children around”.

“I would love for them to explain to me like a two year old, what is so offensive about me feeding my child,” said one mom, who joined the protest.

H&M spokesperson Laura Shankland says the company is sorry.

Looks like another protest is ready to get going in London, Ont., where a woman says staff at a La Senza store chastised her for breastfeeding.

“I felt violated… you would eat your big mac in public, why can’t my baby eat his big mac in public,” the woman said.

Two lessons here:

1) Don’t piss off a new Mom when she’s got a boob out.

2) Boobs are plentiful in Vancouver when you need to protest.

Vancouver Will Pass Montreal In Olympic Debt

photo credit: kevindooley

It took Montreal 30 years to pay off it’s Olympic games – Vancouver is shaping up to blow away the record.

In 1976 the games left Montreal with a $1.5-billion debt, and oddly enough much of the debt was serviced through a special tax on tobacco. (At $10 a pack, not sure you can add more tax to raise any money here.)

Montreal projected the games cost to be $300 million.

The B.C. provincial government claimed the cost of the Olympics wouldn’t exceed $600 million. Estimates passed $2.5 Billion a while back and it’s still going strong. Best of all the B.C. taxpayers are on hook for at least $1.5 billion.

The auditor-general pegs the Games’ total budget at $4.3 Billion. About $1.8 billion of that will be recouped from Olympic revenues.

Ottawa will contribute $607 million and local government $389 million, leaving B.C. taxpayers on the hook for about $1.5 billion, the report estimates.

Some examples of surprises still to come:

- Security – 1 Billion – original estimate $175 mil.

- The Canada rapid rail line – way over budget (plus the destruction of Cambie Street small business worth millions)

- A $150 million US currency blunder (organizers delayed entering into currency hedging contracts).

- The sports facilities are all in trouble – no one dares to publish the actual overruns. They were given $110 million earlier to cover cost overruns. Expect these to be at least $200 million.

Projects being done for the Olympics (but not included in the budget):

- the $775 million Sea to Sky Highway

Good news: The $1.3 billion in infrastructure and other costs, including some serious cost overruns reported in the past, are mostly accounted for in its general budget. This means we get to start paying for these now.

This is starting to sound like the way the Gov’t has handled my favorite company – ICBC.

They should have hired Calgary to look after the management.

Best of all is that nobody is responsible for reporting to the public on the overall cost of the Games.

If you have a link to any finance reporting on the games, I’d be very happy to get it… the Province seems to be the only one privy to any details.

Your estimate of what the final tally?

My guess is $3 Billion in debt. $1.5 Billion if we’re lucky.

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