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Topics http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcbusiness The taxonomy view with a depth of 0. en-cwm Carmen Timmins in Melbourne http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/people/2010/07/07/carmen-timmins-melbourne Accountant Carmen Timmins dishes on working Down Under. http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/people/2010/07/07/carmen-timmins-melbourne#comments People Australia BCBusiness British Columbia expatriates Culture Shock getaway Travel vacation vacation destinations work abroad Wed, 07 Jul 2010 12:07:15 -0700 BCBusiness <h2 class="bcb-article-deck">Name: Carmen Timmins Age: 29 Hometown: Fort St. John Location: Melbourne, Australia Job: Accountant, Lend Lease Primelife</h2> I moved here because I had an opportunity to work abroad, and when that contract ended I realized I wasn’t ready to leave. The first thing I did was take a drive along the Great Ocean Road. It is truly one of the world’s most breathtaking coastlines. The biggest shock was the lack of central heating in many homes. I actually purchased a duvet lounge suit and electric blanket for the winter months! What I miss most is Clamato juice. I was able to track some down last year at a specialty food store, but the price was exorbitant. My favourite experience so far has been sailing through the Whitsunday Islands off the coast of Queensland. I’ve never seen such aqua blue water and pristine white beaches. It was absolute paradise. The scariest thing that’s happened was the bush fires on Black Saturday last year. Temperatures of 46 degrees Celsius and winds over 100 kilometres an hour caused catastrophic fires across the state and numerous fatalities. The people are very friendly and welcoming. I haven’t had any trouble adapting to the Australian culture. What B.C. could learn from Melbourne is to preserve the old but also embrace the new. This contrast is evident in the different architecture around Melbourne, and it creates a very powerful statement about where the city has come from and where it’s heading. 14179 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca Ecodensity Forever? http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2010/05/05/ecodensity-forever Experts praise Vancouver's density strategy. But where does the city go from here? Is there life beyond condos and cafes? http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2010/05/05/ecodensity-forever#comments Top Stories BCBusiness community condo development condos ecodensity economic development roundtable Top Stories urban planning Vancouver Urbanism Wed, 05 May 2010 12:11:08 -0700 BCBusiness <div class="bcb-article-deck">Does downtown Vancouver have a future beyond condos and coffee shops?</div> The party’s over. The guests have all gone home, and after seven years of arranging the furniture and polishing the silverware, the hosts can finally sit back and breathe a sigh of relief. They liked us. Sure, we deserve some down time, a few days off to shuffle around in our slippers and field the thank-you calls. But it won’t be long before Vancouverites have to slap some cold water on their faces and confront the reality of a new day. Our shiny new downtown impressed the visitors, but where do we go from here? How long can a city sustain itself building one “livable” community of high-rise condos after another? Coal Harbour, Yaletown, False Creek: Vancouver has replicated its exemplary model of urban living over and over. But already cracks are appearing. Southeast False Creek, expected to be the crowning achievement of Ecodensity, required emergency life support to see completion, and its dreams of social diversity will be scaled back drastically, if not jettisoned altogether. We’ve busted our transportation budget with a shiny new subway line that whisks visitors downtown but does little for daily commuters, since downtown jobs are increasingly rare. For the latest insights into possible futures for downtown Vancouver, BCBusiness gathered a panel including experts in real estate, demographic trends, architecture and design. Cameron Muir is chief economist with the B.C. Real Estate Association; Andrew Ramlo is a director with Urban Futures, a population research institute; and Trevor Boddy is an architecture critic and curator of “Vancouverism,” an exhibition that travelled to London and Paris before returning to Vancouver during the Olympics. Vancouverites feel pretty smug about having one of the world’s most livable cities, but where do we go from here? Do we just keep building more condos and coffee shops? MUIR: The trend toward higher density is not going to reverse itself. Vancouver is constrained by the ocean, the mountains, the border and the agricultural land reserve, with land in finite supply. The only place we’re going to house people is through high density and by going up rather than spreading out. BODDY: Vancouver’s identity for a generation has been a place that has emphasized livability above all else. What we’re not doing well is the other half of the equation downtown, and that’s workspace. We have areas that used to house startups – software companies, architects – areas like Gastown, portions of Chinatown, Yaletown. Those have almost completely converted to housing, so we’ve lost our incubators. And we’ve built very little in terms of workspace over the last 10 to 15 years. In 1991 city council rezoned half of downtown to “residential optional.” Virtually none of that has gone as workspace. Our development and real estate industries are expert at providing housing, but we have to make some very serious public decisions about the nature of downtown and whether it will be a residential-only zone. RAMLO: You guys are talking primarily about land use, but it’s the people who live on the land that are going to have an implication. Who is living downtown? Well, it’s predominantly 20-to-30-year-olds. A much higher proportion in that age group than in the region as a whole.  <div roman="" new="" times="" style="margin: 10px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; width: 259px; float: left;"><img height="328" width="259" src="/files/image/Ecodensity-Forever-3-1.jpg" alt="" /> Cameron Muir</div> But how long can we continue filling downtown with condos? BODDY: That’s one of the most important things for us to talk about today: downtown Vancouver after the era of cheap money. The era when Vancouver identified itself solely in real estate terms ended during the Olympic Games. The identity that Vancouver hangs on to as one enormous and continuous development project is going to change. A certain watermark has been passed, and with an era of expensive money – and with some of the demographic forces that Andrew’s indicated – we’re going to have quite a different city emerging in 10 to 15 years, and I’m not convinced we’re planning for it. I think we’ll be reactive: a kind of panic will set in in a couple of years when we’re not booming, when the cranes aren’t visible, when prices are not going up. We’ve so identified ourselves through those markers that we’ll wonder if we’re still Vancouver without them. MUIR: Another key issue is affordable housing. If you go back 15, 18 years, the purpose-built rental stock in Greater Vancouver has actually declined about five per cent, and that’s been driven primarily by economics: it made more sense to build condominiums than it did to build rentals. So the population growth and the increase in rental demand has been satiated by private investors who have been buying a condominium or two and renting them out, as well as the many basement suites that are around the city. Purpose-built rental stock is likely not going to increase in a major way unless there’s some program or incentive out there. And as long as that supply is being constrained, then we’re going to have high housing costs. Will Vancouver ever be a head-office town? MUIR: We continue to have a small contingent of head offices here, and it’s still going to be a centre for businesses that need that connectivity, that need to have a presence in the major city. But a lot of office space activity over the next 20 years is going to move out toward the suburbs, where rents are less and there’s available space. And when we look at job growth, it’s highly correlated to where population is and where business park industrial land is, and that’s certainly strongest in areas such as Surrey and Langley, for example. RAMLO: There’s also the function of what the Lower Mainland economy is. Unlike Calgary, where you go to the streets and ask, “What’s driving our local economy?” and people are going to say, “Oil,” ask the same question of somebody in downtown Vancouver and people don’t really know. So it’s a much more diversified economy, which lends itself to diversification in terms of the workplace as well. We don’t need as much of that concentration downtown. But having said that, if you’re not going to build any offices downtown, then you’re certainly not going to reinforce those jobs downtown. BODDY: I guess I’m the worrier here because I think Vancouver has been asleep at the switch in terms of economic development. The city of Calgary spends more on economic development than every B.C. municipality put together. And they’re out there stomping on our toes. Vancouver, for the first time, will have to get over its beautiful-adolescence self-image and actually get out there and wear down some shoe leather, using things like land and quality of life to attract new business and grow the ones we have. Yes, there are lots of startups in Yaletown apartments, and lots of us work out of our homes, but what happens when you hire your third employee? When businesses get successful they migrate out, and there goes the tax base. MUIR: We can’t disconnect downtown Vancouver from the overall region. Yes, the downtown area is an innovation incubator for young entrepreneurs, and as those incubators produce companies they may in fact move out of their trendy downtown space. But the important thing is that they move out to maybe south Vancouver or to Richmond or to Surrey or Burnaby, but not out of the region or the province. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges going forward, to maintain that intellectual capital.  <div roman="" new="" times="" style="margin: 10px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; width: 259px; float: left;"><img height="296" width="259" src="/files/image/Ecodensity-Forever-3-2.jpg" alt="" /> Andrew Ramlo</div> How else will the shift of business from downtown to the suburbs affect Vancouver? BODDY: If they move to strip malls in Surrey, that has a huge public policy impact. The growth in office space in the last decade has been in places that are incredibly ill-served by public transit. Our whole radial system of rail-based transit makes absolutely no sense because people are going to jobs where there isn’t any bus service. That’s the other missing option: we’ve got huge potential to develop around our transit stations, but complete paralysis. Look at Broadway and Commercial: 24 years after it became the hub of our transit system, nothing has been done there. If you look at Toronto, you see that the development industry worked with politicians and overrode the objections of neighbours to make job and living hubs right at transit. We are so far behind that, and we’re behind Richmond and Burnaby, and even Surrey is doing that. Vancouver is the slow coach. RAMLO: That regional context applies to living too. The data for people with kids shows that you probably move into a condo downtown, either with a kid or you have one after you move in, but where do you put the next one? Do you put him out in the hall? Your likelihood is to transition away from that condo downtown. They’re going toward family-style housing, and the degree to which that type of housing is incorporated into downtown at a reasonable price will keep some of those people from going elsewhere. What will downtown Vancouver look like in 20 years? BODDY: Vancouverites talk about downtown because it’s our hood ornament, our symbol, our leading brand. But really, the future of downtown will ultimately be determined by what happens in the rest of the city and the region. Architecturally, Vancouver is more or less done; the cake is baked. It’ll be surprisingly undifferent in 15 to 20 years. What will really change will be things like our arterials. Kingsway, for example. Talk about huge potential: a transit corridor, and a lot of it has views. We will make a better downtown by enforcing the best qualities in the rest of the city. We can create affordability, create places where people other than extremely wealthy investors can have a niche. RAMLO: If you just look at the downtown peninsula, your cake certainly is baked. But the pancake is going to flow eastward as well. And the Downtown Eastside will certainly have an implication in terms of becoming a more integrated part of downtown. That may be on the job side because people are looking at some sites to be developed in terms of workspace. But also on the residential side, with the City of Vancouver saying they’re going to put a cap on residential development here. Well, where are the developers going to look? They’re looking to the east side.  <div roman="" new="" times="" style="margin: 10px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; width: 259px; float: left;"><img height="306" width="259" src="/files/image/Ecodensity-Forever-3-3.jpg" alt="" /> Trevor Boddy</div> Why haven’t developers taken advantage by building around transportation nodes? MUIR: I think the number-one reason is that we don’t see the groundwork laid by local cities and municipalities in order to have those nodes rezoned and capable of supporting taller buildings and much higher residential densities. With the SkyTrain station on Commercial Drive, you’d think, given all the time that it’s been there, there would be several office towers, residential towers, some office space, unique retail and restaurant facilities. RAMLO: And that’s not a product of the transportation system; that’s a product of planning. The planning notes say that we want to focus on jobs, in terms of that higher density stuff, in the regional town centres. Commercial and Broadway is the most accessible location within the Lower Mainland in terms of transportation, and it’s fundamentally stupid that it’s one storey all the way around. BODDY: But the planning situation is a manifestation of political will, and in Vancouver there has not been political will to develop, or even to plan around the stations. For example, I live right by the King Edward station of the Canada Line. It’s all single-storey commercial buildings and bungalows, a hundred yards away. And when the line opened, the planning process just started. Where were they seven or eight years ago when they knew exactly what the station would be? There’s a kind of terror of residents objecting. In other words, why make a fuss by allowing density at our nodes? We’ll just leave it fallow. And you see the results of that at Commercial and Broadway. If Vancouver’s downtown core is essentially built out, might suburbs like Surrey become the new downtown? BODDY: I’ve been doing a fair bit of work in Surrey, and I think there is a really different ethos out there. I see a kind of hustle and grit right now that’s sort of lacking from Vancouver. I see a kind of readiness and an openness; Surrey knows that it faces a very competitive landscape for talent, for new businesses, for the tax dollars, and if they don’t offer quality urban spaces, with bikeable, walkable hubs, with more amenities, they will lose to other municipalities that are doing it better. RAMLO: Vancouver’s the good-looking cousin. In Vancouver we can sit back on our laurels and say, “Gee, we can accept anything because we are the good-looking cousin.” And that has certainly shaped, to date, what is done on the land-use side and is going to in the future. BODDY: Vancouver’s problem in the urban forum and in business development is success. We’re good-looking, we’re popular; the world came for our Olympics and they loved us. But we have to understand that we cannot coast on beauty and livability forever. We have to actually deliver the goods, and delivering the goods means filling in the gaps: developing the arterials, addressing affordability, for both residents and businesses. Where do you expect to see the biggest change in Vancouver in the next 20 years? RAMLO: It’s obviously going to be a much different place than it is today. Immigration is going to drive population growth in the coming years, so it’s going to be much more culturally diverse. And the tides are turning: downtown is becoming more of a suburb, and the suburbs are becoming more like downtown. Downtown will always be downtown, but we will start to see some diversification throughout the region. MUIR: The skyline is going to get a little bit higher, but, more importantly, in 20 years the boomers – the pig in the python if you will – is moving forward and housing design over the next 20 years will have to change, as will the way we design livable communities. In terms of the economy, I think Vancouver’s ideal location and our ethnic diversity are setting the stage for tremendous success with our trading partners in Asia, and I think we’ll be astounded at the amount of trade and integration that we’re going to receive as a result of that. BODDY: I’d like to go back to the metaphor of the downtown peninsula as a cake that’s baked. What hasn’t been done, though, is that we haven’t iced it yet. And I think there are some pretty important decisions there. You can destroy a cake with icing, and by icing I mean things like public spaces, parks. And I do think that with the 10 or 20 per cent of sites that are yet to be developed, we have to get much more demanding in terms of architectural quality, both in terms of the visual quality of our buildings and their social fit and possibility. Basically the shape is there; it’s come out of the oven and it’s ready to be iced. I hope it ends well. 11981 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca What's Your Best Grooming Tip? http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/business-sense/2010/05/05/what039s-your-best-grooming-tip Three local luminaries share intel on how to prepare for your next big meeting. http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/business-sense/2010/05/05/what039s-your-best-grooming-tip#comments Business Sense advice BCBusiness business advice business sense business tips inquiring minds meetings strategy tips Wed, 05 May 2010 10:37:12 -0700 BCBusiness <h3>HEDY FRY, MP, Vancouver Centre</h3> “Dress for the part. My mother always used to tell me, ‘You have to dress for where you’re going.’ If you’re doing a presentation or a meeting, it’s because you’re doing a professional event, so dress professionally. You should be very clean and business-like. Show that you have a sense of style but don’t go around wearing something flamboyant. You want people to focus on the depth of your presentation and the presentation itself instead of focusing on you.” <h3>SPICE LUCKS, realtor, Spice Lucks Real Estate</h3> “Nothing about your looks can make a deeper impression than authenticity, passion and enthusiasm. The most important preparation you could do for a meeting is to commit to being true to yourself and to letting go of outcomes. People resonate with people on a deep level and they sense passion and excitement. Positive energy always leaves tracks. When you’re true to yourself, any other type of personal grooming is icing on the cake.” <h3>JAMIE PALLIARDI, operations manager, Paramount Components Ltd., and former model</h3> “Wear something that speaks to your personality. You could be throwing on a suit, but it’s that special tie or shirt that makes it more you, maybe a bright colour or design. It takes confidence to break your shell and try something different to find what works for you. I probably wouldn’t have gone into modelling had I not had the opportunity to try on all the nice clothes and realized, ‘Hey this doesn’t look bad.’” 11960 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca The Do-good Generation http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2010/04/02/do-good-generation MBA students are using business to make the world a better place. http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2010/04/02/do-good-generation#comments Top Stories BC BCBusiness entrepreneurial skills international field trip Kirby Leong MBA Mike Valente Nancy Langton Sauder School of Business Tony Lapointe Trinity Western University University of Victoria Vancouver Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:06:24 -0700 Bryan Arseneau It takes a village: UBC students share their business smarts with local youth in Nairobi, Kenya <div class="bcb-article-deck">Not everyone entering an MBA program is lured by the promise of big bucks. Increasingly, MBA students say they want to use the power of business to make the world a better place.</div> At UBC the Sauder School of Business’s Social Entrepreneurship 101 (SE101) program, headed by faculty adviser Nancy Langton, aims to make a difference internationally. In 2009 students went to Nairobi, Kenya, to teach local youth entrepreneurial skills and how to build a business. Student participant Les Robertson says the hands-on instruction will outlast any handouts: “This is neither a hand-out nor simply just business management/entrepreneurship skills; this is a hand-up. These are life management skills, and this creates economic opportunity internationally.” By sharing what they’ve learned from their MBA programs, the SE101 participants “empowered the Kenyan students with knowledge that they can use to start to build a better future,” adds Kirby Leong, a past participant and current SE101 program co-ordinator. The University of Victoria’s MBA program also offers students the chance to apply what they’ve learned within an international setting. Mike Valente, assistant professor in business and sustainability, teaches courses on doing good within the community. One of the four strategy pillars of the UVic MBA program, he says, is sustainability, which encompasses social and ecological issues. “So the program has started to build sustainability and social responsibility into [students’] projects as part of the curriculum.” Valente involves his students in an international field trip every year, and in 2009 20 students went to Brazil to help a local company that wants to bring the acai berry to international markets, while still involving the local community in sourcing the berry. The students were there to help advise the company on how to make their business model work. But not everyone with an MBA has an international focus. Tony Lapointe, executive director of the Mission Community Services Society in Mission, B.C., is making a difference closer to home. While Lapointe was doing community work before completing an MBA at Trinity Western University in Langley, he now has a greater understanding of the business tools that are fundamental to any business, for-profit or not. “There were things for me that were relatively new and significant, such as finance and knowing how to apply the financial tools, or how you market a not-for-profit organization,” he says. So whether you’re travelling the world to teach disadvantaged youth entrepreneurial skills, helping a company compete globally or staying close to home and running a not-for-profit organization, there are MBA programs out there that can teach you more than how to boost the bottom line.  10953 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca Westbank Projects http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/tech-innovation/2010/04/02/westbank-projects Using Woodward's to reimagine downtown Vancouver. http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/tech-innovation/2010/04/02/westbank-projects#comments tech innovation BCBusiness innovators The Woodward's Development Westbank Projects Corp Fri, 02 Apr 2010 08:50:00 -0700 BCBusiness The transformative aspect of real estate development is mostly a fiction reserved for florid marketing brochures and breathless sales pitches; “cutting edge” and “a new way of living” are almost always cookie-cutter replicas of the same old thing. Or so it was until Woodward’s opened its doors last September. The most complicated and ambitious development in Vancouver’s civic history – reimagining, in one bold stroke, the Downtown Eastside – consists of more than one million square feet of mixed-use space: for residents, businesses, bureaucrats and students; and for rich, middle-class and poor. Some critics have called Woodward’s a big gamble for developer Ian Gillespie and his company, Westbank Projects; others, more charitably, call it a bold social experiment. The full truth won’t be known for several years, perhaps decades, but there are many early signs of promise: a complete sellout of the 536 market condo units, an already bustling retail cluster (which includes JJ Bean, London Drugs and Nester’s – the Downtown Eastside’s first grocery store in 15 years) and glowing national and international media attention. Surrounding blocks are now being referred to, by business owners and real estate agents alike, as the “Woodward’s District.” “Woodward’s is going to do great things for everyone involved: for the area, for the industry and for Westbank,” predicts one of our panellists. “Bravo to Ian Gillespie and crew for pulling it off.” <div style="padding:10px; float:left"><a href="/node/11267"> <h3><< Tech & Innovation Guide</h3> </a></div> <div style="padding:10px; float:right"><a href="/node/11180"> <h3>Next Innovator >></h3> </a></div>             11179 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca Vancouver's Urban Agriculture http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2010/03/03/vancouver039s-urban-agriculture Is urban agriculture in Vancouver a passing fad or serious business? http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2010/03/03/vancouver039s-urban-agriculture#comments Top Stories BCBusiness climate change eat-local Food Mattered food supply Gregor Robertson HB Lanarc Janine de la Salle peter ladner Sole Food Inner City Farm United We Can urban agriculture Vancouver Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:50:45 -0800 BCBusiness <div class="bcb-article-deck">Rooftop gardens, community plots and a city hall vegetable patch: is urban agriculture a passing fad or serious business?</div> The new City of Vancouver administration raised some eyebrows last spring when one of its first moves was to tear up a swath of lawn at city hall and replace it with a vegetable patch. For many this was easily dismissed as a symbolic gesture: farmer Robertson staking his claim. Not so easy to dismiss are the dozens of garden plots that have sprung up all over the city or the fact that developers and urban planners now have entire departments devoted to planning patches of city farmland. While some dismiss the “eat-local” movement as a passing fad, for others it’s serious business. Take Ward Teulon, for example: the proprietor of City Farm Boy has carved out a business tilling west side backyards and selling the produce. Or consider Sole Food Inner City Farm on East Hastings Street: the half-acre city plot has 12 part-time staff on its payroll, and its founders claim it will contribute to feeding Downtown Eastside residents. The city-farmer faction has clearly gained traction, and, equally clearly, it’s not just a bunch of back-to-nature freaks who are behind the movement. To help make sense of the growing trend toward city farming, BCBusiness sat down with two experts. Janine de la Salle is the director of food systems planning at the Vancouver office of HB Lanarc, urban planning and design consultants. Former city councillor Peter Ladner is a fellow at the SFU Centre for Dialogue and is working on a project called Planning Cities as if Food Mattered. To the average Vancouverite, agriculture is out of sight and out of mind. Why do we need more agriculture in the city? LADNER: The first issue people have to be aware of is the fragility of our food supply. It’s coming mostly from out of province, and given a number of major issues in the world right now, that supply is increasingly threatened. There’s the growing number of people in China and India who are starting to eat meat and consume more of the world’s grains. There’s global warming, which is causing drought in some areas and flooding in others. There’s a shortage of water; agriculture uses 70 per cent of the water in the U.S., and that water’s running out. Then there’s the rising price of fossil fuels, and that affects not just the cost of transportation but the cost of fuels used in producing food in a factory setting, as we do now for most of our food.   <div roman="" new="" times="" style="margin: 10px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; width: 259px; float: left;"><img width="259" height="186" alt="Peter Ladner" src="/files/image/RoundTabel_GrowingAmbitions-3.jpg" />“Convincing people of a threat to the food supply is like convincing people that climate change is a problem: you can either wait until the crisis hits or react now” – Peter Ladner</div> When I go to the Safeway, the shelves are stocked, so how are you going to convince people there’s a shortage or a threat to our food supply? LADNER: It’s like convincing people that climate change is a problem: you just have to say here’s where all the trends are pointing. You can either wait until the crisis hits or you can react now. And there’s no question there’s going to be a big change. DE LA SALLE: To me it’s funny that we even have to ask the question about the importance of urban agriculture. It’s only in the last 150 years that cities have purposely excluded food from their centres. In European cities a lot of the streets are named for food that was sold and created on those streets. There were fish markets and bakeries and abattoirs in town. Agriculture will of course always be a largely rural activity, but urban agriculture is a huge opportunity to not only grow food but to create places where people come together, where they talk and meet their neighbours. And it’s an important part of educating people, so kids know that carrots come out of the ground and don’t grow on trees. LADNER: Another economic issue is a cost driver, and that’s the quality of the food that we’re getting. The further away it comes from, the less fresh and nutritious it is. The health-care costs are a major concern, with about 40 per cent of disease in North America now attributed to bad diet. Health-care authorities all over are saying we will invest in whatever it takes to give people a better diet, and one of those things is fresher food and fresher fruits and vegetables. Is it realistic to expect to produce any significant amount of food within city limits? DE LA SALLE: We’ve got evidence from places like Cuba, and Havana continues to be the leading example of a national urban agriculture policy. The stats are not totally reliable: the most optimistic estimates are that about 90 per cent of people’s produce needs, and some protein, are produced within city limits; the smallest numbers I’ve seen are 30 per cent, and that’s still significant. Of course the difference is that they have a full year of growing because it’s a temperate climate. And also they faced a crisis: people were starving, so they had to find a solution. How much we could produce in Vancouver depends on so many factors – soil, solar exposure, the skill of your farmer – but we could be way more productive than we are now. A lot of interests are competing for space in Vancouver, so how do we make space for agriculture? DE LA SALLE: It has to blend in with other programs in the city. Think of it as a backyard: you want a place where your kids can play, you can entertain, you can grow some ornamental plants, you can grow some food plants. LADNER: You also have to talk about how we price agricultural land. Agriculture incurs a lot of costs that are not charged back to the buyers of the food, such as contamination of the soil, increasing use of pesticides, loss of bees that are pollinating and so on. So there is a case for agriculture that argues that you should use those lands for high-value use. The irony is that in these extremely expensive places around the city, there’s a lot of free land that can be used that doesn’t displace other uses. [Urban farmer and entrepreneur] Ward Teulon is making about $50,000 a year off half an acre of plots that are scattered around, and he doesn’t pay anything for the land. DE LA SALLE: Part of the challenge if you’re trying to be an urban farmer is that you put so much into building up your soil quality and setting up your systems so to move is very expensive. Urban agriculture is fundamentally a different business model than rural agriculture. You need to consider so many different things: What does it cost to farm something for four years and then move? Your productivity would probably go way down, so how do you absorb that as an entrepreneur? LADNER: I would still say that there are lots of places you can have permanent agriculture in the city at no land cost. Land in parks that is converted from a piece of grass is actually a net saving to the park board. They don’t have to mow it anymore, and volunteers will come in and look after it. Land in schools is the same thing. There’s land in people’s backyards that’s just lawn that they don’t use. They’ll be happy to hand that over to somebody who can put it to use. North Vancouver is doing something on public rights of way that wouldn’t be used for anything else.   <div roman="" new="" times="" style="margin: 10px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; width: 259px; float: left;"><img width="259" height="186" alt="Janine de la Salle" src="/files/image/RoundTabel_GrowingAmbitions-3_2.jpg" /> Our Panelist: Janine de la Salle</div> What do you say to those who scoff at tearing up a patch of city hall lawn to plant a few vegetables? DE LA SALLE: I think there’s kind of a cultural barrier with community gardens: a lot of people see them as really messy, as eyesores. There has to be a cultural shift toward more acceptance that, yes, growing food is messy. You’re actually seeing this interesting landscape with seed heads and big piles of compost. This doesn’t apply to all of Vancouver: there are a lot of immigrant populations in Vancouver – the Italian community, the Asian community – that came from places where it’s actually weird not to grow food in your backyard. What can we grow in our backyards in Vancouver that will contribute in a significant way to our food supply? LADNER: Very few people I know in the urban agriculture movement expect that we’re going to grow all our food here or only eat things grown within a 100-mile or 100-foot radius of where we stand at the moment. There’s always going to be a place for imported food. So let’s look at what we can grow here to help limit our dependence on imported food. Probably 80 per cent of the vegetables you can buy in the store you can grow here, except for the citrus and so on. You can grow the meat; you can grow the fish. It’s difficult to grow grains, and that’s the big gap in the local diet, but there are people now growing grains. DE LA SALLE: The grain question is really important, and so is the protein question. Urban places are probably not appropriate for grain; it needs large tracts of open land with lots of solar exposure. And it would be very difficult to survive without the grains that are our basic sustenance. But protein is another question. I’d love to see an urban aquaculture project happen in Vancouver. You can grow a lot of fish in a very small footprint, and we haven’t really gone there yet. In terms of economic opportunity, I think aquaculture is one of the key things that we can start looking at. Peter, have you seen examples of that kind of small-scale aquaculture operation that’s economically viable? LADNER: There’s someone in Agassiz growing coho salmon in tanks who supplies the Hyatt restaurants in Vancouver who wants to be Ocean Wise. If you want evidence of a shortage in our food supply, look at what’s happening with the salmon, which has historically been our major source of protein here for thousands of years. It’s disappearing. There are projections that all of the major seafood that we eat will be gone by 2048. I recently visited a tilapia farm in Milwaukee where they’re growing I think 10,000 tilapia a year, and they have a very simple closed-loop system. They get six dollars for a tilapia at a local restaurant. Whether it’s fish farms or growing food that adds value to our food system, what do we need to do to make this happen in Vancouver? DE LA SALLE: At a policy level there can be some land-use changes to allow for more agriculture activities to be permitted in the city. There has to be a more sensitive interpretation of the existing health and safety regulations. In the rural context, the provincial meat regulations have basically shut down small-scale meat processing in B.C. We also need to develop tools for designers and developers, people who are actually building on the land and determining what happens with the land, to allow for more opportunity for the agricultural entrepreneurs out there.  Is agriculture, urban agriculture in particular, a viable career option for young people? DE LA SALLE: There are a lot of examples emerging of people making a very good living on a very small piece of land. So it is possible; it is out there. It’s just a question of doing some training, having the kind of education infrastructure set up. Kwantlen University just opened up its Institute for Sustainable Horticulture, where they’re going to be running hands-on urban agriculture courses. We need more programs like that to entice people in. But ultimately, people will be enticed only if they can make a living. So it’s about valuing good food; it’s about valuing local food, paying a little bit more for it. LADNER: Another issue is the cost of land around here, and farmland. And one of the reasons farmland is so expensive is because it’s under speculation. People are assuming that the agriculture land reserve boundary is going to crumble at some point and that land will be worth more. So it’s really hard to get your hands on land near the city. And if we made that border more secure, the price of farmland would go down and therefore people would be able to afford it more easily. We’ve got a law on the books reserving certain chunks of land for agriculture. What more do we need to do to exclude that land from speculation? DE LA SALLE: A lot of it has to do with growth management. Vancouver is anticipating a doubling of population within the next 15 to 20 years. Where are those people going to go? The age of suburbia is over. So we need to retrofit existing suburbia into infill intensification of existing areas. Patrick Condon at the school of architecture at UBC did a study showing that we could absorb all the growth that we’re anticipating in existing areas. So if we can focus growth in existing areas and therefore decrease the pressure on farmland and incentivize infill intensification, then the speculation on that farmland will be decreased. That’s a regional policy question and a local government policy question. It’s a shift toward more sustainable, complete communities. LADNER: There’s another interesting trend: when developers are opening up new tracts of land – and let’s assume this isn’t protected land but land already designated for development – in some cases it’s feasible to put in an organic farm instead of a golf course as your attracting amenity. This is happening in hundreds of proposals where people are saying that’s a pretty nice amenity. What do you expect Vancouver to look like in coming years with regard to urban agriculture space? DE LA SALLE: I think we’re already seeing the next generation of urban agriculture. There’s a garden that’s just been put in on Hastings Street at Hawks Avenue, by the Astoria Hotel; it’s called the Sole Food garden and it’s being run by United We Can, a non-profit in the Downtown Eastside. And it’s not allotment plots; it is intended to be an urban farm that is selling products. And I know there’s another project that’s in the planning stage, using park board land, to do a similar enterprise. So there are new models of urban farms coming forward. I think the economic model behind it is now becoming more clear, more publicized, and people are becoming attracted to it. So I think the market transformation that is opening up for urban agriculture will draw more people to it. I think the iterations of urban agriculture will continue to evolve as more people get involved. For example, we could see a whole site with vertical PVC pipe with lettuce coming out of it. That’s not inconceivable. I’m excited to see who’s going to take that sort of project on. LADNER: I think we’re going to see everything from more people with tomatoes on their balconies right through to commercial enterprises in unused or under-used lots around the city. Before too long you will not want to put in a new development without some kind of community garden attached to it because there’s such a demand for that space. I think you’re going to see people supplementing their income selling at the farmers market or selling over the back fence. There’s going to be a commercial element that’s going to get into this more.  10239 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca Master of Disaster http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/business-sense/2010/03/03/master-disaster From Victoria, software developer Edwin Braun engineers the collapse of California. http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/business-sense/2010/03/03/master-disaster#comments Business Sense 2012 movie BCBusiness Brennan Clarke Cabas Visual Technology Edwin Braun high profile video games VolumeBreaker Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:58:10 -0800 Brennan Clarke <div class="bcb-article-deck">From Victoria, software developer Edwin Braun engineers the collapse of California. </div> Behind a sliding glass door in his tiny basement office at Vancouver Island Technology Park, Edwin Braun surveys the total annihilation of Los Angeles with all the twisted enthusiasm of a comic book villain destroying the world from a distant underground lair. Palm-lined boulevards undulate like ocean waves from the force of a powerful earthquake. The Santa Monica Freeway buckles and collapses. A cement truck skids across four lanes of traffic and bursts into flames. Vehicles fall like rain from imploding parkades. Skyscrapers tumble to the ground in explosions of broken glass and twisted steel. Finally, a massive chasm rends the earth and swallows the city whole as the entire state of California begins to slide into the Pacific Ocean. One of the most disturbing and realistic disaster sequences ever put on film, it’s a scene from 2012, the latest apocalyptic vision from Roland Emmerich, director of such blockbusters as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. And it wouldn’t have been possible without VolumeBreaker, a time-saving piece of software developed by Braun’s company, Cebas Visual Technology Inc. “It makes me proud. It’s amazing to see it, especially if you know how the other companies’ software works,” says Braun, a native of Germany who is in the midst of moving his company to Victoria. “For special effects, I must say this is a real milestone.” One of several Cebas products used in 2012, VolumeBreaker allows computer animators to make digital images look like they’re exploding. The program manages everything from the size of the debris to the light, shadows and background needed to fill in empty space as objects disintegrate. There’s even what Braun describes as a “real-world physics engine” that mimics the way objects react in an explosion. “It was so much work, especially making the software work for all the crazy ideas they had,” says the Cebas CEO. “When the people in the cinema see the L.A. sequence, it lasts four or five minutes, but we worked on it for about 18 months.” Born and raised in Germany, Braun founded Cebas 20 years ago when the software revolution was in its infancy. Video game programmers were among the first to use Cebas technology, in high-profile video games such as Tomb Raider, Need for Speed and Command and Conquer 3. In recent years, the company has racked up an impressive list of movie credits as well, including Lost in Space, Black Hawk Down, Spider-Man 3, Star Trek: Nemesis and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The move to Victoria was prompted by two main factors: the need to operate in the same time zone as California, where the majority of his customers are located, and a deep aversion to raising his family in the United States. “Victoria was about as close as you can get to the States without being in the States,” Braun says, adding that “Canada’s social system is a little more European.” On the side table near Braun’s work station sits a hefty tome entitled Industrial Light and Magic: Into the Digital Realm; it’s a testament to his lifelong fascination with movie special effects that began when he saw the original version of Godzilla as a child. “Godzilla had a really big impression on me. They just had Japanese actors in rubber suits stomping on little plastic houses,” he recalls. “I knew it was fake, but I loved it anyway.”  10250 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca Vancouver Loves Cooking Schools http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/business-sense/2010/03/03/vancouver-loves-cooking-schools During down economic times, Vancouver's food lovers look homeward. http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/business-sense/2010/03/03/vancouver-loves-cooking-schools#comments Business Sense BCBusiness cooking school Cookshop David Robertson Dirty Apron Jenna Mawjee Murray Bancroft Vancouver Vanessa Richmond Wed, 03 Mar 2010 09:49:09 -0800 Vanessa Richmond <div class="bcb-article-deck">During boom times, Vancouverites support one of the healthiest restaurant scenes in North America. Come the downturn, though, we look homeward. </div> In times of plenty, people eat. They seek enjoyment and the odd celebration. In times of turmoil, people eat too. What better way to fortify the mind, body and spirit against the wolves at the door? But while it seems eaters seek indulgence and nourishment regardless of the economic climate, the venues change. During boom times, Vancouverites support one of the healthiest restaurant scenes in North America. Come the downturn, though, we look homeward. But there’s one upturn in today’s downturn: people want to prepare more than frozen dinners or the old stand-bys, and an interest in cooking and entertaining has led to a profusion of cooking schools. “I’ve been talking to a few chefs who run top restaurants and they told me that December was horrific,” says Jenna Mawjee, director of Cookshop, one of the oldest cooking schools in the city. “But that was one of our best months ever. People are investing in their kitchens and their skills.” Cooking schools have suddenly become a growth industry in Vancouver. Last August Chambar restaurant, for example, converted the space next to its Beatty Street premises to a cooking school named Dirty Apron, and its classes have been maxed out almost every night since. Head chef David Robertson says attendees take classes for a crash course or to pursue a lifelong hobby, but, in either case, it’s mostly about sending people away feeling more confident and inspired. “Food is very practical,” he says. “It doesn’t need to be complicated. You just need someone to explain how to do something or how to use something.” Taking cooking classes is also about replacing the restaurant experience. Robertson explains that one group of Dirty Apron regulars is typical: the women used to eat out together but now go to the school twice a month instead. What makes it especially rewarding for him, he says, is when students say things like, “I had the sablefish here in your class, and I had it in a restaurant last week, and I enjoyed it here more.” On a typical evening, students bundle up after a Dirty Apron class to face the rain outside. As they file out, they pause to shake Robertson’s hand, thank him, and ask questions about topics like knife sharpening or ingredients.  The latter is a particularly hot topic these days. “So many people want to know what to cook, but for me it’s as much about good ingredients as it is about recipes and techniques,” says Murray Bancroft, a local chef and food stylist who has been consulting with Cookworks to create new in-store interactive cooking demonstrations and a 12-class series. He’s designed the program to feature several local food and wine producers as well as local chefs. He says the recent upswing in class attendance is partly about recession-related home eating and entertaining and partly about the coincidental proliferation of food blogs, magazines and TV shows. People see those, think, Wow, and want to “up their game,” he explains. To feed these heightened expectations for home cooking and entertaining, Bancroft helps customers develop new cooking techniques and knowledge, but also gives lots of advice about how to pull off a good evening with guests, which often comes down to doing less: “I always tell people not to do anything too fancy.” He encourages doing one thing well, usually something simple and in season, “which will enable you to have anyone over, from any walk of life,” and have both you and them think, “that was great.” 10249 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca 2011 Top 100 http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/2010/02/16/2011-top-100 Thank you for your interest. We are no longer accepting entries for the 2010 Top One Hundred. Check back in Spring 2011 to submit information for the 2011 Top One Hundred. http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/2010/02/16/2011-top-100#comments BCB BCBusiness top 100 top 100 companies in b.c. Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:57:00 -0800 BCBusiness <h3>Thank you for your interest. We are no longer accepting entries for the 2010 Top 100.   Check back in Spring 2011 to submit information for the 2011 Top 100.</h3> For general queries about submitting your company's name for consideration, email us at: <a href="mailto:top100@canadawide.com">top100@canadawide.com</a>. But please be advised that we will not be checking the account again until early 2011. Thanks.             12566 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca B.C.'s VQA: Quality Control http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2010/02/03/bc039s-vqa-quality-control Retailers think the program is a good thing but worry about the execution. http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/top-stories/2010/02/03/bc039s-vqa-quality-control#comments Top Stories b.c wine industry BCBusiness february 2009 peter mitham vqa wine Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:35:32 -0800 Peter Mitham <div class="bcb-article-deck">B.C.’s VQA program is a much-lauded effort to create standards for B.C.’s wine industry. But does VQA spell trouble for retailers?</div> <author></author>This month, as B.C. entertains the thousands of international visitors who have come to watch and celebrate athletic achievement, many local businesses are strutting their stuff, showing the world what the province has to offer. On tables around town, B.C. wines are being uncorked with all the pride one would expect of a province home to one of the New World’s hottest wine regions: the Okanagan Valley. Wines from the valley have been winning scores of international awards in recent years, and B.C. residents have been buying in, purchasing $165-million worth of wine bearing the Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) seal last year alone – two per cent more than in 2008, even as the value of wine sales trended downward in the face of tight economic times. VQA wines, made from 100 per cent domestic fruit, have received an additional boost over the past year as an increasingly savvy consumer recoiled from “Cellared in Canada” wines: those sold in the local section of B.C.’s liquor stores made from a blend of domestic and imported juice. According to advocates of local product, the VQA seal is the best guarantee of wines made solely from the juice of B.C. grapes. All of this has been good news for operators of B.C.’s 19 VQA wine stores, which the province began licensing in the late 1990s and whose collective mandate is to make B.C. wine available across the province, from Kelowna to the Kootenays. Consumers are buying more wine than ever before, according to Jeff Wong – owner of one of the newest VQA stores, Mud Bay Wines in White Rock – and B.C. wines are delivering flavour and quality rivalling many foreign wines. “It’s just convincing them to drink B.C. wines as opposed to Australian, Californian, French or Italian wines,” he says. “It’s been great for business because you can tell consumers about these new wines.” Unlike other store licences, licences for VQA stores are held not by the store owner but by a third party: the B.C. Wine Institute (BCWI). In exchange, store owners have access to a supply of product that wineries supply on consignment (reducing stores’ investment in inventory) and benefit from the marketing and promotion activities of the BCWI. The arrangement effectively gives store owners a leg up in the competitive retail sector, which is especially tough for shops specializing in a single kind of product. But while the principle behind the VQA stores is widely lauded, the practices of the VQA’s governing authority have proven highly contentious. Legislative changes two years ago stripped the BCWI of most responsibilities save for promotion and marketing. Its new focus led to a revamping of relationships with store owners such as Jim Ruhland, former operator of Oliver’s Wine Country Welcome Centre in Oliver, B.C. The wine store closed at the end of May 2009 after the BCWI recalled its licence on the grounds that it wasn’t meeting the $600,000 annual sales target the BCWI required. While the original purpose of the VQA stores was to serve industry, Ruhland believes the BCWI has become more interested in using the stores as a profit centre than a promotional vehicle. He thinks that approach threatens the very mandate it seeks to fulfill. <h3>“We are not supposed to be just a retail outlet; we are supposed to be an information centre,” he says. “Now it’s just about hard-core business numbers. They even raised the quota for all the stores right in the middle of a recession – it’s ridiculous.”</h3>  Ruhland estimates that he sold more than $4.5 million in wine over six years between the Welcome Centre and the adjacent Toasted Oak Wine Bar & Grill. The sales figures are impressive for a community of 5,000 people that claims to be “the wine capital of Canada” but fell short of Ruhland’s contractual obligations. The BCWI wanted him to relocate, but he contends he wasn’t given enough time to make the appropriate arrangements. When the licence was pulled, he relaunched the Toasted Oak as the Firehall Bistro, but the store remains shuttered. “They want the revenue from their stores, but they don’t want to behave like a big retailer should,” Ruhland says of the BCWI, expressing particular dissatisfaction with the institute’s top-down approach that he believes puts undue demands on store operators. “They’re basically making people take the risk for them, opening retail outlets. And if they don’t hit [the sales target], then they collapse them.” Ironically, the bcwi’s policies reflect historical divisions regarding participation in the VQA program that the recent legislative changes aimed to resolve. Created by the B.C. and Ontario wine industries in 1990 with provincial government support, the VQA program’s original aim was to assure consumers of the quality and origin of Canada’s fledgling vinifera wines as wineries went head-to-head with competitors from California and elsewhere post-NAFTA. Victoria established the BCWI to oversee B.C.’s program, marketing VQA wines and co-ordinating research initiatives on behalf of industry. But the institute was also voluntary, and a handful of wineries chose not to join. Some simply wanted to fly solo; others voiced concern at the conflict inherent in industry both administering its own quality-assurance program and then marketing the wines whose quality it was adjudicating – especially when some members of the tasting panels were from the wineries participating in the program. In 2008, in an attempt to heal the rift, the government established the B.C. Wine Authority to administer a new set of production standards for B.C. wine and provide independent oversight of wine standards. Reduced to a marketing and lobbying role, the BCWI turned its attention to the VQA stores. A new contract was negotiated with – or, in the words of some, imposed on – store operators in late 2008 that set a $600,000 annual sales target, just as consumers were trading down on wine purchases. Stores that couldn’t meet the new targets faced the prospect of having their licences clawed back by the BCWI. Additionally, in February 2009 the BCWI implemented a levy on the handful of non-member wineries producing VQA wines and listing their products in VQA stores – reviving memories of the old divisions that had split wineries into two camps during the 1990s.  The surcharge was slammed by non-member wineries as a mean-spirited penalty for not being a BCWI member. Langley’s Domaine de Chaberton Estate Winery and Okanagan Falls’ Blasted Church Vineyards were among the wineries hit with the higher costs. Blasted Church responded by pulling its product from B.C. VQA stores, while Domaine de Chaberton simply upped its price in a tit-for-tat measure to cover the inconvenience. Neither move helped the VQA stores: sales of Domaine de Chaberton’s wines slowed, while aficionados of Blasted Church went elsewhere. Store operators were left not only answering customers’ questions but asking some of their own. One of the most common was whether the BCWI should hold store licences at all. Ruhland, for one, doesn’t think so: “The BCWI needs to actually give these licences to the operators themselves so that they can actually operate like independent businesses.” But that’s not about to happen, according to Trudy Heiss, co-owner of Gray Monk Estate Winery in Okanagan Centre and a member of the BCWI committee that oversees the VQA stores: “The BCWI and the wineries that belong to that association would not give those up.” Mud Bay’s Jeff Wong acknowledges that the arrangement with the BCWI is not without its shortcomings but says the institute is more responsive than it was when he bought Mud Bay three years ago. “Orders were barked down from the chairman or the board of directors to the executive director, and the executive director was just a peon handing out orders. Nothing ever got addressed, so it was very frustrating,” he recalls. “They’ve come a long way. They’re actually listening now.” He’s also pleased with the lower overhead associated with the consignment arrangement. Still, Wong remains critical of the lack of a connection between participation in the VQA program and the retail outlets. “Wineries can be VQA but choose not to supply wine to our stores. And that’s a confusing message to the consumer,” he says. “Why aren’t they supplying us?” Wong, like the more vocal critics of the VQA store arrangements, believes operators should also have the freedom to stock other made-in-B.C. products, such as microbrews, fruit wines, ciders and spirits. “We get asked about fruit wines all the time,” Wong says, arguing that it’s a missed opportunity for the BCWI. “The wine institute would profit from it,” he says. Moreover, when B.C. grape wines are in short supply, as happened with the 2007 vintage, having the extra product would help store operators meet their sales targets and remain viable. “If they have to sacrifice some wine, at least they could make it up with micro-beer or ciders or fruit wines.” That doesn’t sit well with Trudy Heiss, who says store operators shouldn’t try to bend the rules. “There are VQA rules and they have to abide by them if they want to have a licence,” she says. “There are different formats where they can look for different licences if they want, but if they want to run a VQA store, those are the rules.” She adds that store owners who survive the current transition period stand to benefit; a branding program, which Heiss expects to be launched in the not-so-distant future, will standardize store signage, giving outlets a recognizable presence in the marketplace. “It’s easy to walk away. But it’s sometimes harder to stick together and make this thing go,” she says. “Right now, I feel very positive that [these improvements] are going to go forward and it’s going to help everybody.”  9311 at http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca