April 1 - 15, 2018
OPINION
PHILIPPINE ASIAN NEWS TODAY
Reyfort Publishing & Entertainment
Rey Fortaleza - Publisher
Carlito Pablo - Editorial Consultant
Rosette Correa - Senior Editor
Jun Cordero - Associate Editor
Writers - Crisanta Sampang ; Columnists - Geoff Meggs, Ben Berto, Editha Corrales, Mon
Datol, Fr. Jerry Orbos SVD, DeeDee Sytangco, Alan Samuel, Erie Maestro, Sandee M.
Ed Malay, Jayne Anastacio, JJAtencio and Willie J. Uy (Manila Bureau Chief)
Alvin Barrera / Mon Correa - Graphics and Layout ; Rolly Fortaleza - Graphics Design
JoelCastro - Website; Julian Fortaleza - Sports Editor; Ricardo Fortaleza- Sports
Photography Editor: Dean Guzman; Photograhers- Charles De Jesus/ Christian Cunanan
Office Add: 9955 -149th Street,
Surrey, B.C. V3R 7N2
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.philippineasiannewstoday.com
http://www.reyfortmediagroup.com
Tel: (604) 588-news (6397)
Fax: (604) 588-6387
Copyright of letters and other materials submitted and accepted for publication remains with the author, but the Publisher may freely reproduce them in any other forms.
Opinions and views expressed are of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the PHILIPPINE ASIAN NEWS TODAY. E-mail: [email protected]
Breaking
Point
By Rosette Correa
I’m worried. I’m worried because
ten years ago, my husband and I, with
the same salary rates as today, were
able to buy a modest townhouse for
less than $300,000. Today, with the
same salary rates as ten years ago, a
little over a few cents because BC fi-
nally relented to some pocket change
in minimum wage increase, my two
daughters will have to cough up twice
the amount we paid for our unit if they
decide, or can ever afford, a home of
their own. I’m with Hector Bremner on
this one, as he worries about his own
boys’ ability to buy their own home in
the future, too.
Just last week, Toronto announced
its lowest real estate rates, plunging
down to 44% in market, not since
1989. Just a few months earlier,
homes in the area were selling in a
couple of days for tens of thousands
of dollars more over the asking price.
Desperate buyers wanted into the
market at any price; sellers were ready
to take advantage. Today, more and
more houses have been waiting for
offers for weeks, and no one wants
to pay the price asked. This is the
new reality in many parts of Ontario.
After years of booming prices and a
few months of complete insanity, the
housing market in many cities is fall-
ing back to earth.
And just like Vancouver, between
late April and May last year, 9.1 per-
cent of transactions involved foreign
Bulong
Pulungan
By Deedee Siytangco
Reprinted from Manila Bulletin
The big threat to our environment
is the belief that someone else will
save it. – Robert Swan
***********
Tourism Sec. Wanda Teo won
us over to her causes in her initial
appearance in our Bulong Puungan
sa Sofitel.
She was candid and charmingly
confident now, unlike the first few
times she faced media. “I was new
and had very little to say then,” she
admitted, but now that she has been
on the job for a year and a half, “I have
achieved some goals I can be proud
of.”
Like successfully staging the Ms.
Universe pageant four months into
the job, upping the tourism arrivals,
managing her people, moving them
where they would perform better,
connecting with her counterparts from
all over the world, and now working
When Bubbles Burst
buyers. Foreign buyers, typically
from China, would purchase
four or five houses at a time,
and the houses will be empty,
making ghost towns out of previously
neighbourly streets.
In Vancouver, the real estate fiasco
was exposed by people who saw the
abrupt market changes and wanted to
know what was keeping Vancouverites
from owning homes. Andy Yan is a 42-
year-old East Vancouverite and direc-
tor of the City Program at Simon Fras-
er University, exposed Vancouver’s real
estate fiasco in 2014, earning him the
ire of Mayor Gregor Robertson, calling
him a “racist” for specifically target-
ing the real estate bubble for foreign
buyers, especially the Chinese. Yan is
a first-generation Vancouverite whose
grandparents paid their head tax way
into Canada in the early 1900s. When
Yan published the results of his re-
search in November, 2015, it came as
a shock, because it seemed to con-
clusively prove what everybody knew
but nobody was supposed to say out
loud, that of Chinese foreign buyers
buying for investment purposes. And
like good Canadians, no one wanted
to talk about it, lest one wanted to be
labelled a racist.
What Yan found out was some-
thing Vancouverites would set blood
aboiling. Buyers with “non-Anglicised
Chinese names” had picked up two-
thirds of 172 houses sold over a six-
month period beginning in September
2014 in Vancouver’s posh west side
neighbourhoods. Contrary to pub-
lic perception,
however,
the
buyers weren’t
just showing up
with “bags of
cash” to make
their
buys.
Some of Can-
ada’s biggest
banks were in
on it. Roughly
80 per cent of
the deals in-
volved a mort-
gage, and half
of the mort-
gages
were
held by two
banks – CIBC
and HSBC. The
Canadian Chinese banks were lend-
ing money to foreigners so that they
could buy Vancouver property, while
Vancouverites crawled their way into a
modest mortgage.
Metro Vancouver’s real estate mar-
ket was and is now a field of panic
buying, tax fraud, property flipping,
overseas pre-construction condomin-
ium sales, stone cold speculation and
elaborate, multiple-account money
transfer transactions that are the av-
enue of choice for drug cartel tycoons
and other dirty business dealings.
That’s what scares me the most.
Now, the NDP is trying to solve
the BC problem with a band-aid so-
lution, starting with the rental situa-
tion. They’re too slow, though, but I
can’t blame them, either. This bubble,
which has not burst yet, will take more
than a band-aid. What politics un-
der Robertson and Christy Clark has
done for the future of Vancouverites is
something that hopefully keeps them
awake at night. While their children
have a chance to buy their own homes
with the money they made from these
transactions and business dealings,
our own children from working class
families, will be stuck with renting
over and above their pay scale. All we
can do is pray that the burst happens
in Vancouver, just like in Toronto, and
keep foreign buyer hands out of our
hard-earned homes and give our chil-
dren the chance to be homeowners
where they choose to live, not where
they will be forced to because of af-
fordability. Racist or not, this is our
home, not the foreign investor’s.
A Collective Solution for
Boracay’s Problems
hard on the Boracay problem
Initially, Sec. Wanda faced skeptics,
mostly about her qualifications for the
post. The buzz was that she got the
post because she was a sister of the
Tulfo brothers; she is from Davao and
knows President Duterte; she was
“just the owner of a travel agency”
etcetera, etcetera, she recounted with
a straight face.
Except that Wanda has been in the
tourism business for over 20 years,
and she brought with her the tenacity
to do a good job. She put aside her
shyness and boldly made her mission
known in her many travels to tourism
fairs and conventions abroad, acting
like, she admitted, a “saleswoman
from my beautiful country” than the
big boss of the department. “I talked
to anyone, tour operators, travel
ministers, anyone! Being a woman
helped open doors! I convinced them
to come to our beautiful country!”
The result of that drive is that we
have had a record number of inbound
tourists. Then the Boracay sanitation
mess unfortunately burst into the
national consciousness and Wanda
found herself in the spotlight of
negative public opinion. Hold it, she
said, things to consider with Boracay:
Tourism has no direct control on
the management of the world’s
most beautiful beach island—the
local government unit more or less
runs it the way they want and they
collect the R75 fee charged to every
visitor. The blame is placed on the
Department of Tourism (DOT), she
lamented. But without backing away
from the mess, Wanda stressed that
the sanitation problem had been
happening for a long time. She says,
“I was still in the private sector, the
sanitation department was already a
shameful problem. The over-building
WWW.PHILIPPINEASIANNEWSTODAY.COM
on the beach, the occupation of the
wetlands, they were already there.”
Now the President put his foot down
and these are the things going to
happen. The inter-agency (DOT,
DENR, and DILG) task force has
recommended full closure for a year.
But Wanda will be recommending
to President Duterte full closure for
only two months. She understands
the concern of stakeholders. In fact,
she is meeting them so they can
understand the national government’s
moves, like declaring a state of
calamity in Boracay. This may seem
too drastic but Wanda explained that
in a state of calamity, improvements,
demolitions, and other things to do
can proceed with any fear of TROs
from dissenters.
At present, resident and owners
of establishments in the island are
cooperative,
like
Region IV director CONT PAGE 8