Jacob Parry

The ministry responsible for regulating B.C.’s mining industry is failing at its job, concluded a harsh report from the office of B.C.’s Auditor General Carol Bellringer. Bellringer recommended that the government remove its mining compliance and enforcement program from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, stating that “the environmental risks...

Metrotown's sterility may be rooted in the fact that the neighbourhood is literally named after a 1960s urban planning term. When regional planners prepared a study on Burnaby, they referred to it as the city’s “metro town” and it stuck. Four decades later and the city of Burnaby wants to...

Two-thirds of Vancouver residents think that marijuana dispensaries should be allowed to operate while less than a quarter said they should not, according to a poll from Forum Research released Tuesday, days before the city is set to shut down dozens of illegal dispensaries on Friday, May 1. The poll found...

Even in the heady B.C. real estate market, the Fraser Valley has broken from the pack. According to a Re/max spring market report, the number of sales jumped 66 per cent from the first quarter of 2015 to the same period in 2016. Average prices of all residential housing types...

If you want to know what happened to the lofty dreams of B.C.’s medical marijuana hopefuls, look no further than Bellingham. In a white-panelled warehouse across from that city’s airport, Otto Folprecht—CEO of Vodis Pharmaceuticals Inc.—rents out a climate-controlled, 450,000-square-foot grow-op for $3 million a year. It’s one of only...

When PCI Development Corp. trialled car-sharing in a heritage building conversion in 2006, the embrace by its strata was at best lukewarm. The building’s residents didn’t use it, and by 2014 the car was sold off. Car-sharing at the time was “more paperwork more cost,” says Brad Howard, senior development...

The industry organization that represents some of B.C.’s biggest mining companies came out in support of a price on carbon emissions on Wednesday, with the caveat that it wants to ensure “a level playing field for emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries.” The Ottawa-based Mining Association of Canada includes metals miners like Eldorado Gold...

Three Vancouver area First Nations have purchased one of the last major tracts of undeveloped land on Vancouver’s west side for a half-billion dollars. On Friday, the Tsleil-Watuth, Squamish and Musqueam First Nations announced that they had acquired the 38-acre parcel in Point Grey—currently the site of West Point Grey...

More condo-dwelling Canadians are buying secondary units, according to a survey of Vancouver and Toronto homeowners conducted by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. And while more Canadians are getting involved in condo investing, “there’s not much evidence of flipping activity," says Robyn Adamache, market analyst at the CMHC. And while the bulk...

Whither the next million Vancouverites? With the Lower Mainland’s population set to increase 35 per cent by 2040, it was a conundrum tackled at the Vancouver Real Estate Forum held Wednesday, a conference for industry professionals that drew around one thousand attendees. “We have to make our land work harder,” said panellist Jon...

Public perceptions of B.C.’s nascent liquified natural gas industry are souring, according to a survey conducted by polling firm Insights West. Forty-three per cent of respondents said that they were in favour of the government’s support for LNG, while 41 per cent were opposed—that’s down from 50 per cent in...

With a green light from the federal Ministry of Environment, WoodFibre's $1.6-billion proposal for a liquified natural gas plant outside of Squamish moves one step closer to construction this week. On Friday evening, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency issued its verdict on Woodfibre LNG, stating that the project is “not...