Gone Flippin'

Hookin'ThePublic
LargeMouthBassVille

While big Rich Coleman sets the hook with no substance comments about a social housing catastrophe he and his colleagues did their best to create, it turns out that treaties are not the only way British Columbia's LINO's have been flipping crown land out to developers:


By —Andrew MacLeod
Dec 13 2006, Monday Magazine

Ray Zimmerman draws a finger across the topographical lines on a map showing land in the Highlands near Mount Finlayson that changed hands betwen the provincial government and Western Forest Products in 2001. “The crown got the land that wasn’t much good for development because of it’s steepness,” he says. “The chunk that’s given away is the developable one.”

WFP turned around within a few months and sold the land it acquired to the developers of Bear Mountain resort, where part of it is now home to a golf course. WFP sold the 45 or so hectares for $1.05 million, the same amount they’d paid the government.

Zimmerman, who was active in the effort to save the Sooke Hills greenbelt in the 1990s, asks, “Why were they giving Crown land away in an urban area at that time?”

According to Jim Stephen, who works on land management for WFP, the area in question was part of a larger deal. The province wanted land in the Varney Bay area to add to Marble River Provincial Park near Port Alice on northern Vancouver Island. In exchange, says Stephen, the government offered various properties that were attractive to WFP, including the area the company later sold to Bear Mountain.

As for the timing, he says, it was coincidental that the deal completed within months of the B.C. Liberals taking office. “These deals take a long time to come together,” he says.

Yes, the company flipped the property pretty quickly, he says, but it was at a time when WFP was having financial trouble. “The company was trying to generate money,” he says. “We went through a period of time where we were identifying surplus land and selling it to generate cash.”

A man named Bob Flitton worked on the deal for WFP. Interestingly, he now works for Bear Mountain. He did not return calls.

Sound fishy?

Sure does.

And if this is a good deal for British Columbians, why do I keep seeing adverts for the land we used to own in the 'Escapes' pages of the New York Times?


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Update: Reader Big Audible Dyn-O-Mite reminds us that Paul Willcocks wrote about a much bigger give away, both in terms of hectarage and money, that the LINO's recently gave to another lumber company, Weyerhauser, on central Vancouver Island. Oh, and the ultimate point man on that one just happened to be none other than the afore-mentioned Mr. Coleman.

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