In May, Liberal Housing Minister Sean Fraser dined with British Columbia’s “Condo King” and a group of big real estate developers at an intimate private fundraiser in Vancouver.
While Canadians are struggling to afford record-high rent and mortgage payments, the Liberal Party is taking donations from real estate CEOs—some of whom run companies that have benefited from the federal government’s financing of housing developments.
An Elections Canada fundraising report shows that Bob Rennie, the province’s notorious condo marketer and real estate tycoon, attended “An Evening with Sean Fraser” at the luxury boutique Loden Hotel.
A dozen other guests were in attendance, including top executives from some of Western Canada’s biggest corporate real estate developers—Colin and Dale Bosa, the CEOs of Bosa Properties, Ryan Seminoff and Bill Aujla, president and vice-president of Aquilini Development, and Beau Jarvis, CEO of Wesgroup Properties.
The Liberal government has promised to “solve” the country’s housing woes. But critics say it continues to offer major incentives to for-profit developers, including tax breaks and cheap financing, while steering clear of regulating the housing market.
Ricardo Tranjan, a political economist and senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said it “isn’t surprising” to see developers gain this level of access.
“It’s power politics, and the industry has more influence,” Tranjan said. “While the minister has never bothered to sit down with and listen to the many tenants on rent strikes, he is winning and dining with corporate landlords.”
“The industry is dominating housing policy development in Canada, and that helps to explain why the situation continues to get worse for tenants.”
Developers benefit from Liberal support for private for-profit housing
Some of the developers attending the fundraising event, which carried a maximum donation of $1,725 as an entry fee, have previously benefited from government financing.
The Trudeau Liberals provided $145 million in low-interest loans for a Bosa Properties’ development in Surrey last fall.
They also provided a $79.35 million loan to convert condos to rental housing last year to Wesgroup Properties. CEO Beau Jarvis issued a press release “thanking” the government, noting that was the fourth such federal financial injection to support Wesgroup projects in recent years.
The Aquilini family, whose $3.3 billion fortune is based on agriculture and real estate, have long been criticized for charging high rents in their rental properties.
Tranjan says that while there’s “broad consensus” on the need for the government to fund social and non-market housing, support has remained “small and piecemeal.”
And while the government promised to review the preferential tax treatment that corporate landlords receive, Tranjan said they “backpedalled” this spring, releasing a statement that he said sounded “almost apologetic” to those landlords.
The same day Fraser met with the real estate CEOs, a government-appointed housing council also released its long-awaited report on the financialization of purpose-built rental housing.
Leilani Farha, the former UN special rapporteur on the right to housing and the executive director of housing rights organization SHIFT, criticized the report for ignoring tenant protections like eviction moratoriums or rent freezes.
“The Council decided not to hold financialized landlords accountable,” Farha wrote. “The result is a report that offers recommendations barely different from those pedalled by the real estate industry and its pundits.”
None of the developers in attendance responded to requests from The Breach for comment.
Director of Communications for the Liberal Party Parker Lund did not answer questions about what was discussed at the event, including what policies the real estate CEOs may have advocated for.
“The Liberal Party of Canada has committed to the strongest standards in federal politics for openness and transparency with political fundraising events, including by holding events in publicly available spaces and allowing journalists to cover events,” Lund said.
In fact, a new bill introduced by the Liberal government will end the public disclosure of such events before they happen, and afterward will only name their city and province and not their venue name and postal code—thus ending media exposés of such “cash for access” fundraisers.
The Condo King’s deep ties to Liberals
Few figures have been as central as Bob Rennie to the long, unregulated boom in Vancouver’s housing market that made the city one of the most expensive to live in anywhere across the globe.
The wealthy real estate marketer and art collector has served as a king-maker for the province’s richest developers, helping them access the halls of power and push against regulation and taxation on speculative investment.
He once hosted a $25,000-per-plate lunch for developers to meet with then-mayor of Vancouver Gregor Robertson.
His real estate firm, named after himself, boasts a staff of nearly 400 and pulling in more than a billion a year.
As the B.C. Liberals Party’s primary fundraiser, Rennie made property developers its top donors, with then-premier Christy Clarke even receiving a salary top-up from developer donations until 2016. (The B.C. Liberals are well to the political right of the federal Liberals).
He was the marketing force behind the Woodward’s Building, which has been criticized for driving gentrification and increased rents in the Downtown Eastside, and luxury developments like the Living Shangri-La skyscraper (where you can rent a one-bedroom apartment for a whopping $4,600/month).
According to the federal donor registry, he has given $11,00 to the federal Liberals since 2005.
Today, Vancouver has the most expensive rental market in the country with the average two-bedroom renting for $3,648. That’s helped make the city the third least affordable city in the world.
Poilievre taking advantage
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has seized on the nation’s anger over the skyrocketing housing prices.
But while he has pitched himself as the solution to housing unaffordability, his party has also received donations from executives at Canada’s biggest real estate investors and developers.
Developers have been showing up in numbers to private fundraisers that Poilievre has attended across the country, as previously reported by The Breach.
When I went to journalism school 10 years ago, my parents thought that they would eventually read my articles in The Montreal Gazette. Today, that newspaper is a husk of its former self. But I get to explain that I’m working towards critical, independent, and sustainable journalism.
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– Amanda Siino, Development Director, The Breach
