WHOEVER SAID THAT POLITICS MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS must have been thinking of Doug Collins and Harry Rankin.
On the one hand, we have a man with impeccable left-wing credentials. An ex-Committee of Progressive Electors Vancouver alderman, a stalwart supporter of the NDP, a card-carrying member of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, lawyer Harry Rankin yields to no one in his devotion to left-wing causes; radical environmentalism, feminism, government controls over the economy, peace marches, economic nationalism, he has fought for them all.
On the other hand, there is a man with equally impeccable right-wing credentials. Doug Collins is a long-time west coast columnist now writing for the North Shore News. A rejected candidate for the newly formed Reform Party (by leader Preston Manning after the local constituency had nominated him), Collins has been highly visible as a witness for Mr. Zundel at their hate literature court trials. Drawing his ire are feminists, multi-culturalists, the immigration lawyers, and radical environmentalists.
What on earth could these two very different political animals have in common—apart from the fact they happen to reside in British Columbia?
Both have recently criticized the purchase of Vancouver real estate by foreign investors from Hong Kong. In the words of Mr. Rankin, “When money floods in from individuals buying four or five houses for investment purposes instead of for living in, you heat up and inflate the economy. We have to check the source of the inflation—the foreign speculators—by not allowing anyone other than Canadians and landed immigrants to purchase residential property.”
In chillingly similar language, Mr. Collins strongly objects to the practice of the Block Bros. real estate firm in “taking out whole-page ads in the Hong Kong press inviting Hong Kongers to buy homes on the North Shore. “Recently,” he stated, “a woman in Woodcroft was offered a fancy price for her apartment by an Asiatic. When she asked him why he wanted her place, he told her he had already bought every other apartment on that floor.
“Regulations to prevent the mass selling of residential real estate to foreigners would not be unusual. The Australians have already put the clamps on such sales. So have some other jurisdictions, including P.E.I. and Hawaii.”
These statements are very objectionable, even frightening. They harken back to the discredited and discreditable era of the “yellow menace” and “yellow peril.” One would have hoped that never again would a presumably civilized society such as ours be subjected to such carryings on, but it appears that we are not to be spared.
Adding insult to injury, there is a small matter of hypocrisy. Collins is himself an immigrant to Canada from the U.K., while Rankin’s forebears hail from Europe. It comes with particular ill grace, then, for these two gentlemen to engage in blatant foreigner bashing.
Further, it is simply untrue, as both imply, that Hong Kong investments in Canada will harm the inhabitants of this country. When a person of Chinese descent (or any other, for that matter) purchases a home in British Columbia, he offers consideration which, in the eye of the seller, is worth more than the property in question. For example, if a British Columbian sells a domicile to a resident of Hong Kong, for $300,000, it must be true that the vendor values the money he receives more highly than he values the residence he gives up. Otherwise, he would scarcely agree to the sale!
Collins and Rankin go wrong in that they liken the foreign investment to a takeover of real estate. As a moment’s reflection will convince us, the Hong Kong Chinese are not seizing property; they are trading for it.
As for the similarity of belief way out on the fringes of the left-right spectrum, this is only paradoxical to those who do not realize that both extremes, not just one or the other, fail to comprehend the subtleties of voluntary social arrangements. Both, unfortunately, are all too willing to call for the coercive power of government to do their bidding, to impose their will on the rest of society.
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Daily Townsman (Cranbrook, British Columbia), January 24, 1989.