One of the things that has always surprised me about life in Canada is that in some respects the country is hopelessly mired in the past. This is not a criticism that we should be overly worried about, I bet that I can find pockets of tardiness in both the US and Europe, but especially here in Vancouver there seems to be a deliberate willingness to embark on strategies that have been proven wrong in other countries many years ago. “We’re Canadian, we do things differently”, is the familiar and omnipresent self-defeating routine. Last year the Vancouver city council got a radical electoral make-over when years of conservative rule made way for an old fashioned, union-inspired, bunch of socialists.

They wasted no time to put signs visible to everyone entering the city that Vancouver is a “no-nuclear weapon” zone, the last time I witnessed such an redundant exercise was in Holland in, you guessed it, the 1980s. You can deal with stuff like this, although it is irritating and highlighting a deliberate waste of resources. The same is true for long debates on the war in Iraq which of course falls right into the jurisdiction of the Vancouver city council. Absurd, but I am not prepared to have my day spoilt when I read about the long and intense deliberations in the morning paper. It gets somewhat nastier when attempts are made to prevent the opening of a Wal-Mart store (it’s American, it discourages unions, all great reasons to try and bust a low-price retailer out of a low income neighborhood) and when the safety as well as the quality of life in the city is impacted directly as a result of willful negligence by the city council.

Here’s what’s at stake. Vancouver has a relatively high number of homeless people and a sizeable drug problem; both very often go hand in hand. There are many homeless here because of the relatively mild climate and their ranks have been growing rapidly ever since governments across the country have reduced welfare rolls in order to balance their books and encourage people to get back to work in order to make a living. Many have packed up and left the icy east to move to western urban centers. The net result is that downtown Vancouver has seen a noticeable increase in crime, aggressive panhandling and even more aggressive squeegee men, the latter setting up their own unions, allocating street corners. On top of that the homeless have established permanent tent camps in downtown parks and residential areas, making it very clear that they are not moving anywhere unless the government provides an acceptable alternative. I leave it to your imagination what a tent camp of drug addicted homeless people looks like and how the area around it is impacted. The city council however has refused to take direct action against these excesses, refusing to enforce bylaws on the homeless that every other citizen would have to endure if he or she would be camping in a city park, ignoring panhandling and sqeegeeing, all under the guise of caring for the poor and downtrodden. When prompted about his responsibility to keep the city clean and free of crime the Mayor, an ex-cop named Larry Campbell, would point to the provincial government and say, it’s their problem, they have acted irresponsibly by cutting social welfare spending let them fix it. When the situation escalated over the past few months when a number of elderly residents were mugged in the downtown area, calls for action increased, yet Campbell and his team have been loath to do anything. If ever there has been an example of an irresponsible negligence of duty it is right here in Vancouver, the culprits being the very city councilors that are supposed to enforce bylaws and protect citizens.

What makes it even more galling is that - and many critics have pointed this out - other large North American cities have gone through this problem and decided to act decisively in the face of decay, crime and lawlessness on their streets. The best example is of course the zero-tolerance and hard-tolerance approaches implemented by Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s that turned New York into a clean and livable city. Vancouver was a very livable city but things are getting rapidly out of hand, and ten years after the successful Giuliani approach one misguided ex-cop with a political agenda is turning this great city into a cesspool in order to make a political point. Of course, any political campaign pointing to an American success is destined to fail in a Canadian city, but chances that Campbell’s left-wing bullies and their poorly crafted agenda are going to earn another term have become questionable as Vancouverites are fiercely proud of their safe and clean city.

Many businesses target specific demographic groups as a way to increase their business, while at the same time establishing some social credentials. As an example HSBC targets the Chinese community and nobody has ever raised any real concern about it. Least of all I, who after dealing for seven years with financially astute bankers with very poor English speaking skills, was relieved that I could continue this experience in North America without having the discomfort of dealing with obtuse bankers that are fluent in English, and I mean that. Yet, there is some social-demographic targeting that does not always get the seal of approval.

This week an ad-campaign by Canada’s largest credit union that underlines their commitment to service all lifestyles, including gays, drew the ire of the Catholic Church. Now the VanCity credit union may be using the omnipresent debate on gay marriage as a vehicle to promote their services or genuinely believe that they have a role to fulfill in an important debate, the Catholic Church did not miss a beat and instructed all Catholic schools that worked with VanCity on a youth-savings plan to suspend their ties with the credit union. Archbishop Exner reacted as follows:

He accused VanCity of engaging in an "objectionable cause," Exner said the credit union's pro-homosexual advertising campaigns and sponsorships display public support for "agendas which are worrisome and harmful to the church and to society."

That’s nothing new, but I found it discouraging to learn that a highly successful program that lets elementary school children get comfortable with the concept of financial responsibility gets axed just because some clerics are upset over the particulars of one advertising campaign. And I might add, if we want to teach our kids anything in relation to money matters it is financial responsibility through saving, especially in a society where rampant credit card use is taken for granted. On the issue over whether VanCity should target gays I believe they should if they feel it is right. Why not? If part of the idea of gay marriage is giving equal rights and equal protection to same-sex couples then such a campaign is laudable if it is done by an industry that over the years has profusely used the traditional family as the centerpiece of ad campaigns focusing on savings, mortgages and financial security. VanCity most likely knew they were going to stir up a controversy, even in Vancouver, and that they were probably going to lose an amount of business equal to what they maybe would gain. But they somehow thought they were supporting a just cause and rolled the dice. It’s a pity that children bear the brunt but I have no doubt that another shrewd credit union will step into the void.

We finally had a little bit of rain yesterday and a little more this morning, which is good news as it has been a very dry summer over here in British Columbia with devastating results. There have been an exceptional number of forest fires, last weekend the fires engulfed the suburbs of Kelowna, a city about 4 hours inland located in the Okanagan Valley which is usually very dry and hot during the summer months. Some 30,000 people needed to be evacuated from their homes over the weekend and there was very little that could be done to prevent a major loss of property in this town. The wind and thunderstorms expected for today did not materialize and that has given the firefighters and relief workers some respite.

This is pretty scary stuff, imagining that we live right on the edge of a forest here. Although I assume that the coast is not at the same risk as the inland areas, our village has now taken extraordinary measures to ensure that no hikers will enter the forest (a $2,500 parking ticket anyone?). Irene has taken me to task for suggesting that this would be an opportunity to do some serious tree-cutting, like a clear cut circle around the village, explaining to me that a real wildfire is next to unstoppable, especially when the winds are blowing in the wrong direction. In any case a few of our local firefighters have taken off to the Okanagan Valley so if anything happens we may be toast anyway.

After a left-leaning government nearly wrecked the province of British Columbia during the nineties, the tide is turning. First in 2001 a tax-cutting right of center provincial government came in to clean-up the mess and set the province back on track. Today the city of Vancouver, together with the ski-resort of Whistler won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. This is great news and it will no doubt help in further unleashing the phenomenal potential that this province has. It will also mean that they will start upgrading one of North America's unsafest highways which is very pleasing as I happen to navigate it every day.

Canadians may congratulate themselves on their country’s liberal attitudes as evidenced by the federal government’s decision not to oppose gay marriage, but if events like this warrant police attention and investigation then there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Last week I reported on the SARS epidemic in Hong Kong and it appears things are getting more serious. And it is getting closer to home, last Friday I experienced an unusual but explicable case of hysteria related to SARS.

As some of you know, my main activity during the day is advising start-up companies on financing and legal issues, as well as overall business strategies. There are great start-ups all over the place, very few make it because they lack solid business management skills and that is what I provide. In any case, one of my client companies’ CEO was on a business trip in, you guessed it, China. On Friday when I was working from my home office I got a call from the lady who runs that companies’ administration, HR and related operational matters asking me what to do as some of the employees had raised the alarm over the CEO’s impending return. Some of the employees appeared to be very concerned and they suggested that the CEO should be quarantined as he had spent over a week in China, one of the more seriously affected areas. Now this falls out of my jurisdiction but I have grown quite close to this company and its people, I get involved in all sorts of things and I am always willing to help whenever they call on me. Still, I was caught off guard here, but I quickly reassembled my managerial skills and said there was no issue until next Monday as he would only arrive late Sunday and that the only thing he should do is follow whatever regulations local health authorities had implemented on Sunday at the airport. What else can you do? This CEO by the way is one of the nicest and most employee-considerate company executives that I have ever come across so the idea that he would come into the office coughing and spreading the SARS epidemic was truly absurd. The lady thanked me for the advice and relayed this advice to the staff in an e-mail which also contained some information on what local authorities had advised so far. What happened then was truly interesting and it provided me with the evidence of what I had suspected when I got the call in the first place.

Now this company has two divisions and they develop products that are somewhat similar in nature. The problem is that one division is generating good revenue and requires a lot of managerial attention (contract negotiations, equipment purchases, trips to California etc.) whilst the other is not generating a penny, yet they have a unique product with enormous potential in development. Guess where the SARS concerns came from? After my advice real hysteria broke out on the non-revenue side where accusations started to fly that the company was not acting in the best interests and safety of the employees, while at the revenue generating side humorous e-mails from people looking forward to 10-days quarantines started to drop into my mailbox. It was all a matter of attention, and the fact that the concerns of the non-revenue generating guys did not automatically translate in deep management concern and holding hands pissed them off even further, leading to some pretty unpleasant discussions at the office. I was glad that I was not there. I have seen these mechanics before and while the non-revenue generating guys have a truly great product it is so much harder to bring it to commercialization. We do everything we can to get it to that stage but for some reason it has not clicked as yet. The other division’s success and their frustration has resulted into a number of unpleasant incidents over the past year and it was always a function of the non-revenue team not getting managerial attention, influence and yes, money.

So, what happened today ? Our CEO is fine, we followed whatever instructions there were and he is back in the office. The non-revenue generating guys apologized for their overreaction, and tomorrow I will resume handholding them by going through one of their business plans. When I told them that, they already looked happier. It is all a matter of attention, really.

Some of my readers may ask what a pro-American Dutchman who has lived in the UK and Hong Kong is doing in Vancouver, Canada. Well, here's the answer.

I was having lunch today with a few local lawyers who expressed some concern that Vancouver is no longer number one on the list. Well, if we're second only to Zurich (no offense to the Swiss), I can live with it.