Mind the Gap | Chinese bearing the brunt of Canada’s hypocrisy

Most Canadians are obstinately oblivious and wilfully ignorant of their country’s absolute decline over the last 40 years. As the world, especially China has rapidly evolved around them it has inflicted upon Canadians irreversible changes that few in Vancouver can understand or accept.

Vancouver is one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets. Statistics from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver show the benchmark for a detached house in Metro Vancouver was C$1.2 million, up 22 per cent from the year before. The average price of a condominium was up 14 per cent to C$435,000. And the market continues to boom.

Its citizens are learning a cruel lesson about being on the losing end of globalisation and economic development. For years the lack of affordable housing has been a problem. People are only now beginning to realise its magnitude and permanence. Foreign investors are supposed to be the cause. What they really mean is investors from China. The Canadian media fears being called racist if they blurt it out.

You can feel an almost implacable atmosphere of racism as the town has become balkanised among different ethnic groups. Vancouver used to feature one or two Chinatowns. Now the entire city is one sprawling Chinatown.

Richmond, a neighbouring suburb, is so Chinese that few white people consider living there. Successively wealthier waves of Chinese since 1986 rejected the original Chinatown experience as being too much of a ghetto experience that failed to reflect China’s current influence.