Group wants to make sure PM will honour vow
Peter O’Neil
Sun
OTTAWA – A group representing some of B.C.’s estimated 65,000 victims in the $1.5-billion leaky condo crisis is giving Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government a deadline to prove it intends to honour its vow to review the government’s role and possible culpability in the disaster.
A representative of Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said earlier Monday that a new option has emerged since the minister wrote to victims in July saying the government couldn’t even “consider” a review while the government is being sued by some owners.
“We’re currently studying options as to how we can proceed without compromising current legal proceedings, as we have recently learned that there may exist review options that will not interfere in these proceedings,” Colleen Cameron, Finley’s press secretary, wrote in an e-mail to The Sun on Monday.
“Unfortunately, I can not provide detail about these options at this time, only assure you that we remain committed to a review.”
The president of a B.C. advocacy group said Monday she has asked the government to clarify its position by Sept. 30.
The tight deadline, she said, is intended to show whether the Harper government is sincere or just putting up “a smokescreen.”
“What is clear [is that] our society does not want owners of leaky homes to be re-victimized with false hopes and used for election purposes,” Carmen Maretic, president of Consumer Advocacy and Support for Homeowners, wrote in an e-mail to The Vancouver Sun.
B.C. Conservative MP John Cummins, meanwhile, has written to one leaky condo owner assuring him Harper will keep his Dec. 17, 2005 campaign promise.
“His commitment to carry out a review of the federal government’s involvement or contribution to the leaky condo disaster was an integral part of his platform to clean up government and restore accountability,” Cummins (Delta-Richmond East) wrote in a letter sent last week to Dan Healey.
“A commitment made by this prime minister can be relied upon. I have found Mr. Harper to be a man of his word,” wrote Cummins in the letter provided to The Sun by Healey.
Finley sent a letter on July 17 to CASH, a consumer group established to seek compensation for the thousands of B.C. residents whose homes and property values were devastated by moisture damage.
“As I’m sure you can appreciate, it would not be appropriate for me to comment or to consider initiating a review into leaky condo issues while these matters are before the courts,” she wrote.
CASH president Maretic, noting that leaky condo court cases were underway before the election promise, responded last week by accusing the government of breaking its commitment to voters.
Harper vowed during the election to “review CMHC’s handling of construction regulations and ‘leaky condos.'”
A press release accompanying the platform boasted that Conservative MPs pushed CMHC “to investigate how it failed to warn homeowners about potential problems with ‘leaky condos.'”
In an exclusive interview with The Vancouver Sun after the announcement, Harper said he’d consider compensation for condo owners following the review.
Cummins told Healey he has already advised the government on options to fulfil the promise.
“It is time to get this matter settled through a competent and credible transparent review process,” Cummins wrote to Healey.
“Any review, if it is to be credible, must be public and clearly independent of” the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), a federal agency.
Healey also released a letter Cummins sent to Finley in April that called on the government to strike a formal inquiry under the federal Inquiries Act.
The MP, whose research uncovered federal documents from the early 1980s warning of a potential housing disaster in coastal areas due to new federal housing regulations, said the condo disaster could very well repeat itself.
“All the factors that were in place in the late ’70s are in place again,” Cummins wrote, citing rising energy prices and growing pressure to build energy-efficient housing.
“Finding out what went wrong in Vancouver and the federal government’s role in it may turn out to be an extraordinarily important work and have significant impact on the future.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2006