Premier David Eby Tuesday (Oct. 24) rejects charges from BC United that he personally benefited from language marketing his former Victoria condominium as a short-term rental.
“That’s a lie,” he said. “I did not market the property for short-term rental. You are allowed to do long-term rental in the building. That was in the listing and to the best of my understanding, the family that bought the condo was to rent it to a child who was going to school in Victoria. It’s a manufactured scandal. It’s nonsense. Of course, the opposition wants to make it about me.”
Eby made these comments at an unrelated event in the legislature after Question Period, during which BC United’s housing critic Karin Kirkpatrick had raised the issue.
“In a building named Juliet, the Premier found not star-crossed love but a lucrative Airbnb opportunity that earned him $150,000 profit,” Kirkpatrick said in alluding to Eby’s 2019 sale of his Victoria condominium. “He marketed the property in the advertising with a clear tag line, ‘Unrestricted rentals.’ Why the blatant double standard? One rule for him and another for everyone else.”
Eby publicly acknowledged on Feb. 15 that he had sold the condominium in January 2019.
“Like so many British Columbians, when my wife went back to school, our family sold the condo to help pay for her tuition,” he said in February. “We used that condo when our first child was born, when I was working here, so that we had a place where she and our new baby could be while I was working as an MLA,” he said. “That’s the condo flipping that they’re talking about, just so we’re clear.”
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BC United had raised that sale in February to accuse Eby of wanting to escape the pending introduction of the speculation and vacancy tax, and Kirkpatrick Tuesday accused Eby of withholding further information.
“What the public hasn’t been told is that this wasn’t just any condo,” Kirkpatrick said, adding that the building had non-conforming use exceptions for short-term rentals.
“Now listen to this quote from the building’s own literature,” Kirkpatrick said. “‘We have an on-site B-and-B management company to handle your bookings.’”
Government House Leader and Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon defended Eby in questioning the motives of BC United.
“This session we have a new party (Conservative Party of BC) that ask questions that are completely over the top,” Kahlon said. “And now we have a BC United party that says, ‘Hold my cup.’”
“Let me be clear here,” Kahlon added. “The Premier never rented his property out for Airbnb. He never rented his property out for Airbnb. This is just a false statement that exists. Honestly, they’re into conspiracy (territory) here.”
Eby said the personal charges against him attempt to distract the public from the fact that BC United opposes his government’s proposed law to regulate short-term rentals.
Eby also took aim at amendements that Kirkpatrick had brought forward Tuesday morning.
“I do not think the way forward is to turn this legislation into Swiss cheese to create a bunch of loopholes that people who are motivated by profit can drive a freight train through,” he said.
The new short-term rental regulation has stripped Eby’s former building of non-conforming Airbnb use.
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wolfgang.depner@blackpress.ca
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