The B.C. government came under fire again Thursday for selling valuable Crown land for millions below the appraised value.
For the third straight day, the Opposition hammered the Liberals at the B.C. legislature for unloading properties at bargain prices in order to balance their election-year budget in 2013-14.
“Well, another day, another fire sale,” said NDP Leader John Horgan, before launching into questions about the sale of a property on Panorama Drive in Surrey.
Horgan said documents obtained by the NDP under the freedom of information law show that an appraiser believed “the highest and best use of the lands would be a holding situation, pending rezoning to permit commercial, retail or office development.”
Instead, the government sold the property for $20.5 million — $3 million below the appraised value of $23.5 million and nearly $7 million below the assessed value of $27.2 million, Horgan said.
The deal closed in late March 2014, before the end of the 2013-14 fiscal year.
Earlier in the week, the NDP revealed that the Liberals sold 14 parcels of land in Coquitlam to a developer for $43 million below the appraised value in one of the hottest real estate markets in the country.
Horgan said the government should now release appraisals for all Crown assets that have been sold.
“The reason we need to see all of these appraisals — [and] not go through a circuitous [freedom of information] route that could take years — is that we need to have public confidence that the government is putting the people of B.C. ahead of their political objectives,” he said.
Finance Minister Mike de Jong promised to release a list of asset sales with appraised and assessed values next week. The complete appraisal reports will still have to be released under freedom of information rules, he said.
“There is a process for the release of the reports and that will continue to be followed.”
De Jong said the plan to sell surplus properties was never a secret. The government laid out details in budget documents, hired a reputable firm to sell them and received fair market value, he said.
The Panorama property was purchased years ago for a new hospital, but became surplus when the hospital was built at the Surrey Memorial site.
“We said in the budget in 2012, in 2013, in 2014, we were going to identify properties that were surplus to the needs of the government,” de Jong said. “We were going to put them on the market. We were going to allow the private sector to unleash their energy and put people to work.
“We set targets, and, as foreign as this might be to the members opposite, we followed through.”
