TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 B1TIMES COLONIST, VICTORIA, B.C.

BUSINESSEditor: Darron Kloster > Telephone: 250-380-5235 > Email: dkloster@timescolonist.com timescolonist.com/business ■ MARKETS, B2

SPORTSCanucks battle Kingsin fight for playoffs >B4

ON THESTREETCHEK anchorstarts PR jobFormer CHEK Newsanchor Jim Beatty startedhis new job Monday in theVictoria office of Hill andKnowlton Strategies.Beatty will work in athree-person office. Hilland Knowlton is an inter-national public-relationspowerhouse with head-quarters in New York.Beatty worked at CHEKfor three years, served asCTV bureau chief in Victo-ria for seven years beforethat, and spent 10 yearswith the Vancouver Sun,where he covered theB.C. legislature.

Hornby opensnew free storeA party over the weekendon Hornby Island markedthe completion of a newbuilding holding its volun-teer-run Free Store, a cen-tral part of the communityand focus of its recyclingefforts. The previousbuilding was determinedto be unsafe and was takendown. The new 1,900-square-foot store wasfunded by the Comox Val-ley Regional District.

Don’t missClean out your filing cabi-nets, wallets and pursesand recycling bins andbring your confidentialdocuments for shreddingfrom 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. onMay 1 at in the parking lotat Tillicum Centre. Theevent is sponsored by theBetter Business Bureau ofVancouver Island. Shred-ding is by donation and allproceeds will be directedto the volunteer-run hot-lunch program at the Rain-bow Kitchen. Small busi-nesses and consumers areinvited to bring a maxi-mum of five bags or fiveboxes of paper documentsfor onsite shredding.

Nice touchAmerican Income LifeInsurance Company, inVictoria recently for a con-ference, donated $25,246to Our Place Society aspart of its Closer to theHeart program of charita-ble giving. Our Place is aninner-city communitycentre serving the city’smost vulnerable.

Architect firmmarks 30 yearsLow Hammond RoweArchitects is celebrating30 years in business. Thelocal firm opened in 1985as Chow & FleischauerArchitects Inc. and nowincludes partners JacksonLow, Paul Hammond andChristopher Rowe. Thecompany has 18 staff in anew office at 1590 CedarHill Cross Rd. Low Ham-mond Rowe also started tooffer residential and com-mercial interior designservices with interiordesigner Julia Roemer.

MIKE BLANCHFIELDThe Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Vast, sandy expanses ofundeveloped Caribbean coastline,sprawling green countryside andthe faded but lingering beauty ofold Havana have sparked many abusiness-development fantasy insome of Cuba’s more entrepreneur-ial visitors.

Those dreams of new beachresorts, golf courses and condosseemed a little closer to realityafter December, when presidentsRaul Castro and Barack Obamadeclared Cuba and the U.S. wouldtry to normalize relations after 53years.

But Cuba’s top North Americanenvoy has a special message to allthose dreamers — keep dreaming.“We are not against selling prop-erty, but not freely,” said Julio Gar-mendia Pena, the Cuban ambassa-dor to Canada. “We want to keep thecountry for Cubans.”

In a recent speech in Ottawa toan audience of diplomats, academ-ics and government officials, Penamade clear Cuba may be open toforeign investment, but buying

land is not on the table.Many obstacles remain to a full-

on Cuban-American rapproche-ment, including two big ones —establishing diplomatic relationsand lifting the crippling U.S. eco-nomic embargo, which Cuba callsthe blockade.

But the biggest one is a long-run-ning feud over property, valued atbillions of dollars.

After Fidel Castro’s communistrevolution in 1959, the new Cubangovernment seized and nationalizedU.S. assets across the country.These included the American-owned telephone company, utilities,sugar-cane fields and various prop-erties, including several Hiltonhotels.

When heiress Paris Hiltonrecently visited Havana and postedselfies in front of the old Hiltonhotel, she was castigated online forthumbing her nose at the legacythat underwrites her current life ofcelebrity leisure.

The value of seized Americanassets has been estimated at asmuch as $7 billion, much of itclaimed by the very angry andinfluential Cuban expatriate

community in Florida that revilesthe Castros.

Like many other informedobservers, Mark Entwistle,Canada’s ambassador to Cuba from1993-97, said Monday some sort ofcompensation agreement will haveto be reached before Cuba and theU.S. can move forward.

As one of the founders of aToronto-based boutique merchantbank (his partners include BelindaStronach and former Onex execu-tive Anthony Melman), Entwistlehas spent a lot of time in Cuba theUnited States recently.

One refrain he is hearing in theU.S. these days goes like this: “Howdo I buy that piece of beachfront,how do I buy a downtown city blockof Havana to redevelop it?”

No time soon, is Entwistle’s stan-dard answer, because Cuba viewsland as a national asset that belongsto the state.

“There’s a sense, especially inthe United States, that there’s somegold rush bonanza is about to hap-pen,” said Entwistle.

“This is largely informed by atremendous lack of information andunderstanding of Cuba itself, and

where the Cubans have come from,and who they are and where they’regoing.”

Pena himself made clear thatCuba had learned lessons from itspre-revolution era of Americaninfluence.

“We already went through this,”he said. “And at the end of the day,when we began to see who is own-ing these properties, it was a fright-ening list. So we decided to be morecareful in that direction.”

Eventually, Entwistle said, Cubawill have to open itself up to moreforeign investment if it wants togrow an economy hobbled by ahalf-century of economic isolationfrom its massive neighbour 135kilometres to the north.

But that doesn’t mean Cuba willstart selling off deeds and titles tohoteliers and developers, especiallyfrom the United States, he added.

“A situation in the past, in Cubanhistory, where one country ownedtwo-thirds of the national economyand all the utilities and phones andelectricity and over 80 per cent ofthe fertile sugar lands and agricul-tural lands — that’s not going tohappen again.”

Cuba encourages investment, but not in land

ANDREW A. DUFFYTimes Colonist

Dan Dagg has big plans forthe Greater Victoria Devel-opment Agency.

The new chairman wantsmore buy-in from theregion for the eight-year-old economic developmentorganization, which wasdeveloped around a com-mittee table at the GreaterVictoria Chamber of Com-merce in 2007.

Dagg, president of Victo-ria-based Hot House Mar-keting, also wants to find amore sustainable fundingmodel for the GVDA’sactivities, while the mar-keter in him wants theagency and what it does tobe much more commonknowledge.

“I feel we are at a water-shed moment for theGVDA,” Dagg said in aninterview. “Over the next18 months, we are going toflourish and take off.”

The GVDA has a bit of arunning start, having comeoff a strong 2014.

Last year, it launched athree-year, federallyfunded trade and invest-ment program to increasethe region’s internationalbusiness activities.

It also played a big rolein landing more than$10 million in new invest-ment from beyond GreaterVictoria’s borders.

“I think we are seeingsome growth and momen-tum,” said Dagg.

To keep it going, theGVDA will use some of the$1.5 million from Ottawa toco-ordinate a response to astudy it undertook onGreater Victoria’s exporteconomy. The study

showed the region’s busi-ness community exportsabout $5 billion in goodsand services annually,accounting for one-third ofgross domestic product.

Now the challenge is tohelp firms increase theircapacity to grow interna-tionally, with a focus onbuilding export capacityand marketing the region,its companies and theGVDA to attract new inter-est and open new markets.

To do that, Dagg knowshe has to get the region tobuy into the GVDA’s overallmandate — helping to builda sustainable economy.

Right now, the GVDA’sfunding comes from Victo-ria, Saanich, the chamberand Ottawa.

“Economic developmentshould be everybody’s No. 1cause. … Without a robustand vibrant economy, wecan’t fund and support allthe other wonderful causesthat are dear to our hearts,”he said.

To that end, he intends tomeet with each municipal-ity to get them on board.

“I don’t see us as com-peting with local municipal-ities in economic develop-ment. I just think some ofthe municipalities haven’tappreciated the concept ofregional economic develop-ment,” Dagg said.

He said it’s important tolook at the lower Island as awhole.

“I can tell you someonein China or the U.S. isn’t

thinking about doing busi-ness in Langford or Sooke.They are thinking aboutGreater Victoria,” he said.“And it doesn’t matterwhere a business locates, itbenefits all of us.

“We need to be less com-petitive that way and thinkabout winning a greatershare of the bigger pie.”

Dagg would like to seeall 13 municipalities con-tribute to the GVDA’s oper-ating budget, and eventu-ally establish a sustainablefunding model that wouldallow the organization theluxury of executing longer-term plans rather thanannually going “cap inhand” to keep the lights on.

It would also allow eco-nomic-development fund-

ing to go further, since theGVDA can pool and lever-age it more effectively thana single municipality.

Getting all parts ofGreater Victoria to buy inis easier said than done, butDagg is optimistic.

“I think there is agreater acceptance andawareness of the impor-tance of economic develop-ment and of our role,” Daggsaid, adding other regionsare going after economicdevelopment aggressively.

“I can help buildmomentum around a cause.I see my job as getting theright people on the bus andmaking sure the bus ispointed in the right direc-tion.”aduffy@timescolonist.com

Growth is everyone’s business

DARREN STONE, TIMES COLONISTDan Dagg, the new chairman of the Greater Victoria Development Agency, is pushing economic development as aregional cause. “I can tell you someone in China or the U.S. isn’t thinking about doing business in Langford or Sooke.They are thinking about Greater Victoria.”

New chairmanat developmentagency callsfor regionalapproach

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