Goodman Report Podcast

Listening to Rick Ilich in this edition of the Goodman Report podcast (and you really must), you immediately understand why his most influential peers have twice elected him chair of the Urban Development Institute. Ilich embodies the long, deep, always-in-the-weeds experience of a builder who started his massively successful development company in 1980 and has steered it sagely and safely through even the most recent and most devastating downturn. He speaks with grounded political and policy passion, quietly raging at municipal governments’ “addiction to the ATM machine of new housing” and condemning the higher-level government intervention and bungling that produced the latest “100-percent-policy-based” economic crisis. (In one of the few theatrical flourishes in our conversation, Ilich refused even to name the former federal Liberal prime minister and said of current B.C. Premier David Eby: “Does he understand economics? No, not even close. Is he an advocate of social engineering and over-regulation? Absolutely.”)
What comes through most insistently, though, is Ilich’s rare combination of prudence and innovation. The son of a civil engineer who began his own career laying pipe in the ground, Ilich cut his real estate teeth as a Block Brothers “gopher” before starting Townline as a single-family housing developer. He has stayed on the front line of every major housing trend—townhouses, condo towers, mixed-use commercial/residential projects—and made a substantial, early contribution to purpose-built rental and not-for-profit housing. Through TL Housing Solutions, he has now delivered more than 4,000 non-market homes for women escaping violence, seniors, people with special needs, Indigenous communities, and working families priced out of the market.
Lately the challenge has been to support and rescue other industry players struggling in this compromised market and—like all the big brands—to keep teams together and cranes turning, even if that means building “for no margin just to keep things going.”
Townline is still innovating. You’ll want to hear what Ilich has to say about the first-in-Canada purpose-built co-housing development he has completed in Victoria. And despite ruing the end of a decades-long hot market, he remains optimistic about the industry’s capacity to build and thrive. “You’ve got to count on good value and good product,” he says. “And despite the pain that’s being inflicted right now, there’s nothing really that wrong with that.”
For Townline, that means: “We’ll keep trucking away. We’ll do our thing, and we’ll do fine. But everything is, at best, a base hit or a bunt.”
For everyone else, it will pay to listen to Ilich’s soft-spoken wisdom.

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I have to admit that I was surprised when David Eby’s office accepted our shot-in-the-dark invitation for the NDP Premier of British Columbia to join me on the Goodman Report podcast. Even then, I wasn’t ready for how open, funny, self-critical and transformed the premier seemed in our hour together.
The surprises started with my first question, when I asked him about the recent budget and, especially, the deficit. The premier dropped his head, slouched in the chair and said, “Talk about a dumpster fire. I mean $13.3 billion. It’s just brutal.”
The worst part, Eby said, is that the next “really urgent” policy shift will be to cut revenue, because, “we have to get rid of the foreign buyer and speculation taxes.” He went on, “This is hard, because the (NDP) base loves those taxes. But people don’t realize how badly they have kneecapped the development industry. And, seriously, construction is the third or fourth biggest employer in B.C. Those taxes are killing jobs.”
Talking about the housing crisis in general, Eby also said he’s aware that you can’t help renters without helping – or at least not hurting – the people who build and own rental housing, which also requires a change in direction. “I get it,” he said. “Capping rent increases below the rate of inflation – that was just a dumb idea.”
When I asked the premier about other things he might admit as mistakes, he said, “Well, it’s politics. It’s hard. Like reconciliation: that’s a great idea. It’s really important. But UNDRIP? We’re really climbing down on that.”
On climate change. Eby said, “If you remember, the NDP campaigned against the carbon tax right from the start. The only reason we kept it was because (Green Party leader Andrew) Weaver and (then-Premier John) Horgan were, like, rugby buddies and we needed the Greens to take power.” Now, Eby has killed the carbon tax and, recently, reassigned staff from the Climate Action Secretariat to work on expanding fossil fuel infrastructure. “It’s like (former NDP cabinet minister and LNG lobbyist Moe) Sihota always says: the NDP’s best budget surpluses were floating on gas royalties from the northeast. We need more of that.”
When I noted that the NDP is still warring with Alberta over pipelines – quoting then-Premier Horgan’s promise to use “every tool in the toolbox” to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline – Eby said, “C’mon, I saw that toolbox; there was nothing in it but a dull pencil and a stale donut. Seriously, if the feds are still buying, we’ll get the next pipeline through even faster than the Trans Mountain.”
Finally, I asked how Eby expects to keep his job if he abandons so many policies the left holds sacred. And what came next was the biggest shock of the podcast. He said, “Well, the BC Conservative Party leadership vacancy opens a real opportunity. I mean, do the math. It would only take four NDP MLAs crossing the floor with me to give the Conservatives a majority.
“We have a team in place and negotiations underway. And as one of my advisors said, I can switch parties and I won’t even have to change offices.”
We both laughed. After all: it’s April 1.

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Beau Jarvis is a passionate advocate for the development industry—an essential voice at a critical time. You (and every voter you know!) need to hear what he has to say.
The most blistering part of our conversation focused on Canada's national housing crisis: who's to blame, who can help, and—most importantly—how crucial it is for governments to stop making the problem worse.
First, though, know this: Beau is a true pro. Wesgroup is one of Western Canada's largest privately held, vertically integrated real estate companies (celebrating 70 years, with no outside capital partners, ~$2B under construction, and thousands of units in the pipeline). On his path to the top job, Beau has been hands-on in every aspect of development: project feasibility, site acquisition, underwriting, due diligence, construction management, planning and design, entitlements and approvals, customer care, interior design, sales, and marketing.
These days, however, he spends far too much time educating policymakers on the dire consequences of their interventions. For three decades, the development industry has been the principal source of all new housing in our cities—while fully bearing the cost of growth. Yet municipal, provincial, and federal governments have conspired to create a brutal supply and cost-of-delivery crisis, piling on building code burdens, unchecked spending, double taxation, and regulatory delays that rank Canada near dead-last in the OECD—all while misrepresenting or misreading key statistics (most recently, the fiction of "robust" housing starts).
Seven years ago, Beau notes, Wesgroup was achieving a 17% return selling condos at $587/sq ft. After the explosion in fees and levies, plus multi-pronged assaults on international investment, $1,150+/sq ft is barely enough to break even. (Is that surprising when Metro Vancouver's fees rose ~1,943% in a single decade?)
Beau calls out spend-happy municipalities "drunk on DCCs" and stresses the need to attract capital by celebrating risk-taking instead of tall-poppy syndrome. He pleads for coordinated infrastructure audits, permit reform, stable immigration, and the repeal of punitive taxes. On the bright side, he believes the market's most mature and capable operators will survive this downturn—but he views the current bloodletting as wasteful and entirely avoidable.
Our deep, candid chat also covers Beau’s remarkable journey: growing up in tiny 1970s Whistler (ski racing and family entrepreneurship at the original Keg on Alta Lake and Rainbow Ski Village), working as a broker in ugly markets, earning a "PhD in development" at Onni during the mid-2000s boom, and stepping into Wesgroup in 2014 to drive change and scale operations.
It's trench-level insight on why housing "doesn't just happen," why developers aren't the villains, and what real policy shifts could restore confidence and get us building again.
Raw, real, and right on time—grab your headphones.
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Follow Beau Jarvis:
LinkedIn - https://ca.linkedin.com/in/beau-jarvis-5b146912
Wesgroup Properties - https://wesgroup.ca/

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Eric Carlson has a well-earned reputation as a blistering critic of the dumb, ideological interventions of government. He is also one of a handful of Vancouver development-industry heavyweights—someone who has been helping reshape the region for decades while building a diversified, integrated, international real estate and development empire. His Anthem Properties Group now employs more than 850 people here and abroad. But Carlson may be most famous in the public mind for a searing attack on NDP Premier David Eby that ran in the Victoria Times Colonist just before the last election—an outburst that quickly went viral.
Reading that piece, you might expect to meet a snarling polemicist with blood in his teeth.
In person—and on the upcoming podcast—Carlson proves to be so much more. He’s a guy who can rightly rile up a crowd. But when you ask him to back up the sharp invective, what you get is—well—nuance. Carlson has revealed himself as a lifelong student of psychology, history, international relations... and even music appreciation.
The man is razor-sharp. He thinks fast, explains complex issues clearly and without bullshit, all while remaining surprisingly compassionate. He speaks with real authority, zero filter, and a brutal sense of humour. Tough as nails, yet genuinely funny.
There’s no question that Carlson is fierce. He still puts in 80-hour weeks and stays deep in the weeds on every aspect of his business. But he’s also willing to go deep. Our conversation ranged from childhood influences and the early grind to Anthem’s evolution, why company culture matters, Vancouver civic politics, communism, ESG (what he calls corporate wokeism), the game-changing Cowichan fee-simple decision, global macroeconomic shifts, and everything in between.
From Anthem’s corporate strategy to Carlson’s measured analysis of the issues, the person you find at the mic is someone deeply thoughtful—who assumes you probably are, too.
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Links for this episode:

Follow Anthem Properties:
Website: https://anthemproperties.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theanthemway/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheAnthemWay/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-carlson-16b09614

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The next Goodman Report podcast, an interview with the unstoppable Nelson Skalbania, is one of the most entertaining – and absolutely the most fun – of any that we have done so far.
Nelson Matthew Skalbania was the prototypical Vancouver tycoon – and the only guy in town who my mother would let smoke cigars in the house when he was doing deals with my father.
Born in Regina to Polish immigrant parents and raised in relative poverty in East Vancouver, Nelson found success as a structural engineer and made his fortune – really, many fortunes – first in real estate and then in any other business that caught his eye.
He’s the guy who, admitting that he knew nothing about hockey, signed Wayne Gretzky for $50,000 only because the 17-year-old Great One beat the then-38-year-old deal-spinner in a six-mile foot race. 
At his peak, Nelson was sitting at the big table with Vancouver icons like Jack Pool, Peter Brown, Bob Lee, Sam Belzberg and Jimmy Pattison, rubbing shoulders internationally with people like the up-and-coming Donald J. Trump, and doing 1,000 deals a year, totalling $500 million – in 1970 dollars.
That’s an unimaginable pace – almost three deals every day, often for millions of dollars each. That demands a combination of intelligence, nerve and stamina that absolutely deserves to be celebrated. 
Back in the day, the larger-than-life Skalbania was such a character – so brash, so unlikely in the grey Canadian outpost that was then Vancouver – that the media made him a caricature, and a target. And sure enough, the critics and the regulators took him down. But this interview will make you forget the caricature: at age 87, Nelson is still the real deal – sharp, shrewd, oddly modest about his accomplishments and surprisingly forthcoming about his indiscretions (at least one of which landed him in jail for a day and under house arrest for most of a year). 
Frank, philosophical, insightful – full of the wisdom earned from “11,000 mistakes” – Nelson’s stories are great, and his advice is very much worth hearing.
This podcast is a blast. Don’t miss it.
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Nelson Skalbania’s website: https://nelsonskalbania.com/
 
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