Government debt and other liabilities in the city of Vancouver /

F R A S E R RESEARCHBULLETIN FROM THE CENTRE FOR FISCAL STUDIES July 2014 CITY OF VANCOUVER OTHER METRO IN THE RED -$268 MILLION VANCOUVER MUNICIPALITIES IN THE BLACK +$2.0 BILLION Government Debt and Other Liabilities in the City of Vancouver Hugh MacIntyre and Charles Lammam Summary The City of Vancouver has the unique abil- Metro Vancouver municipalities exceed gross ity among British Columbi [...] It then com- along with the fact that the City of Vancouver is pares the City of Vancouver’s financial position the largest municipality in the province, makes to that of other Metro Vancouver municipali- the city an interesting case study. [...] By contrast, the City of Vancouver fell into a net Gross liabilities and financial assets of liability position in 2002 (British Columbia, Min- the City of Vancouver istry of Community, Sport and Cultural Devel- When the City of Vancouver’s net financial opment, 2013b) and has remained there up to position is broken down into gross liabilities 2013, the most recent year of available data for and f [...] Types of liabilities and financial assets From 2006 to 2011, when net liabilities more Liabilities and financial assets are general cat- than quadrupled, table 2 shows that the larg- egories and the City of Vancouver holds differ- est driver of the increase in gross liabilities (in ent types of each. [...] Total financial assets and liabilities for 2013 are The Olympic Village project was also an impor- available from the City of Vancouver’s annual fi- tant factor in the 2009 increase of financial nancial report, but the types of financial assets and liabilities are not presented in a manner that is consistent with the Local Government Statistics (the 17.