Century Group Commissions Mustel to Dispute Southlands Results?

The Mustel Group has been conducting a telephone survey of Tsawwassen residents. Reports of phone calls started coming in Saturday evening saying that Mustel was asking almost identical questions to the recent mail in survey conducted by the Corporation of Delta through Ipsos Reid. The survey covered a wide range of questions dealing with housing height limits and town core density, but the question that was the hot topic in South Delta was regarding whether or not to allow development on the Southlands. The people of Tsawwassen responded with a resounding 62% against any development of the Southlands.

More controversy ensued after the results of the Ipsos Reid survey were presented to Delta City Council when city CAO George Harvey's recommendation to have the Tsawwassen Area Plan Committee adopt the results into their plan and council voted unanimously to have the committee "consider" the results.

Even with the politicking at city hall it was unlikely that the results of the city commissioned survey could be ignored. After many failed attempts to get untainted results the city spent $28,000 to have Ipsos Reid gather unbiased data.

The results were met with anger by Century Group's president Sean Hodgins, who told Brian Lewis of the Vancouver Province after the results were announced, that he was "never going to quit". It would seem this is true. Although the Mustel Group won't divulge who their client is, it's not too hard to connect the dots. The Century Group already commissioned Mustel in August 2009 to do a phone survey and Sean Hodgins told the Province that, "because Delta council elected to do a mail-in survey, rather than a traditional, scientific, random survey, opponents to his development would have been more likely to respond to the questionnaire."

Having been recently outed in the media for paying Kwantlen Polytechnic University an initial $50,000 to support the devlopment and to lobby government for the land development Century Group is running out of options. The community doesn't want the Southlands developed, Kwantlen is fighting to repair their reputation, and the politicians at Delta City Hall wish this would just go away.

In the end, there is a good chance we will never know the results of this survey but it sure makes for great news.