London, Ont. developer rant caught on tape during BIA meeting

The issues and frustrations of downtown business people came to the forefront on Tuesday when Shmuel Farhi went off on a rant at a London Business Improvement Association meeting.

The issues and frustrations of downtown business people came to the forefront on Tuesday when Shmuel Farhi went off on a rant at a London Business Improvement Association meeting.

“Everything else here is a bunch of bull****,” he said during Tuesday's meeting.

Farhi’s message included the closure of a number of downtown businesses, concerns over WSIB leaving the core, and hundreds of employees relocating to the outskirts.

BIA Chair Scott Collyer has known Farhi for 30 years, and was not surprised by the outburst.

"I very much agree with many of the frustrations [of] that sentiment because it's obviously being felt by the entire membership,” he said.

However, Collyer didn’t agree with the way Farhi went about conveying it. 

“How I do things is, 'It’s praise in public and correct in private,’” he explained.