The Long Division Project: Crap In Our Parks

There'sNoMath
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Well.

Whadd'ya know.

The latest cut to the British Columbia Parks Budget is, apparently, something in the order of $5 million dollars.

Which comes on top of cuts from last year that, according to the good folks at the 'Outdoor Recreation Council' at least, led to crap being spread all over at least one Park.

Literally (careful, pdf; see pg 4):

"How can we be proud of the glories of Garabaldi Park......when half the toilets were closed last summer (due to cutbacks), as a result of which campers were defecating around their campsites instead."



So, given all that, what's the Minister-In-Charge-Of-Motel-Sixes, Mr. Barry Penner to do?

Why, raise camping fees of course.

Rob Shaw, of the Victoria Times Colonist had that story on the weekend:

....The price to stay overnight in one of B.C.'s provincial park campgrounds will rise as much as $6 a night, depending on the location, leading to a nightly bill of as much as $30.

B.C.'s Environment Minister Barry Penner said that without the increase, he would have had to reduce or possibly close services at parks to pay for higher operating costs and compensate for slumping government revenues.

"I came to the conclusion we'd have to ask the people who benefit by using the parks to contribute more to the cost of operating them," said Penner.

But here's the thing.

If you take the latest estimated cost of the new roof on BC Place (approximately $450 million), which is designed to make a kinda/sorta professional football team and an almost, but not-quite, professional soccer team happy for 30 days a year, tops, and then divide that amount by the cost of the latest cutback that will affect literally hundreds of thousands of British Columbia citizens that have ALREADY paid for their parks.....

Well.....

It means that you could get rid of the cutback, right now for ninety years.

Yes, ninety years.

Which is a very long time indeed.

****

Of course, if you first multiplied the Parks cutback by 10 and then divided the total by the cost of the stupid roof atop the marshmallow we could have massive improvements to the Parks every single year for nine straight years instead.

And can you just imagine what would happen when all that new infrastructure started to entice gazillions of out-of province tourists, not to mention thousands and thousand of new British Columbians, into our beautiful wilderness year after year after year.

Heckfire!

A real plan like that, instead of that silly roof, would mean that by the time littler e., who is currently in grade 5 and doing a lot of long division these days, reaches voting age in 2019 we would have a parks system so fine that it would give her a reason to proudly vote for politicians whose policies put people first.

Wouldn't that be amazing?



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Hey! I have an idea....Why don't we charge David Braley and friends a user fee of say, $5 million dollars everytime he uses the useless marsmallow....After all, isn't that a perfectly reasonably extension of the Minister's 'logic'?
Original Link Source: Former Lotuslandian and current Desert Eater, Ian Reid.


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