Thursday, November 16, 2017

Site C Boondogglepalooza...The Twisted Logic Of Cookie Dough Mike.

ThisAin'tNoFriedman
UnitVille


BC Liberal Party leadership candidate Mike de Jong travelled to Port Alberni for a grip-and-grin earlier this week and no one showed up.

So the good Mr. de Jong instead spent a whack of time talking to Mike Youds, a reporter for the PA News, and complained that he just couldn't understand why John Horgan et al. would even begin to consider dumping 24 fast ferry equivalents into the Peace River.

Or some such thing:

...The decision whether to cancel or continue with the energy megaproject — as laid out in the B.C. Utilities Commission report delivered two weeks ago — is a relatively simple one, he (Mr. de Jong) added.

“When I used to do this in the 1990s and visit Port Alberni, people were pretty outraged by the folly of building three fast ferries that didn’t work and having to write off $500 million. This is four times that, this is a whole fleet of them. This is (the equivalent of) 24 fast ferries...



Left unsaid by Mr. de Jong, of course, is the fact that with a now expected final price tag of ~$12 billion, his government's 'point-of-no-return' project, if completed, will eventually cost we the people of British Columbia approximately 72 fast ferry equivalents.

For no good reason...

At all.


OK?


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Wondering about the sub-header?.....This.


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25 comments:

Anonymous said...

And ICBC debt last year was 1,000 million dollars not 11.. so dont trust us?
Thats some magic Mike!

PS how many properties do you own?

North Van's Grumps said...

@RossK

It wasn't that long ago, this year, that you sort of wished that Site C could be hauled across Burrard Inlet to showcase it's budget overruns to the same degree that Premier Gordon Campbell did with the fastcat ferries.

As it turns out Mikey did it for you. Instead of THREE,that's 3, cats ... imagine TWENTY-FOUR, that's 24 cats, eight times more.

North Van's Grumps said...

... theoretically ... the 24 cats could be tied end to end and form a link across the Second Narrow, a Bailey bridge, to create a third crossing ... four lanes wide

Lew said...

Mr. de Jong, as a Rob Shaw-christened frugalist, is strangely silent on a much more apt and current waste of public money than the fast ferries experiment. Namely the equivalent of two fast ferry units each and every year we pay to the shareholders of Independent Power Producers for no justifiable reason.

Could it be that Mr. de Jong's frugality extends to being economical with the truth?

RossK said...

Lew--

The truth?

Would that not be a negative 'de Jong Unit'?


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RossK said...

Anon-At-The-Top--

Ya, but...

At $989 million that's only a measly six 'de Jong Units', so why should he and his worry.

After all, now that the pillaging is done it's not their problem now anyhow.

Right?

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NVG--

Thing is....that was all snark at the time.

Regardless, never in a million Marky Mark minutes did I think they would actually use the ff's to justify their ridiculously profligate ways and means.


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cfvua said...

Perhaps Mr. DeJong is more familiar with the BCRail Gift to Insider units. Of which the site C boondoggaility would equal 12. He would no doubt then point out that it "only" cost .006 of a unit to suppress the information that would have lead to who made the decision to give the gift. A decision that has and will cost communities like Ft Nelson and Tumbler Ridge, as they become hostages of big rail. Looking forward to a visit to the far end of rail from the candidate as he tries to convince undecideds who he is/isn't.

North Van's Grumps said...

Interesting eh, Premier Gordon Campbell blows $1.6 billion on HST and is kicked out of office; and then Premier Christy Clark spends another $1.6 billion and is kicked out of office

Mr. Beer N. Hockey said...

There is an addiction afflicting De Jong and more than a few others that appears to be very nearly untreatable: the uncontrollable urge to keep on bringing up the fast ferries.

RossK said...

Excellent points cfvua - thanks!

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NVG--

Ten de Jong Units each is all it took to sink each of them?!!!

If only we'd known in, say, 2009!


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RossK said...

Beer--

Fast Cat Scratch Fever, perhaps?


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Willy said...

Next time he'll make some cookies to bring along.

North Van's Grumps said...

Good thing de Jong isn't at the 2017 negotiating table over the softwood dispute because ....

Robert Matas
Vancouver
From Friday's Globe and Mail
March 29, 2017
December 28, 2001

A briefcase with confidential documents from the contentious negotiations over the multibillion-dollar Canadian-U.S. softwood lumber dispute was stolen three days before Christmas from B.C. Forest Minister Mike de Jong's vehicle.

The briefcase and other items were stolen Dec. 22 while he was at a shopping mall.

It contained sensitive government documents from the trade negotiations and his passport.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/forest-ministers-briefcase-sensitive-documents-stolen/article25452130/

Danneau said...

Mikey was in PA? I didn't get the invite so I couldn't not go. I'm sure that he and the Black Press toady had lots of echo to bounce around. And that Fast Cat Scratch Fever? Gotta be on a uke.

Unknown said...

Soon. ... wheres cutesy? Mike and richey own lots high ticket real estate,c.c.owns 1/2 a holiday property on galiano,but grifters always have a bag packed by the door...

Anonymous said...

Just watch NDP will vote for more -24 fast ferries, re SITE C , that will sink them the next election if Greens dont do it first.

scorpion on the back of an alligtor crossing river.

https://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/scorpion.asp

motorcycleguy said...

If I were the President of BC I would book an hour on the TV right after the Global ET Tonite "News" entertainment program that is on every night at 6.....I would have Moody's Credit Rating in a seat and say "Mr. Moody, will you or will you not degrade the credit rating of both the Province of BC and that of BC Hydro if we proceed with this project?...the people of BC want your commitment." Then I would turn to BC Hydro in the next seat and ask for the residential addresses on each and every security permit that has been issued to workers on site. As the on-camera assistant tallies these numbers I would turn to the Union rep and the CLAC rep and ask how many of each of these identified workers are in their Union or association and at what rate of pay, and what number of total hours of work have they been promised. While they are figuring that out, the APEGBC rep in the next chair over will be asked "Will or will not the banks continue to slide and will or will not they be stable after years of changing reservoir levels and earth tremors...and..."Is your organization taking full legal and financial responsibility for any failure and/o cost overruns due to unforeseen geological problems?" This answer should not take long as after all, the project is already fully engineered by accredited professionals.

Then as President of BC I would turn to the viewers and say either "OK, got this first part all figured out in one hour.....tomorrow we will get environmental impact facts and the day after that commitments on profit that the owners of BC Hydro will realize in what time frame.

Or....I will say "Jeez, see that?....no one has been able to provide even this small amount of data so we better not believe the rest of what we are being told about this project that will only contribute about 10% of our generation capacity...they're fired (with generous severance for the actual workers of course)".

e. a. f. said...

don't forget the deck there either...............

fast ferries, if that is all they ever had to complain about they're lucky. I've got a much bigger list to complain about during the 16 year reign of money being shovelled off the back of the truck to B.C. Lieberal insiders. At least the fast cats where built in B.C. el gordo had ferries built in Germany and Christy had them built in Poland, the new Germany for manufacturing because its cheaper than Germany these days

el gordo gave a way a rail way which belonged to the people of this province, not nice.

Scotty on Denman said...

Mike! D’oh Gong!

Anonymous said...

Well after 16 years of propa and 34 billion dollars debt added?

Anonymous said...

It's a bonfire of the absurdities?

Hugh said...

Quote today in BC Legislature:

"There are 3,000 trillion cubic feet of (natural) gas that we have here (in BC). Let me put that into perspective. That's enough gas to help power every house, energize every house in Canada for 8,000 years."

And how much fresh water would be needed in order to frack it all out of the ground?

https://www.leg.bc.ca/documents-data/debate-transcripts/41st-parliament/2nd-session/20171120am-House-Blues

North Van's Grumps said...

@MotorCycleGuy et al

Environmental Impact Statement for Site C Clean Energy Project

http://www.llbc.leg.bc.ca/public/pubdocs/bcdocs2013/528795/vol_3/index.htm

North Van's Grumps said...

If you want a clearer picture of just how far along Site C is at the two year mark out of ten years, then there is this image generated by BC Hydro from its Environment folder.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p8dxKE3OBZM/WhJpvxAbzgI/AAAAAAAAS28/naFaiBtNtuQ5FnVRO0VwUY6g7CzO0EQvQCLcBGAs/s400/Site-C-Labour-Req-Fix.jpg

Anonymous said...

false narratives and the institutional imperatives