This Evening In Snookland...Mars?...There's No Water On Mars!

WhatWouldMiloMinderbinderDo

PayToPlayVille

Last weekend, after her online editorial minions began posting up photos of the boss opportunistically 'running into' front line firefighters in the Okanagan, we wondered if there would be any such photos of  Ms. Clark coming across a Mars water bomber during the fighting of the then still growing West Kelowna Smith Creek fire.

Anyway...

Laila Yuile has done some digging and, given the 'pay-to-play' track record of both the Snooklandians and the Knotty Gordians before them (e.g. this), Laila wonders if, perhaps, the fine fellow and former longterm public servant mentioned below might be able to shed some light on why the Mars water bomber was shut down due to the non-renewal of a longterm aerial suppression contract with the Coulson Group (at a cost $750,000 per year) and why a new contract was implemented with Conair (at a cost $1,800,000 per year):

Hmmm.. who would be best suited to offer a knowledgeable perspective on the government's choice to go with the costlier contract to Conair?

How about someone with first-hand, government experience, who “joined Conair in the spring of 2013 after a 36 year career with the British Columbia Forest Service, all in the forest fire domain with 26 years specifically in airtanker operations. Jeff (Berry) was the head of British Columbia’s Airtanker Program from 1996 to 2013.” http://conair.ca/conair_team/jeff-berry

Now.

This new hiring by Conair might or might not have had anything to do with the contract switcheroo by the Snooklandians.

But given the essentially empty explanation for the switcheroo that has been offered up by the Snooklandian Minister responsible, Mr. Steve Thompson, it is not unreasonable, in my opinion, for a rational person who has been paying attention to wonder what the heck really went down.

Laila also wonders if there might be some political payback being played on Wayne Coulson for his stance against the Snooklandian raw log export policy.

Go have a look at her entire post.

It's a good one.

(There is also quite a bit of good discussion in the comments to Laila's post as well...Brett Mineer, in particular makes some thoughtful contrarian points...Gosh, maybe he should be speaking for the Minister - and I mean that it in a good, knowledgable, non-PAB-Bottian way)

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West Kelowna fire update...As of 5:00pm Tuesday it was 60% contained....Snooklandian photo-op follow-up coming?

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