BC Ferries: Enjoy The Death Spiral While You Escape The Crowds...

...In The Scenic 'Seawest Lounge'.

Jack Knox has a piece in the Victoria Times Colonist today on a report/submission from the 'Ferries Advisory Committee Chairs', which is a group that represents coastal communities that depend on BC Ferries for all manner of things.

Interestingly, it would appear that the 'Chairs' were never taken over by the Golden Era quislings and cronies that Mr. Campbell (and his successor) have installed, willy-nilly, province-wide.

Why have I arrived at that conclusion?

Because the Chairs have just released a report that says something that we, and others, have been saying for some time now.

Which is that the constant fare increases (and, yes, that includes that bloody reservation fee) are driving down ridership and, thus, revenue:

...“This is an affordability death spiral,” the submission states. “It is the core problem facing coastal ferry service.”

The paper argues that instead of increasing revenue, fare hikes are choking off ridership. It predicts that means Ferries will miss budget targets by at least $20.5 million during its current four-year contract with the government...

****

Now.

There has been quite a bit of caterwauling from the usual suspects recently about executive compensation at BC Ferries, approved, of course, by the above mentioned cronies and quislings.

Which I agree is an issue.

But a bigger issue, I think, is the fact that it would appear that that the very same, very well compensated executives do not have to travel on BC Ferries regularly like the rest of us.

Why have I arrived at this second, somewhat more tentative, conclusion?

Well...

Firstly, because I spend lots of time walking the Whackadoodle up and down a little strip of sand where the North Arm of the Fraser meets the Georgia Straight, I see those Helijets filled to bursting with cronies, quislings and executive types (but never ever uber-fine fellows dressed in Spiderman garb) whipping by non-stop.

Secondly, every time I cross the Straight on a ferry that luxurious Seawest Lounge pictured above, which was built to buffer said executives, cronies and quisling from the great unwashed, sits pretty much empty.

In fact, much of that luxury seating sat unused, on both trips we took, coming and going, on the Thanksgiving Weekend just past while the regular riders paying the salaries and stipends of said executives, cronies and quislings (eg. families with small kids) were were forced to sit on the floor in steerage due to the lack of seats.

OK?


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You can read the full submission of the Chairs, here....Gosh, wonder how long it will take the Snooklandians to get rid of them now?....I mean, it's not like they haven't gotten rid of truth tellers before...Right?


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RailGate Resurfacing....Boss! Boss!...The Spur!!!

There'sNo40LikeTheGolden
FourtyVille


Well, well, well.

Looks like that little chunk of track that may or may not have been dangled as some sort of bizarre 'stay in the game/quid pro quo' strategy a decade ago, is back in the news again.

Lori Culbert had the latest chapter in the BC Rail 'Spur Line' saga in Thursday's VSun. Here is her lede:

Troubled BC Rail sold off its trains almost a decade ago and was absorbed into the transportation ministry in 2010, and yet it still has 20 executives and staff that collectively made nearly $4 million last year.

The question critics ask is what are these employees doing, after the government sold its trains and leased its rail lines to CN in a controversial 2004 deal that sparked a police raid of the Legislature, a high-profile criminal trial, and the public paying $6 million in defence lawyer bills?

According to government documents, the primary mandate of BC Rail now is to support the expansion of goods coming into the province through the Pacific Gateway Strategy, which involves “acquiring, holding and managing railway corridor and strategic port lands and making related infrastructure investments.”

BC Rail still owns the 40-km spur line to Roberts Bank port, manages the CN lease of its railbed and tracks, and operates a real estate subsidiary...

All of which is interesting, as far as it goes.

But...

What Ms. Culbert's piece (as published at least) failed to mention is the fact that, just like the rest of BC Rail tracks, the Spur Line was also for sale way back when.

And then, suddenly, in the spring of 2004 (i.e. a few months after the Ledge raids when the investigations were going pretty much every which way) the bidding on the Spur was suddenly halted when the Horsemen informed a very fine fellow named Kevin Falcon that the process was 'tainted'.

Which brings us to another chapter of the saga that appears to have little, if anything, to do with clandestine meetings at lupine-like restaurants and/or gladiator games on mile-high gridirons. We summarized that part of the tale thusly:

...(The following is from) the transcript of a RailGate-associated RCMP wiretap of a conversation between Mr. David Basi and Mr. Bruce Clark (Ms. Christy Clark's brother) wherein they discuss a 'Request for Proposals' (RFP) for the BC Rail 'Spur Line' in the fall of 2003. The transcript was finally released to the public in early 2011:


David Basi: "So basically, um, what we have is the draft RFP."

Bruce Clark: "Okay."

Basi: "Um, that uh, we have t' make changes and y'know, uh, um, we can draft it anyway we want now, right: so..."

Clark: "Whose, wh', whose hands is it in?"

Basi: "It's, it's in our hands right now."

Clark: "Okay."

Basi: "Uh, and then it'll go back to transportation. And then they'll look at it and then they'll uh, um, issue the official RFP."

Clark: "Okay. What are the time lines like?"

Basi: "Uh, two weeks."

Basi: "So, I can sit on this thing for two weeks. So if you come back next week then you can take it and look at it, show it to them. They can, they can, y'know, change some of the words around, that's obviously, some buzz words they wanna see in there, right?"

Clark: "Yeah."

Basi: "And these, these companies know how to, how to, y'know, get the fluff out of this shit and how to tailor it to themselves, right?"

Clark: "Of course." 

...{snippety doo-dah}... 

Clark: "Wonder, wonder if it would be better if you got it couriered from here or not?"

Basi: "I don't care. Whatever you want. I don't care."

Clark: "Okay, well maybe I'll get you to courier it to Europe for me, or something."

Basi: "You want me to courier it to Europe?"

Clark: "Sure, you could do that."


...{snippety doodle-dandy}...


Clark: "Or uh, or, or can it be faxed or something or?"

Basi: "Oh it can be faxed, yeah. Do you wanna give me a fax, secure fax number?"

Clark: "Yeah, I'll get you a secure fax number and we can do it that way."

Basi: "Yeah, you get me a fax number and I'll fax it to you.

Clark: "Sounds great my friend."

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One last thing....As for that 'troubled' descriptor right at the top of Ms. Culbert's pyramid lede....In our opinion (and we are not alone) that type of stuff lives on because a fiction that was deliberately written by the architects of the Golden Era so that it could be used both to change public opinion and to make a massive tax write-off possible for the pre-selected winning bidder of the big prize....OK?


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That Day In Snookland...The Railgate Reunion?

HeWhoKeepsDiggingFindsAllTheNuggets
MackinVille


Bob Mackin has been doing a little digging into who was 'invited' to Christy Clark's 'private' Cabinet swinging Swear-In back in the early summer:

Premier Christy Clark broke from tradition on June 7 with a Cabinet Naming Ceremony at Canada Place. In case you missed it, the entire 54-minute, 37-second extravaganza is available on YouTube...

{snippety doo-dah}

...So who went? That is a good question. The attendance list was not released, but the list of invitees was. See it below. I pored over the document and made some lists of my own...

****

And, guess what...

Pretty much the entire BC Rail 'Sale/Not-Sale gang (sans Spiderman, of course) was invited to the really big show:

...There were eight key figures from the 2003 controversy on the invite list: CN chair David McLean, ex-Premier Gordon Campbell, lobbyist/strategist Patrick Kinsella, ex-lobbyist/Campbell aide Jamie Elmhirst, ex-BC Rail director James Shepard, ex-Finance Minister Gary Collins, ex-Deputy Minister Chris Trumpy, ex-BC Liberal Party executive director Kelly Reichert...


Imagine that!


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Go read Uncle Bob's entire post to learn more, including how the 'timing' of the Swear-In ensured that there was no need to follow lobbyist reporting rules.
Speaking of digging and nuggets and all that.....Norm!



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This Day In Snookland...Let The Shinying Begin.

Heeeeerrrres...
Gregor!Ville


First out of the gate with the 'news' of a new shiny object for the Lotuslandian proMedia to focus on, post-Horgan walk-away was, it would appear, Sunny Dhillon of The Globe:

...(Vancouver mayor Gregor) Robertson was in New York last week for a mayoral summit and will next month lead a delegation of business leaders to China. After the speech he told reporters he’ll look for opportunities to partner with Chinese companies and attract investment into Vancouver.

He also, after again being asked, insisted he’s not interested in the B.C. NDP leadership...

****

Meanwhile, the Dean actually spoke to Mr. Horgan, kinda/sorta. And in the bet-hedging that ensued Mr. Palmer floated an idea that reader scotty-on-denman had already suggested in the comments to a previous post:

...(I)f the party executive opted to hold off the (leadership) vote until 2015, Dix might continue with his intention to step down next year. In that event, John Horgan could be on the short list for interim leader.


Imagine that!


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For the record, the denizens of the PacificGazette's subterranean homesick bluesroom  (i.e. the Whackadoodle and me) actually like the interim leader idea...
And, in news that actually matters (that I missed because I've been climbing in and out bloody cigar tubes), the Snooklandians are STILL NOT funding the Therapeutics Initiative.
Interestingly, last night the cigar almost had to land in Seattle because of the dreaded, get this....Fog!....Apparently, those old Mulroney/Schreiber buses just aren't equipped for flying through pea soup.



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Did Mr. Horgan Just Clear The Tracks For...

...Eby?

I dunno for sure.

And, regardless, I'm pretty sure the punditry will focus their attention on a shiny thing called Gregor for a news cycle or three.

****

But this I do know...

Horgan would have been a heckuva premier.

And I think he would have been a fine, not to mention feisty, campaigner.

But there is all that 'old guard' baggage to consider.

Which just might be telling us something about the extent of the coming changing of that old guard.

Which could, I think, really and truly be a good thing electorally.



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And don't forget - I'm no party insider....So those of you who are may want to have a go of it in the comments...

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This Month In Snookland....Bring On The Bush Ranger Action Heroes!

There'sNoTullInThis
JethroVille


Yesterday, we noted that our fine Premier is getting together with Alberta's finest to talk pipelines 'n stuff after a November 5th Vancouver Board of Trade Mtg.

And, guess what...

An even finer fellow named Ian Anderson from Kinder Morgan's northern branch plant is going to be there too.

Along with, at least according to the Board of Trade's website, a couple of other shadowy men (and/or women) from a shadowy planet:

Imagine that!



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What's with the Bush Ranger action-hero stuff in the header you may be asking?.....Well...You know....Golden Era history...Who needs it!


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This Day In Snookland: We All Say Things To...

...Get Elected.

First there was this...

"We all say things when we are trying to get elected." 

Christy Clark Excusing Her By-Election Candidate's Outrageous Statements

Sept 21, 2012

****

Then there was this...

Alberta Premier Alison Redford met with B.C. Premier Christy Clark on Monday over the Northern Gateway oil pipeline project, and both women agreed the meeting was unproductive and “frosty.”

“Well, I'm an Albertan and when you talk about sharing Alberta's royalties with other jurisdictions, things tend to get a little bit frosty,” said Redford...

{snippety doodle-dandy}

...“We’re about the environment and there is no price that can be put on protecting our environment in British Columbia — there is none,” said (BC's [not] Premier Christy) Clark on Monday...

Ms. Clark Goes To Calgary

Oct 1st, 2012

****

And now, finally (and inevitably?), there is this...

B.C. Premier Christy Clark and Alberta Premier Alison Redford today released the terms of reference guiding their joint working group to open new energy export markets.

The two Premiers also announced they would next meet in Vancouver on November 5, following Premier Redford’s address to the Vancouver Board of Trade...

Province of Alberta Press Release

Oct 15, 2013

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All The Leaves Are (Not Quite Yet) Brown...

...But This Is The Last Sunflower.

Meanwhile, while she wasn't here for Thanksgiving, Bigger E. had a big dinner of her own with Turkey and, apparently, three, count 'em Three!, homemade pies.

Oh, ya....

And she also had time to put together this version of Wagon Wheel with her friend Y, down in the St. Laurent Metro Station:

_____
Actually, truth be told (assuming it was not a rigged scene), we actually saw photographic evidence of the remainders of the pies on the Skypemobile the morning after...
And, just so you know, the leaves on Karen's tree never listen to The Mamas and the Papas...



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Are Canadian Workers Once Again Training Temporary Foreign Workers...

...To Take Their Jobs?

Alison thinks so.

And she makes a pretty good case that it's happening in Tar Sands country:

Fort McMurray Today reports that 270 unionized welders and pipefitters contracted to the Husky Sunrise tarsands project were laid off and replaced by cheaper temporary foreign workers from Mexico, Ireland, Portugal and Italy.

Husky says their work was over but a commenter under another article who was a worker on the site disputes this :

"The work contracted to Black and McDonald was no where near complete. We had to conduct a handover to Saipem (a mostly Italian workforce), detailing to them where we had stopped work so that they may continue. In the final week, Saipem foreign workers were actually in the facility working side by side with us; a very uncomfortable situation for those of us about to be laid off."

****

Meanwhile, Alison also notes that Blair Leckstrom is doing his very best to become a vision of derision straight outta something from our Neil:

Got a man of the people, says keep hope alive... Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive...


Why?

Well, it turns out that the former member of Gord's Golden Minstrel Ministry has gone to work for HD Mines.

Yes.

That's right.

That HD Mines:

Months after controversy gripped a Chinese-backed company's efforts to bring in temporary foreign workers to mine coal in British Columbia rather than hire Canadians, newly surfaced documents show the federal government granted a key dispensation to a different, similarly Chinese backed B.C. project to hire nearly a hundred workers on the basis that they spoke Mandarin.

The project that drew criticism and court challenges in the fall was HD Mining's attempt to hire 201 foreign workers for its Murray River coal project near Tumbler Ridge, B.C. Newly revealed Services Canada files show that a partner company in HD Mining was itself given permission to bring in almost 100 foreign workers after listing Mandarin as the sole language requirement...


All of which is just another way of letting you know that, if you are not visiting Alison's 'Creekside' regularly, you are missing a lot.


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Passage about HD Mines 'criteria' for workers to work in British Columbia mines is the lede of a solid, well-researched story by Jeremy Nuttall last spring in The Tyee.


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Hey, Ari...Mullah Boehner Just Called...

....And He's Got A Deal For You And Yours.

From just one of a billion 'both sides do it' HR Puff-'N-Stuff fluff pieces that are (really, really) hurting America:

...President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, spoke on the phone Friday afternoon after the latest Republican offer, a modified deal for a short-term debt limit hike that sets up a framework for negotiations on a bigger budget deal...



______
Who's Ari?....Well, in case you've forgotten he used to shill and fling the swill for these two finest  of the fine, fine fellows...And we all know how that turned out, right?


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This Week In Snookland: Nevermind The People's Business*...

...'Cause I'm Shillin' For Shell!




______
*aka....The British Columbia Legislature


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There Was No 'Gimme, Gimme' For Young Gump Worsley.

AllTheWorld'sAPoint
SearsCatalogueVille


Former New York Rangers, Montreal Canadiens and Minnesota North Stars goalie Lorne 'Gump' Worsley entered the Hockey Hall of Fame a long, long time ago, in 1980.

But it was only this past weekend that Mr. Worsley was finally inducted into his hometown 'Point-St-Charles Hall of Recognition.'

His daughter Lianne told the Montreal Gazette's Stu Cowan that he would have been ecstatic about the latest honour:

“He would have loved this … he would have been really, really happy about it,” Lianne said about her father. “It’s too bad they didn’t do it when he was still alive, because he would have been there with bells on. He loved the Point.”

But here's the thing...

After the Gumper had finally given in to his fear of flying that was made, way, way worse by expansion and ended his playing days in the early '70's he still returned, with his growing brood, to the Pointe from time-time:

...“When we used to get too cocky at home, if it was: ‘I want, gimme this,’ he would say: ‘Get in the damn car.’” Lianne recalled. “So he’d pile the kids in the car and he’d drive us to the Point and then he would tell us how when he played hockey as a kid outside that they had to use road apples and that they had to use Sears catalogues as pads, ‘So don’t you start with the gimme, gimme, or I’m just going to give you a Sears catalogue.’...

All of which got me to thinking about one of my favourite John K. Samson song-poems of all time...

____
And in case you were wondering....Stu Cowan also had a companion piece last week explaining how Gump got his nickname.

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This Day In Snookland...The 'L' Word.

YouKeepOnUsingThat
(Clean)WordVille


Based on the pre-game, leak-assisted wurlitzering that was Mike Smyth's column yesterday, it would appear that the Fazil-assisted Snooklandians are gearing up to play the 'Let's All Pitch-In And Fix Our Oil Spill Problem' card in the upcoming newscycle or four.

But anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention knows that our woeful spill response capability is very, very old news indeed.

Instead, the newer (non-Malaysian) 'energy' news is about the cleanliness (or lack thereof) of Christy Clark's herd of LNG  sparkle-ponies  that was broken by Justine Hunter of The Globe last week.

First, there was Ms. Clark's reiteration of the very carefully parsed 'clean' pitch of uber-fauxiosity:

...“My commitment is to have the cleanest LNG facilities in the world,” Ms. Clark told an editorial board meeting of The Globe and Mail on Tuesday.

The Premier has made that promise to British Columbia repeatedly, a commitment that could have repercussions for natural gas producers if it applied to extraction of the raw resource.

“We have set a goal to have the cleanest LNG in the world,” the Premier told the World Economic Forum in Tianjin, China, last year...


Then came an attempt to obfuscate obtusely when it came to the reality of the thing, also straight from the mouth of the  'Say Anything' Premier herself:

...(Ms. Clark) clarified on Tuesday that she never intended for that commitment to capture the emissions produced upstream.

“We don’t produce LNG in the northeast, we produce natural gas. We will produce liquefied natural gas in the northwest, so that’s what we have been talking about,” she said. “There is no ‘L’ in LNG until it gets to Kitimat or Prince Rupert.”...

Jeebuz!

Does Ms. Clark really think the world will swallow her codswallop that 'upstream' frack-gas from the North-East will suddenly become 'clean' just because it has been shipped to, and then liquified in, the North-West?


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What Real Editorial Pages Editors Should Do Every Single Day...

PostMediaDemonstratesItReallyCanDo
BetterVille


...Is write stuff like this:

...(T)hrough it all, the response of the Conservative party has been either spin (in the case of in and out), stubborn support (Del Mastro, Penashue), silence combined with juvenile deflection (robocalls) and even, a judge found, outright “trench warfare” to prevent the courts from looking into allegations of electoral fraud.

In short, every election since Stephen Harper became prime minister has been associated with some Conservative battle with Elections Canada, some scandal over broken rules.

It is hard not to wonder whether Harper’s Conservative government has a problem with Elections Canada...

Now.

The above passage was written by Kate Heartfield, the current editorial pages editor of the Ottawa Citizen.

And it came just below her lede, which consisted of a concise short re-cap of the various and assorted sundry 'difficulties' that Mr. Harper and colleagues have had with Elections Canada over the years (although Ms. Heartfield did miss this one).

More importantly, Ms. Heartfield then provides a detailed, data-backed analysis of the 'difficulties' (and more) before she finishes with the following bit of 'anti-false equivalency' conclusion making:

...Stephen Harper is not a corrupt politician in the old sense, and he does not run a corrupt government. Compared to his predecessors, there is little of the cronyism, featherbedding, influence peddling and so on that has been the hallmark of traditional political corruption in Canada. This helps explain Harper’s substantial appeal to the middle class.

Yet Harper’s Conservatives have shown themselves willing to twist the rules into whatever shape is necessary to win. To spin. To control information. To push all possible boundaries, from prorogation to questions of privilege to manipulation of electoral law.

Combine that with enormous stubbornness and unwillingness to retreat, and you have what is starting to look like an unsettling disdain not just for the “jackasses” in the electoral bureaucracy, but for the democratic process itself...


This really is editorial page writing of the finest kind.

And it deserves to be lauded as such because it both informs the public and puts public officials on notice that they will be held accountable for any and all fast ones they try to pull based on the actual evidence at hand.

And that's we need a whole lot more of around here.

OK?

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This Day In Snookland...Ms. Clark Goes To Washington.

Nice shot of the Capitol Dome in the background....

Gosh.

Can't help but wonder how long will it be before 'attended' Congress starts showing up in the good Premier's bio.

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