The
leak that the Campbell government has entered into a 990
year contract with CN for BC Rail opens new insight into
how that government works. Many thought that 90 years was
a long time (60 years with an option to renew for 30), but
Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon has confirmed that
the contract provides 15 opportunities to renew for 60 years
each.
In order
to get an idea of what kind of changes may occur over the
next 990 years, it is useful to consider what the world
looked like 990 years ago, in the year 1014. That was 200
years before the Magna
Carta. It was 50 years before the Norman
conquest. Around year 1014, Europe saw the early development
of cities, and the formalization of a feudal system which
provided more security to the population. The modern state
was still hundreds of years away. In the late middle ages
people didn't wake up to a hot shower, radio, TV, the Internet,
electricity, planes, cars, or even the power loom. The year
1014 came over 700 years before the industrial
revolution. With a time span of 990 years, imagine what
the planning documents must look like in the secret recesses
of the Campbell government where they no doubt do due
diligence before signing a 990 year contract! The consequences
of global warming will be more evident within the next century.
What do you suppose the Campbell government has projected
for year 2994?
The
latest spin out of Campbell land is that each of the 60
year options for extension are up to the government of the
day, not CN or its successors. There is a slight catch-22
for those who have been listening carefully to government
spin. At each 60 year point government can exercise its
option only if it chooses to buy back the railway. In other
words, government rhetoric about the renewals being solely
up to government is nonsense. Having the option to re-purchase
is fundamentally different from having the railway revert
to the crown.
As they
struggle to regain control of the runaway story, Campbell's
sleuths must be looking at how Province columnist Michael
Smyth obtained a copy of the secret 1,500 page contract.
Can Smyth expect his hard drive to be seized during a midnight
raid in an effort to expose the leak? Open, transparent
and honest are not terms easily applied to a government
that gives one of its major campaign donors a prime asset
and then tells the public they can wait to see what information
will be made public after it is too late to change course.
Then again, by Stardate 2994 maybe they will have time travel.
April
20, 2004
Inconsistencies
in the BC Rail Story
On Sunday,
April 18th, Province columnist Mike Smyth broke the story
that the Campbell government's contract with CN, with respect
to BC Rail, allows 15 extensions of 60 years each - in other
words it is a 990 year deal, not the 90 year deal government
claimed. Smyth also reported that the deal contains a provision
where the land under abandoned track can be sold to CN for
just one dollar. As expected, opposition members Joy MacPhail
and Jenny Kwan focused on BC Rail in Monday's questions period,
and Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon confirmed Smyth's
report, although he attempted to minimize the importance of
the provisions.
In answer
to Kwan's question on the provision for selling land, Falcon
said "The reason we did that is because we wanted to
ensure that if there was a case where track in which they
were operating had, for example, significant environmental
remediation costs associated with it, we wanted to ensure
that we had the right to make sure that the operator could
not discontinue that section of the track and turn it over
to a taxpayer obligation." The government didn't have
its choreography working very well on Monday, as demonstrated
by the first bill called for debate following question period,
the Environmental Management Amendment Act, 2004. MacPhail
immediately used the opportunity to say:
"The
government's saying: "Oh, we're gonna force CN to take
land for a buck, because if it's contaminated, then they'll
have to clean it up. We're going to give them billions of
dollars of land, because if it's contaminated, then they'll
have to clean it up." Why not just make a law or enforce
the law that was on the books that the owner had to clean
it up regardless?"
Bill Barsioff,
the Minister of Water, Land and Air Protection, had trouble
answering any of MacPhail's questions. He made no attempt
to explain why the government has a provision in its contract
with CN that would allow the giveaway of crown land rather
than requiring that CN clean up anything that is environmentally
damaged. It looks like the Campbell government can't keep
its story straight, and it can't explain what it is doing.
Giving land away for a buck, and extending a lease for 990
years is contrary to everything Campbell said about the BC
Rail deal, the deal he still refuses to call a sale.
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