WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL WITH B.C. FERRIES LOSSES?
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Hits: 1981
By HUBERT BEYER
VICTORIA – So Liberal leader Gordon Campbell wants a public inquiry into B.C. Ferries’ finances. Don’t hold your breath, Gordo. Governments are notoriously reluctant to have public inquiries. Nor am I sure one is called for.
What about the finances of the ferry fleet that could rout most of the world’s navies if the B.C. taxpayers sprang for outfitting the ships with a few guns and missiles? Like navies, B.C. Ferries is costing us a lot of money.
With a fleet larger in numbers than the Canadian Navy, B.C. Ferries is caught between a rock and a hard place. One the one hand, it needs to continuously upgrade its aging fleet and terminal facilities; on the other hand, it is unable to break even, leave alone turn a profit.
The first time I travelled on the ferry was in 1969, after pulling up stakes at the Winnipeg Free Press in favor of a job at the Daily Colonist in balmy Victoria. Smart choice, eh?
Back then, the ferry vessels were tiny, compared with today’s super ferries, holding less than 200 cars. The Swartz Bay terminal in Sidney, near Victoria, was little more than a wooden shack. But at the time, the facilities sufficed.
Then the travel explosion happened. Tourist flocked to Vancouver Island in ever-increasing numbers. More islanders visited the Mainland more often. B.C. Ferries responded by making its existing vessels bigger, extending them in length and, in some cases, cutting the ships lengthwise and adding a car deck.
That was sufficient for a while, but demand soon outstripped the Crown corporation’s infrastructure. It became clear that more new vessels were needed. Eventually, two super ferries were added to the fleet and work is in progress on a number of catamarans.
All that is costing money, a lot of money. The corporation’s latest annual report, released earlier this week, showed a $76.5 million loss for the last fiscal year, compared with $39.4 million the previous year.
To stem the tide of red ink, B.C. Ferries last week raised fares for he second time this year. That, however, won’t be the answer. If fares are too high, passenger use will drop off, causing losses to go even higher.
There’s one solution to the problem. Stop demanding that the ferry service has to operate on a break-even basis. Make the service free to British Columbians, but continue charging tourists.
To keep travel-happy British Columbians from abusing the free service, a quota system of free trips, based on the current average usage, could be established. Anyone using the ferries beyond their allocated quota would also pay. I’m sure a workable scheme could be hammered out.
A radical idea? Not at all. With the exception of the Coquihalla Highway, we travel on our road system free of charge. Even tourists don’t pay to use our highways. The whole shebang is paid out of general revenue, and nobody is asking for a pubic inquiry because keeping up the highway system costs a lot of money.
Dan Miller, the cabinet minister responsible for B.C. Ferries, seems to have come to a similar conclusion, saying that the ferries are an important and integral part of our transportation system and can’t be expected to entirely pay for themselves.
Still, for some years now, governments at every level have been flirting with the user-pay philosophy. But isn’t one of the government’s basic functions to level the playing field, to make sure that costs are spread as evenly and equitably as possible?
Some people never set foot in a public library, but part of their taxes pays for libraries. People in Victoria pay their share for highways maintenance up north, even if they don’t own a car. So what’s the preoccupation with B.C. Ferries’ operating losses?
The cost f operating the ferry system will keep going up. Losses will be unavoidable. And eventually, some government will again dust off the old proposals of a fixed link between Vancouver Island and the Mainland. And sooner or later, the idea will make so much economic sense that the link will be built.
In he meantime, no public inquiry is going to change the fact that it costs more money to run the ferries than they can possibly generate in revenues.
THANKS GREENPEACE
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VICTORIA -- After years of lobbying abroad for a boycott of B.C. lumber, Greenpeace has finally struck pay dirt.
B & Q, one of Britain’s largest do-it-yourself furniture-maker chains has announced that it will boycott B.C. hemlock, the predominant species on the West Coast. O.K, so it took Greenpeace a few years, but putting people out of work is a job that can’t be done overnight.
In a letter to MacMillan Bloedel’s distributor in Europe, the company said it intends to stop buying hemlock from Mac Blo next year and switch to pine from Scandinavian forests.
The decision to find a substitute for hemlock was made because B & Q doesn’t believe that MacMillan Bloedel and other West Coast forest companies will achieve international standards for logging of hemlock by the end of 1999.
The Forest Stewardship Council, an international group of representatives from industry, government, environmentalists and others, set those standards in 1994 at a conference in Oaxaca, Mexico,
Regional councils were to adopt the standards that deal with issues such as environmental impact, tenure and use rights, indigenous peoples’ rights and rules for monitoring.
A few years ago, businesses in Britain informed Canadian companies that they would look elsewhere for wood products if the Canadian companies didn’t move towards those standards.
B & Q’s decision to stop buying hemlock isn’t going to be the end of British Columbia’s forest industry. The company buys its wood all over the world. MacMillan Bloedel’s market share is between $1 million and $2 million a year. But B $ Q’s move could prompt other companies to follow suit.
B & Q is a member of a buyers group that includes 79 other companies with annual sales in wood products worth about $7 billion. That’s considerable clout. And we owe it all to Greenpeace.
For years, Greenpeace has spread fear and loathing by using its massive international influence to portray British Columbia as the Brazil of the North. Its tactics have included every trick in the book.
The former Harcourt government established the Commission on Resources and Environment, which came up with detailed land-use plans. It brought in a tough Forest Practices Code, so tough, indeed, that rigid adherence to it would place the entire forest industry at risk.
Nothing was enough for Greenpeace. The organization continued to lobby against the province and its forest industry around the world, which earned it the name "enemies of British Columbia" from Premier Glen Clark.
Greenpeace said B & Q’s decision to stop buying hemlock from British Columbia was a wake-up call for government and industry. To me it’s more of a wake-up call for ordinary people to take another hard look at Greenpeace.
To engineer a boycott of our forest products thousands of miles away is no achievement. It’s a disgrace.
You can’t blame B & Q for pulling the plug. These people are in business to make money. And if the buying public in Britain is convinced, thanks to the efforts of Greenpeace, that we ravage our forests, B & Q won’t buy from us, no matter what the reality may be.
One final word to Greenpeace: if you want to find out how to be responsible and effective environmentalists, read "To Save the Wild Earth" by Rick Careless.
In the 25 years Rick has been active in the environmental movement, he’s done more to make British Columbia a better and more beautiful place than Greenpeace could ever hope to achieve.
RECALL – THE NDP’S FAVORITE WHINE
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VICTORIA – When David Stockell got the green light from B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bryan Williams to file a class action suit against the NDP for alleged fraudulent pre-election claims, Premier Glen Clark said in so many words he was looking forward to beating up on the Kelowna printer in court.
Stockell is the guy who felt that he was had by the NDP’s election promise of a balanced budget. He’s pretty sure the premier knew very well that he couldn’t deliver a balanced budget, so he lied to the public to get the NDP elected for a second term
Well, the premier may have been ecstatic about the forthcoming court scrap, but Brian Gardiner, provincial secretary of the B.C. New Democratic Party, is less than thrilled about it.
In a three-page letter to NDP members, old Brian shows himself a bit of a whiner. Appealing to NDP supporters for "immediate help," financial that is, Gardiner accuses opponents of refusing to accept the defeat voters handed them in the last election.
"They are going to extreme ends, taking an obviously partisan case to the courts to try to win from a judge the victory B.C. voters denied them."
God forbid that anyone except the NDP become partisan. Why, we would end up with political politics, which as W.A.C. Bennett said, is the worst kind.
Gardiner also goes on at length about the evils of recall legislation, which "other outside interests" are using to "try to defeat our MLAs and install the Liberals in government."
Brian, my boy, I’m one of the few British Columbians who has a right to call the Recall and Initiative Act one of the most stupid pieces of legislation ever introduced, because I called it that even when it was put before voters for their opinion.
You, of all people, have no right to whine about it, because it was your party that brought it in, not because it considered recall another step along the road of evolutionary democracy, but because it was politically expedient.
Much as been said about whether the legislation was meant to give voters chance to recall an MLA for gross misconduct or as little as a perception that he or she isn’t really representing the interests of the constituents. I’ve got a bucket of e-mail letters, explaining just why Helmut Giesbrecht and Paul Ramsey should be recalled.
As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter. Recall is a stupid idea. That’s my story and I’m going to stick by it, no matter how many letters I get trying to convince me that it’s the best thing since the king stopped beheading members of parliament.
I’m quite content to use regular elections to voice my opinion on the conduct and performance of my MLA and the government. That system has served us just fine and will continue to do so.
That isn’t to say I support Brian Gardiner and his crew who are now desperately trying to fend off the recall threat, and want money from NDP supporters to do so.
I believe it would be very interesting to see the recall initiative succeed, because from that moment on, politics in British Columbia, which is already a blood sport, would be elevated to new heights.
Those who now live by the sword would surely die by the sword. If Giesbrecht and Ramsey are recalled, the NDP’s slim majority will be down the tube and a general election will almost certainly follow soon.
Assuming that the Liberals win that election, a whole squadron of their members would stare their own recall in the face 18 months after the election. And it would serve them right.
Recall should never have been introduced. Once introduced it should never have been invoked. Now that it has, there’s little chance to get rid of it. The ultimate problem with the legislation is that only extraordinary courage or naked fear could prompt any government to scrap it.
It sure feels good to be able to say, I told you so.
GOVERNMENT GETTING HAMMERED IN COURT
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Hits: 1958
VICTORIA – For the past six weeks, a logging company has been squaring off with the provincial government in Prince George Supreme Court, and the way things are going, the powers that be in Victoria may well be on the hook for up to $150 million.
The case involves an inordinate amount of bureaucratic arrogance and political shenanigans, the latter of which achieved new heights last week, when Carrier Lumber of Prince George was finally able to produce documents it had requested under the province’s freedom of information legislation.
By all appearances, the government had tried every trick in the book to delay turning the documents over to Carrier Lumber, which prompted Judge W. Glen Parrett to order an investigation into a possible government cover-up.
"There are grounds for the gravest of concerns as to what is going on in the Ministry of Forests and their disclosure of relevant and material documents in this case. I am appalled by the inferences that could be drawn from these documents, and the timing and method of their disclosure," Parrett said.
"Whether it was deliberate and calculated or the results of utter incompetence is an issue that, in my view, must be resolved," he added. Those are pretty strong words from a judge, but more about the documents later. First some background.
The matter goes back to 1983, when Carrier Lumber was granted a 10-year licence to cut five million cubic feet of beetle-infested timber on the Chilcotin Plateau, about 200 kilometres west of Williams Lake.
Carrier Lumber intended to harvest the timber with modular, pre-fabricated mills to be transported to locations in the Chilcotin. The method was widely hailed as a pioneering venture, on a scale never before seen in British Columbia. More than 200 people were employed in the venture.
Disaster struck Carrier Lumber in 1991, when Native bands put up roadblocks, preventing the company from logging.
Trying to settle the dispute, then Premier Harcourt first tried to talk the Natives into mounting a joint venture with Carrier Lumber. When that failed, he promised the Natives there would be no logging without their permission.
It was then left up to the forest ministry to find a way of making Harcourt’s bungled decision stick. And since there was no legal and overt way of cancelling Carrier’s licence, a sneaky and covert one had to do.
In cancelling the licence, the ministry claimed that the company had not lived up to its silviculture obligations, basing its case o a law passed in 1987 by the Social Credit government. That legislation, however, was meant to apply only to large companies which held licences practically in perpetuity, not for smaller firms such as Carrier Lumber, whose licence was non-renewable.
The government steadfastly claimed that the legislation had been intended for all companies. That claim was solidly trashed during the court proceedings.
But the government’s defence began to get really shaky when Dick Byl, Carrier’s lawyer, presented documents he had at long last obtained under freedom of information rules, including one from an Indian band linked to the case.
The documents were clearly relevant to the case and should have been made available to Carrier Lumber and, more important, the court, at the start of the trial, not midway through.
Paul Pearlman, acting on behalf of the government, appeared at a loss. "I don’t have any satisfactory explanation," he said, adding that he was concerned that there may be more documents to be produced.
The judge postponed a decision on Carrier’s request to throw out the government’s defence and rule in favor of the company right now. For the moment, the case has been put on hold because a key witness became ill.
And just about now, if I were Forest Minister David Zirnhelt or any of the forest ministry bureaucrats involved in the mess, I’d be starting to get worried. The government and the forest ministry may finally learn that they cannot do anything they want.
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