British Columbia's ticking time bomb

Brought to you by Gordon Campbell and a failed forest protection policy. (Emphasis mine)

Many communities in the B.C. Interior are at significant risk of potentially catastrophic forest fires this summer, because critical prevention work promised by the government has not been done, a forestry expert said Friday.

It could make 2003, when the town of Louis Creek was wiped off the BC landscape, look tame.

Campbell and his Vancouver-centric government have been in possession of the facts for six years.

British Columbians can consider themselves fortunate that the disaster was not worse. Few communities in the province would have been immune from an interface fire, given the extreme danger ratings over the course of the summer. Without action, the danger remains.

And what came out of that report, now sitting on a shelf, gathering dust?

Oh yeah... that. And that. And that. And, not least of all, this.

The top 100 bureaucrats in the provincial government will receive salary increases as large as 43 per cent, all in a bid to attract and keep top executives...

Right. Heckuva job they're doing. I'm willing to bet there is not one of those "top bureaucrats", regardless of ministery, who doesn't have at least one priority file with the words 2010 Olympics in it distracting them from the job British Columbians are actually paying them to do.

There must be an election in BC...

Political party leaders have discovered a new place in the province.

That would be anywhere in Canada's third-largest province that isn't Greater Vancouver or Greater Victoria.

Lo and behold, BC Liberal leader (and incumbent premier) Gordon Campbell and BC NDP leader Carole James both parachuted into the same southern BC interior city... on the same day. The only time Kamloops sees that much concentration of political power, outside an election, is when a political party times an annual strategy planning and massage retreat to coincide with the greening up of golf courses dotting the South Thompson River.

What's so important about Kamloops? Bellwether ridings. The members elected from Kamloops usually take their seats on the government benches of the legislature.

So, Gordo reaches into his pocket and pulls out a reminder of the "gift" he gave to the BC southern interior last fall.

At a rally in Kamloops Thursday night, Campbell used his government's recent move to cancel tolls on the Coquihalla highway as a way to garner support.

"There are truckers, there are families, there are communities that are really pleased we have taken the toll off the Coquihalla," Campbell said to a cheering crowd.

The cheering crowd would be the party faithful, such as they are. Kamloopsians in general, however, probably view the removal of tolls on the Coquihalla highway (one of two super-highways in BC) somewhat differently.

The highway is a legacy of Expo 86 and had tolls slapped on it by the government of Bill Bennett. The tolls were never intended to finance ordinary construction of the highway, nor were they levied to recover the cost of ordinary maintenance. The promise associated with the construction and accompanying tolls was that once the cost of accelerated construction was recovered, the tolls would be removed.

Thanks to Campbell, however, that never happened.

At about the same time the Coquihalla was removed from the province's list of contingent liabilities, instead of removing the tolls, Campbell offered the highway up for lease to the private sector in a convoluted private-public partnership. The deal was that any private operator would invest in the necessary rehabilitation to upgrade the highway and in return receive the revenue - from perpetual tolls. Worse, the private operator would be permitted to set the rate for tolls and conduct its operations removed from government oversight. In true conservative "the market will sort everything out" fashion, Campbell was actually intending to sell the primary link to the southern interior leaving residents and commercial traffic at the mercy of a for-profit private operator.

That caused an outroar from Tete Jaune Cache to Sicamous. When polled, an overwhelming 97 percent of respondents viewed the sale/lease of the Coquihalla as a betrayal by the Campbell government and rejected the plan with loud protests.

Proving just how out of touch he was with the population outside the Vancouver-area lower mainland and southern Vancouver Island, Campbell pressed ahead with his plan espousing all kinds of future benefits for southern interior residents to be gained by continuing to pay the only road tax in the province - at increased private rates.

Kamloopsians weren't buying it. In fact, Kamloopsians won't buy anything without a guarantee. It has been called one of the toughest markets in Canada, something Campbell was about to find out.

As the Campbell "Privatize it!" plan continued so too did the protests, and something became quite clear to BC Liberal Kamloops MLAs Claude Richmond and Kevin Kruger: The sell-off of the Coquihalla would cost them their seats in the next election. It wasn't just a possibility; it was fully assured. And more often than not, where goes Kamloops goes the fortunes of a provincial political party.

Campbell, very begrudgingly, backed-off claiming he had "listened" to the people, but not without firing a shot of sour grapes along with the announcement.

Campbell said British Columbians have made it clear that they do not see the benefits of this particular partnership. While there was a strong business case for the proposal, evident in the 28 expressions of interest received from the private sector, the public did not see or accept the new improvements that the proposed partnership would provide in this case.

[...]

The public request to maintain the status quo on the Coquihalla means that taxpayers will not receive the resources for new infrastructure that the partnership would have provided.

In short, you people are too stupid to understand how good this is and now you're not getting any dessert.

Most southern interior residents ignored the petulance, satisfied that they had won more of the fight than they had lost. The fact that there were still tolls on the Coquihalla, in violation of the compact which had been reached with a previous government, survived as an undercurrent of discontent. The Campbell government gave every indication that it was intransigent. The tolls would remain... indefinitely.

When the southern interior MLAs complained to Campbell that the lingering effects of the assault were still giving them the election willies the BC Liberals came up with a corny slogan borrowed from a Chevy commercial and started calling the interior of BC "The Heartland". Most southern BC interior residents saw that for what it was: lipstick on a pig. In fact, the "Heartland" moniker became a symbol of the remoteness of a Vancouver-centric government.

So, when Campbell made a sudden announcement in September, 2008, that the tolls would be removed from the Coquihalla people may have indeed been pleased, but they weren't cheering. In fact, most southern interior residents felt the removal of tolls was more than long overdue. It wasn't that Campbell had just provided a surprize gift to the southern BC interior; it was that Campbell had continued to milk cash out of the southern interior highway link, and taxed the people who lived in the interior, far beyond what was considered fair or equitable. There are a good many people who feel they are owed a rebate for five years of tolls they should never have been paying.

And everyone who was willing to look at a calendar knew what brought it about: An election date now risen above the horizon.

Now that it's here, sure enough, Campbell is trying to capitalize on his supposed generosity. If his candidates are returned to Victoria however, it won't be because of him; it will be despite him.

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Now, as a matter of interest, the Times-Colonist article to which I linked stated that both Campbell and James were in Kamloops. Strangely, James got one line of text while Campbell got spotlit.

Perhaps James' activities weren't quite as exciting as the crowd of business people Campbell gathered but the TC's coverage in such critical ridings is rather - skewed.

I disagree with James' on a couple of issues, no less than I do with Campbell, but we may never know what she's saying given the coverage by the BC capital city's Canwest-owned newspaper.

"Watch for falling rock" on the 2010 Games

This happened just across the water from me on Tuesday night : a cliff face collapsed onto the Sea-to-Sky highway and the rail line between Vancouver and Whistler. 75 meters of what will be the route to the 2010 Olympic Games is buried in rubble 10 meters deep and will take at least five days to remove.

We must have heard it but as there has been blasting over there every night between midnight and 2am for weeks now, no one would have thought much about it. I wonder if all that blasting had anything to do with loosening that cliff face? In addition to the earthquake in California yesterday and another one in Port Townsend today - hello, San Andreas Fault! - and the fact it rained all day for two days for the first time in weeks - acts of nature we can do nothing about - what about all that blasting and road construction that's been going on?

2010 Games boosters were immediately on damage control :
Premier Gordo Campbell :

"This is an area that was not touched by the improvements that we're making."

Ministry of Transportation spokesman Dave Crebo :

"The area where the slide occurred is not part of the $600-million Sea to Sky Highway Improvement Project, so it has not been worked on recently by construction crews."

That's $775 million, actually, guys, with blasting on that mountainside every single night.

B.C. Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon :

"There's no need to worry about a similar incident during the 2010 Winter Olympics. I'm very confident we'll have a situation in place to deal with these things," he said. "We will have contingency plans."

Colin Hansen, minister responsible for the Games :

"It's one of the reasons there are two separate athletes' villages -- one in Whistler and one in Vancouver."

VANOC VP of services and transportation Irene Kerr :

"A slide during the Olympics would not ruin the games."

Yeah but it could totally ruin the day of anyone caught under 1600 cubic metres of rubble though, couldn't it, Irene?

"To mitigate any short-term transportation challenges between Vancouver and Whistler, athletes, officials, and the majority of personnel required to stage an Olympic or Paralympic event in Whistler will be housed in the Whistler area, so events will proceed on schedule."

Well, events proceeding on schedule is the most important thing about a rockslide I guess.
And 'short term transportation challenges'?
You mean like the bus driver who thankfully had the wit to floor it out of there as the rockslide smashed into his bus?

So far no one has been reported trapped in the slide - the dog patrols are out sniffing now - but this is a notoriously dangerous highway : 14 major landslides in the last century, with 19 deaths and over 800 accidents in the last five years alone. A rock slide in 1996 was 60,000 cubic meters and another in 1990 took two weeks to clear. It's not called the "Killer Highway" for nothing.

Well you know I'm not a huge fan of the two week Five Ring Circus urban renewal project and I'm bound to be crabby about all this so let's hear from a professional - geologist Colin Smith with Vancouver-based Fundamental Research Corp :

"The Sea to Sky Highway route in the Porteau Cove area is one of the worst possible places to build a road. In fact, Tuesday's slide near Porteau Cove may have weakened surrounding rock structures to the point of making a future slide in the same area more likely."

but, but, but ... Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon said:

"There's going to be a lot of rock-bolting ... and we will have all the contingencies and eventualities in place."

Colin Smith :

"I don't think rock-bolting really would have done a whole lot," he said. "Over time there's not a whole lot you can do, especially when you exploit the weakness by undercutting the structure with the road."

Oh look, here's Crebo, spokesman for the Transport Ministry, with another update :

"The slide was "nowhere near" roadwork on the highway."

Ok, I think we're getting your main point here, Dave, but the mountain might not agree.

Meanwhile 15,000 to 20,000 people are stranded in what the papers have taken to calling "the affluent alpine village of Whistler" for the next five days.
Now what was that in our bid for the Olympics about "an imaginative combination of road, rail, marine and air" options again?

Cross-posted at Creekside