Tag: Politics

When is a plan not a plan?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

…and when is an announcement not an announcement?

It is pretty clear the BC Liberal brand is in a bit of trouble, and the new packaging is not working out as well as planned. Premier McSparkles’ telegenic smile has not been enough cover for the general lack of direction displayed by a Government that is looking a little past its due date.

I am not a member of any political party, and usually vote based on the value of the local candidate (although, I have to admit, the Federal Conservatives could run the resurrection of Mahatma Ghandi locally, and that wouldn’t be enough to win my vote at this point). I have met both Judy Darcy and Hector Bremner, the presumed local NDP and Liberal candidates in the next Provincial election, and they both seem like good people with their hearts in the right place; I have no reason to believe either wouldn’t serve our community well.

The new Premier was an unknown coming in. In contrast to Kevin “strip it down, pave it over, sell it off” Falcon and Rich “Darth” Coleman (both who give ample reason to vote the other way), there was not enough substance to Clark to make me want to vote for or against her, despite her merging skills. In the end, it appears that apparent lack of substance was masking a much deeper and more profound lack of substance.

Yet like most people in an abusive relationship with an authority figure, I keep waiting and hoping for the BC Liberals to come up with just one Really Big Good Idea (RGBI) that will put them back in this race. And I keep waiting.

Regular reads here (Hi Mom!) will know that I am way more interested in transportation issues that is, frankly, healthy. So this week when the Premier rolled out her “Pacific Gateway Transportation Strategy” this week, with the by-line “Moving Goods and People”, I thought OK, maybe this is the RGBI. By the announcements, it sounded like they are committing a bunch of money, working with major partners, and are going to deal with the major transportation issues in our Province!

Surely (thinks I) this includes improvements to short-sea shipping, like suggested back in 2005 in a report prepared for Port Metro Vancouver, to finally remove some of the container traffic from our roads and reduce the unsustainable use of trucks to connect major trans-shipment locations. Maybe they will finally include a strategy for high-speed rail, to integrate with the west-coast high speed rail network our Southern Neighbours are planning? Maybe they will finally outline plans for rails to the valley, and upgrades to the Westminster Rail Bridge? Surely, it will include a review of TransLink governance, and a sustainable funding model for TransLink to meet its mandate outlined in Transport 2040. Maybe even (pinch me) an integrated Transportation Demand Management Strategy? A reasoned regional approach to tolls? Where is the Big Plan that shows leadership in Transportation?

Alas, like a Who on Christmas morning, I found nothing under the Christmas Tree that looked anything like Leadership. Even the lump of coal in all our stockings has already be been reduced to atmospheric greenhouse gas.

First off, there is the money committed. Transportation requires infrastructure, infrastructure costs. The plan offers “$25 Billion in total investment… by 2020, beyond the $22 Billion previously committed”. If you go the back pages of the plan document, where the numbers are, you can total up the money committed to $34.7 billion. That sounds like a lot of government investment in getting people and goods moving.

Except that more than $28 Billion (more than 80%) is private money, the lion’s share being a projected $18 Billion to be spent by mystery funders to build mythical LNG plants in Kitimat. The rest? $2.8 Billion in rail line growth by CN and CP, more than $4 Billion in Port Expansion in Vancouver and Prince Rupert, and $1.8Billion in Airport Improvements. All three of these, one should note, are federally-regulated lands and industries, so the Province has less than nothing to do with them. It couldn’t stop them if they tried. After that, private money will be used to build a smattering of privately-funded road works to improve access to mines and oil and gas fields.

OK , so what of the $6.7 Billion that is Government spending? Most of it is wrapped up in the Port Mann 2 and Hwy 1 Widening project ($3.3 Billion) and the South Fraser Perimeter Road project ($1.3 billion). Really, you are re-announcing, yet again, the PMH1 and the SFPR!? Again? This is meant to excite us? Throw in another $1-2 Billion on various ongoing already-announced and well underway highway projects (Kicking Horse Pass, etc.), and we are looking at a grand announcement of…no new investment in transportation.

Then we can look at the various uncosted parts of the announcement/plan. Things like “cap the property tax on designated ports”, and “eliminate jet-fuel tax for intern ational flights”. No indication what these moves are going to cost us, probably because cost accounting on tax cuts is really not this government’s strong suit.

Oh, and that other part of Transportation policy? The less feel-good parts about zooming trucks and vrooming planes? Strangely absent. This strategy is outlined in an 11,000-word document, but there are some words missing. Like “carbon”. In their defense, “climate” appears 7 times in the document. The only problem being that 6 of those times, it is used in the context of “building a climate for investment”. The time it is mentioned in the context of “change” is in the little sidebar about “the environment”, notable as it is also the only time the words “green house gas” and “emissions” are named. Here, they demonstrate their commitment by re-announcing, two years later, the Canada Line (a rapid transit system that was overcapacity the day it was built), and, yes, the Evergreen Line. No mention of a $30Million gap though. The word “Translink” is not raised.

But rest assured, the Environment is important. If you listen really carefully, you can hear the birds chirping over the mid-tempo rock with vrooming-and-zooming soundtrack of the splashy announcement video, right when the word environment appears. You can’t make this shit up:

Just like this big-images, low-content video, this government has once again displayed they are all about show, with no substance at all. Premier McSparkles appears to think re-announcing Kevin Falcon bad ideas and doubling down on the hating teachers is the path to success.

What should be telling is that neither John Cummins nor Adrian Dix are making too much of splash of opposing her ideas or announcements. When a government is sinking this fast and the Premier is busy bailing water onto the boat, you don’t want to risk distracting her from the task at hand

Short take on Minister Lake

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

For the most part BC Minister of Envrionment Terry Lake seems like a pretty good guy. He is smart, educated, says the right things, seems to have his head screwed on straight. One of the few “Good Guys” in the BC Liberals camp. I wanna believe.

Then I get a series of tweets from him, all talking about the great time he is having at the Vancouver Auto Show, shilling for the New Car Dealers of BC. 

Isn’t a sitting Minister of Environment providing hourly tweets promoting the Vancouver Auto Show a little… I dunno… unaware?

More Fishy Messaging

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I’ve been on about the proposed changes in the Fisheries Act, as have several other people of higher intelligence and more importance than me. I cannot emphasize enough that this is a major shift in environmental policy in this country, not just some obscure change in language of some obscure act. It is worth noting that the threatened habitat provisions of the Fisheries Act were added in 1983 by that foreign (Irish?) environmental radical socialist Brian Mulroney.

Not much mention of it in today’s “Penny Smart – Dollar Dumb” budget, but this issue is not going away. The Cons are still messaging what a major inconvenience the Federal Fisheries Act is to all who care to hear, and they are now resorting to printing silly half-truths in local newspapers. I present as evidence a letter written by Conservative MP, former professional voodoo back-cracker, and denier of evolution James Lunny, to the Nanaimo Daily News just a few days ago, the link to which I have provided, but the full text I also offer below:

.
We need reasonable fisheries regulations
Nanaimo
Published: Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Re: ‘Feds should listen to critics’ (Daily News, March 26)

There are very few political issues that stir up more rhetoric than fish management or quota allocation. This article does your readers a disservice by inflating reactionary alarms based on speculation.

As one former minister admitted, managing fish, fish habitat and economic development is a balancing act. Many Canadians are unaware of the unreasonable decisions in the name of “habitat protection.”

For example, in Richelieu, overzealous officials blocked a farmer from draining his flooded property. The farmer was fined $1,000 in 1993 for dewatering his fields simply because a couple of fish found their way in with the flood. Believe it or not, he had to buy a fishing permit in the last flood otherwise he would have been subject to a $100,000 fine.

Abbotsford, which maintains flood control ditches, can’t meet its legal obligations to clear waterways due to DFO rules.

We have many such examples on Vancouver Island. When I was first elected I spent months bringing together land owners, provincial authorities and DFO to resolve a recurrent flooding problem at West Glade Creek that had turned a farmer’s field into a fish habitat and threatened to flood neighbouring Island Scallops’ facilities. The problem was resolved by building a groyne to prevent the mouth of the creek from plugging up with gravel.

The B.C. government has long complained about DFO enforcement policies that make it impossible to clear drainage ditches or clogged streams that threaten to flood properties. The federal government is reviewing fish and fish habitat protection policies to ensure they do not go beyond their intended conservation goals and that they reflect Canadians’ priorities.

Let’s not throw reason under the bus because the government is reviewing policy to improve management outcomes; that is the role of responsible government.

James Lunney, MP Nanaimo-Alberni

The silly half-truths are found in the examples provided.

The Richelieu example is drawn from an expose in one of Canada’s greatest bastion of journalistic integrity, the “Weird News” page of the Toronto Sun. Even then, they had to go back to 1993, 19 years ago, for this example of a Farmer being fined for a violation under the Act. Even then (read the story, you can’t make this stuff up), it wasn’t overzealous officials that triggered the fine, but his farming neighbours complaining he was shredding up fish in his pumps and polluting the watercourse with fish offal!

The Abbotsford example is complete, 100% unadulterated bullshit. According the Minister of Fisheries, they are referring to an article in Abbotsford Times from nine years ago. We can assume is that this was an instance of disagreement between the Province and the Federal government over flood control management, long since dealt with.

I can say with confidence that it was dealt with, because Abbotsford, like every other Municipality with man-made ditches draining the Lower Fraser River flood plain (including Chilliwack, Pitt Meadows, Surrey, Langley and Richmond) have developed ways to efficiently manage their drainage systems while staying in compliance with the habitat provisions of the Fisheries Act. I’m not sure what the dispute was in 2003 (the 2003 article is not on the net), but of you look at the Abbotsford City website, you find this guideline used by the City to coordinate their instream works around the appropriate fisheries windows. This is just good environmental practice, with little or no budget implications, and easily managed by professional City Staff. I actually deal with this stuff on a day-by-day basis in my job. Like most Municipalities, the one where I work finds the habitat protection measures of the Fisheries Act are a simple, easy to apply, and effective tool for assuring the health of drainage network and the Fraser River.

The Scallops on West Glade Creek story is a mystery, as there is no mention of it on the internets, nor does Lunney provide any references or details that may allow us to trace the story. It is not mentioned on his website, nor is West Glade Creek easy to find on any map. But again, it sounds like habitat alteration was required to facilitate drainage and to support a local business, and DFO assisted in seeing that the habitat alteration was done in a way that complied with the law. We have no idea what role DFO or the Fisheries Act played in this, but the point is that the habitat alterations were needed, and DFO allowed them to happen. Is this not an example of an envrionmental law working to support both fisheries habitat and businesses?

Finally, there is a very clear process to instream works for drainage and flood control, and if the BC Government has long complained about it, they have been doing so very quietly to us who work in Environment. Actually, the DFO produces a series of Operation Statements, Guidelines and Best Practices, specifically for the unique situation in British Columbia. In fact, the BC Government’s own Riparian Area Regulations extend the exact same protections above the waterline, and are designed to specifically dovetail with the habitat protections under the Fisheries Act. It seems strange that the BC Government would complain about a Federal Law, then extend the exact same protections onto lands not covered by the Federal Law they so loudly disagree with…

So Lunney has no idea what he is talking about. In his defence, he is not there to think, but to parrot the message from the PMO office, as related through the Minister of Fisheries, and sign his name on the bottom. That’s how you get a Senate Seat. This is why the exact same language and underwhelming examples are being trotted out over the signatures of other God-Fearing Harperites, like the Conservative MP for Kelowna has rolled out to demonstrate the importance of this issue to Sportsfishermen. Expect more to come soon.

And, unfortunately, there is probably nothing we can do to stop them.

Disclosures part 3

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

In the third part of my ongoing “ending any hope of ever raising funds from anyone to run for anything” series on the New West Municipal 2011 election, we can now cast our skeptical eye towards the election of City Councillors. There were 16 candidates for 6 positions, and it appears the one trend that favours election more than any other is incumbency. Even the new guy elected was a bit of an incumbent. However, if any single race makes the case that Labour Council support is fundamental to securing a seat, this is it.

click to make bigger…

Here, once again, are the candidates’ disclosed financing sources by category, reading from left to right by the number of votes received. It is notable that all 6 elected candidates received financial backing from one or more labour unions, and only one of the non-elected 10 did. Also, the top 5 candidates are those that received the most financial support from labour.

In contrast the other “controversial” contribution source, the Development community, provided significant support to two losing candidates, and less substantial support to all but one elected candidate. But as we can see, in total, the amount donated by the Development community is less than half of that from organized labour, and both of those pale in comparison with the amount spent by the Candidates themselves:

A couple of other anomalies we can note: Ashdown and Palmer were no doubt more open about “In Kind” support provided to their campaign than the others. The rules about what represents true “in kind” contribution are rather fuzzy, especially when a volunteer relies on a “professional skill”. If a teenage volunteer sets you up a webpage as a volunteer, it is probably not declarable, but if a Professional Web designer does so as a volunteer, that should probably be declared, but there is a lot of room for grey zone between those extremes.

On a completely unrelated note, what the hell is up with Jaimie McEvoy? $28,000? How does one candidate spend more than three times the average, and about 40% more than the second place spender? Notably, the big anomaly is the amount of his personal money that went into the campaign, so I suppose if he wants to re-invest so much of his Council Stipend on campaigning, then all the power to him, but yikes! He more than doubled the amount spent per vote for any winning candidate, and was well ahead of a couple of per-vote big spenders on the losing side. Maybe he overestimated the challenge that Chuck Puchmayr posed (ultimately, his well-founded support came at the expense of Long-serving councillor Bob Osterman).

Jonathan Cote receives a lot of support from the Labour Council, but he is more notable for the amount of fundraising he received from private donors (disclosure: this includes me). I think this simply comes down to Jonathan’s curb appeal. He is young, bright, and isn’t afraid to speak out on issues important to the community. While working, serving the community, and raising a young family, he is taking courses at SFU towards a certificate in Urban Planning – actually learning about the intricacies of running a City instead of assuming he knows it all. It is hard to walk away unimpressed when talking to Jonathan on a variety of subjects, from breed-specific dog bylaws to infilling ditches in Queensborough, with his knowledge (or at least acknowledgement) of both sides of the issue. The fact he receives such strong support for the community, and the most votes from the community, is enough to prove to a cynic like me that local democracy can actually work.

So I am far from worried about where the money is coming from. I actually think the support that the top 5 candidates get from labour comes more from the DLC’s acknowledged support than the money. Out door-knocking with one candidate this year, I was surprised to hear how many people in Sapperton asked the candidate right out front: “Are you supported by the Labour Council?” Like it or not, New Westminster is a Labour Town, and Labour manages to get the vote out enough that it counts in Municipal elections. Much like support from the business and developer community, the disclosure is more important than the actual money.

This brings me to the issue I actually worry more about: the horrible state of disclosure. Simply put, many of the disclosure forms are either incomplete or factually wrong.

Quick Quiz: how much did Jaimie McEvoy actual raise? Here is the link to his disclosure form. According to Schedule A, he received $6001 from businesses and labour, and $20,276 from Individuals, and no anonymous donations. By my math, that is $26,277, which is not the same as the $25,765 he put on the top of page 4. Add $2,898 (donations under $99) to the $26,277, and you get $29,174. Somewhere, someone forgot to carry a 1, and the disclosure is off by $1000. If $28,176 was spent, where is that $1000 now?

Wayne Wright’s declaration is a mathematical mess. There are very few columns that add up. The number $61301 is apparently the sum of all the numbers in his Schedule A disclosures, including the $10876 from his own campaign fund, but NOT the twe $50 donations that he nonetheless included in the Schedule A2 forms and included in the subtotals, but I suspect those are the same two $50 donations that appear on line B of Schedule A1.

Hanlon’s Razor cuts pretty sharp here.

Chuck Puckmayr’s contributions magically go from $12,095 on Schedule A2 to $12,695 on Schedule A1, with no indication where the extra $600 came from. Bill Harper also gets his math wrong, as his list of Class 1 contributors adds up to $6425, not $6,350, and he offers total contributions (including those under $100) as both $19,814 (Schedule A2) and $20,264 (Schedule A1), although adding it all up, the number seems to total $19,888. Oh, and he had 9 contributions of under $100 each, but they somehow add up to $2651.

It’s not just Councillors. Apparently, the problem with School board is not too many teachers, but too few Math teachers. According to Michael Ewen’s Schedules A1 and A2, $6082+$4080 = $10,862. In Jim Goring math, $3008 = $2938.

Some may see this as nit-picking, but the idea behind disclosure is to create transparency. Bad math can be just that, a simple mistake, but it creates the perception that something fishy is going on, and this is all about perception. I don’t think this is corruption (see Hanlons Razor again), nor do I think failing to carry a 1 on a financial disclosure form is a particularly clever way to get away with something untoward, I think it is just sloppy, and doesnt instill confidence. Sloppy should not be acceptable at this level. It seems petty to worry about a $3000 School board campaign, but now that the Mayoral race is approaching 6 digits, and there are councillors willing to drop nearly $30K for a campaign, things need to be clearly, visibly above board.

Simple solution: that $500 fine for not filing your form before the deadline? The ineligibility repercussions for not completing a form? These should be extended to include forms where the math simply doesn’t work out, because a false declaration, even by mistake, is no declaration at all.

Muni Election Disclosures – Part 2

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

The School Board Trustee election is sometimes the most “local” of all local elections. The 2011 edition in New West comes on the heels of some pretty ugly politicking around the previous board. A vocal DPAC has accused the Board of everything short of fraud, and seems to see Conflict of Interest luring behind every corner (a battle that seems to be ongoing).

I don’t have any kids, and don’t plan to, so my interest in the School Board is completely from the taxpayer side. I pay school taxes every year, and don’t really begrudge it: a well-educated populace benefits society, so paying my part for the education of other people’s kids doesn’t really offend me too much, much like I don’t mind my taxes going to a hospital that I have never needed the services of…

However, after attending a Board Meeting last year to talk on what I thought was a well-intentioned student-led project, I watched the silly partisan bickering taking place, and walked out embarrassed for the entire adult population of the School system (The students in attendance were the models of reason and decorum: stunning in contrast). So I went into this election with a bit of a “pox on both their houses” mentality, and decided to support a couple of new candidates who seemed to have their heads screwed on right. They both finished well atop the popular vote, but I suspect it had less to do with my support than the support of the District Labour Council. I’m just not sure the financial support from Labour is really that meaningful.

Click to make bigger

Look at the money raised by the candidates (order from left to right by the number of votes, Mortenson crossed the elected threshold, Goring did not):

Of course, the outstanding numbers here are the money provided by “Labour” to four of the candidates, all elected. At and average of $4,800 per candidate, this clearly puts those four candidate way above the rest of the field in spending. Actually, without the money from Labour, they would have still been the top four spenders in the election by a healthy margin. So the utility of having all that extra cash is suspect. Especially if you plot the number of votes vs. the amount of spending:

Note those 4 circled outliers: that is the strange result of the labour funding.

There are other trends to take note of. Jonina Campbell was the most effective fundraiser (even discounting the Labour money) by far. I suspect that had much to do with her rather refreshing approach and her very effective public speaking during the campaign. The amount of personal money that most candidates sunk into the election was also significant. Spending by the candidates themselves totalled almost $40,000 and almost twice as much as Organized Labour spent on the School Board campaign in New Westminster.

Finally, a bi-modal distribution shows up again when you plot the amount of money spent by candidates per vote.

The Labour Council-backed candidates all spent a little more than $2 per vote, where the non-affiliated candidates all spent less than $1. More remarkable is that, outside of the vetted 4, there is little correlation between spending and the vote received. In the non-labour affiliated subgroup, the value of the candidate seems more important than the money spent.

Municipal Election Disclosures – Part 1

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.
All of the Campaign finance disclosures from the New West Municipal election have been released by the City. There is lots of interesting information there, most of it completely supporting every complaint and conspiracy theory about how municipal politics is financed: those who spent more got more votes; Labour money makes a big difference; Developers are as heavily invested in politicians as they are in land, etc. etc. It is worth taking a closer look at these numbers though, to find the stories behind the stories. 
 
Since this is all about disclosure, I should go first. I gave three candidates money this election. Two of them I voted for, one I didn’t. One of them I just headed a cheque to, two others I contributed through attendance at fundraisers. I also spent a few hours volunteering with one candidate, just accompanying him during some door-knocking. I had two lawn signs in my front yard. For the most part, though, I wore the Referee shirt, literally and figuratively, during the election. 
 
 
The Mayors race was a run-away for incumbent Wayne Wright, in votes, and in spending. Not only did he garner 61% of the vote, more than twice second-place finisher James Crosty, but he outspent the rest of the field by a wide margin. That Wright’s $61,000 campaign budget was more than three times Crosty’s should be a surprise, considering how Crosty’s campaign was ubiquitous during the election; and Wright’s was rather, um,  understated in comparison.  
 
Another way to look at those numbers is that Wayne Wright spent $9.24 for every single vote he received. Crosty’s 3000-odd votes cost him about $6 each, which was even less than distant-third Vance McFadyen paid per vote. 
 
 
(“private” means declared donations over $100 from private citizens. “Personal” is the Candidate’s own money)
The other side of the coin (pun?) is where the money came from. McFadyen and back-marker Francois Nantel self-financed their campaigns, where neither the Wright nor Crosty spent any of their own money in the race (with the exception of the $10,000 war chest the Mayor had accumulated from last campaign leftovers, but that’s not really his money). 
 
Wright was the only candidate to receive any money from organized labour: $1000 from the Engineers Union. We can save the discussions of Labour Money for the other races. 
 
Both candidates did a good job fundraising from the citizenry: Wright raising more than $9,000 from individuals, and Crosty almost $13,000 between private donations and anonymous fundraising. The sometimes-mocked “Friends of Crosty” definitely put some money where their mouth was. This also puts some truth to Crosty’s “man of the people” campaign rhetoric. It is an impressive fundraising achievement in a City where only 11,000 people voted.
 
The big difference, of course, was the business donations. Wayne Wright received $40,000 in dontations from the business community (compared to the $6,000 Crosty was able to raise). About 75% of that money came from developers. The biggest single donation was $10,000 from Aragon, developers of Port Royal, but all the big players were there: Westgroup, Balenas, etc. A smattering of local bars, restaurants, and law firms also contributed to one or both candidates, but it is the Developer cash that really stands out. 
 
Which makes you wonder what they are buying. 

Fishy Fishing with the Fisheries Act

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

You know, I have been railing against the Harper Government for so long that it is even boring for me. I was one of those people after the last election thinking: well, how bad could their majority really be? Sure, he will continue to harm the economy by throwing more eggs in the Oil basket, and cutting taxes on the wealthy to create false crises as an excuse for future gutting of social programs, but he is a cagey politician and pretty shrewd, so he won’t go too far, lest Canadians get itchy and dispatch him next election. Maybe in the meantime, he will actually bring on some promised Senate or electoral reform or cut those MP Pensions. Remember Steve, your Reform Party mantra? that could be helpful in the long-term. I mean, it is only 4 years. How much harm can he do?

Then this story comes along.

To the uninformed, this seems rather innocuous to remove “habitat language” from the Federal Fisheries Act. To people who work in the Environment field, this is a huge thing.

Simply put, the Fisheries Act is the strongest piece of environmental legislation we have in Canada. It overrides all Provincial and Municipal legislation, it is so powerful that even the railways have to follow it – yes, even the Railways! It serves as the primary protection of fresh and marine water quality and aquatic habitat in the Country. From filling ditches in Queensborough to building the Site C Dam, the Fisheries Act is involved. The potential replacement of the Pattullo Bridge, and even the spill response measures for maintaining the bridge, invokes the Fisheries Act. Don’t take me word for it, ask any Envrionmental Professional you know – P.Geo., P.Eng., R.P.Bio, ask then what Canadas most important Environmental Legislation is, 80% will say “Fisheries Act”. (Most of the other 20% will say Species at Risk Act, until you suggest the Fisheries Act, then they will correct themselves. Go shead, try it. If I’m lying, I’ll buy you a pint.)

Because of the Fisheries Act, there are two terms that are ubiquitous in environmental protection in Canada: “deleterious substance” and “HADD”.

The first is what I deal with primarily. According to Section 36(3) of the Fisheries Act, no-one can deposit or allow to be deposited any “deleterious substance” into waters frequented by fish or in any place where the substance may enter water frequented by fish. As for what constitutes a “deleterious substance”, that relies on a pile of guidelines, standards, and reports backed by a huge pile or scientific research on different materials. I deal with this section of the Fisheries Act every day of my working life.

The second part is clearly an acronym: Harmful Alteration, Disruption, or Destruction. Section 35(1) of the Fisheries Act says:

No person shall carry on any work or undertaking that results in the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat.

Basically, everything you do in or near an open watercourse that has fish in it, you need to be mindful that there may be fish present, and not harm the environment in a way that harms fish. This provided defacto protection to aquatic birds, invertebrates, amphibians and countless important plant species, while providing an extra level of protection to the quality of the water in our lakes, rivers, and oceans.

You know, that foundations of the ecosystem stuff.

Section 35(2) says that the Minister (or a Governor in Council under any other Act) may grant approval for a HADD. So even this hard and fast rule is really nothing more than an “irritant” for most. It doesn’t stop oil and gas or pipeline development (at least it never has up to now). In essence, every bridge is a HADD, but you don’t see us not building bridges. However, if your works create a HADD you must compensate for that lost habitat, and that almost always means by improving the quality of some nearby adjacent habitat so there is “no net loss” of habitat.

You want to build a ferry slip on this 20m of pristine foreshore? Then spend some money restoring that 20m of hardscape shore over there, and we’ll call it even. Want to put a span bridge across this ditch? Then do a little invasive species management in the riparian area beside the bridge and there will be no net loss. All very reasonable: do your business while protecting habitat. Win-win. These terms are negotiable, and are negotiated every day across the country by fish protection officers. Fish habitat compensation is rarely a significant portion of the capitol cost of a development. If it is, then there is usually a problem with development that needs to be fixed (see Prosperity Mine example).

Of all legislation to protect the environment in Canada, this one is the most straight-forward, the most protective, the most firmly established, and the easiest to understand. Like few things in Government (especially around the environment file), it works! Every Environmental Scientist working in Canada, and most Professional Geoscientists and Engineers who work in or near water, know the words “deleterious substance” and “HADD” and know how to apply them, they have been the law of the land for something like 30 years. Why change it? Is no net loss too much to ask for the Billions of dollars that oil sands development are exporting every year? And why fillet the most important peice of Envrionmental Legislation in the country as part of an Omnibus Budget Bill? How cynical do you have to be to catch these guys?

This laws is so fundamental that most Provincial and Municipal regulation protecting the local environment are designed to specifically dovetail with it, as are Acts regulating farming, forestry, marine navigation, Environmental Assessment… Changing the Fisheries Act language on Habitat may throw all of this other legislation into chaos.

And it may spell the end to our already threatened natural salmon stocks.

…would distract from those “fishy” phonecalls, though.

Elizabeth May tweeted from the House of Commons (at 2:43PDT this afternoon) that rumours have this coming from the PMO, not DFO. That seems obvious, because no-one with a passing knowledge of Fisheries legislation or fisheries science would suggest such a ridiculous change. This is dumb, irresponsible, thick-headed, a really, really bad thing. I have to admit, I never imagined they would do this much harm. I still don’t.

All Pattullo, all the time.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I missed my first NWEP meeting in a couple of years to attend the TransLink Pattullo Bridge consultations in Surrey. I stepped back and did not take part in the “consultation” part (TransLink got a page full of notes from me at the New West meetings, let them hear from someone else for a change), I really just wanted to see how the other half lived, and get a sense of what the mood is on the Surrey side of the River.

Exposing my cultural biases, I walked into the meeting assuming that people in Surrey were all for the bridge, and the bigger and more toll-free, the better (which seems to be the position of their Mayor). Instead, I found there was a lot of diversity of opinion in the room. Admittedly, there was more discussion of getting rid of traffic lights in favour of onramps and overpasses in Surrey that I heard in any New Westminster meeting, but there were still a lot of people concerned about the need for the bridge, and the impacts on their community of yet another major highway expansion. Perhaps this should not be surprising, as these people are currently watching the installation of South Fraser Perimeter Road in their neighbourhood – highway expansion is not a hypothetical to them.

One of the issues I heard a lot of (that was new to me) was the encroachment of industrial and commercial development in the Bridgeview Neighbourhood. There are a lot if single-family homes in the area between King George Highway and the new South Fraser Perimeter Road, and the residents are feeling squeezed by the commercial properties along King George, the industrial lands to the east and west, and the new truck route to the north. One resident of 124th was concerned that the proposed expansion of 124th to accommodate truck traffic linking the SFPR to King George was going to bring trucks through the middle of this neighbourhood, and within 20 feet of his house. His house is built on “60 feet of peat bog”, and every time a truck drives by now “I get shaken from one side of the sofa to the other”.  Naturally, goods movement through his front yard does not seem like a good idea to him.

For many Bridgeview residents, the “Upstream” vs. “Downstream” question, which I kind of made fun of for the New Westminster side as an example of a completely irrelevant question, is not at all irrelevant. Downstream means the bridge will extend over a small area of waterfront park space (a limited, and therefore valuable, commodity in Bridgeview), but the Upstream option will move the elevated parts of the bridge closer to their homes, potentially increasing noise and view impacts.

Another thing I learned is that TransLink is actually listening. Many of the issues raised by residents in the first consultation in New Westminster two weeks ago are now being brought up by TransLink during the introductory discussions. This has even resulted in more complete answers being provided to address some of the uncertainties I raised in my earlier posts about this project.

And example is more detailed explanation of the 6-lane bridge decision. Frankly, I still think the “increased safety” argument is a red herring, but the argument for 6-lanes is more fleshed out now with discussion of the business case made back in 2008, and subsequent reviews of the business case. It would be great if the metrics of those analyses were available on the consultation page. Especially as I heard one interesting discussion at this event about how the value of the existing bridge was assessed.

I had something like this question bouncing in my head recently, but I didn’t know how to frame it. Luckily, one of the participants in Surrey was very eloquent on the idea (more than I will be in this paragraph): what about the social and economic value of the existing bridge? Like it or not, the Pattullo is an iconic structure, a steel arch-span bridge similar in age, height and length to the Sydney Harbour Bridge (though less than half as wide). It’s arch has loomed over New Westminster for 75 years: the same age as the Lions Gate Bridge and the Columbia Theatre – two structures of which no-one would argue the heritage value. Surely this has a socio-economic value to the City, and to the region. If Translink wants to replace it with another dull, cookie-cutter, concrete cable-stayed bridge built by the lowest bidder, what value is lost? Honestly, I don’t know how we estimate that value (or if we can), but this is a question that a City that prides itself on its Heritage Values needs to address: What will New Westminster look like without the Pattullo?
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Thank You Jack Campbell!

? Another interesting question was raised by one of the participants at the tables rising from the data provided by TransLink. If the daily truck volume is 3,000 and the daily vehicle volume is 60,000, then less than 5% of the volume is actually trucks. 20 cars per truck. So why are we building a 24-hour dedicated truck lane each way? How much do we anticipate truck volumes growing? 3,000 a day is only 1 or 2 each way per minute. This seems like a lot of extra money for very few trucks. Or more frightening, does TransLink think the increase in trucks will be much, much larger? What impact will this have on New Wesmtinster?

Maybe I am getting mired in the details too much, and am missing the fundamental point here; and if so, perhaps TransLink is doing the same thing.

At all of these consultations, I have had friendly chats with TransLink Roads and PR staff, the consultation team from HB Lanarc Golder, and the representatives from the engineering firm that provided the conceptual design work. All of them say the same thing: we need to build a bigger bridge because traffic volumes are going up. Some people in the room disagree with this (as do, apparently, some members of New Westminster Council). So perhaps TransLink should not have sent their roads guys to come and consult with the City of New West on the topic of offramp shapes, but should have sent the Policy Guys to come and discuss the need for a bridge.

Perhaps the fundamental question we need answered is this: What is Translink’s Mandate? Is it to create the transportation system that people want, or that Kevin Falcon wants? Or is it to set transportation policy for the region? I always thought the latter, but the Act seems to suggest they carry both responsibilities. If so,  shouldn’t the Policy part come before the building part?

TransLink’s policy document right now is Transport 2040. So before they send people to New Wesmtinster and Surrey to talk about offramps, they should come to our communities and have a discussion about how Transport 2040 fits our local conditions. Then we can talk about the type of bridge to build. As it is, building an expanded road bridge while Surrey and the Broadway Corridor wait for their long-promised mass transit investments seems to be a demonstration of a policy very diffrent than laid out in Transport 2040. 

Pattullo and the City

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Having attended both New Westminster workshops on the Pattullo Bridge Replacement being held by TransLink, and being on the Master Transportation Planning (MTP) committee for the City, I noticed there is a o lot of misunderstanding about what the City’s position is on the TransLink process, and how the City’s MTP process fits into that.

Big caveat here: I am but one member of the Master Transportation Planning committee, representing the Advisory Committee on Transit, Bicycles and Pedestrians. The MTP committee has 20+ members from various City committees and outside agencies, and is only one part of the entire MTP process, being run by City Staff and outside consultants, under direction from Council. Therefore, nothing I say here is in any way the official position of the MTP committee, City staff or Council, or anyone else other than me. It is, however, based on what I have heard said at various official meetings and unofficial conversations with staff and council.

At the TransLink meeting at the Quay on Thursday, I talked to School Board members and several other people in the community who are usually very much in the know, and I found myself trying to explain what the relationship between the MTP and the Pattullo Bridge consultation is. Unfortunately, it has been cast a bit in the media that New West is once again being obstructionist, engaging in Nimbyism, refusing to take part, and being generally petulant spoilt brats. This despite the attempts by City Council and TransLink to broadcast that this is not the case.

So I am going to presume to interpret how the City sees this process happening, based on conversations at the (public and open) MTP meeting and with City Staff and Council members (so interpretation ahead: Staff or Councillors please correct me if I am off the mark here!)
I don’t see New Westminster missing the boat at all here, but I see the City taking a pragmatic, responsible and measured approach.

The first thing you need to keep in mind is that this round of consultations on the Pattullo is the first round of a very long process. TransLink will be taking the results of this consultation (preliminary design characteristics) and then entering an “operation analysis” phase. The preferred design out of this process will be tested at both ends for everything from how it manages traffic flows, how it fits the existing traffic patterns, how bikes and pedestrians will be accommodated, etc., etc. TransLink will also start the (potentially lengthy) joint Provincial and Federal Environmental Assessment process. Both of these steps will include significant public consultation and discussion. Then they will have to deal with the financing model, hiring a concessionaire, negotiating land swaps, etc. Even after this initial consultation, TransLink is at least 4 years from any shovels getting into any ground, and at least 3 before we know whose shovels it will be, and where they want to put them.  In other words: there is no rush to provide all the answers right now.

As for the City, they are updating their Master Transportation Plan, last completed 13 years ago. The MTP process will take about another 12 months. If you look at this diagram, it shows the steps for the MTP:

The City is currently completing Phase 2 (information gathering) and is about to embark on Phase 3. That is the phase where the City looks at where it is today, transportation infrastructure-wise, and determines what the Goals, Values, Objectives are for the coming decade or two. It is the big “visioning stage”. In a couple of months, after some public and stakeholder meetings, and likely workshops, the City will come up with a set of Values and Goals that define what type of transportation infrastructure the community wants to see in the foreseeable future (and in this case, by “the community”, I mean the residents, the businesses, the staff and the elected officials; everyone involved in the MTP process).

Then, when those Values and Goals are determined and formalized, the City will be in a position to approach TransLink and say: “Here you go. Make your plans address this”.

I don’t think there is yet a concrete idea of how that discussion will take place: will there be public consultations? Will the City report out to TransLink or do a joint consultation and reporting? No idea., but the point is that the City will take a bit of time right now to get a better understanding of that the community of New Westminster wants in a transportation system, then they will be armed with that knowledge when they go into negotiations with TransLink on how the bridge they want to build fits those parameters – or if it can even be made to fit them.

In the meantime, TransLink will be continuing to work on their process, but New Westminster will not be missing any boats here. We will be through that Phase 3 work in only a few months, TransLink will not likely have any operational plans in place for a year. When the MTP is at a point where useful data is available for TransLink, TransLink will be in about the same position as they are now. More importantly, TransLink knows and understands that this is the route the City wants to take, and seems to respect that decision.

So, if you really want to influence the Pattullo Bridge design? My advice is to get involved in the Master Transportation Plan process. Come to the meetings, attend the workshops, follow on-line, and provide your input at every opportunity.

Pattullo Bridge Consultation – Day 1

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

First off, you think TransLink would learn their lesson.

During their last foray to New Westminster to consult on highway expansion, the turnout was at first completely overwhelming, then Standing Room Only in the subsequent hastily-assembled  4- or 5-step consultation proccess. This month’s public open houses for the City’s Master Transportation Plan had a higher turnout than the consultants have ever seen at a similar event, more than 100 people each for the first phases of what, for most sities, is a dull planning document. The Lesson? Have a public meeting about Transportation issues in New Westminster, and people are going to show up! There is no excuse for having too small a room and not enough chairs for the participants.

I’m not going to talk too much about what Translink discussed at the Workshop at Centennial Centre on Tuesday. Daniel at City Caucus sums up the spirit of the room pretty well, and we were not really offered any info that isn’t available on the TransLink website for the consultation.

Instead I am going to talk about what wasn’t discussed at the meeting, and why that is a problem.

The first topic that was not up for discussion was the number of lanes. TransLink has determined they will build a 6-lane bridge with two of the lanes (apparently) dedicated to trucks only. No business case is made for this (for perspective, a transportation expert once opined to the NWEP Transportation Group that the difference between a 4-lane and 6-lane bridge could be as much as $300 Million). When pressed on the question of lane count, TransLink suggested 6 lanes was the only option on the table for “safety reasons”. The somewhat convoluted justification being that keeping trucks on the outside lanes keeps them from needing to change lanes on the bridge, or mix with the cars on the inside lanes, increasing safety for all users. That sounds good, unless you are paying attention. Take a look:

click to embigginate

All of the designs deal with on ramps the same way, but I’ll use this one as an example, because it is first alphabetically.

Say you are Dave the Truckdriver entering New Westminster from Surrey, over there in the rightmost lane. If you want to go east to Highway 1, you take the first offramp, if you want to go towards the Queensborough, you take the second offramp, if you want to continue north towards Burnaby, you stay on the main route to McBride. All are options, as all are on the Major Road Network and designated as Truck Routes. It is unclear where the main route changes from three to two lanes, but it is presumably at the first or the second offramp. If it is the first, then you will need to change lanes before then (unless that is your destination). If it is at the second, you will still need to change lanes before that. Trucks going North will always need to change lanes. So lane changing is inevitable unless all trucks are forced to a single offramp going in one direction, but that would significantly reduce the usefulness of the bridge for “Goods Movement”, wouldn’t it.

The same situation happens for trucks heading south down McBride onto the bridge, or entering the on-ramps from the other roads, they are either going to have to change lanes to get to the outside lane, or merge onto the outside lane, and there will be inevitable mixing with cars. Oh, and cars using any of the offramps will of course need to move into the lane with the trucks in it, presuming the exit ramps are all on the outside lane. It is inevitable that cars and trucks will need to move lanes, and will need to at some point share lanes. Mixing of cars and trucks in inevitable.

This is the important part: These inevitabilities do not change at all between a 6-lane or 4- lane structure. The argument that a 6-lane bridge is “safer” is a complete wash.

The second point that was not discussed was the bigger picture around how we will manage the extra traffic once it exits the off-ramps of the bridge. TransLink pointed out one of the arguments against locating the bridge in another location (such as upstream at Sapperton Bar, downstream at the Tree Island location) was the integration with the existing road network. However, the current road network on the New West side is built to accommodate a 4-lane bridge, and already fails at times to accommodate that traffic load. Increasing the bridge by two more lanes will increase traffic capacity at the City boundary by 50%,. Currently, there is no plan to accommodate that. Think McBride is backed up northbound now? Think Brunette and Braid is an issue today? Think the Stewardson-to- Queensborough connection is a mess today? How will increasing traffic 50% to these locations help?  This is unfortunately and eerily like the UBE discussion again.

Tranklink responded to this saying: we’ll design the bridge first, then figure that out. Not surprisingly, few people in the room were satisfied with that answer. That answer shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone in the region who is funding TransLink; even those that believe building roads can solve traffic problems. TransLink wants to spend a Billion of your dollars to move a traffic pinch point 100m up the road. This is an example of a build-then-plan mentality that has them currently building a $4 Billion 10-lane Port Mann Bridge / Highway 1 Widening Project and a $1 Billion South Fraser Perimeter Road project, two major new Goods Movement routes that actually cross each other but do not intersect, forcing trucks to drive through New Westminster to get between them.

Oh, and that Billion dollars? That was the third topic not discussed. According to Translink, there is currently no funding source for the bridge. They are therefore presuming that it will be funded by tolls, likely through a design-build-operate concessionaire, much like the other 16 lanes of Fraser River crossing traffic that have been built in the last decade. They won’t say it is tolled, but they won’t say if there are any other sources.

This creates another area of uncertainty that needs to be addressed before we go any further. The BC Liberals have, as few as two weeks ago in that strange radio-interview-mini-throne-speech-event, suggested they are against tolling. The Mayor of Surrey doesn’t like tolls for this bridge. However, the senior governments are not lining up to dump a billion dollars on TransLink, and TransLink can’t raise taxes. So how are we paying for this thing? TransLink says let’s design it, and get approvals, and the money will arrive. One significant problem with this, of course, is that we cannot establish the business case or the demand for the bridge without knowing if it will be tolled.

TransLink representatives after the meeting admitted their estimates for future traffic demand on the bridge are based on tolls being collected. They provided some demand estimates based on population growth: increased vehicles from 60,300 today to 94,800 in 2041, but didn’t make clear in the presentation part that these estimates are based on a 6-lane, tolled bridge. How do these estimates change if we build a 4-lane bridge? Or if we don’t toll? Or if this same $1 Billion is invested in rails and/or SkyTrain for Surrey and Langley? Or are we, once again, just going to build it, then plan?

We have learned from the Golden Ears bridge example that tolls are effective Transportation Demand Management tools. People have avoided paying them, by driving around the long way or by reducing the number of trips. We have also learned from the Golden Ears that traffic estimates for tolled bridges can be overly optimistic (not the same story for new rapid transit infrastructure).

So without demonstrating the need for increased lanes, without explaining how these increased lanes will be accommodated on our already crowded and built-out streets, and without telling us how the bridge will be paid for, TransLink has taken to time to ask us which side of the old bridge we would prefer the new ramps?

Sorry TransLink. For some reason, the people of New Westminster are not feeling like they are “Part of the Plan”.