Priorities shift for subsidies
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Peace Arch News
An open letter to provincial Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Shirley Bond.
You know from your daily contacts with provincial, national and international logistic providers – trucking companies, Port Metro Vancouver, railways, steamship lines – that worldwide container volumes shipped have declined by 15.7 per cent in the first half of 2009 as compared to 2008.
In North America, the decline was 19.2 per cent; Port Metro Vancouver reports container throughput declined 25 per cent. Ship owners are walking away from $20-25 million deposits on new buildings, knowing there will be no employment for these 10,000, twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) capacity vessels for the next decade.
When a VP of Port Metro Vancouver was asked by me during a public hearing a few years ago how many containers are trucked each day to/from Deltaport, and how many are transported via the Trans Canada Highway, the answer was: “We do not have the statistics but hope to have them by the end of the year.”
People in the business know the answers. They know that we, the taxpayers, subsidize large importers. Their import containers are trucked off the terminals and reloaded into larger highway trailers, thus “saving” the importer another few dollars – or cents – per unit bought in the Far East.
Despite all this knowledge, the government went ahead with the construction of the billion-dollar South Fraser Perimeter Road, which is not needed now and will not be for a decade or more to come.
My question, minister, is simple:
How can your government allow the construction of the SFPR to proceed, when other environmentally friendly low-cost alternatives are available to move containers to/from marine terminals, yet at the same time announce cuts through the health ministry to essential services, such as the White Rock-Surrey Come Share Society and, likely, dozens of others in the province ?
How do you explain taking away a mere $162,000 from seniors, and at the same time proceed with wasting taxpayers’ money for a highway which is not needed and which contradicts the premier’s policy that B.C. will be the first “green” province in Canada?
Wolfgang Schmitz, White Rock
http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/letters/56978227.html
You know from your daily contacts with provincial, national and international logistic providers – trucking companies, Port Metro Vancouver, railways, steamship lines – that worldwide container volumes shipped have declined by 15.7 per cent in the first half of 2009 as compared to 2008.
In North America, the decline was 19.2 per cent; Port Metro Vancouver reports container throughput declined 25 per cent. Ship owners are walking away from $20-25 million deposits on new buildings, knowing there will be no employment for these 10,000, twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) capacity vessels for the next decade.
When a VP of Port Metro Vancouver was asked by me during a public hearing a few years ago how many containers are trucked each day to/from Deltaport, and how many are transported via the Trans Canada Highway, the answer was: “We do not have the statistics but hope to have them by the end of the year.”
People in the business know the answers. They know that we, the taxpayers, subsidize large importers. Their import containers are trucked off the terminals and reloaded into larger highway trailers, thus “saving” the importer another few dollars – or cents – per unit bought in the Far East.
Despite all this knowledge, the government went ahead with the construction of the billion-dollar South Fraser Perimeter Road, which is not needed now and will not be for a decade or more to come.
My question, minister, is simple:
How can your government allow the construction of the SFPR to proceed, when other environmentally friendly low-cost alternatives are available to move containers to/from marine terminals, yet at the same time announce cuts through the health ministry to essential services, such as the White Rock-Surrey Come Share Society and, likely, dozens of others in the province ?
How do you explain taking away a mere $162,000 from seniors, and at the same time proceed with wasting taxpayers’ money for a highway which is not needed and which contradicts the premier’s policy that B.C. will be the first “green” province in Canada?
Wolfgang Schmitz, White Rock
http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/letters/56978227.html