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Ripley's game |
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Written by Citizen staff
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Thursday, 02 July 2009 |
As a way to spend an idle summer evening there is a delightful spectacle offered by the seamy goings-on down Highway 16 at Prince Rupert's coal-handling Ridley Terminal.
Last Friday, no doubt hoping the news would be lost in a haze of barbecue smoke, federal Transport Minister Rob Merrifield fired Dan Veniez, the chair of the board of government-owned Ridley. Unfortunately for the Tories, the announcement has only stoked interest, in forums ranging from the National Post to the Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun, in a deliciously sordid stew that's cooking a pot full of fat and juicy serpents ranging from the prime minister to B.C.'s coal industry to Prince George-Peace River MP Jay Hill.
Perhaps the Conservatives' only saving grace is they can blame Trudeau. In 1982, during the era of megaprojects, the Liberals built Ridley as a grand and expensive way of turning B.C. into a global coal superpower; by 2006, after hundreds of millions spent and tens of millions in operating losses, then-PM Paul Martin were prepared to sell it for $3 million down and $17 million over 40 years.
The Conservatives called it a fire sale and, indeed, Hill's website features a November 2005 snippet where he demands the Liberals cancel the sale in the Commons. Two months later, Harper won his first minority, nixed the sale and appointed Veniez to head Ridley.
Veniez's past as a Mulroney wheelhorse must have served him well because he was already a notorious figure in Rupert; he'd been the public face of the disastrous efforts to revive the pulp operation Skeena Cellulose. Nevertheless, he may have done something astonishing - in the next three years, he took the perennially money-losing Ridley and restored it to a semblance of fiscal health.
On paper, it's a right-wing fantasy - savvy businessman donates time as volunteer chair to whip Grit white elephant into a lean, hungry moneymaking operation. But, according to a letter Veniez sent to Merrifield dated June 23, he applied the bottom line to the wrong people, namely the coal and commodity firms who use Ridley, by raising the rates they pay.
That allegedly drew the ire of forces like Peace River Coal, which operates in northeastern B.C., and U.S.-based ICEC, which Veniez claims hired a lobbyist to pressure Merrifield, whose riding contains many a coal interest and Hill, the government house leader, to fire the Ridley chair and his board (in another P.G. connection, pressure was also applied to UNBC alum and Tory cabinet minister James Moore, who rebuffed the advances.)
Veniez also alleges, in the same letter, Peace River Coal withheld $2.5 million in payments to Ridley. Regardless, it would have would have all been dirty laundry left unaired had Veniez and the Ridley board not mulled selling Ridley to a private investor, as the Liberals considered in 2006.
It is a smiting irony for the righteously free-market, free-enterprise Tories - they appoint a can-do entrepreneur type to operate Ridley with business acumen, but balk when their champion wants to sell the firm for a solid buck.
Admittedly, one can't judge Veniez for his actions over the Skeena debacle, but it's doubtful that Veniez is a virtuous volunteer who wants Ridley to succeed out of the goodness of his heart. According to a Globe and Mail article dated May 20, Veniez claimed that
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private firms were now offering up to $131 million for Ridley - but the deal was being stymied by none other than Hill, who was leading the opposition to privatizing the facility after Peace River Coal met with the Tories' B.C. caucus in April.
Hill, for his part, admitted to meeting with Peace River Coal, said he'd like to see Ridley remain in public hands, maybe as part of the Port of Prince Rupert and said he'd seen "nothing in writing" when it came to a private-sector offer.
That's when Veniez probably sealed his fate. During the Skeena Cellulose affair, he loved courting the media and he let the Tories have it with both barrels in the press. Ridley's annual report warned the feds would have to spend $200-250 million to modernize the aging facility; he rallied the Sun, the Globe and Mail and the National Post to the cause, writing op-ed pieces and giving quotes about the need to privatize Ridley and how Hill and Merrifield were supporting subsidizing, through keeping shipping rates at the Rupert facility artificially low, their big coal constituents.
He even accused the feds, in the Merrifield letter, on leaning on him to keep taxes away from the City of Prince Rupert.
Safe to say, Veniez won't be getting an Order of Canada. But the firing means one thing: northern B.C. has a bona fide political potboiler to enjoy over the summer.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 02 July 2009 )
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YES Harpers first move was to push out his chest and show the whole world just how powerful he was. His masters pulled his strings and those that he is obedient to, his backers and back room boys they felt they had done right by reversing the process which a duly elected government had started. Yes the Liberal government was defeated but they were governing and were going to unload this money sinkhole once and for all. But wait...watch what is going to happen soon. Mark my words...the government is now PROBABLY going to spend hundreds of millions of more taxpayers dollars upgrading it, they well continue to subsidize big coal, it will lose money, and you can take it to the bank they will if they are still in power down the line, they WILL sell it to some corporation for less than what they've sunk into it. The only way it gets sold is if they can load gravy train with pork barrels, then let it rip. But maybe they won't even ask for bidders. Cheers!