In my last letter to this column I advanced an explanation of the recent election result and I postulated that our provincial government, like every other right wing group, favours low wages. I should have added that that did not apply to the wages of political insiders. A gentleman responded but did not contest my point. He had decided my letter was sour grapes and produced the standard criticism of the NDP namely fast ferries. It seems reasonable to conclude that our then premier had a mind to kick start a ship building industry in this province.
Stephen Harper has expressed the same desire but, perhaps wisely, left it at the announcement stage and kept his money in his pocket.
We were out about a quarter million and the libs won an election on the result.
Governments of all stripes get into contractual agreements with private firms and very frequently they get burned.
Take the case of the new fighter jets. Even now they don't seem to be ready to drop the order. I suspect they might already be committed to a large chunk of cash they would prefer we didn't know about. Then there was the matter of some submarines.
Closer to home we have a highway that is a very good road for three or four months a year and a disaster the rest of the time. I was told by an Australian that he saw it featured in a reality series titled Worst roads in the U.S.
There was a convention center in Vancouver built over the water about a stone's throw from another just like it. If a reporter asked about the cost overrun, Gordon Campbell nearly had a fit but we lost about 600 million on that deal. Then came the retractible dome on the stadium. And there was the case of the bridge designed to shift the traffic gridlock from one side of the river to the other. Three billion dollars and on the first snow fall, it hurled ice bombs on the traffic below. I do not believe an NDPer should hang his head over the fast ferries. It seems rather significant that after 10 years in power you could only find one failed enterprise to carp on. And beware of Ms. Clarke. She has got a scheme to build a dam to power some gas liquefiers to send our gas overseas. The probability that we will lose our shirts on such an enormous project is frightening.
Ross Pearce
PrinceGeorge
