We're number one, we're number one

It's now 2010 and the Olympics are nigh. Kudos & Kvetches in The Vancouver Courier posted the following back in November and it's taken me until now to post it here, but hey, at least I'm finally doing it:

As the province speeds headlong towards the 2010 Winter Olympics like a greased-up two-man luge, K&K is happy to report B.C.’s sacrifices, determination and winning attitude have started to pay off. According to the 2009 Child Poverty Report Card released Monday by First Call, a national child-advocacy group, B.C. has the highest child poverty rate in the country… for the sixth year in a row. In your face, Nunavat!

Of course, it’s not easy maintaining such consistent results, especially when B.C. is one of the most affluent provinces in the country, led by a government who voted to give its top 100 bureaucrats hefty wage increases last year, including Premier Gordon Campbell’s deputy minister, Jessica McDonald, who received a 43 per cent raise, pushing her salary from a paltry $243,936 to a more civilized $348,600. And let’s not forget that just two years prior, MLAs voted to give themselves a 29 per cent wage hike, and the premier a 54 per cent raise.

So how has B.C. managed to own the child poverty podium, despite such huge obstacles? Let’s start by giving a big shout out to the 156,000 kids around the province living in poverty. Without their sacrifice and dwindling resources thanks to constant cuts to social programs, B.C.’s dream of having the highest child poverty in the country would be just that… a silly dream. In short, their lack of options and poor diet make us stronger. Thank you, poor kids.

And let’s not forget the province’s steadfast refusal to increase the minimum wage, which was once the highest in the country but now secures the bottom spot, sitting at $8 an hour since 2001, to say nothing of the generous $6 “training wage” the B.C. Liberals introduced, presumably to dampen the sticker shock a princely sum like $8 an hour can cause.

Also, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention a recent article in the Georgia Straight that pointed out that B.C. Liberals—while slashing funding for mental health services, support for arts and culture and children’s sports—have shelled out nearly $1.5 million for 2010 Olympic tickets purchased by Crown corporations B.C. Hydro, ICBC and the B.C. Lottery Corporation, all at the expense of taxpayers. And “many of the tickets, including those for luxury suites in B.C. Place, GM Place and the Pacific Coliseum to watch coveted hockey and skating events, were for B.C. Liberal MLAs and cabinet ministers for the purposes of ‘Olympic community engagement and leveraging.’”

Then there’s the recently completed Vancouver Convention Centre, which was originally budgeted at $495 million, but ended up costing $883 million.

But the B.C. Liberals can’t take all the credit for the province’s gold medal performance in child poverty. Carole James and the NDP, despite initial protests, eventually accepted their “outrageous” 29 per cent wage hikes a few years back and have squandered every opportunity to defeat the government by putting its energy into opposing what it thinks are hot button issues such as gasoline taxes and now the HST.

Then, of course, there’s you, the majority of B.C. voters, who have either continually supported the government on its winning path of achieving the highest child poverty rate in the country for the past six years, or don’t bother voting at all. So take a moment and pat yourselves on the back. There’s plenty of blame to go around.

Here's a link to the original post.

Cut-And-Cover Ain't Boring

On the topic of the Millenium Line to UBC traveling along Broadway, I found the following passages from recent columns to be intriguing, especially the parts concerning Kevin Falcon, Minister of Transportation, which I've put in bold type.

First I read this, on page 7 in the January 17-24, 2008 issue of the WestEnder:

Although it has yet to be determined whether the extension will ultimately exist underground, at street level, or as a suspended light-rail system, merchants along Broadway are already nervous.
...
Vancouver city councillor Suzanne Anton said a SkyTrain-type line through the Broadway area is unavoidable because 70,000 people per day use transit along the route. “We cannot put any more buses on the corridor,” she said.

Anton does not envision cut-and-cover style construction — which proved so disruptive to Cambie — being used along Broadway, nor does she want it. “I’m going to guess that we would never do cut and cover again,” she said, “but, you know, all of these things are up for discussion.”

Although Anton’s words may be encouraging to Broadway merchants, Cambie business owners were told the Canada Line would be built through a bored tunnel until one week before the project began. However, Minister of Transportation Kevin Falcon insists Broadway won’t be torn up at street level. “I can put that to rest real fast,” he said. “We couldn’t do a cut and cover in that area because it’s too dense.”

Then I read this, on page 9 in the January 18, 2008 issue of the Vancouver Courier:

As a business owner along Broadway, would you be willing to have the street dug up in front of your shop for months--maybe even years--to accommodate the construction of an underground rapid transit line from Commercial Drive to UBC?

Although Mayor Sam Sullivan didn't use those words, he asks in his "Millennium Line Completion Survey" whether residents want a tunnel, elevated system, light rapid transit or other along Broadway.

If you believe Sullivan's latest dispatch, which was emailed to the Courier Tuesday, more than 1,800 people responded to the survey and "support for completing the line to UBC was overwhelming."

Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon has said the expansion of the line will most certainly be in the form of a tunnel, or cut-and-cover. That's the method being used to build the Canada Line, which has forced the closure of several Cambie Street businesses.

Sullivan says nothing in his dispatch about the impact construction will have on Broadway merchants. But he does say that he and NPA councillors Suzanne Anton and Peter Ladner have "initiated an outreach campaign to local Broadway businesses." No specifics are provided.

Then I read this, on page 10 in the January 18, 2008 issue of the Vancouver Courier:

The main prize for Vancouver is the new transit line out to UBC. You may recall that between them, the City of Vancouver and TransLink have invested almost $3 million in studies to determine, among other things, the type of technology that will be used on that route.

Never mind. Falcon has already made that decision. It will be SkyTrain technology running through a bored tunnel. We don't want to do to folks in the premier's riding what we did to those merchants on Cambie Street.

In my opinion, there is no portion of the Broadway area that is denser than Cambie Street from 16th to King Edward, so if that's the only reason Falcon is giving for why they wouldn't cut-and-cover maybe they'll announce a week before beginning Broadway's construction, after getting everyone on board with the project, that it is in fact going to be cut-and-cover. Now that would be shocking! And totally unprecedented!

Then I read this, on page 8 in the February 1, 2008 issue of the Vancouver Courier:

NPA Coun. Peter Ladner doesn't want the proposed Millennium SkyTrain extension along Broadway to be built with cut-and-cover construction. He's seen enough of what happened to merchants along Cambie, where the Canada Line is under construction. Businesses have closed and motorists are furious. Ladner hasn't made up his mind on tunneling, but the cost has him questioning the method. "At $235 million a kilometre, I'm not sure that you can justify tunneling all the way out to UBC," he said. "There are a whole lot of options."

Though no decision has been made on the type of construction, Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon has publicly mentioned his preference for tunneling. How that method would be done without disruption is unclear.

So what's wrong with building a line above ground like most of the track that runs all over the Lower Mainland? It's less expensive. But what an eyesore, critics have said. There's also the fact the line will go through Premier Gordon Campbell's riding and that of the good burghers on the West Side.

When the Courier spoke to Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan before last year's Union of B.C. Municipalities meeting, he wondered why his municipality had its SkyTrain tracks built above ground--and why the Canada Line was built underground. And then he answered his own questions. Because we're in Burnaby, he said.