Bus service may be halved: TransLink

Apropos of my Transit post this morning, try this:



Frank Luba
The Province


Thursday, August 07, 2008


Looming cuts at TransLink are a big concern for bus drivers' union boss Don
MacLeod.

"It's always the bus service they go to first," said MacLeod, president of
Local 111 of the Canadian Auto Workers.

"We make all these commitments and promises but we have no money to support
it," he said of TransLink plans.

Provincial legislation requires TransLink to have a balanced budget, so when
its accumulated surplus of $400 million runs out in 2011, there will have to
be $150 million annually in cuts.

For "simplicity," according to the transportation authority's recently
passed 10-year transportation and financial plan, that massive cut is
achieved by cutting more than half the region's bus services.

There are 4.181 million bus-service hours scheduled for 2008 and that total
is projected to grow to 4.722 million by 2011. In 2012, and out to 2018,
that number is chopped to 2.122 million.

"If expenditure reductions are required, we would effect a reduction through
a combination of reduced bus service, roads funding and administration and
program support costs," reads the plan.

The bus service, which carries about 80 per cent of transit users,
represents the biggest opportunity for cuts with an expected expenditure in
2011 of $668 million.

TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie identified annual administration costs at $48
million to $49 million and funding for the road network at $55 million.

"Ultimately, there's not nearly enough money in those budgets to offset the
$150 million," said Hardie.

"Our goal is to not cut anything."

But unless a ready source of ongoing funding materializes, there have to be
cuts.

"After 2011, we'd have to find $150 million in savings somewhere," said
Hardie. "Some would come from programs and some would come from service."

There was a huge outcry in 2001 when TransLink cut just 160,000 hours of
service in response to not getting its reviled vehicle levy approved.

Looking for a Miracle

Hi Jesse

What has happened here in Fairview along the Canada Line route - in a
democracy that is brimming with money for every Olympic whim of our
Premier - is a travesty.
It was preventable and most definitely undemocratic.

The world will be watching, and looking for examples of the consequences
both good and bad of bringing the games to our city. After three years of
suffering, and of having our concerns dismissed then whitewashed with pretty
banners, this Liberal totalitarian regime could still do the right thing and
reimburse us for this negligence.

There is no excuse for the meanspirited abuse of power that has resulted in
the near collapse of all we have built up over years.

I am already talking to foreign press who are very interested in stories
from small businesses - like the one about the hardworking, tax paying,
involved in the community single mom who was forced to take the unthinkable
step of legal action against every level of government - while losing
hundreds of thousands of dollars and nearly losing her 25 year old
business - lied to and continually mislead about a several Billion dollar
way over budget transportation project that was funded, rammed through and
rubber stamped by the government as part of the bid to win the 2010 games.
Film at eleven.

Nothing for Canada (Line) to be proud of - especially in a democracy.

Dr. MacDiarmid understands fully the effectiveness of timely preventative
medicine. The families along the Canada Line route were given a fistfull of
costly placeboes, and have been left to die by the roadside.

The cure for RAV disease is available, and still within the grasp of a
person with itegrity and courage who is trained to assess and heal.
Dr. MacDiarmid has what it takes to be this person.

The malpractice that has occured here will not be forgotten any time soon -
until the appropriate treatment is dispensed. Money. Credit. Rehabilitation.
And in an IV transfused directly into our life's work. The autopsy results
are conclusive.

While the good doctor is making her rounds in our neighbourhood, she will no
doubt be mindful of the consequenses of ignoring the oath to "do no harm".

I guess we're looking for a miracle.
In the meantime I will continue to press forward my legal case for full
compensation.

Regards
Susan Heyes
Hazel&Co
3190 Cambie Street
Vancouver BC
604 687-0721

A Breast of the Times

This is Vancouver's idea of a controversy.

Mothers breast feeding in a clothing store.

Yah, world class city.

Oy.

Would everyone please grow up.

Quote of the Day

Hedy Fry calls her political position "energetic, progessive thinking."

This worst of all MP's in living memory has been elected and re-elected five times.

She has shamelessly courted the gay community in the West End and accomplished nothing substantive of which we are aware.

When will people, gay, straight or purple, realize that simply having some fool gush over you does not mean that he or she has something real to offer. In fact, it is usually a guarantee of the opposite. POepl with real policies feel no need to salivate.

Justice Mockeries on Parade

House arrest for a Hell's Angel associate dealing cocaine.

Oh, and no guns please, sir.

Duh?

Tom Sandborn, filling in for vacationing Allen Garr in the Courier, reminds us that Mayor Sullivan promised to reduce Translink fares.

Of course, that never happened.

Instead, fares have risen and service continues to decline.

The Premier's carbon tax is a long-winded route to a cleaner environment. It doesn't work.

Reduce transit fares, improve service at whatever cost. That's why we already pay taxes.

Then more people will ride the system.

World Class Chumps

Vaughn Palmer's recounting of Campbell and Co being utterly hoodwinked by a con man and scheister is so hysterical you simply have to read it to believe it.

In honor of which, you will find below Robert Preston and the original stage company's lusty version of "76 Trombones" from "The Music Man," an homage to con men and country hicks everywhere.

76 Trombones!

M.D. - Me Doctor!

"Never marry a doctor!"

Those words of wisdom came from one of the most beautiful, accomplished women I've ever met.

She and two of her friends had dreadful experiences dating doctors. All three women found doctors to be arrogant, self-absorbed shmocks.

"They think they're God. How much fun can that be on a daily basis? At the clinic, they play with life and death and everyone answers to their every whim. Then they come home...and HELLO!"

These warnings came to mind this morning as I was reading the story about the local bones who won't treat a child because they can't get along with her parents.

Huh?

Some doctors treat patients in the midst of gunfire, famine, flood, insurgency.

Then there's this home-grown group of geniuses who expect everyone to be nice.

Here's the telling moment.

Dr. Doug Cochrane, vice-president of medicine for BC Children's Hospital no less, writes, "Everyone is trying to do the right thing, but faith, trust and honoring the expertise of the doctors is important."

Ah, yes.

Where in the

Hippocratic Oath

does is say something about treating children only when they have lovely, cooperative parents?

Get over it, Doctors. Do your job. Treat the patient, who, in case, you haven't noticed is a helpless child.

Next!

When I read this morning that 3 NDP MLA'a would not be returning at the end of this term, I thought this was a clear sign of trouble at the ranch.

I shouldn't have been surprised then to read Vaughn Palmer saying much the same thing in his column abut retiring MLA David Chudnovsky.

The elephant in the room that is not being openly discussed is the leadership of Carole James.

I admire James. I think she's a gutsy and smart and interesting person.

But in politics one either has "the Royal Jelly" or one doesn't.

James doesn't.

The provincial pickings are almost ripe.

Enough citizens are tired of the Campbell signature and serious gains if not an outright win is there for the plucking.

But this will most likely not happen with Carole James leading the NDP into the next election.

Adrian Dix?

Jim Sinclair?

New Blog Policy

After considerable consideration, I have decided that I will no longer publish other people's columns on this blog.

I will however point to a column from time to time in the same way that I point to a news story.

This evening, for example, I would encourage you to read Justice Wallace Craig's excellent piece published today in the North Shore News.

It is about holding politicians and police accountable, and it comes from a particularly informed and thoughtful position.

Where there is smoke...

A friend has breast cancer.

She is taking the usual round of radiation and chemo.

The chemo makes her sick.

Two bites of a marijuana cookie and the nausea is gone.

I have absolutely no problem with that.

Marijuana, in this case, is an analgesic, as legitimate at ASA, morphine, codeine or any other pain reliever.

I smoked marijuana when I was a young man. Lots of marijuana. It was great fun. I danced and laughed and indulged my senses.

I stopped using alcohol and drugs when I was 26. Just flat stopped.

Today, I might have a small glass of wine with dinner once a month.

But...

I am not cruising around a drug dealing house in my car filled with bags of dope, ready for the sale.

This was the circumstance in a recent case now thrown out of court.

Selling marijuana is against the law. It is also a huge industry. It is also violent and volatile and dangerous to the participants and to innocent citizens who happen to be nearby.

So the Delta police stop this guy because he is cruising, etc and they smell what seems like pot and they search the car and Bingo!

But, no. No, says the Provincial Court judge - accent on Provincial.

What the Delta police did was conduct an illegal search based on a "hunch."

And what the judge did was safeguard the dope dealer's rights of privacy.

No consideration, of course, for my right to live in a drug and violence-free community.

The courts in general have ruled, we learn, that just because a cop smells pot smoke, that doesn't mean there's anything illegal going on here.

Look, kids...

I smell pot smoke walking down the street at least once a week.

I don't care if little Benny and June College student want to get wacked this afternoon. Good luck to them.

But I care A LOT if Donny Dealer wants to set up shop next door to me. I care if guns are blazing in the night. We are talking here about big money, big, illegal money and the grief that follows.

The courts continue to be an ass.

The courts continue to NOT reflect the sentiments of the community.

The courts continue to make of justice a vaudeville.

For shame.

Crazy to Kill?

The Greyhoud Headchopper stabbed a total stranger numerous times, cut off his head and then cannibalized him.

Charge? Second degree murder.

What kind of knife are you carrying at this moment? How big is it?

The killer came on the bus pre-armed. Mayhem was his script.

This was premeditation and calls for first degree murder.

Now, the psychiatrists and psychologists will salivate all over him and release their scholarly findings.

But ordinary citizens, armed with common sense and single syllable words, understand the reality here, even if the professionals and the courts do not.

Life without parole, ever. 'Bye Bye.

The War to Help Drug Lords

It has long been my position that Canada should not be sending troops into harm's way to support a drug culture in Afghanistan.

This morning's NY Times editorial agrees calling the country a "narco-state."

America

You might think that race is no longer an issue in America.

You'd be wrong.

Check out this cautionary tale about the upcoming Democratic convention in Denver.

Scary.

Solzhenitsyn, Literary Giant Who Defied Soviets, Dies at 89

Read the NY Times bio of the Nobel winner who gave us, among many other things, the "Gulag" as an encompassing single word denouncement of very bad government.

A Mother Answers The Monumental Premier

I am a single parent, of an 11 1/2 year old son with special needs, who publicly admits to being on disability through welfare. I am shocked that this government is planning on spending money on a "capital" cost for a building for services that it does not fund. And which part of the budget is this money going to come from? Whose lives do they plan to decimate by that re-allocation?

Certainly the autism community doesn't believe others should be damaged in its' name, do they? Because it is certain that people will be damaged when money is taken from subsistence housing and welfare budgets which have been drastically cut. Of course, poor people don't really count or know much; because they have to be stupid or they wouldn't be poor, right? So the government and it's friends don't have to care.

But in case there are people who care; understand, for example, there is absolutely no respite funding for parents, child with special needs or not, who don't have enough money. The NDP eradicated in-home respite for parents. The only option is foster care, which is more costly than in-home respite.

As for supports for children with special needs: my son's diagnosis from Sunny Hill is "Complex Neurodevelopmental Disorder", an umbrella term that includes disorders like autism and FAS, which he does not have. But it doesn't matter that he has disorders in all the same areas as someone diagnosed with Autism, he doesn't have the right label, so we are not eligible for funding for the supports, respite or therapy.

I applied to the Community Living program and the At-Home Program and was refused because my son is not on the autism spectrum and his IQ is over 70. To top it off, without a referral from Community Living we are not eligible for supports from non-profit and other charitable associations I have applied to.

I had a splenectomy last September and at the same time the doctors were telling me to rest I could get no in-home child-care whatsoever. I am a single parent and was worried I might have cancer. If not for relatives who do not live in Vancouver offering to take my son for the first week, he would have had to go into foster care, which I could not allow to happen and which would have traumatized him.

I am on disability because of health reasons which have been made worse by effects from my son's disabilities, poverty, the welfare system and the continual awareness and affects of people's ignorance about all of it. If I could work full-time I most certainly would, rather than be continually humiliated.

Yet I do work full time. Like all parents who have children with special needs, especially those who are not rich and cannot afford to pay for what they need; I have to spend my "working time" as my son's administrative assistant and therapist, as well as advocating for him and making sure he is getting everything he needs in the school system. Plus, I have to try to be continually aware of the damage the government is doing and adding my small voice to advocating for services. Sometimes I imagine all I had to do was take care of my son special needs because the resources he needs would all be there.

But they are not; this government has no plans for that. The BC government, including the NDP when it was in power, is not providing practical, community supports that children with special needs and their families must have. In fact, they keep destroying them.

So, if individuals want to fund and build this new centre, please, do so, and give it your name. (By the way, how do you expect parents who don't have personal transportation to get out there?) Just realize, that in no way, by it's own admission and practice, does the Liberal government have any extra funding for this new centre; don't expect the government to fund something just because Gordon Campbell's friends want it and the university wants the ego boost; when there is no care for all citizens no matter what their income bracket.

But silly ethical issues like that have never stopped this government before. Like most of the rest of the world, these people will only listen to and respect those in a certain income bracket who know absolutely nothing about the lives of the people whose lives they are making decisions about, and destroying in the process.

Martin Luther King

Carol King

Gipsy Kings