Sue is choked too
'Best Place on Earth' brings out that catch in Campbell's throat - SUN Sept
30/08
Really Vaughn?
Here's a guy who has undermined the democracy in our Province by being the
most arrogant and secretive, closed door decision making, perks to his
friends "leader" we've seen - maybe ever - and you are taken in by a wee
show of....what did you call it - sentimentality ??
Perhaps he's regretting his impaired decisions that have placed so many in
this province in harms way, with cuts to health care, long waits for
treatment, the failure to respond to crisis after social crisis .....and -
oh yeah - the preventable death of scores of once successful small
independant businesses along his toy train the Canada Line....?
Nah. He probably got choked up because he looked at all those investments
the government made in sub-prime backed paper that are now not worth
...well - the paper they are printed on. These are the pension funds of hard
working Canadians, too.
And in the case of the Canada Line, he even topped up their tank with $56
million more taxpayer funds upon request! What a guy.
Good grief. There is nothing that this Provincial government does that is
not self-serving. Tolls off the highway? It's election time boys and girls.
Just waiting for the next bauble/bribe for the weary tax paying masses.
Perhaps a seismic upgrade of this Provincial government at the polls?
Do I sound a bit choked up? I've suffered through 3 years of unimaginable
hardship - have nearly lost all I've worked hard to build up over 25 years.
Out of desperation I am taking my own government to court to find justice
for this abuse of power called Canada Line. It is no small point that as
Mayor, Campbell was prepared to take legal action against the Province in
SUPPORT of compensation for Expo/Millenium Line construction. What a
hypocrite.
I continue to fight as hard as I can for my desperate neighbours - and if I
were speaking to you right now there would most certainly be a CATCH in my
voice.
Standing tall - and loud on Cambie Street,
Susan Heyes
Hazel&Co
Cambie Street
604 687-0721
10 comments:
No sympathy Susan.
If the second forced vote about the location for the RAV line did not set off alarm bells in your head then the third one with the stacked council MUST HAVE.
Smart business owners got out when the getting was good...the right time to break your lease was about 30 seconds after the cut-and-cover-up was breaking ground.
At least then you only have a few hassles with court a few years from now...not having to watch your works flushed down the ditch that used to be the road.
I cannot support using tax payer funds to fix your mistake is judgement and total miscalculation in risk factoring. I say that the signs were there for all to see, only you chose to ignore them.
David: I tried to resist making a comment on this...and failed...
I wonder how Ms/Mr. Smarty-Pants would have reacted to a suggestion that s/he pay a penalty for breaking a lease, when the Canada Line CEO Jane Bird and others assured Cambie entrepreneurs - not once but many times - that RAV construction would be in front of any given business for two to three months - that's MONTHS not YEARS. Get it?
If Ms/Mr. S-P was moved to blog-post on Susan Heyes' letter, one wonders how loud would have been the bawling, had it been her or his AUDITED $900,000 losses?
Choked yet?
Liz J.
You go Susan!
I am totally behind you.
What the government did here is completely unjust and they need to be forced to take some responsibility for it.
As for the first anonymous - go back under your rock, it should be obvious to anyone who follows how the world currently operates that "justice" is a very rare commodity and should be applauded where ever we find it.
Jennifer
Gord, is that you? Kevin...Jane ?
Good to see you paying attention with this pathetic attempt to blame the victim.
We are amazed at the effort your costly PR army puts into all the toxic spin of the irrelevant merrits of this project, with no regard for the viability of those who are the collateral damage of this deception.
This was an abuse of power the likes of which we have never seen before in these parts. The shocking thing is that the presedent this sets paves the way for much more of the same, and it must be changed.
We say NO to your impaired, secretive, bullying style of driving this Province. Time to take away your keys.
As for taxpayer funds being tossed into the trench, the RAV shopping mall shuttle bus - or 'ghost train' as some will call it in the future when even the planned forced ridership fails to meet the fictional numbers you assure us will ride it - is now by all accounts about a BILLION dollars over budget.
It is, however a gravy train for all the land development that will begin now that the small businesses and residential tennants have been bulldozed out of the area.
If there has been a 'mistake in judgement and total miscalculation of risk factoring' it rests firmly with Canada Line and all its partners. The negligence demonstrated here rivals that of China. Congratulations Gord! This is one way BC can compete with the Beijing Games when we welcome the world in 2010.
I can't wait to meet the press.
I recall a blogger expressing a similar sentiment to anonymous #1 a few weeks ago, and he describes his interests are in real estate. One and the same.
Keith
The RAV facts speak for themselves. 3 of the 4 bidders followed the RFP and EAO Terms of Reference that REQUIRED tunneling to extend south at least to 37th Avenue, and anticipated to go to 46th or 49th. The RPF is clear: "Open excavations...will not be considered as part of the Main Line Tunnel."
Why did one bidder, with a plan to rip up Cambie Street dated 15 July 2002, bid differently than all of the others? Why after contract signature did this "fixed-price" $1.72 billion project escalate to an admitted $2.05 billion while two stations were cut and 2 kilometres of track dropped from elevated guideways to on-grade? Why is this contract now significantly above that of the second-place bidder?
Sponsorship West?
No city in the world has ever allowed a 6 km trench to be run through its heart, not even the poorest of Third World countries with extensive subway systems.
No government has ever gotten away with a fraudulent supplemental payment to a contractor of $640 million dollars that was never authorized by the project's Responsible Authority. Even the Auditor General took notice.
Now just ask any RAV worker how dry their segmented cast-in-place tunnel is, and how the driverless electronics will fare in the constant wetness? Then consider why SNC-Lavalin's bid partner, Serco, dropped out of the project, and why SNC will be the first engineering company ever to be forced to take on responsibility for operating a transit line of its own making.
The province had to take over Translink and lock its governance into a dark smokey room to try to keep the facts hidden.
Yes, this is another fast ferry fiasco, only with gross fraud and an extensive cover-up to spice up the indictments. Oh, and an Olympic-sized price tag and sub-prime-like annual payments that will make those ferries seem cheap.
All the original source documentation behind these facts is available at www.doravright.ca, with links to governmental source web sites.
Next time, think twice about assaulting Susan, and then rubbing salt into her wounds. Such behaviour is appalling.
Ms. Heyes, I have never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I would like to convey that I, and so many others in this Province are pulling for you and your fight.
All the power to you!
Cheers
How stupid of me... With the second vote on the RAV Line, I should have known what was coming and started looking for a new home away from Cambie Street immediately, rather than waiting for greedy speculators to buy up my wonderful townhouse community and start evicting our 70 families with 90+ children from the home and community that we cherish.
Like the Cambie businesses, we should known that the gig was up and evacuated Cambie immediately to make room for the RAV Line and greedy developers.
How foolish to hang onto all that we have created and built our lives around these last few years, and to naively expect justice and fairness in a city like Vancouver, a province like British Columbia or a country like Canada.
I see the TransLink/RAVCO spin doctors are alive and well. Of course it is all Sue's fault; how bad of her to operate a business in Vancouver and dare to complain about a 40 foot pit in front of her store for 3 years. I mean some people are so, so selfish, so unCanadian to demand even a sou.
Take $1000.00 a day Jane (Bird droppings) Bird to court and see her perjure herself. The same goes to TransLink and their collective grand economies of the truth. Yes David, I have sent Susan a list of TransLink falsehoods, with the truth added.
"Oh what tangled webs we weave, if we first practise to deceive."
I do wish Susan makes it to court and her Lawyer embarrasses TransLink and RAVCO. with inconvenient truths and why they choose to deceive the people. Her court case could be the equal of the Basi/Virk/BC Rail scandal.
Where is the media? Of course, it is rapid transit, the one motherhood and apple pie story that media never say a bad thing about!
My only fear is, has Campbell & Co., bought off the judges?
Criminal trial association with this obvious debacle?
Only in a very left-wing wet dream.
These businesses, I will say that again, businesses, along the Cambie line RAV construction route that are crying foul now are completely wrong.
Like it or not 'the state' has these powers, we gave them to these knuckleheads and now they, the great mandarins in Victoria, are doing all in their power to use those powers.
At least one business did see the writing on the wall and broke its lease, The Tomato Cafe, I am not aware of the ultimate costs yet but I suspect that the building owner will have his day 'in court' to try and work out compensation.
Now think about this for a minute, if ALL of the businesses on this corridor FLED within a week or two of the pending DOOM announcement that the cut-and-cover-up was coming...do you not think that the 'plan' would have been ammended?
Property owners there would have freaked out. The real costs would be plain as the long noses on their lieing faces.
But no we have to stay here like a stick in the mud and expect the collective public purse to pay for our stupidity.
Good on the onwers of the Tomato Cafe...they are laughing all the way to the bank in Kits!
For the brain-dead in the trenches, keep-on keeping on...who knows you may even convince a judge to look at your case in another 10 years.
Post a Comment