B.C. political scandals

[Ka-El]

QUIZ: Do you remember these B.C. political scandals?

http://globalnews.ca/news/2560040/quiz- ... -scandals/

… and only two directly involved the NDP, as the last one re. the Fast Cat Ferries refers more to how Gordon Campbell screwed over BC taxpayers unloading the perfectly functional boats for cents on the dollar to score political points.

[flamingfingers]

I hope ALL of these and more recent scandals will be brought to the attention of the voting public on the runnup to the 2017 election.

[Urbane]

I hope ALL of these and more recent scandals will be brought to the attention of the voting public on the runnup to the 2017 election.

Or the party trying to defeat the Liberals could come up with a platform that contains policies that a majority of people support. We all know the old definition of insanity . . .

[dieseluphammerdown]

I hope ALL of these and more recent scandals will be brought to the attention of the voting public on the runnup to the 2017 election.

I hope it is also.!
That way when the NDP loses yet again you might just realize how horrible the NDP and their policies are once and for all.!

[django]

… and only two directly involved the NDP, as the last one re. the Fast Cat Ferries refers more to how Gordon Campbell screwed over BC taxpayers unloading the perfectly functional boats for cents on the dollar to score political points.

Funny I clearly remember these boats, and they were anything but "perfectly functional".

The father of the fast ferries, Glen Clark, was gone from the premier's office. A new minister for ferries, Joy MacPhail, was trying to explain why the close to half a billion dollars Clark had spent on the project was mostly gone along with him.

"A failed experiment," she called the project. Her briefing supplied new premier Ujjal Dosanjh and his ministers with the ugly details.

The three aluminum-hulled catamaran ferries (one still under construction) would not and could not perform as advertised.

http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=2c1 ... 20cfd2b6a7

[logicalview]

QUIZ: Do you remember these B.C. political scandals?

http://globalnews.ca/news/2560040/quiz- ... -scandals/

… and only two directly involved the NDP, as the last one re. the Fast Cat Ferries refers more to how Gordon Campbell screwed over BC taxpayers unloading the perfectly functional boats for cents on the dollar to score political points.

LOL - "perfectly functional" - I just don't get the attempts by the Dippers here to try and revise history. The rest of us aren't as dumb as the NDP flock of sheep you normally preach to, and so aren't ever going to buy your nonsensical revisionist BS. As for political scandals, I didn't see the scandal involving Clark and Dix bending over for the BCTF in 1998 and giving in on class size and composition at the demands of their union masters. The amount of taxpayer money wasted on that one foolish and corrupt decision makes the idiocy surrounding the fast ferry decision pale in comparison. What's amazing is that the idiot NDP has only had three terms in the entire history of this province, and yet are responsible for so much damage and stupidity. The NDP should be disbanded, immediately.

[flamingfingers]

They seem to be working just fine in the UAE:

Access to and from the island has, in the past, been provided by daily subsidized barge and ferry services for both passengers and vehicles from Port Mugharaq on the mainland and a free air service direct from Abu Dhabi airport. As space on the vessels was limited and the passengers had to compete with freight to carry their cars to Delma, the Department of Transport was tasked with providing a passenger and vehicle ferry service to Delma Island.

Suitable vessels were purchased in late 2009 and were shipped to Abu Dhabi. After a period of preparation and training for the crew, the ferries were delivered to Al Gharbia (Western Region) and triggered operations between Jebel Al Dhanna and Delma Island. The ferries have been named Yameela and Al Gharbia.

Now fully operational, there are daily trips departing from each port, thus making it possible to visit Delma Island and return to the mainland in one day. Services started in mid March 2010 and are proving immensely popular with the inhabitants and visitors of Delma Island.

http://dot.abudhabi.ae/en/info/Ferry_Services

[logicalview]

They seem to be working just fine in the UAE:

Then the UAE should have ordered them built and blown the $450 million on building them, instead of BC taxpayers. Here's how great these "fast cats" were actually functioning in BC:

The fast ferries were intended to achieve crossing times that were 30 minutes faster than those of conventional ferries, making twelve crossings per day rather than eight.[10]Although they initially achieved this crossing time, complaints of the wash of the ships wake forced the ferries to take a longer route, and operate a slower speed around Bowen Island. An archived version of BC Ferries website states that a PacifiCat sailing was only 15 minutes shorter than a sailing with a regular vessel.

and why was this whole debacle a "scandal" in the first place? Oh right, because the BC NDP were so brazenly incompetent:

In 1992, BC Ferries and the government began reviewing the issue of ferry service to Nanaimo. The final report, completed in January 1994, neither supported nor endorsed the use of fast ferries for service between Horseshoe Bay and Departure Bay.[3]:15-19 At a meeting in February 1994 that involved the minister responsible for BC Ferries, the corporation's management indicated that using fast ferries required "further extensive analysis."[3]:20 Their advice was ignored, and less than two months later the minister responsible, Glen Clark, ordered the ferry corporation to cede control over its long-term planning to the government.[3]:20 After the government finished drafting the plan, Clark pressed the BC Ferries board for a quick approval, and the Auditor-General's report about the fast ferries partly blames him for rushing the fast ferries into production.[3]:31

The result was a ten-year capital plan which had been crafted by the government. It bypassed leasing a fast ferry for trials in BC waters and went directly to implementation. Several other projects previously considered essential, such as replacing one of the northern ferries, were deferred in favour of the fast ferries. In addition, the construction of the fast ferries would be used to revitalise the province's shipbuilding industry, furthering policy goals beyond merely improving ferry service to Nanaimo. The BC Ferries board, which was required to rubberstamp the plan, noted several concerns about the fast ferry aspect when asking the cabinet to give it final approval.[3]:20–21

A public announcement of the fast ferry project was made in June, 1994; it had been decided to immediately proceed with building three fast ferries. The government claimed the fast ferries would cost $210 million total, and Clark later insisted that this figure had included everything "right down to the toilet paper."[7] The truth was that little actual analysis had been done: not even the type of ship (single hull or catamaran), nor their dimensions had even been determined when the $210 million figure was announced.[3]:22

The government hoped that private shipyards would be able to build the ships on a fixed-cost basis. This turned out not to be the case; the shipbuilding industry was less enthusiastic than anticipated. Moreover, none of the shipyards being considered for the work had the facilities to build the fast ferries. BC Ferries had no choice but to do the work itself on a cost-plus basis. It would have to act as project manager and assume the risk of the fast ferries. Catamaran Ferries International (CFI), a wholly owned subsidiary of BC Ferries, was incorporated in March 1996 to carry out the work and construction started later that year.[3]:23-24

The CFI board was suddenly replaced a year later with a new one whose members were either part of CFI management, had significant business ties to the company, or already served on BC Ferries board. According to the Auditor-General's report, this is a textbook example of poor corporate governance. It "created the awkward accountability relationship of having board members account to themselves for their performance."[3]:35

[flamingfingers]

^^Kinda like having people tied to the BC Liberal government declared 'independent' and contracted to investigate BC Liberal government scandals, eh?

[logicalview]

^^Kinda like having people tied to the BC Liberal government declared 'independent' and contracted to investigate BC Liberal government scandals, eh?

yes, makes you wish the Liberals and NDP were both forced to sit out the next election so that everyone could vote for fresh options, instead of the tweedle dee and tweedle dumb we have now.

[Ka-El]

The fast ferries were intended to achieve crossing times that were 30 minutes faster than those of conventional ferries, making twelve crossings per day rather than eight.[10]Although they initially achieved this crossing time, complaints of the wash of the ships wake forced the ferries to take a longer route, and operate a slower speed around Bowen Island. An archived version of BC Ferries website states that a PacifiCat sailing was only 15 minutes shorter than a sailing with a regular vessel.

There. I’ve bolded the part that more astute readers would not have missed. The point is the boats were not suited for that one route. They are working more than exceptionally fine in the UAE. Gordon Campbell screwed the BC taxpayers over by selling these perfectly functional boats for pennies on the dollar. But hey, what’s a couple hundred million taxpayer dollars when you can score political points on an already hapless and pretty much irrelevant party?

They seem to be working just fine in the UAE:

Yes, and thanks to Gordo they got a spookum deal subsidized by BC taxpayers

Access to and from the island has, in the past, been provided by daily subsidized barge and ferry services for both passengers and vehicles from Port Mugharaq on the mainland and a free air service direct from Abu Dhabi airport. As space on the vessels was limited and the passengers had to compete with freight to carry their cars to Delma, the Department of Transport was tasked with providing a passenger and vehicle ferry service to Delma Island.

Suitable vessels were purchased in late 2009 and were shipped to Abu Dhabi. After a period of preparation and training for the crew, the ferries were delivered to Al Gharbia (Western Region) and triggered operations between Jebel Al Dhanna and Delma Island. The ferries have been named Yameela and Al Gharbia.

Now fully operational, there are daily trips departing from each port, thus making it possible to visit Delma Island and return to the mainland in one day. Services started in mid March 2010 and are proving immensely popular with the inhabitants and visitors of Delma Island.

http://dot.abudhabi.ae/en/info/Ferry_Services

[logicalview]

There. I’ve bolded the part that more astute readers would not have missed. The point is the boats were not suited for that one route.

Exactly. What kind of idiots (the NDP) forge ahead and blow $450 million of taxpayer dollars on stupid ferries before even doing a feasibility study on whether or not they can even operate on the routes they are planned to run on? Like what kind of blazing stupidity does it take to make such an insanely stupid decision like that one? The kind of stupidity that should penalize a political party to be forever in Opposition, as it is obvious that the NDP just can't govern. It's obvious why the NDP went ahead with this expense, they were ordered to by their union puppet-masters. Blaming Gordon Campbell for this mess is just pure partisan garbage. Glen Clark and his gang of loser NDP are the ones wearing the badge of shame here, just as they wear a badge of shame for their horrible back-room deal with the BCTF in 1998. The NDP should forever be consigned to the dustbin of history.

[Ka-El]

So you deliberately missed the point again, but that is to be expected. News flash: the NDP haven’t been in power in this province for over ten years and it is highly unlikely they will be in power again here anytime soon - if ever. Yes, the construction of the fast ferries was a political failure and a gong show, but that doesn’t excuse Gordon Campbell for exacerbating the cost to BC taxpayers (by a couple hundred of million taxpayer dollars) just to assuage his own feelings of inadequacy and need to overcompensate. Close your bedroom closet door LV. Keep the NDP boogeyman inside.

[Muzza]

From Wikipedia, so I don't know if this is a biased or unbiased article:

The ferries had the following problems during their brief tenure:

High fuel consumption. The four 8,375 brake horsepower (6.2 MW) engines driving their waterjets required an inordinate amount of diesel fuel. Fully loaded and traveling at top speed of 34 knots/ 63 km an hour required the engines to be used at 90% power.

Due to an unusually wet and windy winter, there was a higher than normal amount of flotsam in the waters along the route, some of which was sucked into impellers for the ferries' engines, causing breakdowns and sailing cancellations.

When operated at full speed, the Pacificat fleet created a wake which was reported to have damaged waterfront wharves and property in coastal areas near the two terminals. This required that the ferries reduce speed in certain areas and alter course in others, reducing their speed advantage.

The air on vehicle decks became uncomfortably warm, either from the heat of the vessel engines or lack of air circulation. This made some people wary of bringing pets aboard the FastCats; however, the ferries had kennels with improved air circulation at the bow and stern of the vehicle decks.

There was little outside deck space for passengers. The existing ferries had large decks, and it was common for passengers to spend the entire sailing circling the decks of the ship or sunbathing on the lifejacket containers.

The ships had interiors that were perceived by passengers as being cramped compared to the existing ferries.

Loading took longer than the older ferries due to balancing issues. This further negated the ships' speed advantage.

[Muzza]

Wikipedia again..... Even the NDP knew they had to dump them.....,

After a change in leadership, the new Premier of BC, Ujjal Dosanjh, placed the ferries up for sale.