BOO WHO?
By
William Thomas

DEATHS AND DIRTY DEALINGS
Still think you can stay home on May 1st? Do yourself a major favour and review the 1985 movie, “Wall Street”. Then consider where Gordon “Gekko” Campbell is taking us.

Condemned nine times in two years by the United Nations for human rights violations after changing collective agreements and using legislation to enforce unfair wages and practices on ferry workers and other unions, Campbell's budget slashing at the Ministry of Children and Families saw children dying. After forestry safety rules felt the Liberal's expediency axe, loggers' deaths leaped from 13 in 2004 to 43 in 2005. [Democrat June 6/06]

Recall, as well, the scandal in BC seniors care homes cited for dozens of health and safety violations following further Campbell cutbacks. As the CBC reported, “One woman was found strangled to death by the restraint on her wheelchair. Another man wasn't bathed for 11 days.” [CBC Oct 4/07]

Rotten food in the care homes was blamed on privatization to a foreign corporation under a contract with the Ministry of Transportation, headed by the same “Boo Hoo” Kevin Falcon who, along with Campbell, was one of six lobbyists who helped the Liberals break an election promise by privatizing BC Rail. Announced on November 25, 2003, the ultimate winner was Canadian National Railway, after CP withdrew from the bidding in bitter written protest of an "extremely prejudiced" process favouring CN - which just happened to have contributed $150,000 to BC Liberal coffers. The last time I tried to take the train to Victoria I ended up on a CN-chartered bus.

The CN scam went through. But Falcon had to cancel the privatization of BC Rail's Port Subdivision after an RCMP criminal investigation revealed the process was tainted by "advisors" to a bidder obtaining confidential information. [vivelecanada.ca; straight.com March 10, 2004]

In dizzying succession came the privatization of BC Rail, cuts in welfare, social services, medical clinics and long term care beds, and the destruction of Eagle Ridge and arrests of 29 West Vancouver residents opposed to the ruin wrought by Falcon's Sea To Sky Olympics highway expansion. [vivelecanada.ca]

“But what's happening to our ferries?” you ask.

Why more of the same, of course.

FLIM FLAM MEN
On April 2, 2003, Kevin Falcon and the Minister of Land and Water quietly signed documents transferring all BC Ferry crown land, foreshore, water lots, terminals, berths and parking lots to the BC Transportation Financing Authority in exchange for a $330 million promissory note. The BCTFA immediately turned around and charged the Campbell government $330 million for a 60-year lease on the berths and terminals just transferred to it.

So the newly formed and heavily indebted BC Ferry Services Inc. handed back BCTFA's $330 million to lease the facilities it had owned just seconds ago. Presto! What had been public crown land was now owned by the newly hatched BC Transportation Financing Authority.

BC Ferries ended up with an insupportable debt that was soon to quadruple under a massive and long overdue modernization of ships and shore facilities that could best be carried out by the provincial government. But not after this bookkeeping flim-flam that removed government liability to what it called an “arms-length” distance that left taxpayers liable for any payback shortfalls.

By holding all but one voting share of the company, the province now owned a private company called BC Ferry Services. To insure that the BC government could not “interfere” with what is no longer a provincial ferry fleet, this voting share was handed to the newly created BC Ferry Authority, which controls the new BC Ferry Service through its Board of Directors. As the Ferry Authority explains on its website, “By its structure, the Authority ensures the operations of BC Ferries are independent from the provincial government.” [bcferryauthority.com]

Which is why transport head Kevin Falcon told the legislature he was powerless to roll-back the April Fools Day pay bonanza, after a U.S.-based consulting firm determined that board members deserved it. "I don't want to have the ability to overrule them,” Falcon insisted. “One day you're rolling back directorship pay and next thing you know they're placing orders for aluminum and launching fast ferries down the spillways.”

“Nonsense,” barked the Vancouver Sun's veteran government watchdog, Vaughn Palmer. As the controlling shareholder, “the government could legislate a cap on directors' fees.” [Vancouver Sun Apr 16/08]

And fares.

SHELL GAMES
Because BC Ferry Services needed cash to operate, the born-again company immediately borrowed $428 million from the same government that had just formed it. For collateral, BCFS mortgaged every ferry in the fleet, plus its prepaid 60-year lease for ferry terminals and other infrastructure previously owned by BC taxpayers.

Watch closely. The Campbell privateers then re-mortgaged the BCFS mortgage they had just issued through a Banking Consortium. This allowed them to secure a $500 million bond offering, which was then used to pay off the mortgage held by the province!

If you want to see what happens when half-billion dollar mortgages are refinanced and flipped in a series of risky hand-offs, check out any major newspaper detailing the worldwide mortgage meltdown over the past six months.

And you say this can't happen here?

PEANUTS ARE FOR MONKEYS
What the fritz was going on?

BC Ferries Corp. assets totalled $503 million when it was transferred to BC Ferry Services. But the $428 loan to BCFS chopped shareholder equity to just $75 million. And that was “peanuts when compared with the value of the Crown Corporation which was essentially given away,” Island Tides further explained. [Island Tides Mar 23/06]

Not only was BC Ferry Services financially crippled on start-up, as the Vancouver Sun learned, “The new 'private' company has to pay more for borrowing than a Crown corporation would, and the higher costs contribute to higher fares.” [Vancouver Sun Feb 7/08]

As BC Unity Party finance critic Greg Watrich warned at the time, after offloading the debt for its modernization program onto BC Ferries, if government subsidies remained flat at $135 million a year, the company would have to sharply increase fares. “The government's long term goal is to operate the terminal facilities only, while private companies will compete as service providers,” Watrich observed. “Or else force the Ferry Corp into bankruptcy.” [BC Unity Party Press Release]

HAHN'S OFF
That's a word well known to David Hahn. After presiding over the sell-off of Ogden Aviation assets that included 25,000 employees and airport operations in 30 countries following what was hailed in the press as a “monumental bankruptcy,” this New Yorker bailed out of his $500,000-a-year position as VP of Ogden's parent company - the energy and transportation giant Covanta. After pulling the ripcord on his $228,000 golden parachute, Hahn made a soft landing in the arms of Gordon “Gekko” Campbell, who picked him as the ideal executive to ruin - oops, run - the new BC Ferry Services. During the first year he collected a $300,000 salary as CEO of the fleet, Hahn was also paid a $30,000-a-month “consulting fee” from his former employer.

“Here's a guy whose qualifications for the job of running our ferry fleet appear to consist of the part he played in the dismemberment of a multinational corporation that racked up $3.3 billion in debt before it declared bankruptcy two years ago, leaving investors with $250 million in losses and $45 million in unpaid taxes,” investigative reporter Terry Glavin revealed.

“A major part of Hahn's job at Covanta had been to expedite the disposition of Covanta's aviation assets, its cargo-handling business, its airport fuel-supply services, everything,” Glavin discovered in a newsletter that tracks corporate bankruptcies. “The relevant talents of the guy that Gordon Campbell's appointees have hired to run BC's ferry fleet appear to lie mainly in breaking up and selling off a major transportation company's assets.” [The Troubled Company Reporter ; Georgia Straight Dec 18/03]

Can you say, Blue Star Airlines?

SUNSET INDUSTRY?
Most ferry-sailing British Columbians still don't know how badly they've been scammed. But ferry users and workers were quick to feel the effects. On April Fool's Day, 2003 ferry workers' pay cheques no longer came from the BC Government. Veterans with decades service in the fleet also saw their Public Pension Plan tossed overboard and replaced with what they saw as unequal compensation.

Boo hoo. Targeting coastal runs - while leaving five Mainland and Interior ferries to continue making seven daily runs for free - the newly imposed Coastal Ferry Act allowed the BCFS management to ignore the Labour Relations Code in overruling collective agreements with ferry workers. The provincial auditor can also be barred from examining the books of this “private” ferry company.

No wonder the week of December 8, 2003 saw Terry Glavin reporting, “The worst disruption to BC's ferry system in a quarter of a century.”

“Here's how my life on Mayne Island was disrupted,” this veteran journalist continued. “First, it was not knowing whether the Queen of Cumberland was ever going to show up. Then it was having no ferry at all. Then it was wondering when the ferries would be running again. But the very worst thing about the whole week was turning on the radio for news only to hear some rich American tell me over and over again how much he cared about me and how he was going to do all he could to protect me and my family against the ferry workers, my own neighbours. My own friends.” [Georgia Strait Dec 22/03]

But most ferry riders sided with the ferry workers, who were quickly forced back to work by legislation that imposed a seven-year contract with a zero wage increases during the first three years, followed by a 6% raise diluted over the final two years. [TheTyee.ca Feb 9/05]

LOSS LEADER
As for hostage ferry riders, Glavin explained: “In the sleight-of-hand transactions made possible by the new Coastal Ferry Act, we all went from being citizens, passengers on our own ferries, to being 'customers' of a private company.” [Georgia Strait Dec 22/03]

The act also targets riders. Calling for the ferry system's 24 subsidized routes to pay their own way after “cross-subsidies” from the two paying major routes were phased out by March 31, 2008, it allows unprofitable runs to be cut at the whim of the board's ferry commissioner. Courts cannot intervene. [Vancouver Sun Dec 22/03]

By reducing ridership, rising fares guarantee further “losses” on island runs that used to be part of the highways system and, like provincial roads, were never intended to return a profit. Sure enough, in the last quarter of 2007, crippling island fare hikes saw BC Ferry Services lose almost $8 million - nearly five-times the amount lost during the same period the previous year.

A PROVEN PLAN
If you have a problem this, don't try addressing your complaints to the provincial Ombudsman, or using the Freedom Of Information Act to find out what's happening with your ferries. Neither avenue applies to private companies like the BC Ferry Services and the privatized portion of BC Hydro.

Remember BC Hydro? Promising not to privatize “the most valuable water-generating electric system in North America,” the Campbell government buried BC Hydro in billions of dollars of debt, while permanently preventing its development of future energy generation. Instead, the crown corporation's newly privatized Transmission arm was bound to advanced energy purchases from private companies, mostly from the United States.

Campbell also forced BC Hydro to outsource much of its metering, billing and financial services to Accenture - formerly known as Arthur Anderson Consulting before being resurrected in Bermuda following corruption convictions in the Enron scandal. Our new BC Hydro partner will assure that BC electricity is generated by high-cost private U.S. producers from BC rivers, and then zapped down to the USA at inflated consumer prices - which will also apply to British Columbians. [ashlu.info]

Sound familiar?

LEARNING TO SPEAK 'MERICAN
Memo to Messrs. Hahn and Falcon: “IT'S NOT WORKING!”

Or is it?

The union-supported Save Our Ferries committee warns that Gordon Gekko Campbell's new business plan “threatens to sink the corporation, putting all its assets in the hands of bankers.” These include a $1.1 billion ferries upgrade tab for five new ships - including the three German “Super C” ferries and two smaller second-hand ferries, plus major refits for nine other aging vessels.

Don't forget the interest on those loans. Right now, the hijacked ferry corporation taxpayers no longer control but are still on the hook for owes banks $335 million and bondholders another $950 million. That's $1.29 billion in debts coming due - plus hundreds of millions more dollars in ferry terminal construction - just about the time peak oil prices go stratospheric, impacting every sector of the BC and world economy. As climate shift also surges into hyperdrive (Google: methane releases), ferry crews warn that anticipated sea-level rises will render inoperable every ferry ramp on the BC coast.

Guess who's not planning for these contingencies?

“If something goes wrong, and BC Ferries defaults on repayment of its loans,” worry BC ferry workers on their website, saveourferries.com, “the banks are entitled to recover their money.”

Since “all loans and bonds are backed by BCFS assets,” this means that as BC Ferry Services Inc. sinks further into financial difficulties, “the people of British Columbia as the shareholders will have to bail it out with tax dollars then buy back all the assets from the bank.”

With what? An American buy-out?

SINKING DOWN
“It's time to pull the plug on this model of ferry management,” says the BC Ferries union, “before it all goes down the drain.” [Campbell River Mirror Feb 27/08]

One ship already has.

Appointed Director Safety, Health and Environment to BC Ferry Services in January 2006, by June Master Mariner and safety expert Darin Bowland was suing that corporation in BC Supreme Court for allegedly resisting his “advice, directions, recommendations, and warnings.”

Bowland told the court that ferries management “was unwilling to recognize and address the safety problems associated with the fleet.” But the former safety director went even further, charging that the management of this cost-cutting, for-profit ferry corporation was “unwilling to take urgent action necessary to ensure the safety of its employees and the public as a whole, action that could well have prevented the sinking of the Queen of the North.”

After that late night loveboat debacle off Gil Island on March 22, 2006 drowned first-time ferry passengers Gerald Foisey and Shirley Rosette of 100 Mile House, the BC Ferries safety director further testified that a company supposedly immune to political interference prevented him “from conducting an inquiry into the sinking at all.” Disciplined for speaking out about safety concerns that might have prevented the tragedy in Wright Sound, David Bowland finally resigned. [vivelecanada.ca]

SEND IN THE MARINE GROUP
Could an American company end up running BC's ferries? How about the Washington Marine Group? The firm that sold Dave Barrett's NDP government three “fast-cat” catamarans for $450 million dollars, then bought them back for about $19 million is presumably too savvy to take on a public transportation service that must be subsidized to operate. But they are certainly experienced. Washington Marine Group already owns and operates Seaspan International of North Vancouver, three shipyards located in North Vancouver, Victoria and Vancouver, and a commercial ferry service that runs freight cars between the lower mainland and Nanaimo. [washingtonmarinegroup.com; senioryears.com]

Under Governor - oops, Premier Gordon Campbell - the “Americanization” of BC is already well underway. The new president of Global TV is American Kathleen Dore. The new president of CanWest Media Works' publication division, including 11 major Canadian newspapers, comes from the New York Times Company. The president of CanWest sales and marketing is from Time Warner. And the BCFS vice-president in charge of Southern routes is a Yankee from Alaska. [vivelecanada.ca]

Aren't there any Canadians capable of selling out “Canadian” companies?

Apparently not.

PATTERN RECOGNITION
Maybe Kevin Falcon, Gordon Campbell and David Hahn ought to walk that same plank. Does lying to the public qualify? At the 2004 BC Ferry Service Annual General Meeting, Hahn told anxious ferry riders, “Our agenda is… keeping fares as low as possible and putting ferry users first.” [Vancouver Sun Sept 28/04]

Guess what?

How come it costs $40 for such a little ferry ride? How come it costs more to get to Hornby than it did to cross the Gulf?” asks Denman islander Doug Christie. “ And the answer is: We do not understand.”

Realization might dawn when the Campbell government's ferry privatization agenda is seen within a bigger picture. On the evidence of what we've been handed so far, the ultimate fate of our ferries fits into an overarching plan that does not include serving communities that depend on them.

Google: North American Union, integrated North American economy, unimpeded free trade area.

As demonstrated by the erosion and loss of BC Ferries, BC Hydro and BC Rail, along with provincial legal, social assistance and medical services, “British Columbia is up against a global development that is ruthless, rapacious, and without conscience,” writes Robin Mathews in his “Reason For Revolution” from BC's Ashlu River. [ashlu.info]

Mussolini defined “fascism” as a form of government that serves corporate interests by oppressing its constituents. But not even its inventor foresaw how unjust taxes, fees and regulations would come to be imposed by a tiny elite dedicated to personal profiteering and control.

It's time to remember that we outnumber them.

HOW'S YOUR BACKSTROKE?
Rising opposition to destructive ferry fares draws from the same outrage and struggle against the corporate “hollowing out” of communities across North America. Throughout the islands, we'd better get together and get on it.

Already reeling under major losses of tourism revenues, Hornby and Cortes islanders who must purchase two ferry tickets to get home face a unique “double-whammy” in fares that have doubled since 2003 and are set to double again between that year and 2011.

But in addition to fare increases on all island runs, additional fuel surcharges are also certain to rise. Not due to rising oil prices, but because surcharges imposed far in excess of actual fuel costs are proving to be a terrific rip-off - oops, revenue - earner. (Ask your ferry crew.)

And don't forget Gordon Campbell's new carbon tax, which will hit ferry users harder than motorists. Led by big ships racing across the Strait of Georgia at 24 knots, ferries currently burning 120 million litres of light diesel per year will pay an additional 8.3 cents per litre by 2012. Look for the first carbon tax surcharge on top of the already excessive fuel tax surcharge as early as October 1, 2008. [Vancouver Province Feb 20/08]

Memo to “Super C” captains and their superiors: SLOW DOWN!

WHAT CAN WE DO?
“We suggest you share your concerns with Transportation Minister Hon. Kevin Falcon,” says Doug Christie. You can email him at: Minister,Transportation@gov.bc.ca.

You can also show up for your local May Day ferry rally. On that day, says Gabriola organiser Jean McLaren, “There will be protests from other islands - Quadra, Denman/Hornby and Mayne.” Galiano, too.

You may not be able to stop the war on Iraq. Or redress many other unjustices so many of us spend so much of their time railing against. But all injustice is connected. By standing up together, and joining this grass roots uprising, we can end the war against our own communities - and in so doing contribute to a worldwide groundswell calling for peace and justice.

NOW HEAR THIS
“Our ferries have been stolen from us. We should take them back,” urges Mayne Islander Terry Glavin.

Problem is, Doug Christie comments, with just 25,000 residents on the Gulf Islands, “our 200 or so swing votes represent no political clout.”

Don't expect the Campbell government to instantly heed our May Day demonstrations for fair ferry fares. As veteran public rights campaigner Robin Mathews points out, “The history - for at least the last five years - has been of resistance from nice public organizations, nice unions, a love-in Legislative Opposition, nice researchers and nice freelance journalists working on the issue, getting nowhere, losing ground each day… ” under the “relentless manipulation and corrupt practice of the Gordon Campbell mob and its corporate puppeteers - Canadian and U.S.”

If they continue to ignore the families and communities they are being paid to serve, the Campbell privateers could be in for some big shocks. Turn out and tune in for some surprising developments as alliances are forged through a swelling all-islands protest with ferry workers, retailers, and this summer's irate visitor/voters from politically powerful constituencies.

Come out on May 1st and contribute your energy and input for the next stage of our campaign - which will shortly be moving toward a guaranteed wake-up call. Until then, with the next provincial general election coming up on May 12, 2009, our response to Gordon Campbell and Kevin Falcon is just two words:

OTHER SOURCES
bcndpcaucus.ca
islandstrust.bc.ca
bcauditor.com
nupge.ca
ctv.ca

SEE FERRY FARES VIDEO CLIP HERE

Tell the Campbell Liberals that the ferry is your Highway. Please fill out the petition at this link.