I’m less quick than some are to play to the parochial peanut gallery about big bad CN Rail bullying our innocent little town of West Vancouver.
Equipped with a circa 1957 university course in English constitutional law, I am, as the judges nobly say, reserving judgment.
On the face of it, the train people’s insistence – that WV pony up $3.7 million annual rent for lease of CN Rail land used in part for West Vancouver’s popular Centennial Seawalk – is a mite greedy. (And CN is itself a tenant, leasing the land from the British Columbia Railway Company, successor to the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, and then, way back to 1913 when the PGE began building the line, the province was and remains the ultimate landlord.)
But leap to this embarrassing fact: West Van hasn’t paid a nickel for use of this land since 1994. Yes, 23 years and only now under threat of eviction. Which is what CN Rail seeks from the Canadian Transportation Agency.
Yet town hall believes CN Rail should be grateful. It hasn’t paid a nickel either, for the riprap and West Van’s shoreline maintenance – costly work, especially after a major 2001 storm – that protects the rail property for a 1.1 km stretch from roughly 19th to 24th Streets.
CN Rail is playing tough catch-up with its $3.7 million annual demand.
In the days when railways were warmly welcomed, not vilified as CP Rail was in a recent hard-assed $55 million land settlement with the City of Vancouver, B.C. Rail – restructured in 1984 from PGE (popularly dubbed Please Go Easy) – was amazingly charitable.
The rent for three separate land parcels for West Van’s 1967-70 construction of the Centennial Seawalk was …
Twenty-five bucks per lease. Right, total $75.
In 1993 B.C. Rail proposed a big increase – to $300 for each lease. Now this should make the hottest homer uneasy: West Van town hall “does not have records whether these amounts were paid.”
In 1995 B.C. Rail jacked that up to $500 each. The next year it proposed consolidation of the three leases and rent of $2,500. Again, the town’s records are stunningly shaky: That lease “was not executed’’ and “it does not appear” that WV made the proposed payment.
It gets worse. In 1998 B.C. Rail provided another draft contract, proposing $8,900 per year. The town didn’t pay. The next year B.C. Rail served notice that rent of $9,523 was outstanding. Town hall responded that it was “raising issues” with some terms of the proposal including rent escalation provisions. Didn’t pay.
Again, WV’s own records indicate B.C. Rail gave up trying: “It does not appear” that the company requested rent any time after 1999, “and no payment has been made since 1994.”
Leap to September 2015. CN Rail is now landlord. It met with WV representatives seeking to “regularize” the lack of a written agreement, sought compensation, and – suck breath in – proposed rent based on the market value of adjacent land. That’s where the $3.7 million comes in.
Last December CN Rail demanded a 10-year deal at that rent, raised at the end of the fifth year by the rate of inflation or 15 per cent, whichever is greater. After the tenth year, the railroad boys would determine the rent “in a commercially reasonable manner.”
On Feb. 10 West Van counter-proposed continued use of the Seawalk, its maintenance of shoreline protection, a 25-year lease renewable for a further 25 years, and would pay “annual compensation” of $12,500. Just $3,687,500 less than CN Rail’s asking price, so to speak.
CN didn’t dally. Seven days later it served notice of termination of the three leases and removal of buildings – that would include the gazebo – and other non-CN property, and on Feb. 20 served notice of legal action.
West Van in turn seeks an order from the Canadian Transportation Authority allowing use of the Seawalk crossing and access to shore protection work, and dismissal of compensation claims. The town also argues that its Seawalk reduces trespassing and vandalism on the track. It bases its $12,500 counter-proposal on “the last offer of $9,800 per year made by CN’s predecessor B.C. Rail in 1998, adjusted for inflation since 1998 to 2016.”
As a taxpayer, I warmly hope West Van succeeds. As a newspaperman, I’m not a parish-pump cheerleader. Before even reading the above-quoted documents, I mused: Since WV hadn’t paid anything for 23 years for use of CN’s leased land, were previous councils and top staff naive or worse in letting the issue slide – as if a day of reckoning wasn’t inevitable?
Town hall wouldn’t answer that, with the stock response that the matter is before the courts.
I cite Voltaire’s shrewd insight: “A long dispute means that both parties are wrong.”
Former Vancouver Sun columnist Trevor Lautens writes every second Friday on politics and life with a West Vancouver bias. [email protected]
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