"She who asks a question may appear a fool for five minutes; but she who does not ask a question will remain a fool forever."
Gender equality version of ancient Chinese proverb
THREE issues led me to paraphrase that Chinese proverb last week.
Never short of questions, the most insistent alarm bells rang about the debt-load at B.C. Hydro.
Already concerned after a decade of watching the Campbell-Clark Liberals manipulate Hydro into a shadow of its glory days, I asked myself: 'If people wish to buy out an asset they already own, how do they establish its market value?'
Is it simply a matter of reading the balance sheets, confirming the net value of cash-flow, earnings, assets and liabilities, analyzing the state of its infrastructure and the value of in-force contracts and using those numbers to complete the calculation?
Now, having challenged some investor-gurus, here are my reasons for asking:
Last Wednesday, I learned that if the Site C Dam project is approved, the board of the Peace River Regional District has agreed to accept Hydro's offer of a "legacy" payment of $2.4 million per annum over a 70-year term.
Not all PRRD directors supported that decision. One of the three who cast a dissenting vote was Arthur Hadland - an Independent candidate in last May's election.
Quoting numbers provided by Hydro president Charles Reid at a Fort St. John Chamber of Commerce meeting, Hadland told me the $7.9 billion Site C Dam proposal is "totally irresponsible."
He said as much to Reid when, by doing the math on Hydro's own data, he corrected the speaker's claim that Hydro is in debt to the tune of "only" $50 billion.
"It's closer to $70 billion," Hadland told me. "I have questioned these numbers many times - in public - and never been challenged.
"Allowing Hydro to carry its current debt load, while boasting it pays millions in dividends to the province is unacceptable."
Asked what his suggestions were for an alternative energy source, Hadland surprised me: "We own the natural gas resource in this area; it can produce four billion cubic feet of gas a day," he said.
When I asked about the environmentally undesirable side effects of the power and water-hungry rock-fracturing method of harvesting natural gas - fracking - Hadland said "gas has always been produced by fracking."
The implication was that gas production would have less detrimental impact on the environment than Site C, given that the dam project would require thousands of farming and wilderness acres to be flooded.
In summary, Hadland agreed with my impression that Reid appeared far less confident about his numbers than one would expect from the president of a multi-million-dollar public corporation.
. . .
Next, a few unequivocal words for the Mayors' Council on Regional Transportation: Please, unless you are willing to include a "none of the above" option, no more surveys that ask taxpayers how they would like to remit the lint in their pockets to TransLink.
We're on a sit-down strike - period.
On strike until you commission an ethical, unbiased cost-benefit comparison of SkyTrain versus light-rail transit - and not by Bombardier or SNC-Lavalin.
On strike, until an audit reveals the latest use-and-abuse costs of the U-Pass program.
And on strike until the province shoulders its responsibility for decision-making by filling its voting seats on the TransLink Board.
Until those conditions are met, taxpayers are no longer willing to be prey to TransLink's version of the Stockholm syndrome - prey under its spendthrift thumb despite the comforting clichés about sustainability and the greater good.
. . .
Lastly, we come to the CityLine Developments rezoning application(s) in the City of North Vancouver.
If approved, the developer would be allowed to build three homes where two sit today - perhaps with an option to add coach-houses in the future.
Add in CityLine's rumoured land-assembly plans for other properties in the area and my first question becomes: Why would developers pay $850,000 and $950,000 respectively for two homes in an RS-1 zone east of Grand Boulevard unless staff had given them reason to believe the subdivision would be approved?
As I asked around the time of the Onni application: Why is council underwriting the time and expense of an official community plan process if it's not prepared to wait a few months to see what the community says about rampant density and growth, or to abide by OCP guidelines?
Building million-dollar-plus homes is to achieve profitability not affordability, which is fine; just let's be honest about it.
Furthermore, if municipal growth strategies are being driven by the province through Metro Vancouver, why elect councils in the first place?
Because the way things stand, it seems the North Shore is headed for governance by a regional bully that is answerable to no-one beyond the weighted-vote inner core.
On June 14, neighbours forwarded a 61-signature petition to council in opposition to the subdivision and redevelopment of 732 and 736 East 15th Street.
Attached to a covering letter from area residents Kerry Morris and Mary Tourlas, the action suggests that neighbours immediately affected by the rezoning have no plans to take the proposal without protest.
This is not about "fearing change" as Sunday's letter-writer John Gilmour wrote; it is about the rights of residents to maintain the character of the neighbourhoods they live in.
There's much more to come on these issues. So no matter where you stand, if you want to have meaningful input to their outcome I hope you, too, will take a risk and ask all of the incisive questions they merit.
