Get Moving BC

NDP in tough spot on Gateway

There has been much discussion among the chattering classes over the NDP's position on Gateway. While the party hasn't taken a firm stance either way, the NDP Agriculture Committee is listed as one the Gateway 30 groups opposed to the project.

A recent comment over at Rabble paints a clear picture of the difficulty the NDP is having with this issue:

On the subject of Gateway, it may be politically fashionable, at least among their activist base though not the wider electorate in their ridings, for some Vancouver and Burnaby MLAs to say they are opposed to twinning the Port Mann Bridge and widening Hwy 1 by one (1) lane in each direction. But none of the Surrey or Delta or Coquitlam or other MLAs can afford to sign on for this kind of rubbish even with their memberships, let alone the voters. And the fact is that the Governments of Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark were committed to doing just that, twinning Port Mann and expanding Hwy 1.

It's valid to criticize Falcon and Campbell's desire to do these things as P3s, but it's political insanity of the first order of magnitude to oppose these projects in principle. The last time the BC NDP decided it had to learn this lesson the hard way was in 1979 when they came out in opposition to building the Annacis Island Bridge. They thought they could oppose this in order to appear "greenish" and fiscally parsimonious. They narrowly lost that election because they could not regain enough ground in suburban areas. No rational person believes that you can restrain consumer demand for autos and auto travel by simply refusing to build sufficient highway capacity. What is perhaps more important is that no rational person would suggest that a bus system can be good without a good highway system. It's like suggesting we can have a good rail system without good tracks.

And the inside joke was that the Annacis Island Bridge project was actually begun during Dave Barrett's term as Premier in the early 1970s. It was supposed to be rolled out as the main public works plank in an expected 1976 re-election effort. But Barrett called the election too early in December of 1975, and this item wasn't ready for prime time. So it sat in the Highways bureaucracy for another three years until Bill Bennett rolled it out for his 1979 re-election drive. By then the NDP brains trust decided that the best thing to do was oppose the project, since doing a "me too" positioning would not attract sufficient attention. By opposing the project the NDP painted itself into a corner as a party interested in only selected public services, unwilling to appeal to a broader market, and appearing to be opposed to economic growth and job creation. Big mistake.

It was the same miscalculation that the party had made throughout the 1950s and 1960s by opposing highways as "blacktop government". Bennett and Gaglardi would simply sit back and laugh as the CCF-NDP hung themselves with the voters.

Here's one final thought. Imagine if Mike Sather, the NDP MLA for Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows were to try to run for re-election on a platform that said this:

- Yes, I am in favour of the new six-lane Pitt River Bridge, with no toll on it.

- Yes, I am in favour of the new six-lane Golden Ears bridge being built by Translink with a $3+ toll on it (adding the proviso that he shares concerns about the use of temporary foreign workers on this project by the German contractor, Bilfiger-Berger)

- No, I am totally opposed to building a new Port Mann bridge under any set of circumstances whatsoever, now or at any time in the foreseeable future, even if it does have a $2.50 toll on it, because this bridge would cause GHGs to rise and urban sprawl to increase, ... but the Golden Ears and Pitt River bridges that directly serve my riding will not have either of these unhappy consequences so they can proceed, no problem.

The BC Liberals and their friends in the media would be at great risk of dying laughing if we gave them openings like that. The 180 degree contradictions would be so obvious to anyone that crying "hypocrite" and "phoney" would just be for openers.

It is unfortunate that this vital infrastructure upgrade has become a political football. Politics aside, these roads and bridges are desperately needed. So are transit improvements, especially south of the Fraser. We need them all, and we need them now.

At least the Rabble folks are allowed to debate this in a free and open way. Over at Gateway Sucks, one of their readers don't believe we should be allowed to have a voice:

A friend of mine got so irritated by their ignorance and mockery, that she actually decided to go to "getmovingbc.com" to actually leave a few angry messages, even if it's going to be constant and summon any ISPs. So she decided to use a trusted proxy to workaround any troubles...

But NOOO! Going there with a proxy server never seemed to get through.

I'm guessing they wanna fish out anyone who has legit info, and then get those folks into trouble by calling their ISP. Darn folks. Nothing but free speech censorship.

My friend's intentions was to actually...leave a few comments for those who are browsing the net from another place, to see that there IS oppression and BS going on in this city.

And yes, supporting the gateway project, is supporting oppression. As supporting the gateway project, will mess up some communities and homes...especially some Native friends of mines....

We're being accused of "censorship" by someone who wants to censor our site. Bizarre!

Even funnier is the fact that we haven't done anything out of the ordinary to protect the site. I'm not sure if Blogger has some built-in protections or something, but we haven't done anything special.

posted by Jordan Bateman @ 10:48 AM