The late "Queen of the North"Let's be clear about one thing, there's nothing liberal about British Columbia's Liberal Party government. It's unquestionably right wing and is showing that it is ready, willing and able to live up to right wing standards.
A couple of years ago, the Libs in Victoria decided to 'privatize' B.C. Ferries. Their idea of doing this was to hand over title to the ferries plus a 60-year 'prepaid' lease to the B.C. Ferry Corp., an entity of their buddies set up to take ownership of the boats. It was very much handed over - no money changed hands.
The new operator has a programme in place to buy new ships to replace the older vessels and the Queen of the North that sank last year.
These ships could have been built at the North Shore shipyards in North Vancouver which would have given the province's flagging ship building industry a real shot in the arm. Instead the company decided to have them built in Germany.
Getting these ships built overseas hurts the local economy. It means no jobs for local tradesmen and their companies. It means the money for the boats goes overseas rather than through the local economy. It means that Germany gets the tax benefit of these deals, not British Columbia.
Why go overseas? Because the 'company' can get the ships slightly cheaper that way. Forget the offsets, the economic stimulus and the tax benefits of building at home. When the complaints reached the provincial government they replied it was a business matter for the private operator. The BC Libs had nothing to do with it, none of their business, not their concern.
The ferry system couldn't wait, however, for a ship to be built to replace the Queen of the North so they bought an existing vessel instead, the Sonia. Now the BC Liberal government is up in arms that Ottawa is going to levy federal import taxes on the ship.
The provincial trade minister, Kevin Falcon, is quite indignant calling it 'appalling' that the government should tax the purchase since there was no suitable ship available in Canada. Hey Kev, isn't that the company's problem? Why should your government get involved this time? Seems sort of strange, unless the whole divestiture was a scam.
2 comments:
I've been following the Queen of the North saga on the Google Alerts - just so you know how I got here.
That said, the government should get involved to protect its shareholders - the taxpayers - from unnecessary cost. As you know the Campbell Government is very much focused on the bottom line and I think you should note that before calling this situation "a scam".
The government's role is to promote the economic wellbeing of the province for the benefit of - its shareholders, the taxpayers. That's not accomplished by howling at the feds over import taxes while allowing the operator to send the economic benefit of fleet renewal offshore. Odd how they so selectively get involved on BC Ferries issues. I'm sticking with "scam".
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