Rob Fleming was on CFAX 1070 back on May 27th and its interesting to listen to his earlier comments in light of his promotion :-) and after the Provinces May decision not to overrule the duly elected Esquimalt council: theriteplan.ca/media/140527_CFAX_Rob_Fleming.m4a Terry more asking Rob a series of questions which generated these responses: RF: Esquimalt Council was guilty of the kind of parochial thinking that we sometime lament happens at the CRD. Parochialism is a slightly more diplomatic way of saying NIMBY but the record from the public hearing shows otherwise: the applicant failed to convince the community that it would going to benefit the community. Referring to the CRD Directors Rob said, they had all agreed on McLoughlin Pt as the preferred site. Again, the record shows that several CRD Directors found fault with the project early on and the majority from Saanich and Victoria used their voting might to push the project forward. The Westside/Westshore concerns were consistently swept aside. RF: Even Esquimalt council 6 years ago suggested to the CRD that was their preferred option. Thats wrong. Esquimalt suggested McLoughlin instead of Macaulay because CRD had plans for a 6.8ha site at Macaulay and it was during a time when the CRD was thinking of a distributed system of which Esquimalt would play a part. Much later, it was revealed the McLoughlin was never going to be big enough for any facility that wouldnt negatively impact the property. Three of the options required in-filling the harbour! RF: They [CRD] went through a rezoning in good faith. The CRD entered the rezoning process with its own 2805 bylaw early last year that offered nothing to Esquimalt other than to fix the roads the CRD was going to ruin and to path a bike lane down Lyall St. CRD did not negotiate in good faith or bring forth an amenities package. They assumed they could ram through their bylaw by appealing to the Minister. The Minister say no to intervening last July which forced the CRD to negotiate with Equimalt. CRD did not do it voluntarily. Moreover, CRD threw out the RFP 3 days, before the rezoning. That wasnt done in good faith and they went to the Minister to overrule Esquimalt immediately. None of that is what Id call negotiating in good faith. RF: Esquimalt Council negotiated an amenity package, there were going to be something like $17m worth of amenities for the community for hosting this facility but then it got to a public hearing, there were some loud voices and the Council and Mayor turned it down. 1) Half of that was for a heat loop that Esquimalt didnt ask for and didnt want. 2) Some loud voting turned out to be 99% of the speakers and 95% of the letter writers. RF: They [the Province] did what was politically easy today. What they did was follow the rule of law and chose not to invoke a section of the Environmental Management Act because they lacked a legal footing to do it. Maybe one of the reasons the Province isnt pushing the project is because: a) they know that they consultation has been botched b) they know its not a very good plan or good use of provincial monies Remember that the CRD had promised to make the plan better while it threw out a plan to secure funding but that better plan never materialized. RF: Im pleased, the one thing Im was pleased with hearing from Minister Polak today is that the money isnt going away. In one interview youre worried about losing the money and in other you arent...this time you were right: the money IS secure. Every level of government is paying for this project with debt: CRD, Province, Feds. You do that to spur the economy which tells you the risk of losing the money is low. RF: Theyre going to try and let the region figure it out among themselves, and get past the squabbling and figure out whats in the regional interest; the best value for taxpayers and environmentally the best solution. In that case, open up the project so we can determine the cost of decentralized tertiary disinfected system of smaller plants. We cant rely on 5 year old discussion papers for anything especially a plan that didnt follow the IRM model. So, why has Horgan picked Rob as the goodwill broker with his apparent biases towards McLoughlin Pt and the CRD? When you select a mediator, you usually pick someone with no biases and no stake in the outcome...
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 23:41:41 +0000
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