Thoughts and Opinions On Today's Important Issues

Friday, October 20, 2006

What Will The Labour-endorsed Councillors Do Now


"What's in a name
That which we call DRTP
By any other word would be just as bad" (Apologies to Shakespeare)

I really think that I forgot one of their names; there have been so many. [No I mean the
ones that can be printed in a G-rated BLOG]. But DRTP has a new monicker.

It was just the plain, old DRTP at first. Then it became the Tradeway, then the Jobs Tunnel, then the Green Solution. It must be that none of them worked. So we got a new slogan. [I wonder if the same City Hall sloganeers that worked for Mike still work for Eddie since he has developed so many new slogans during his three year term as well.]

Now DRTP is the "new and improved" DRTP. Honest! That's what Mike said.

There was the old gray ex-Mayor on TV the other night pitching his new vision just like it was a box of soap. He complained that no one understood that the DRTP had changed, again.

He knows though that DRIC has rejected the "new and improved" DRTP already. So has Minister Cansfield when she was in town. Can he prove the "new and improved" DRTP works? If so where are his engineering studies or drawings that show connections that will be approved? Where are his cost estimates? Drawing a line on a map does not cost too much money pretending that is a solution. But another 3/4 page full colour ad does.

Whatever happened to the campaign to link DRTP to the Ambassador Bridge? Did DRTP lose on that one at every level of Government so now they are back pitching their old solution again?

Did you notice that Mike forgot to mention that the "old and tired" DRTP needed $150 million of taxpayer money on a $600 million project to have a hope of surviving financially. This "new and improved" DRTP would require a mega-project, mega-billion injection of taxpayer cash. All that to make private investors rich at our expense.

With truck emissions being cleaned up environmentally over the next decade and fuel being changed, no Government is that stupid to waste money on a DRTP tunnel or any tunnel for that matter notwithstanding what Eddie Francis and the incumbent Councillors may say.

I wonder if Mike and Eddie would ever stand together, shoulder to shoulder, advocating for a border solution. Now that would be something to see. Eddie and Mike together again. Borealis and the Mayor working to achieve a common objective. But then, nothing would surprise me on the border issue.

Clearly, the border is still the biggest election issue (the arena is fighting hard to take the #1 spot) Now several Councillors have a real dilemma that Mike and the Labour Council have put them. As the Star headline said "Labour council backs revamped DRTP proposal." Windsor Council is opposed to DRTP. What do Councillors Ron Jones, Caroline Postma, and Ken Lewenza do now? And we may as well include Percy Hatfield since he is supposedly a shoo-in for election.

Will they have the guts to say that they do NOT want Labour's endorsement now given what the Labour Council has done and given their public position on Council on DRTP?