Xmas Is Early; Santa Baird Is Coming To Town

Ho, Ho, Ho. Santa Baird is coming to town. Michigan Legislators better be good for goodness sake.

Damage control big time. Firm up those Democratic House members. Put pressure on those Michigan Senators.

CANADA MUST HAVE THE P3 LEGISLATION IN PLACE BEFORE JUNE 1!

Don't you get it. If the P3 legislation is in place, who cares what the Senate does. They are irrelevant then. Let them have their "up or down" vote on DRIC. It does not matter. MDOT would have the power under the P3 Legislation to enter into P3s no matter what the Legislature says and even if they are absolutely opposed to it.

So much for legislative oversight! So much for taxpayers' pocketbooks.

That's why Santa John Baird, Canada's Transport Minister, is coming here.

The Time is NOW to beat Matty Moroun is the hidden subtitle of the talk.

After all, Canada has wanted to take over the Ambassador Bridge for a generation or two. Baird has beentrying for 16 months ever since he became Transport Minister. After all, the Prime Minister gave him the authority to buy it in his secret mandate letter as ex-Guv and DRIC lobbyist Blanchard informed us. Santa was authorized to give a loan to Michigan of UP TO $550M to Michigan to help make it happen. DRIC is nothing more than putting the screws on Moroun to get him to sell out cheaply.

Santa could have loaned the money directly. Santa could have given Michigan a gift. But I don't think Santa has the money actually. I could not find it in Canada's Economic Action Plan. I think all Santa had was a 2-page letter that pretended to give money to Michigan. Heck, we don't even know what the terms and conditions are yet but Santa wants everything signed off NOW.

Nope, it was all tied into passing the P3 Bill. Wow, paying that much money to have a Bill passed and in public too.

Consider this case. Can you imagine what would happen if it got out that a US company offered the Government of Canada $550M to pass legislation to help out that Company's business. Is that allowed to be done? Back in the good old days when I worked for the Canadian subsidiary of an American company I believe that we had a term in our contracts that forbade this type of action.

Now as a poor lonely Blogger, US$75 is a lot of money for me to spend to buy a ticket to hear the cliches come out of the Minister's mouth at the Lunch. Who needs the heartburn and indigestion. We have heard them all before anyway ad nauseum.

So perhaps I could ask a favour. If you are going to the lunch, let me know how many of the following lines he will use. You know the ones:

• most important border crossing and infrastructure project
• how much trade goes over it
• truck traffic will triple (I thought before it was only going to double) since it has gone up in 2010
• importance of trade for both countries
• border thickening
• jobs
• security and redundancy
• blah, blah, blah

Actually if you, dear reader, want to save the $75, go here to listen to the speech. It will be about the same with the same old stuff. BLOG: "Baird Interview: Help For The Bridge Company DRIC Lawsuit" http://windsorcityon.blogspot.com/2010/04/baird-interview-help-for-bridge-company.html

Expect also that the DRIC-ites will convince him to insert some language in the speech to counter the points I have raised in my BLOGs as he tries to answer some of my 20 DRIC questions.

To be serious, if he really wanted to accomplish something in Detroit, he should have gone to Warren and met up with the Bridge Company people and figured out how to work together for the betterment of the region.