Tomorrow the new GVS&DD Board will consider a blockbuster report by the "Inquiry Officer" appointed to straighten out the fuss between Metro Vancouver and the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority over who gets the Canfor lands.The two have been fighting over this plum piece of real estate in New Westminster, where Metro is determined ~ it is now on the official record ~ to build a waste-t0-energy incinerator using whatever means it can.
When the Port outbid Metro (offering to pay $10 million more than Metro's offer) Metro resorted to expropriation.
The Port called for an Inquiry into whether Metro was justified in using the "extraordinary and intrusive power" of expropriation.
The Officer appointed to look into the matter found that Metro had submitted conflicting testimony. GVS&DD Commissioner Johnny Carline had stated that Metro planned to build "primarily" a waste to energy incinerator, while Fred Nenninger, the manager in charge of utility planning, said Metro planned to build a whole "panoply" of waste facilities there.
But both admitted that Metro didn't really know for sure what it was going to build there. The Inquiry Officer, Bernd Walter, put it, mildly: “firm plans for all or any of these activities or facilities are not yet finalized, much less approved.”
Walter concluded his report with a recommendation that the GVS&DD go back to the drawing board and figure out what its "evolving plans" are before making a purchase decision.
My question: did anyone tell Marvin Hunt about this?
For months, Hunt has been busy shushing people who claim that Metro is planning to build incinerators. He has been saying that nothing is decided.
But this Inquiry Report makes it clear that Hunt and Carline and the Communications Department at Metro have been intentionally misleading the public. Indeed, we learn in the Report that the GVS&DD Board gave its authorization to go ahead with the purchase for that purpose.
They say justice is blind, but only if they pull the wool over her eyes.
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