Mike DeWolfe : The Daily Edition

Victoria is in the throes of pretending to attempt to include rail to the Johnson St. Bridge replacement. They let the bridge fall into disrepair. They pushed through a referendum that excluded the rail and deployed a lot of dubious tricks to get the votes they needed. When local provincial representatives were urged to come out in support of rail, they failed. Maurine Karagianis, the NDP MLA for Esquimalt-Royal Roads said: "We know that a rail crossing on the Johnson Street Bridge is important... I believe that government needs to be seen as not only understanding our growing transportation challenges, but ensuring funding is in place to satisfy our current and future transportation needs. The corridor is deteriorating; the time is at hand to make a commitment to this region and without senior levels of government at the table, the opportunity may be lost... I encourage you to continue lobbying the Minister of Transportation ( Minister.Transportation@gov.bc.ca ) on this importa...

I am biased in favour of Voting "No" for the bridge project loan. Here's what the Yes and No vote says to me about the decisions being made when you go to the polling booth: Vote No Maybe you just want to see the bridge repaired. It's not that you want to keep the old bridge, you just don't want to green light a $50 million loan because of its implications. The replacement isn't costing $50-million. That's just the loan amount. It's budgeted at $77-million. Budget overruns are a given. This bridge could be $90-million or more. If you let them take out the loan, the City Council will take the in-for-a-penny approach. The extra millions will come from your pockets. This is your money and the City's decisions. Remember when they urged people to vote on the bridge design? Three viable candidate designs were foisted on us-- they purposefully omitted the repair option. The people spoke: they selected an option. Council took the second most popular option...

The Greater Victoria Library labour dispute has been going on for a long time. Now, it's escalated to a lock-out. Here are my two ways to bring this to a swift closure in favour of the CUPE 410. Method One: GET OFF MY LAWN! The main library branch in nestled into an atrium on Broughton. I am assuming that the atrium is provincial government property. As a taxpayer, that makes it my property. So, I say: get off of my property. Don't picket up against the doors of the library. Get out onto the street-- the Blanshard and the Broughton sides of the street. Walk the sidewalk and wave your signs of protest. Of course, that will have a side effect: Ministry of Transportation and alot of other provincial governments offices are in this complex. Their workers are union and they're trained not to cross picket lines. As long as the GVPL staff go wanting, alot of their BCGEU brothers and sisters will be staying home too. While you're at it: do the same at the Esquimalt and Commonwe...