Weather n Transport.

Looks like we are in for a weekend. This morning we have -24 with a wind chill of -38c. Forecast for Sunday is for +5c with chance of snow and or rain.
Nuff of the pleasantries.

Back to transport in de north shall we? At the start of the meeting on Tuesday some time was spent on discussing the Government Press release on the 12th. My co-presenter, in retrospect, thought maybe he wasted time on the subject, well it looks like not.

When you look at the PR and the accompanying 5 pages of passenger and freight rates [not on line] it’s clear this was a rush job and not very well thought out.

The PR emphasis a ‘road equivalency’ and an equal rate per mile for passengers, no matter what the route.
Well holes have been put in equal rate for all claims.

And I pointed out at the meeting that road equivalency would mean higher charges for all the longer haul runs. No car ferry is available, vehicles are sent as freight, passengers on a different vessel, or plane. The only runs that may make sense for the road equivalency would be the gulf runs and maybe some shorter car ferry runs in the south. This was dismissed by the other side, did not want to talk about it.

Minister Hickey confirmed the skepticism this morning on CBC morning show out of HV-GB.
Hickey said that it had been brought to his attention that some of the published rates were unequal, and that he would be instructing his staff to address these anomalies. He went on to say as far as the road equivalency was concerned, he had since leaned that on the mv Sir Robert Bond this would mean a fare of about $1400.00 from Goose Bay to Cartwright. Quite an increase from what it now is. So no change will be implemented on that run, as well as some others. FYI, Hickey is the member for the Lake Melville region that contains HV-GB.

Also raised at the meeting was the timing of the release, and the fact it was far from complete with no rates for the Lewisport-Cartwright-Goose Bay north to Nain.
This morning Hickey confirmed the omissions, said that this is a work in progress and that the longer haul runs will be addressed in due course, No mention of how long the due course would be.

This brings us to the timing of the PR. You would have to be a pretty wanked out junky not to conclude this was rushed to coincide with the bi-election in Labrador West on Tuesday, and the Federal budget due out this coming Monday.

The incompetence and incompleteness of the PR confirms this skepticism.

Another question that has not been asked to my knowledge; why has it taken this government so long to realize the inequities in the fare and freight structure.

To be fair many rates will go down, some substantially, but what gets on our goat up this way is that we are invariably left to last, or an afterthought, in many of these things. This is just another one in a long list.