CN's BC Rail purchase fiasco continues

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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(colored highlights mine)

Defence lawyer seeks cabinet documents on BC Rail sale

Ex-aide’s counsel wants to examine integrity of the bidding process

Neal Hall, Vancouver Sun

Documents expected to involve Premier Gordon Campbell and his cabinet will be sought in an application regarding the controversial sale of BC Rail, the defence announced Tuesday at the corruption trial of three former provincial government aides.

“We expect there will be material in some government files in Victoria that would deal with the specifics of the [BC Rail] bidding process and the political feelings in the bidding process,” defence lawyer Michael Bolton said outside court.

Asked if the defence would specifically request documents involving Campbell’s office, Bolton said: “That’s probably premature to say that, but we’ll be asking for materials that certainly one would expect the premier would have had access to.”

He said he would seek documents such as e-mails between cabinet and staff concerning the BC Rail bidding process and the integrity of that process.

“Clearly there are overtones and undertones of very significant political involvement in this case,” said Bolton, who is representing Dave Basi, former assistant to then finance minister Gary Collins when the government announced on Nov. 25, 2003, the sale of BC Rail operations to Canadian National.

The RCMP investigation of the matter led to the Dec. 28, 2003 raid on the legislature offices of Basi and Virk, who was then assistant to the minister of transport.

Basi and Virk are on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting money and other benefits during their involvement in the $1-billion privatization sale of BC Rail.

Basi’s cousin, Aneal Basi, a former government communications officer, is accused of money laundering for al

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Did I mention that I advised the BC government to privatize BCRail as North America’s first open access railroad?[;)]

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Most of us are aware of that. And they valued your advice about as much as they paid for it.

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WELL, SO MUCH FOR SENSITIVITY TRAINING![#oops][:-^]

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To me it’s just an example of how some people will put themselves through such abject misery just to avoid doing the right, logical thing. Here the Province had this nice regional railroad, had a chance to follow the European model and introduce intramodal rail competition to better serve it’s online shippers e.g. BC voters, and instead they sold out to the siren song of the integrated monopoly, and now they are paying the price big time.

[sigh]

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The only railroad that connect to BC Rail was CN. You could set up open access, but when you reached the end of BC Rail your stuck. Unless you want to use car floats.

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Look folks, this isn’t that complicated. You make the OA connections via either building them like you would a highway connection or enabling trackage rights over the existing rail connection. Don’t they have eminent domain or it’s equivalent up in Canada?

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Look folks, this isn’t that complicated. You make the OA connections via either building them like you would a highway connection or enabling trackage rights over the existing rail connection. Don’t they have eminent domain or it’s equivalent up in Canada?

A couple of miles through North Vancouver, another lift bridge over Second Narrows, and a mile long tunnel under Vancouver ? What would that cost ?

It makes more sense to haul the forrestry products to Prince George, and then straight to Chicago, as CN does now.

http://www.proximityissues.ca/Maps/RAC-2004-Vancouver.pdf

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So how does that work for the number one market for forest products, aka Southern California?

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There certainly isn’t a shortage of lumber mills between southern California and Canada.

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None of which can really compete with Canadian lumber on price…

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With the goofy way our two countries have the lumber tarifs set right now, that Canadian SPF can probably go to LA via Chicago, and be less money than PNW ESLP/AF.

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I do see a lot of lumber on Canadian line railcars going south through Springfield OR.

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For nearly a century manufacturing of softwood lumber has been the basic industry of British Columbia, double-digit numbers of billion board feet has been manufactured annually, with up to 70 percent being exported to the US.

A high percentage of this moved by Milwaukee Road. Freight offices were established in Vancouver and Victoria before the First World War, and the Vancouver office remained open until the Soo Line takeover of the Milwaukee in 1985.

In 1956, Foss Tug began the towing of rail car barges from Squamish B.C. to the Milwaukee’s Pier 27 in Seattle. BCR had a tiff with CN and CP. MILW eastbound became a preferred transcontinental connection.

Until the BN merger, the NP also participated in this movement, the mix on the barges was about 70% Milwaukee and 30% NP.

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How many cars can you fit on a barge? I take it that this probably worked when trains averaged 30 or 40 cars, but would probably lose it’s cost advantage with 100 car trains. For Milwaukee I could see where it’d make sense - a lot cheaper to float cars from BC to Seattle than to build a connecting line.

The thing about the BC rail connection at North Vancouver, it’s only about 5 miles to both CP and BNSF via the CN connecting trackage from North Vancouver Junction. How hard would it have been to use an eminent domain tactic to take this 5 miles worth of track from CN and make it a union railway connection for all four railroads? Again, we’re only talking trackage rights over this portion, not the right to serve the captive CN customers on this section.