DELTA FEELING BULLIED BY CAMPBELL GOVERNMENT
Brian Lewis, The Province
Published: Thursday, February 01, 2007
The relationship between Delta municipality and the B.C. government
hit a new low this week.
"It's enough to make you tear out your hair," says Delta Mayor Lois
Jackson. "They're infringing on us so much that perhaps we should just
hand them the keys to the city and say, 'Here, you run Delta.' "
The latest flare-up comes after a terse Jan. 23 letter from the Ministry
of Transportation informed Delta that its new bylaw designed to control
and regulate open shipping-container storage within the municipality
would not be approved.
The Transportation Ministry has the right to sign off on pending
municipal bylaws that affect any land within 800 metres of provincial
highway intersections and this stipulation applied to some of the
properties falling under Delta's new bylaw.
This rule is there to ensure that a municipal bylaw doesn't impede the
flow of traffic on a provincial highway.
But in this case, Delta's mayor and council have strong suspicions that
Victoria has used Section 52 of the Transportation Act to knee-cap its
bylaw because the new rules would also restrict container storage in
Delta.
Consequently, there will be a negative impact on an expanding
Deltaport's potential business and Victoria's overall goals to expand
B.C. shipping through its Gateway transportation project.
In other words, anything that impedes Gateway won't be tolerated in
Victoria, no matter what the local impact.
Nor did Victoria offer details on why it rejected the bylaw.
"The Ministry of Transportation has found that Bylaw 6313 is contrary to
the interests of Transportation in the Province of British Columbia. For
this reason, this bylaw is not approved," the brief letter said.
Delta Coun. Vicki Huntington and her colleagues don't see how container
storage will affect provincial roads and a Ministry of Transportation
spokesman couldn't offer any enlightenment yesterday.
"What the B.C. government really intends here is that Delta not be able
to regulate container storage on our own industrial lands," Huntington
adds.
There are already an estimated 8,000 containers stored in Delta at any
one time and when Deltaport's expansion is completed, there will be many
more, city reports note.
"We're not trying to keep containers out, but we don't want to see
stacks of them rising up next to residential areas," adds Jackson.
This is yet another skirmish in Delta's ongoing battle with the Gordon
Campbell government on a number of fronts, and most of them relate to
the $3-billion Gateway transportation project, expansion of Deltaport
and the proposed federal-provincial treaty with the Tsawwassen First
Nation.
In all these cases, Victoria has paid little or no heed to Delta's
concerns.
Delta council amended the rejected bylaw on Monday to exclude properties
within 800 metres of provincial roads. This, they reason, means that the
bylaw is no longer subject to Ministry of Transport approval.
According to the transportation spokesman, they're correct, but Delta
council knows full well that if the proposed South Fraser Perimeter Road
is built, much of the land now covered by the amended bylaw falls back
within Victoria's jurisdiction.
This is a fight that's far from over.
If you have a story idea or noteworthy item about anything going on in
the Fraser Valley, you can e-mail Brian Lewis at blewis@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Province 2007
The Leader - newsroom@surreyleader.com
The Now - tzillich@thenownewspaper.com
The Province - provletters@png.canwest.com
The Vancouver Sun - sunletters@png.canwest.com