School might be out for summer, but remedial math classes are in full swing. And for good reason: too much misguided addition and subtraction yielding too many duff answers, especially for business.
Here are a few examples worthy of class assignments.
In the what’s-adding-up category, some good news. The provincial government has committed $7.5 million to a $15 million project to rehabilitate Vancouver Island’s E&N Railway line. If Ottawa kicks in the other $7.5 million, the rail corridor between the province’s capital city and Nanaimo could be hauling freight, commuter traffic and tourist passengers from Inside Passage cruise ships and elsewhere (“Province to fund Vancouver Island Rail” – issue 1132; July 5-11).
Passenger rail transportation in this province, as illustrated by the dismantling of BC Rail and such ambitious services as the Whistler Northwind, continues to get no respect.
Cultivation of its use, especially on rail corridors threatened with abandonment or redevelopment, needs support. Unlike a lot of green PR exercises, rail offers a viable and energy-efficient alternative to rubber tire traffic.
Elsewhere, however, numbers are less positive. Who, for example, is on the natural gas file in this province? When you get the name, please forward the message his or her way that we have a lot of the stuff but next to no domestic market for it (see “Gas peddling push on” – issue 1129; June 14-20). You should also mention that we have companies spearheading its use to run vehicles but again their technology is drawing little support in B.C. This is a head-scratcher, because using natural gas to fuel transportation would be cheaper and leave smaller carbon footprints across the land than gasoline. The successful developers of natural gas technology would also be sought after by an international market eager to lower carbon emissions and reduce its dependence on oil from politically volatile regions. Some of that market revenue might stick around here.
So news that Vancouver-based Westport Innovations Inc. has inked a deal with General Motors to develop a light-duty natural-gas-powered engine but continues to have a tough time quickening any pulses in the local market for its technology underscores B.C.’s difficulty with common-sense business equations.
Also on the negative side of the ledger: North Vancouver City council nixing a $57 million project to upgrade port transportation via the port’s Low Level Road (“North Shore kills Gateway project” – issue 1132; July 5-11).
Little wonder the decision, which pretty much stalls any near-term opportunity to streamline freight movement along the North Shore waterfront, had steam coming out of local chamber of commerce ears. Citizen opposition to the plan turned council’s head on the project. But too many Metro Vancouver residents have too little appreciation of how much the port and the trade that runs through it support their lifestyles.
Most of aforementioned remedial math students are in class to brush up on the realities of wealth generation, which, along with entrepreneurialism, money management and financial literacy, is not taught in the province’s public schools. Current BC Teachers Federation wage and benefits demands attest to the wealth of fiscal fiction peddled in local classrooms.
An efficient port retooled to take advantage of the current trade windfall from Asian enterprise is fundamental to building wealth in B.C. Ignoring that opportunity will shortchange current and future generations. That’s as basic as math gets for B.C.’s economy, and we’re still failing to put two and two together on that score.