By Kirk LaPointe
Dear Kevin Desmond, new TransLink CEO:
Welcome to the job!
Those are perhaps the most generous words you will hear in the early going of your term, so savour them. We spell savour with an extra letter north of the border, so savour the extra letter, too, as Canadian-style generosity.
You will have noticed during the job interview process that, if you asked any questions about the state of the organization you will be running, the respondents averted their eyes and examined their footwear. This is not a Canadian thing; this is the universal body language for discomfort. Acquaint yourself with it, because it will be necessary to unfurl empathy for the pervasive TransLink hurting out there.
Were you told about the hurting? You still came!
In case you need a refresher, let us count the pain points: a stalled infrastructure program, revenue challenges, governance issues that helped scupper a plebiscite to deal with the two previous pain points, complaints about the disconnection with the riding public, angst about excessive executive compensation, Compass Card snafus, allegations of police aggression, SkyTrain breakdowns and Victorian-era hours, frenzied eagerness to build more subways and not the light rapid transit you are so familiar with…
We could go on, but we want you to stay.
We not only want you to stay, we want you all over all of this, and yesterday. We are proverbially waiting for the bus. You are in the driver’s seat of our economic destiny.
You see, you may have met the mayors who will set the tone for your long days and nights to come, and some of them appear to believe that if we can’t walk, run or bike somewhere, we automatically take public transit. That condos exist where transit does not should not disquiet you.
Advice: discuss the existence and possible furtherance of the vehicles named cars or trucks with your trusted confidants only – and make them sign a non-disclosure agreement.
There is no small irony in the fact you are leaving America’s most strangled commuter city for, well, the same danged thing. You must be prepping for that job in Jakarta.
The good news for you, Mr. Desmond, is that you are buying in at the bottom of the market. You cannot help but look good compared with what preceded you, which is every CEO’s dream position. If you do well, no one will want to follow you; then again, if you don’t do well, there may be nothing left to follow.
No doubt, in using Google to read up about Canada, you learned about a fellow named Justin Trudeau and drew relief from the fact he is not related to Justin Bieber. Our newly minted national leader is going to be your guardian angel from afar, providing (groan) true dough (we Canadians love puns).
As you arrive north to take your job in semi-late March (hope you have a Nexus card, by the way, because that unmentionable word – ahem, car – regularly congests our border crossing), Trudeau will have set the stage for a decent infusion of infrastructure money into transit in our cities. You’re welcome!
And as the federal money descends from the heavens – albeit Canadian money – you may not have quite the ordeal of raising the regional share that you would have had a year ago. Sweet timing!
Your country may be about to elect a national leader who will build a wall, literally; ours is trying to build a few bridges, figuratively. He’s the swish guy at the bar picking up the tab, not the mansplainer who sticks you with it. He also seems ready to legalize in Canada what you’ve legalized in Washington to raise taxes and, just saying, you never know when that revenue will be handy.
We drive on the right side of the road here, too, and just remember, we do so frequently because the organization you run has not kept pace with the lives we wish to lead. No pressure! •
Kirk LaPointe is Business in Vancouver’s vice-president of audience and business development.
