Is This Dwight Duncan’s Last Hurrah

One cannot tempt Fate so many times and always win. Sometimes one gets burned. Even a cat only has nine lives. Is this now the end for Dwight as Minister of Finance?

Oh Spanky…why are you doing this? Your political career, after seemingly being over, has skyrocketed. As I Blogged previously:

• “Dwight Duncan has already had a near death political experience a number of years ago with his meltdown on CBC television at a Liberal Leadership convention. He's been able to resurrect his political career and is now in the second most important job in Ontario and is one of the key politicians across Canada.”

And now you are jeopardizing your future in becoming Premier of Ontario, a Federal Cabinet Minister or even the Prime Minister of Canada. For what?

Let me explain.

Do you remember the big fight between Councillor Gignac and our Provincial Ministers. She wanted them to lobby on our behalf but they refused using as their excuse the Members’ Integrity Act. In case you have forgotten about the letters that Dwight and Sandra sent, I have posted a copy of them.

Why they took such a strict interpretation of the rules that they could not even help Windsor with a tree research project. Dwight was so concerned to be seen giving support because it

• “could reasonably be considered as attempting to influence or interfere in a decision, contrary to the Members’ Integrity Act, 1994.”
  

Just to emphasize the point, our two Ministers wrote to the City again saying with respect to the border access road:

• “As you are well aware, Council has been advised repeatedly that as Ministers of the Crown, it would be inappropriate for Minister Duncan and Minister Pupatello to comment on specifics of any proposal for a new border access road, including Greenlink, before a final recommendation is selected by the Detroit River International Crossing study. To do so could be interpreted as an attempt to interfere with, or influence the process, which is contrary to the Members’ Integrity Act.” [emphasis added]
  
  

That is about as clear as it gets in my opinion. So what does Spanky do? Does he follow what was said in those two letters? Hardly. We are still at the Draft stage, not the Final one, and things could change drastically because of the Ontario Realty Corporation warning about environmental issues. Yet, Gord Henderson tells us:

• “'We're so close you can smell it and taste it," confided a provincial government insider who believes Queen's Park and Windsor are just "tweaks" away from a win-win border infrastructure agreement.
  
  The insider said Mayor Eddie Francis and Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, who've had a rocky relationship for some time, shared a ride to Toronto's Pearson International Airport two weeks ago that was helpful in clearing the air and giving each a better understanding of the other's position.”

I do not understand this at all. Was it just the two of them, Eddie and Spanky, in the car talking about different things? What were they talking about:

• Greenlink and DRIC road resolution


• $75 million for the Tunnel deal with Detroit


• paying extra money so that the Tunnel Plaza Improvement project could be completed


• Brighton Beach and the Windsor Jail


• Other financial matters such as the canal project?

I know those are a lot of subjects. However, if the President-elect of the United States and world leaders can have 10 minute phone conversations and resolve issues, then given all the time that it takes driving from downtown to Toronto Airport should be more than enough time to resolve these minor matters.

What was Sparky thinking? Doesn’t he know that a disgruntled Member of the Opposition could jump on this and demand that he resign? It could lead to an investigation under the Members’ Integrity Act. Dwight’s letters would be used as evidence of a possible impropriety that he committed.

After all, Eddie Francis is not just the Mayor of Windsor but he is also a border proponent who is competing with the Ambassador Bridge Company for traffic at the Tunnel. He obviously has an interest in ensuring that the DRIC Road does not go to the Ambassador Bridge but rather goes to a plaza at Brighton Beach so that he can sell the property to the Federal Government and prevent the Bridge Company getting more traffic.

Here are the relevant provisions of the Members’ Integrity Act:

• Preamble
  
  3. Members are expected to perform their duties of office and arrange their private affairs in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity of each member, maintains the Assembly's dignity and justifies the respect in which society holds the Assembly and its members.
  
  4. Members are expected to act with integrity and impartiality that will bear the closest scrutiny.
  
  Conflict of interest
  
  2. A member of the Assembly shall not make a decision or participate in making a decision in the execution of his or her office if the member knows or reasonably should know that in the making of the decision there is an opportunity to further the member's private interest or improperly to further another person's private interest.
  
  Insider information
  
  3. (1) A member of the Assembly shall not use information that is obtained in his or her capacity as a member and that is not available to the general public to further or seek to further the member's private interest or improperly to further or seek to further another person's private interest.
  
  2) A member shall not communicate information described in subsection (1) to another person if the member knows or reasonably should know that the information may be used for a purpose described in that subsection.
  
  Influence
  
  4. A member of the Assembly shall not use his or her office to seek to influence a decision made or to be made by another person so as to further the member's private interest or improperly to further another person's private interest.

I hope that no one gets mad at me because of this. Even my inside moles did not know about that car trip together and you know how good their information usually is.

Don’t blame it on me if Spanky is forced out. Blame it on that “provincial government insider” who probably thought that he/she was doing Spanky a favour. Instead that person should have kept his/her mouth shut.

With a friend like this… why if I was Spanky, I would phone up Henderson and demand to know who that person was.

Jail Baiting

More on WE-DRIC. That is the new jail proposed to be built here: the Windsor-Essex District Regional Incarceration Centre

Wow, the Star is really trying to put the heat on us local folks with that huge story about the Police favouring the Mayor’s preferred site. Ooops, I mean the preferred site of the Chair of the Windsor Police Services Board. Oh heck, what Eddie demands! I mean, what else would they say!

Trouble is, the big Star story was all scare. If you finally got through it to the end, you read:

• "The province recently announced it was going to upload the costs of prisoner transportation.”

Do you think the big cost differential would have been reduced if they used the actual price of gasoline today rather than $1.20 per litre

End of issue. Except there is MORE going on than we are being told I am sure. Surprise, surprise! This is Windsor after all. My fear is that if Eddie keeps mouthing off, Windsor will lose big time. Again!

Eddie Francis is an amazing guy. Not only is he the Mayor of the City of Windsor, Chair or member of various City committees but he is also a border operator, an airport operator, entertainment impresario, new business development promoter, land developer, cross-border financial guru in sophisticated financial deals, downtown visionary, road builder, advertising blitz expert and so much more.

In spite of all this, he has decided that he has the time to be a real estate agent as well. Not officially of course, because then he would need a licence but here he is helping private individuals sell their property. As the Star reported,

• "Even though the province backed away from its offer to buy city land in the west end, Francis said Thursday there may still be suitable private properties in the area, which police favour over the Azar property as the site of a new jail.
  
  "There are a number of privately held parcels of land that, perhaps, would be better suited than popping it into the area they're suggesting," said Francis."

I wish that Eddie had held up that sign as I requested when he made some of the comments in the Star story. Was he speaking as Mayor or as Chair of the Police Services Board? I hope he was doing it as Chair because otherwise he would be accused of making "planning considerations or judgement calls" without a Planning report in front of him.

I wonder who some of these private owners are. It would not surprise me if they are clever real estate people who can see which properties are the smart ones to buy before we mere mortals are aware of anything. I wonder if they were some of the people who bought land around the arena. You know who I mean. In Eddie’s words:

• "Shrewd investors [who] are already picking up properties."

The guy who has nerves of steel has to be Tony Azar. From my limited experience, land developers are very smart operators. They have to be tough as nails in their land dealings because this is a very difficult business. It must be very hard these days to get financing for projects given the meltdown in the economy and yet they have to buy land today for developments years from now.

Yet here he is in a Star story not blowing up because this deal may fold on him but saying very calmly:

• "I believe in the system and we'll let the system work itself through," he said. "We have a good system in our country and we'll see where that takes us."

What a terrific attitude to have. However, I have practised litigation long enough to feel a lawsuit coming if the City is the cause of the Province not buying the property that they seem to want to buy.

If Mr. Azar wants to guarantee that the jail will go on his property, all he needs to do his start a rumour that the Province is considering moving the Jail to the empty Project Ice Track land in Tecumseh. Isn’t there a couple of hundred acres there? If that story hits the Star, then there is no doubt that the Mayor and Council will do everything in their power to ensure that the Jail is built where the Province wants it to go now.

To be quite direct about it, the terms upon which the land is held seem very onerous to me but then again I’m not in the land development business. I do not know if these terms are the norm these days are not. However, if the land deal falls apart, then look at what the claim for damages could be:

• Since it seems unlikely that the land would be sold otherwise because of the poor economy, "a "fixed bonus" of $1 million is due to the lenders if the property doesn't sell within five years.
• There would be a huge claim for interest at the rate of 10% until the property is sold
• I do not know how many acres were purchased but it appears that the package being offered for sale was about 60 plus acres. We are told that the purchase price of the land is $1.5 million or about $25,000 an acre yet some acreage in the area sold for between $4-$500,000 an acre in the area. The Jail itself would be about 30 acres and there would be a gigantic loss if the land was sold ultimately for less sometime in the future assuming that it even could be in this horrific market.
• If the mortgages on the land of the $3.2 million and $600,000 went into the default because of the lack of sale, that could be another claim as well perhaps.
• Of course, some amount would have to be taken off the damages because of the "bonus - ten per cent of the net sale price - if the property is sold."

While there might be other heads of damages, you could see that the claim could be quite substantial. Mr. Azar would claim the damages as a result of the lost sale and would even get to keep the land too.

Of course, someone has to take the blame for this if there was litigation and the case was lost.

Naturally the word blame and Eddie Francis do not go together. He has a legitimate position about the transaction that he has told us on a number of occasions except for the uploading of costs it seems:

• "locating a jail in "a heavy commercial area like that "would "cause problems" and increase prisoner transportation costs."

As I Blogged before:

• "He could have come up with the solution that the Chief did which was to ask the Province to pay for the costs. Instead, he whined and was a naysayer."

But that is nitpicking. Eddie has a perfect alibi, if I can use that word.

Unfortunately the finger of blame will be pointed at the Councillor who seems to be getting most of the publicity about this matter, Councillor Marra. He has taken a very reasonable and legitimate position that people want

• "full disclosure… they want to see the information that was used that allowed them to conclude this to be the preferred location."

He also has a very legitimate position with respect to planning matters respecting the lands that were taken over by the City of Windsor

• "there would be "a very clear process" of proper planning guidelines established before any development proceeded -- "and then we have this."

However, do you think anyone will care about Bill’s reasoned approach when the Province has had enough of the City of Windsor and decides to pull this project from this City and out of the region. They’ve gone through years of torture with respect to the border road and they certainly do not need this on top of that. The Premier is not going to be that friendly to a City that keeps poking him in the nose when he tries to give us money.

We will lose hundreds of construction jobs, the permanent jobs needed to run the jail and we will not have access to all the professionals who will be required to provide services for the jail and its inmates. Several hundred people a day need to be fed and clothed and looked after. Local tradespeople will also lose out.

When I said in my recent Trifecta BLOG that Councillor Marra would get "shafted," I did not think it would happen this quickly. Being blamed for huge potential damages in the lawsuit and the loss of the project and jobs would be almost fatal to any chance that he had to be the next Mayor of Windsor.

Where however is the "MORE" part? Azar’s land parcel for sale is slightly over 60 acres. The jail would only require about half of that amount of land. If the Province is buying the entire site, and none of the Star stories have mentioned that for some reason, than there are about 30 acres of land left.

In these days of economic distress, I would not expect that the Province would buy more land than they need. Accordingly something is going to be done with those other 30 acres. Presumably they are going to be redeveloped for Provincial purposes.

I was scratching my head trying to make some sense out of this when I happened to remember my drive to London recently when I had to go to a hospital there for a family medical reason. Just as one turns off Highway 401 and hits Exeter, there is the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre at 711 Exeter Road. It is a 450 bed maximum security detention residence, about one third bigger than what is being proposed for Windsor.

Guess what is very close to that building and our Mayor should be very familiar with the address: Southwestern Region office of the Ministry of Transportation at 659 Exeter Road where some of the senior DRIC people are located.

It is no wonder that there is so much conviction in their work!

In other words, it appears as if the Province could be planning a massive redevelopment including the jail and another Government Department at that site. Imagine the jobs and economic redevelopment that this could help bring to this City. Talk about potential users and spenders in that commercial area of Walker Road if a big number of Civil Servants located there.

Isn’t that what the Mikhail Brothers have been advocating in the Henderson columns although obviously they would like the Province to move those workers downtown perhaps to fill up some of their empty space. However, jobs are jobs and that is what is needed in our area today.

• "The Mikhail brothers, who have a vested interest in this as office landlords, think the city should lean on its cabinet ministers to move a ministry or government department to Windsor to help the city withstand the shock waves as it tries to reinvent itself.
  
  Mikhail said the transfer of government jobs to Sudbury when the rock-bashing industries were in rapid decline played a key role in that city's turnaround. "One thing the politicians can do is relocate government jobs to distressed areas. That's something totally within their power." Mikhail said if the labour ministry and its 400 jobs had been moved here in the early 1990s, as promised, it would have made a difference.
  
  He believes the province could save significant money by moving workers to low-cost Windsor. For starters, he said, it would free up immensely valuable Toronto real estate and ease the burden on that city's clogged transit system."

Our Mayor is playing a dangerous game. Unless Councillor Marra is very careful, he might get blamed if the Province decides to pull out of this area and takes the jail jobs and whatever else might be going beside the jail out of this area and moves it to who knows where.

I cannot help but feel that this entire jail story is nothing but our Mayor negotiating on land values so that he can get a huge amount of money from the Federal Government for the Brighton Beach area based on jail land values negotiated with the Province and then trying to direct the Province as to where they should put their offices in Windsor. I wonder where he would want the development to go. I would expect to the downtown except is it the existing downtown or the "new" downtown next to the new East End arena?

My problem with all this is that Eddie is not that good a negotiator as we have seen from all of his failures. It is time that the Councillors found out what is going on.

Interestingly, inmates in these Detention Centres serve a maximum term of two years, less a day. Our next election is on November 8, 2010. Hmmmm similar maximum sentences for inmates and citizens!

The Wake-Up Call (Part 1)

Because we are getting down to the short strokes in the DRIC file, it is necessary sometimes to give you a lot of information because it is important for you to understand the context in which decisions are being made by politicians and bureaucrats.

I can hear the groans already. Let me apologize in advance. It’s another one of my extra long BLOGs. It is so long that I am breaking it up again into two parts. Still, what else do you have to read on what may be a cold rainy and even snowy weekend!

I really would like to make them shorter but I don’t think I should. I assume that, if you have been reading my BLOGs for a while, then you know that they are somewhat lengthy. Yet, my readership numbers are pretty consistent. You must have a pretty good idea what you are getting into when you start reading one of my items.

What I believe is that it is my job not only to give you my perspective as to what is happening but to give you the facts behind my reasoning. In that way you will understand why I have reached the conclusions that I have. What I am suggesting as my answer is based on the facts that I believe are important and how I have brought those facts together.

I think that it is important for you to understand all of this when you read what I have to say. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes space and takes time to read.

Whether you agree or disagree with my thesis is then up to you. However, at least I am giving you an informed commentary.

This BLOG is a good example. Today, I will be writing about the siren call of infrastructure and how I believe taxpayers will pay out so much money that other Governmental boondoggles will appear miniscule in comparison years from now when the Auditor General does a report on the Infrastructure fiasco.

DRIC obviously will be the focus of this discussion because we know all about it and because in my opinion it is a classic Megaproject running amuk. It will be the first of many since it seems to be the poster child for P3 infrastructure investments in Canada.

In the subsequent BLOG, I will Blog about financing and P3s to demonstrate that this project does not make sense and that all that will happen is that billions of taxpayer dollars that can be used for more important things will be wasted over the P3 life of this project. If that happens here, it will happen elsewhere. It is inevitable.

Frankly, I as a taxpayer no longer have the desire to fund all of these boondoggles to help keep politicians being elected by bribing me with my own money. If there is some mathematical wizard out there who is good with numbers, I’m hoping that he/she can figure out how much money will be wasted on this DRIC project and let me know.

I am hoping that my BLOG will be a wake-up call before this infrastructure waste gets totally out of control. There will be winners all right but it will be not be the taxpayers of Canada. Enough of the introduction and apology.

Taxpayers of Ontario and Canada are about to be fleeced of billions of dollars.

Do you remember the Scientific Research Tax Credit fiasco? Here is how one commentator described it:

• “The government's biggest attempt to build our high-tech industry was the Scientific Research Tax Credit back in the '80s. It was well intended, but the big Bay Street firms and the accountants and lawyers and investment dealers poured through the thing, found the loopholes, and turned it into a farce. It cost the taxpayer about $5 billion and it was probably the single biggest scam ever in Canada.”

Forget that. Forget the billion dollar HRDC boondoggle or the Gun Registry. Adscam…mere peanuts. Wait until the Infrastructure bubble will burst. We will see taxpayers on the hook for the kinds of billions due to the subprime mortgage melt-down. Already, the Government has sunk in $75 billion to help our banks.

Windsor has become the text-book template for what will happen across this country as politicians look to infrastructure expenditures as their salvation prodded on by those who will gain magnificently from Government largesse during a time of crisis.

The rallying cry of jobs, jobs, jobs will eliminate any due diligence. One job is vital: the politicians’ main job is to get re-elected. That is all that counts. Who cares what it costs us as taxpayers especially if it can be buried as line-items in Government accounts! It was breath-taking to me how the US Government as an example could find $700 billion to save its financial system and how quickly legislation was passed by legislators who really have no clue what is going on.

Forget about the cost of the DRIC project. Notwithstanding that it will cost billions of dollars to construct (probably double what has been said so far), that is mere chicken feed in the scheme of things.

We are being seduced by the call for infrastructure projects to solve all of our economic woes. Let's spend today to get people back to work on whatever scheme is being proposed is the idea and who cares about whether the project makes sense or not. Rational thinking and protecting taxpayer interests do not seem to be requirements. Hop on the bandwagon or else

Last Friday,

• "Liberal Leader Stephane Dion pressed Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Friday to unblock promised multibillion-dollar infrastructure spending to create jobs as the two consulted face to face about the post-election session of Parliament amid a new wave of bad economic news...
  
  His comments to Harper came one day after Transport Minister John Baird, who is responsible for infrastructure, said the Federation of Canadian Municipalities had made "a powerful case" to get $8.8 billion in infrastructure funds from 2007 flowing."

At the PM/Premiers meeting:

• “All premiers are asking Ottawa to accelerate infrastructure spending plans to create jobs as the downturn erodes existing employment.
  
  “There's never a bad time to invest in infrastructure. It always creates jobs and always enhances your long-term productivity. But there's never been a better time than now,” Mr. McGuinty said.”

I am talking about taxpayers losing billions and billions and billions of dollars and not being the wiser. If I am right, there are going to have to be gigantic subsidies to cover the P3 investment costs and return on investment for the new DRIC Bridge, Plaza and DRIC Road for decades to come. Is that what we want?

I cannot see how an investor could make money otherwise using Highway 407 as the example I shall use in this BLOG. In addition there will have to be huge subsidies for the other border crossings if the DRIC Bridge will take away a huge chunk of everyone else’s business as the US DEIS suggests. Otherwise, they cannot afford to stay in business and will have to close down thereby jeopardizing trade in other areas.

Read on, dear reader, and gasp. My suspicions about the real purpose of DRIC may well be true after all. That is, it was designed to force the Bridge Company to sell out cheaply.

Until I did this BLOG, I really did not understand the financial implications of what could happen. Not only is it mind-boggling, it is effectively hidden because Governments will certainly not make a point of saying how much they are subsidizing the border crossings every year. The gap between actual revenues that can be collected from users and what a P3 investor requires to even consider being involved is about as big as the Grand Canyon.

By mid-2000 the Canadian Government already knew that the Bridge Company was going to expand its Canadian plaza and by 2012 was going to build a second bridge adjacent to its existing bridge. It was hardly a surprise frankly since the Bridge Company had announced that in 1998.

I have suggested on many occasions in my BLOGs that I have always suspected that our three Levels of Government in Canada are working together against the Ambassador Bridge Company notwithstanding the occasional squabbles amongst themselves. The DRIC Road brouhaha is the best example of the family feud.

Let us assume that I am right and that they agreed years ago to pretend that they were going to build a new crossing a mile away from the existing bridge using some kind of financing using the public-private partnership model. The purpose was to use the DRIC EA exercise as a threat to convince the Bridge Company to sell out cheaply.

Can you understand this? If I am right, then this is completely contrary to what we were told about DRIC and its decision-making. DRIC was not independently arriving at a conclusion but rather was justifying a conclusion that had already been reached. If you will recall one of my other BLOGs dealing with the border file and experts, then what I am saying is not so far-fetched.

Here are some of the multi-billion taxpayer dollar questions that need answering:

• Why was DRIC needed?
• Why would the Governments need to do anything when the Bridge Company was going to provide up to eight lanes of new traffic making 12 in total at its expense and the Governments knew it?
• Why would Governments continually talk about building additional capacity when none was needed, especially now with the economic melt-down in the auto industry that will take forever to recover if it ever does?
• If the purpose of a new crossing was traffic, why is the project going forward today when traffic volumes have tanked and a new bridge may not be needed for decades even forgetting how smoothly traffic will flow with the improvements in technology.
• Is DRIC nothing more than a farce designed to justify conclusions that had already been reached?
• Why are Government Ministers claiming to respect the process when they are actually discrediting it?
• Who will benefit from all of this if in fact the project really moves forward in spite of everything?

This border file is a complete mess since the underlying assumption of the Governments is that the Bridge Company would see the necessity to sellout. The Bridge Company caused the problem when they did not follow the script. When that didn’t happen, my view is that the Governments did not have a contingency to deal with that and now are doing anything they possibly can no matter how ridiculous.

The classic is the FHWA rep at the Cropsey hearings saying that the real purpose for the new DRIC Plaza is to provide redundancy for the Ambassador Gateway Plaza. If that is the case, then in both Port Huron and in Buffalo, new plazas need to be built to destroy totally other parts of those cities. That will be even worse for those cities than is being proposed today. There would be a riot in those cities if what was said in Michigan was really true.

I suspect also that the American Governments have been duped by the Canadians and became part of the solution without knowing they were fooled! The Americans bought into Canada’s Gateways and Corridors policy and were none the wiser for it and are still not! Canada had to react quickly to some American border initiatives to prevent our economy from suffering and did so.

As I said before, that is the main focus of why the Ambassador Bridge has importance to Canada but not the only reason for trying to beat up the Bridge Company. The other reason is strictly financial.

And money, the root of all evil, will be the subject of Part 2.

More Items Of Interest

Here are some items you may find interesting and enlightening! I just had to clear them out to make way for the new ones coming in.

SECURITY AND REDUNDANCY

I’m sure that you saw this headline:

• “B.C. pipeline still leaking after latest attack”

This is the third attack along the route of sour gas pipelines in British Columbia.

This clearly shows the risk to the pipeline system in Canada yet I don’t hear anybody demanding that we duplicate the oil and gas pipelines for security and redundancy purposes.

I just saw the story:

• “Ont. government opposes two possible new nuclear reactors from Bruce Power
  
  TORONTO — Proposed plans by Bruce Power to build two new nuclear reactors on the shores of Lake Erie met with strong opposition from the Ontario government Friday.
  
  The only private nuclear generating company in Canada will conduct an environmental assessment as it considers building two reactors at the former Stelco lands in Nanticoke in southwestern Ontario…
  
  After a luncheon speech in Toronto on Friday, Energy and Infrastructure Minister George Smitherman made it clear the province is not behind Bruce Power's plans.
  
  "It does not have government support in any form," he said…
  
  "Hawthorne called it "disappointing" that the government did not view his announcement as positive. He said in a world of financial turbulence, his company should be commended for laying out proposed future projects."

I have no idea why the Government is opposing this project. It would seem to me that it provides good security and redundancy in case there’s a problem at the Bruce nuclear plant.

No. It is only with respect to the Ambassador Bridge that security and redundancy become an issue.

LOOPY COUNCILLORS

According to Councillor Postma in her interview with John Fairley, the only Councillors who attend on a regular basis with the Mayor in his bullpen sessions on Fridays are herself, Councillor Jones and Councillor Lewenza. Councillor Halberstadt attends on occasion and sometimes Councillor Valentinis.

However, there is a real question whether the Mayor takes these sessions seriously or not. For example in October, one was cancelled because the Mayor had a Windsor Utilities negotiation meeting scheduled and another was cancelled because the Mayor was in Toronto for the Provincial Municipal Review Report and Press Conference. We know the Mayor was there because didn’t he get a quote in the newspaper.

The Bull Sessions were not rescheduled either.

QUICK CALL THE PARAMEDICS

Dr. Allen Heimann, the Medical Officer of Health, may be focusing on the wrong diseases I am afraid. He is so worried about SARS, West Nile disease and flu pandemics that he has missed the fact that there is an amnesia disease sweeping through City Hall again.

The cause may well be due to all of those fumes being exhausted from the Ventilation building for the Windsor Tunnel near City Hall since there are no scrubbers on the exhaust. I would hate to think that such a concentration of fumes would cause the amnesia around the residences from the exhaust of the Greenlink Schwunnels.

Here is a video rom the EH News report:

• “Mayor's Office Out Of Touch With Automotive R & D Future: Analyst
  
  “Canada's leading auto industry analyst -- with a reputation for frank talk -- says the mayor's office is slowing Windsor's shift from blue collar automotive jobs to the industry's
  future -- research and development.
  
  Tonight on A-News at Six, Daryl Newcombe reported on Dennis Desrosier's comments and how Mayor Eddie Francis responded.”

As is very clear, the Mayor cannot stand to be blamed for anything that may be going wrong. Listen as he lashes out but more importantly listen to what he says about the proposal that the City made to the University.

Now I do not know whom to believe. Here is what Councillor Halberstadt said months before on his BLOG about a so-called proposal.

• "On January 25, at an in camera meeting, Mayor Eddie Francis received approval from City Council, in an 8-2 vote, to concoct a business case to offer free city land, $25-million in cash, plus expropriation costs, to convince the University of Windsor to build its new $110,000,000 engineering school on the western anchor site.
  
  Two days later, details of this closed meeting were leaked all over the pages of the Windsor Star in the wake of a January 26 decision by the university board of governors to reject the downtown site and locate the new faculty on campus.
  
  Columnist Gord Henderson told us that Mayor Francis was to come back to Council in three weeks with a business plan, a rapid timeline I do not recall being pinpointed to Councillors.
  
  I am not sure what the mayor communicated to university President Ross Paul regarding Council’s closed-door decision prior to the board of governors meeting. As one of the two Councillors who opposed the resolution, it offends me that it is now taken for granted that Council gave the green light on the $40-million package.
  
  In fact, all the Council majority did was to give the mayor permission to develop a business plan. Once that came back, I would certainly presume that it would be vetted in full public view, including details of the obvious hit to the property tax base, the city’s financial plan and the much-acclaimed debt-reduction policy.”

I sure would like to know what the City’s proposal was. I find it interesting that the Mayor never made that proposal public.

In case you are suffering from the amnesia disease as well, dear reader, here’s how the Mayor tried to help the University. Here is what I wrote before:

• "Together, we are working to build the new, state-of-the-art Centre for Engineering Innovation. And, it needs to be downtown."
  
  Of course he “ad-libbed” so it would NOT be in writing when Eddie threatened saying if it was not going to be downtown, do not expect a City contribution.
  
  The City would play a role "if and only if the campus was brought downtown."

With help like that...

OYEZ, OYEZ, OYEZ

A spoof of our Mayor from his Law School. Check it out here

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7971803/Law-School-spoof

Engineering The Perfect Border Trifecta

Fate works in mysterious ways. The people who are geniuses are not necessarily very smart or very clever but they have the unique ability to understand where events are going and have the sense to take advantage of the situation. The Eminence Greasie is one of those people.

The Eminence had determined what was to be achieved. The problem was how to accomplish it. The circumstances of the economic meltdown, border infighting, infrastructure spending being sexy and the Liberal loss in the federal election to most people have no connection whatsoever. To the Eminence, it was the perfect storm that came together to accomplish the objective.

Watch the triple political play take place and acknowledge with awe the brilliance of the Master's strokes

1. Dwight Duncan as Federal Liberal Leader? Even though Dwight has learned how to speak French that is not what is really going to happen short-term and Greasie knows it. The word might go out that Dwight is interested but in the end, he will take a senior position with one of the front-runners’ leadership campaigns so that when the Liberals are elected to form the Government, he will get a senior cabinet position as his reward. The PM position can come later.
   


2. With Dwight’s seat provincially open, who better to take it and get a cabinet position but our Mayor. In fact, if you see Eddie getting along with the Mayor of Tecumseh, then you can bet on it since Tecumseh is part of that riding and Mayor McNamara might have his own ambitions to run.
   


3. And with the Mayor’s position becoming available, the gold ring is being held out to Bill Marra to be appointed to the posiiton as long as he stays on the Team and supports the Mayor. There is no need for an election. Of course, Bill will be shafted!

It is the perfect Trifecta.

Obviously, one of the biggest infrastructure jobs in Ontario with billions of dollars being spent for a road and bridge for the economic good of Canada's and Ontario's economic trade, expenditures that in normal times would make no sense whatsoever but in an economic downturn can be justified, will be claims to fame for all three of these individuals. They can take the glory in it.

Whether it gets built or not does not matter in reality. For Dwight, the timing is perfect for the Liberal leadership campaign in the spring. It would be his project and the jobs promised to be created through it. Eddie claims victory as well for his next campaign and Bill goes along with it all.

If only they can get the Bridge Company to sue, then it is perfect. The Company can then be demonized and vilified as the project is postponed rather than the Politicians who know they cannot afford it.

But that is for another time. I will explain it more in another Blog when I talk about the waste of money in this project.

Believe it or not, another urban legend has been created so we know we are coming to the end of the DRIC Road/Greenlink saga. Who thinks up this stuff? Is there someone on the City payroll who stays up at night dreaming up these myths for the Mayor so that Henderson can write about them in his column?

How many urban legends have we been fed so far that we are supposed to believe? I think I’m losing track. I remember Eddie walking through Devonshire Mall and then a Youth Committee was the result. Then there was the lobster pot story at the Rotary event where Eddie and the President of St. Clair College spoke and the next thing we knew the Cleary was gone. Oh I forgot, wasn’t a Tim Horton’s doughnut somewhere in the Cleary story too. Who can forget the wedding in London where Eddie met Mr. Farhi and next thing we knew our downtown arena was located at an old industrial site in the East End.

Now we have the Eddie/Dwight Duncan tête-à-tête in a car going to the airport in Toronto. As an aside, I may file a Freedom of Information Application to find out who paid for the taxi fare if they went by cab or did they ride in a Government limousine. If it was Dwight’s car, did Eddie pay for the gas as his share?

If you believe that story, dear reader, then you will believe the story before the Federal Election that our banks are in terrific shape notwithstanding that the Minister of Finance has just pumped $75 billion into them after the election. Where he found that money is beyond me just as it is beyond me that the US Government can throw over $100B into AIG, an Insurance Company who speculated and lost, and yet not find a paltry $25B for the automobile industry.

Who the heck is this provincial insider who gives Gord all of this great material? It is always so convenient isn’t it? Unfortunately however, both Gord and the insider may well be witnesses in the lawsuit to set aside the Environmental Assessment process. The Column makes it absolutely clear that this has always been a political exercise and not an engineering one.

This column is just another step of the “disrespect” of the DRIC process that would make it so easy that even I could start a lawsuit to stop this process cold and win. Please do not tell me that Dwight and Eddie, and perhaps even the Federal Government, are not making it easy to sue to stop the EA. How many more things wrong do they have to commit?

Give me a break. The DRIC/Greenlink war ended when Dwight said

“THE MAYOR IS WRONG. THE MAYOR IS WRONG.”

When Eddie stopped talking lawsuits or even threatening lawsuits and talked about making submissions to the Minister of the Environment, then everyone knew that he had been given his marching orders. He was not getting anything anymore. He was told specifically by the leak in Schnurr’s BLOG by Sandra and I will bet in Dwight’s car that there was no more and that he had better back off. Eddie was also facing a Councillor revolution that he could not deal with. And if the story is true about polling, then Eddie would understand that citizens of Windsor were not going to put up with his bravado any longer about Greenlink when 15,000 jobs were at stake.

Really, how could Eddie possibly expect anything more given that the DRIC Draft EA has been published. To expect long tunnels at this time would cause a major problem that could require DRIC to go back and start again with respect to the tunnels. It is not going to be allowed to happen. Not when Dwight’s political future is at stake.

There is no doubt that in the drive to the airport, and before, that Eddie would have said that he needed something in order to be our Hero and Saviour. I am sure that Eddie’s supposed Government friend from Ontario and even Dwight would have said that he would get a few tweaks to make him look good. After all, they probably understand the Buzz/Ken Sr. method of claiming total victory when they have an absolute loss.

And Eddie really does not need anything more when people like Gord will rewrite history and claim that Eddie is a master negotiator instead of a failure:

• “This mayor and council have moved the province an enormous distance over five years, from the almost criminally reckless plan to convert the E.C. Row into a gridlock-choked truck route, to a Parkway that's a pale imitation of the city's world-class GreenLink proposal.
  
  But when's the right time to fold 'em? When do you decide you've squeezed every last bit of gain out of the province and it's time to move on? It takes a canny negotiator to make that call.”

As an aside, Gord’s comment is very interesting to me. Effectively, he is saying that this entire process with the City was nothing more than a gigantic game that probably only Eddie and David Estrin knew was going on. Even the Councillors were not in on it and were made to like look like fools.

The Schwartz report, full tunneling and Greenlink were nothing more than negotiating ploys to get stuff out of the Senior Level, as much as possible. As I Blogged previously, this was nothing more than Estrin’s approach in Hamilton except this time the lawsuit was not started, because Eddie does not have the guts to do so, but the stalling technique was applied.

Do you feel like a sucker yet with the way that your emotions have been played? Does your pocketbook feel emptier with that $5M gone? Is this an acceptable way for a Mayor to function? It is the way for an amateur to do things not a “canny negotiator,” not a professional!

Everyone who was a decision maker in this matter knew what Eddie was doing. He fooled no one except the people who voted for him. He could have accomplished what he did years ago. We could have had people working instead of losing their homes or being forced to leave town to work. That is the Francis legacy as a “canny negotiator.”

There is no doubt that our Minister of Finance thought that he had a deal with Eddie after the airport jaunt. He had a bit of insurance, or so he thought. If Eddie got too clever or tried to renege or thought that he might even grab a little bit more of the spoils, the comments about jobs, jobs, jobs in the Star story today meant that Eddie’s bargaining position was just about over. After all how can anyone fight “a glut of jobs?”

Why else did Infrastructure Ontario come down here far in advance of the approval given by the Minister of the Environment. It was designed to pressure Council, the Construction Association, citizens and more importantly, the Mayor. The province had won. It was over.

Dwight kept up his end of the bargain with the wonderful comments about the Mayor and Council as set out in the EH News story last night:

• “We’ve had some differences over the course of last year and those have not been easy on anybody. But I have enormous respect for this Mayor, enormous respect for City Council. We, they, because of their work, their action, we've gone from one additional truck lane in each direction on the EC Row Expressway to a proposal now that I think is a giant step forward.”

How gracious. Did Eddie respond in kind? Oh do not be silly:

• “But Mayor Eddie Francis remains unsatisfied with the design, promising to continue to push for longer tunnelled sections proposed in the city's GreenLink design.
  
  Eddie Francis: ..on May 1st, when they all told us to take a hike and stop providing comments. And you saw what happened several weeks ago with regard to the significant concession that they made…
  
  All members of city council, myself, will be in attendance [at the Public Open houses of DRIC]. We have cancelled the 24th council meeting.”

In the Star:

• “There's a principle of equity and fairness here that they have to apply to those areas," said Francis. "The City of Windsor is fighting desperately for more coverage for those residential areas."

Why should Dwight be surprised? He should understand Eddie by now. Eddie cannot lose. Ever. Eddie runs Windsor, not Dwight. As Gord said for the second time in his column, the Province must bow down to our Mayor:

• “The gap between the city and province -- GreenLink versus Parkway -- involves about 1,000 metres of tunnelling, about 10 Canadian football fields in combined length, and $150 million in additional costs.

Dwight has to be absolutely furious today. I wonder if I should contact my provincial insider and find out how mad he is. There is no point in bothering. Dwight is a big boy and understands the game that is being played by our Mayor. After all, he has been there before with the Mayor.

There must have been a deal over the recent provincial and municipal elections previously as demonstrated by the letter sent by Eddie as support for Sandra’s nomination and that Councillor Marra decided not to run for Mayor although he would have won in a landslide.

Now you know the score, dear reader. What I have been trying to do in my BLOGs is to identify the game and the steps being played. Come on now, none of this is really a big surprise to my loyal readers.

It is a funny thing though about Fate. Fate can never be controlled no matter how smart the genius. Something unexpected can always happen that was never contemplated so that no contingency plan was developed. Even if everything seems to be working out perfectly according to plan, Fate can again intervene in the most unanticipated way to ruin everything. Even the best laid plans of an Eminence Greasie can go off the tracks if one of the participants has an ego as big as all outdoors.

People have asked me if the Eminence Greasie is real and if so, who he/she is. I just smile when asked and say nothing.

If however you want to know if that person exists and who he/she might be, I suggest that you go to the Caesars Windsor Casino, Legends Sports Lounge. If you see a distinguished person betting on trifectas and that persaon has a bald spot as if some hair had been pulled out of that person’s head because of annoyance and worry, then go up to that person say in a low voice:

• “Your Eminence, I know how HE is too.”

If you get a smile back, then you will know the answer.

The Newest Tunnel Deal

More on the Tunnel. It is getting so tedious already because we are kept in the dark about everything.

Here is the form of a new Tunnel deal purcolating in the mind of the Detroit Mayor and staff. Why anyone would think that this makes any sense for Windsor taxpayers is beyond me. We risk a major economic crisis if we borrow $50 million (or will it be still US$75 million) to do this deal:

• "[Joe Harris, the city's former auditor general and new chief financial officer] said that selling part of the city's revenue from Detroit's half of the Detroit-Windsor, Ontario international tunnel could bring in up to $50 million.
  
  The Detroit City Council had shot down a similar tunnel plan by Kilpatrick due to missed deadlines and unanswered questions about the deal."

I do not remember that kind of a deal ever being discussed seriously previously. Why would anyone be interested in buying a revenue stream, especially in the amount of $50 million, in an asset that will lose a substantial part of its business if the DRIC Bridge is ever built, up to 25% of it. The revenues at the Tunnel are hardly booming now.

What is completely absurd is that, according to the latest update in the Communications Package respecting the Tunnel Plaza Improvements, nothing is being done of any significance for that. All that we know is that the costs of the Project have increased dramatically for reasons unknown and that there is no agreement amongst the Governments involved as to who will pick up the excess costs. And Tunnel volumes are still falling.

Could it be that nothing is being at the Tunnel at this time since Governments do NOT want a solution. If there was one, then one of the DRIC issues---congestion on the road system---would have been solved! We cannot have that now can we! Keep those traffic tie-ups going.

If Detroit wants to do the same kind of transaction as we had heard about before, Windsor would be required to buy the revenue stream and if there was a deficiency, then Detroit would not be on the hook. Presumably, it would be Windsor's risk. I did not see anything that would suggest that the City could take over Detroit's half of the Tunnel if there was a default.

If Eddie's reason for getting involved in the Tunnel is to prevent private interests from controlling it, this does not achieve his objectives. The City of Detroit could always sell its interest in the Tunnel to someone. Granted, the purchase price would not be significant because of the revenue stream deal, but in the end the Tunnel would not be owned by Detroit any longer.

I would expect that the new purchaser would be looking for ways to find the City of Windsor in default in the deal. It would not be a happy relationship

It would be a terrific transaction for Detroit given the meltdown in the financial system but a horrible one for Windsor if in fact anyone would finance his transaction for us in the first place.

I know that Windsor taxpayers are a friendly Bank for our politicians---giving them our money whenever they ask at a Zero rate interest so they can squander it on arenas, legal fees and canal visions but I do not remember us agreeing to be one for Detroit too!

Just so you don't forget, here are some facts that have been reported in the press over the last few years that scare me when someone talks about the City buying Detroit's revenue stream:

1. The City's former budget chair, Councillor Bristling Brister said to Gord Henderson some time ago that he cannot provide any details but there are major issues pending involving the Windsor-Detroit tunnel that will consume "a significant amount of taxpayer resources." All such "issues" have never yet been revealed publicly by this open and transparent Council.
2. We know that the Tunnel Ventilation Building had a cost over-run of $7 million. What other issues does the Tunnel have due to its age.
3. A US magazine article calls the Tunnel "a unique security risk, which makes Customs and Border Protection officials nervous. For those of you who take the Tunnel, the concern should be obvious.
4. That same article states that US Customs has said that the Tunnel doesn’t meet their requirements.
5. The City's $30 million Tunnel Plaza Improvement proposal creates a giant parking lot to get cars off of City streets but does not move one single vehicle though the Tunnel any quicker. Who knows when or if the public will ever see the final plans.
6. Why would anyone use the Tunnel to cross the border once the Bridge Company's Ambassador Gateway project is finished. The Bridge Company has added new lanes at the Border that almost equal the number of lanes that the Tunnel has now.

The situation is not a happy one at the border either with the passport issue, the no smoking by-law, the strength of the Canadian dollar, price of gas and strong Casino competition from Detroit. Tunnel volumes and revenues have had problems over the past few years. Here is a fascinating quote that was published on February 23, 2005 in the Star:

• Mayor Eddie Francis plans to ask at Thursday's tunnel commission meeting that consideration of a recommended toll increase be put over until next month.
  
  Francis, who is chairman of the commission, said that two councillors are unable to attend and "out of respect for their opinions, I expect to request a deferral."
  
  With tunnel traffic down by about 10 per cent in 2004 and showing no signs of rebounding, the proposed hike from $3.50 to $3.75 and from $2.50 US to $2.75 US are expected to generate an additional $600,000 annually.
  
  The commission will be presented with three options when they deal with the issue:
  
  - If no toll increase is implemented, it will require a $4.45- million transfer from capital reserves to fund an expected deficit in 2005 and $1 million annually in future years.
  
  - If the recommended increase is approved, it will still require a $3.8-million transfer in 2005 and between $400,000 and $600,000 in future years.
  
  - And if tolls were increased to match those on the Detroit side, it will require a $2.5-million transfer this year and between $500,000 and $900,000 from 2006 to 2010.
  
  No matter which option is chosen, it will mean a reduction in the annual dividend paid to the city which is $6.6 million."

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as I am concerned about the Tunnel. As I said before, we ought not to be focusing only on the Ambassador Bridge when looking at the border. The Tunnel, while not as visible or as controversial so far, has many more stories still to be told.

It is time that the Mayor and Council drop this deal and start solving the many problems that the City has. If, according to Council Postma, we don't have enough money for the Sandwich Community Improvement Plan which has dominated this Council for so long, then we don't have enough money to help get Detroit out of its financial woes. Let's solve our problems first.

Our Mayor was not elected to be a border operator but to administer this City properly. I know that it is not as much fun as playing with $75 million of taxpayer money but he was the one who decided to take on the job. If he cannot handle it because it is too difficult a job for him, he always has the option to resign and let someone else do it.

It is time for this young entrepreneurial foolishness to end already.

Fighting City Hall

The big front page story "Yes, you can fight City Hall" and the large colour photo just did not happen out of chance. Someone at the Star made the decision to run it that way.

It was meant as a warning to Council, and especially the Mayor, to get out of this mess while the getting out is good. Fighting civil lawsuits in situations such as this can turn out in ways that can never be anticipated and with potentially dire consequences.

Do you think that someone also had a hand in the Editorial re the 400 Building that said today:

• "Frankly, we are not interested in reviewing this partial audit sometime next month.
  
  We, like all residents of Windsor, want to see the draft audit that was prepared and submitted by Dunbar in December 2006. That's the gift residents want before Dec. 25. It is our right and the city's responsibility."

Do you think that the Star has finally had enough after all of these years!

Congratulations to George Sofos and Chuck Faubert, and to Frank Miller their lawyer, on their victory to get the Junction “grandfathered” under the City’s entertainment by-law.

I trust that the City will not be vindictive and try to delay their re-opening by filing an appeal. To be direct, it would not surprise me if the City does that given the way at this matter has been handled.

It would seem to me, although I have not seen the reasons for judgment, that an appeal would be futile since the Judge must have made the decision based on the “facts.” Generally, unless the Judge totally missed the point, matters cannot be appealled successfully on questions of fact alone. Do City taxpayers need to pay more legal costs for something like this when the Junction Owners want to re-start their business and start hiring people?

I am glad to read how Councillor Jones reacted and hopefully, the rest of Council:

• "Coun. Ron jones, who represents the west end, said the city must abide by the court decision."

Someone has been teaching him what Black Letter Law means.

It would not surprise me to see the City threaten to appeal unless George and Chuck drop entirely their civil action against the City as well. As the Star story stated

• “Meanwhile, the city faces a $1.5-million lawsuit filed by the owners after council rejected their bid for a business licence.
  
  Sofos and Faubert claimed $750,000 in damages for negligent representation, $500,000 for bad faith, and $250,000 for punitive and exemplary damages in a statement of claim filed May 5 in Superior Court by their lawyer Claudio Martini.”

I know both of these gentlemen and that tactic will not work. If they carried on this long, then they will carry on even if the City appeals. And if the City does appeal in a frivolous and vexatious manner, then all it does is increase the claim for bad faith and punitive damages.

Let me be blunt. If decisions are being made in this matter, then the Mayor should NOT be involved at all. There is a reason why he left the Chair at the Council meeting and participated in the Junction debate, an action I have never seen him take before or after, unless one wants to consider his WUC Whiteboard presentation to be something similar. I have no idea what that reason is but we would find out during his cross-examination in front of the Trial Judge in the civil action.

Now that might make for some compelling news stories for the media if it went that far. We would hear from certain City Hall staffers as well and who knows, perhaps an MP from Windsor West who lives behind the Junction and a Councillor or two. We might even learn who took the inflammatory photos that were used against the Junction, how they were used and why.

Only those Members of Council who have no “reason” should be instructing counsel in this matter. The best decision that they could make is not to appeal, pay George and Chuck as little money as they can to settle and let them get on with life.

Anything else is a waste of taxpayer money.