In what had to be a humiliating climbdown, Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen issued a joint statement this morning with Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek explaining that the Green Line LRT project is back on again, sort of.
On September 2, the feckless 30-something MLA for Innisfail-Sylvan Lake wrote a rude letter to Mayor Gondek informing her that the province was pulling its promised $1.53-billion contribution to the Green Line light rail transit project, which a month earlier he’d stated was 100-per-cent secure.
Never mind the fact that city taxpayers had already sunk $1.5 billion into the $6.3-billion project on the strength of the province’s commitment, the deal appeared to be kaput.
It must have been quite the reaction Dreeshen got, though. At any rate, another month has passed, and the minister has executed yet another screeching turn on the Green Line.
“Over the past few weeks, the City of Calgary and Alberta’s Government have engaged in productive discussions to deliver a Green Line that meets the needs of Calgary’s commuters and preserves value from the previous Phase 1 of the project,” said the statement’s face-saving opening.
“This decision not only works to preserve more than 700 jobs, but also builds on the shared investments we have made towards the Green Line,” it continued, the jobs in question being the ones Dreeshen intemperately put at risk with his sudden decision to pull the plug on the promised provincial contribution, presumably because he saw it as a way to attack former Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi.
Now Alberta NDP leader, Nenshi is obviously taken seriously enough to be considered worthy of some serious political sabotage, even if it cost Calgary taxpayers whose votes one would have thought the UCP might have wanted a billion dollars or more.
Well, perhaps cooler heads in the Premier’s Office – if such things exist – took a more sober look at the damage Dreeshen was doing and decided to ask the young man best known for his MAGA enthusiasm and political volunteerism south of the Canada-U.S. border to simmer down a little.
At any rate, said the statement (which sounded as if it had been entirely written by Dreeshen’s staff, “as part of our meetings, the province reaffirmed that the previously committed funding of $1.53B remains available to support the continuation of this work during the interim period.”
For his part, Nenshi was not impressed. “Yet again, the premier and her minister careen from crisis to crisis, this time trying to solve a catastrophe of their own making,” he said in a statement it must have been quite satisfying to sign off on.
“They lit over $2 billion on fire, and now are desperately backing down, trying to save the Green Line that they killed,” the statement goes on to read.
He continued: “Minister Dreeshen told hundreds of workers that they were OK in August, that they would lose their jobs in September, and now in October that they’ll be OK until Christmas. Maybe.”
He was referring to joint statement’s explanation that an engineering firm approved of by the province “is developing a revised alignment for the downtown on behalf of the province.”
One supposes that if the city doesn’t like those plans – quite possible given the history of the project – Dreeshen will have another snit and call the whole thing off again.
Why not? It’s been affirmed, unaffirmed, and reaffirmed in 30-day intervals now – enough to give Calgary voters whiplash! So it can obviously all be re-un-affirmed again in another 30 days or so.
“This incompetence comes at significant cost,” said Nenshi. “You can’t affirm contracts, then cancel them, then reinstate them without significant financial penalty.”
Well, to be fair, I guess you can if you’re a UCP minister from rural Alberta.
“The direct costs of this misadventure will likely total over $1 billion in penalties, and increase the cost of every provincial construction project for years to come due to new risk premiums,” Nenshi said.
As the former mayor added, “this is not over.” There will soon be more fighting about how, or whether, the line makes its way through Calgary’s downtown.
“Every Albertan deserves to see a complete public accounting of the costs of the UCP government’s mishandling of the largest infrastructure project in Calgary’s history,” Nenshi stated. It’s hard to argue with that, with the caveat that we don’t always get what we deserve.
Good for Mayor Gondek for trying to keep this project on the rails. It can’t be easy.
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