I appreciated your posting the url to the deliberations of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities (5Feb08) … essential reading for anyone to see just how manipulative the system is that’s behind the TPA and the island airport. And I congratualte you guys on a truly brave and commendable showing.  Frankly I was appalled and angered at Volpe’s arrogant, dismissive, and entirely unconstructive and rude behaviour.

But onto a critical item, and that’s the $35 million payout to Porter decision. In one breath Volpe says essentially that Vaughan/Freeman/Iler were out of order raising the issue, and then in his next breath he goes ahead and “for the record” discusses the issue himself.  Anyway, here is his “for the record” statement:

“I want to put on the record that the lawsuit to which they have made reference is one where the federal government—and you had one of the lawyers here before this committee explain what happened—sat down with the province and the municipal government and tried to extricate the city out of a lawsuit it was going to lose. You heard that as testimony in this committee and that the Government of Canada handed over $35 million in indemnities in order to keep the city safe, harmless from what the city viewed, because it signed on to the agreement, as an irresponsible action against the port authority among other players”.

Questions:

1. Isn’t it so nice that the city had such kindly support from the fed’s “to extricate the city out of a lawsuit it was going to lose”. Hell, had they been as generous in supporting the city in their part of the tripartite “no-fixed link” agreement in the first place maybe this whole mess would have been avoided! (lol!). My question is this: what do you think makes Volpe so sure the city was going to lose? Did he know something that others didn’t?

2. I’m puzzled by Volpe’s take on what the city “viewed” as “as an irresponsible action against the port authority…”. Is this true or is he mincing words just to be cutely controversial as is his wont?

(Vaughan, to his credit, caught Volpe lying a few times right in the deliberations and told him so)

David Wilson