, RE’S a vacant lot
Meat the foot of Capilano
[Road that the federal

meacovernment uses as a
mdump for $4.4 million
each year.

And they’ve been dumping,
money there since 1974,

If that doesn’t frost your
hard- -working taxpaying sensi-
# bilities, it’s ume to get off the
Prozac.

The 22-hectare site was
originally leased two decades
ago by the far-sighted feds to
build a 400,000-square-foot
Pacific environment centre.

+ But that idea went out
with the tide. Too bad the

f/m 71-ycar lease for the property

@ didn’r get washed out with it.
The Department of
Environment invested an ini-
tial $4 million to acquire a
leasehold interest in the water-
A front property.

Terms of the lease agree-

SHA ment dictate that the land can

be used only for a facility with
an environmental theme —~ an
environmental centre, a place
g of environmental! studies and
maybe a few international
A conferences thrown in for
good measure.
Also, the lease payments
an for the property are based on
9% of the appraised market
‘value of the waterfront site.
fae. Annual lease payments that
a started off at $241,000 per
a year way back when have
‘thereby skyrocketed to $4.4
a million.
*. Over the first 14 years of
B the lease, those payments have

“MONEY
‘ SINCE 4 968

AUTHORIZED DEALER FOR»

totaled approximately $12.7
million.

Add another $32 million
in payments from 1989 to
1997 and you come up with a
total that has thus far hit close
to $45 million.

By the end of the lease,
which doesn’t expire until
2045, those annual payments
will doubtless hit astronomical
amounts. The sky is the limit,
your grandchildren will be

pleased to know.

Negotiators for both sides
in this lease deserve applause
— from Squamish Band mem-
bers. Who said the white man
had any negotiating smarts? In
this day and age, he is the
pale-faced patsy of choice.

Sheila Copps, the current
Heritage Minister, was the
most recent bumbler at the

negetiation table back in
1994, when, as minister of the
enviroament, she was the
minister overseeing the lease
renegotiation.

Nice job, Sheila. Should
have worked some Canadian
flag sales in to the deal because
the taxpayers got little more
than a royal patriotic screwing
out of this whole affair.

As far back as 1978, the
federal Public Accounts

“Who said the
white man had
any negotiating
smarts? In this day
and age, he is the
pale-faced patsy of
choice.”

Committee heartily recom-
mended that cither the lease
be disposed of or that a
change in the use of the prop-
erty be negotiated.

But here we Sit almost 20
years later, having tossed inil-
lions of taxpayess’ dollars

down the drain, and nothing,
has been done.

Local Reform MPs are
rightly upset over the ridicu-
lous waste of taxpayers’
money involved in the vacant
lot money dump site.

Why not, asks West
Vancouver Sunshine Coast
MP John Reynolds, use the
property for a federal govern-
ment facility chat would
house all its far-flung Lower
Mainland operations in one
location on the North Shore?

Nor a bad idea, consider-
ing we are paying for the site
anyway.

“Or maybe,” he says,
“they could build those big
boxes there.”

Over in North Vancouver,
Reform MP Ted White
became so alarmed at the fla-
grant waste of money that he
sought to have some input in
the lease renegotiation
process.

He took his request to
Copps but got little more
than what he describes as a
Liberal runaround. White was
not even granted the oppor-
tunity to sit in on the negoti-
ations and observe the pro-

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ESTABLISHED 1985

Friday, November 7, 1997 — North Shore News — 7

oney dump

The terms of the lease
remain confidendal, even
though the taxpayer is paying
the freight on this train ro
nowhere.

Oh, well, as they say in
Ortawa: “We're the govern-
ment; we're here to help
you.”

Meanwhile the vacant lot
continues to pile up taxpayers’
cash and other area refuse.

Apart from the lease pay-
ments, the feds now say the
cost to clean up the water-
front property for any devel-
opment is considerable.
Ground water underneath th:
site is contaminated with
heavy metals such as copper
and zinc.

The price tag to clean it is
now pegged at $10 million —
a cost that would have been
prudent to determine before
the lease was signed. And
infrastructure to service the

Lube, oil & filter change
Reg. $28.95 Pennzoil 10W30
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property if anvone ever
decides to build on it could
run into many more millions
of dollars.

Over the years other feder-
al departments have expressed
varying levels of interest in
the size: Fisheries and Oceans;
the Department of
Environment, the Coast
Guard; Energy, Mines and
Resources; and the National
Research Council.

But again nothing has hap-
pened. The site remains
vacant, taxpayers continue to
rwur good money after bad
down a waterfront rathole and
the Squamish Band continues
to pocket the lease payments.

The whole business is just
another example of good
money chasing bad in a woe-
ful federal government adven-
ture in vote-buying.

It’s an approach that is,
like the waterfront site itself,
totally vacant.

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