BC Rail Scandal

BC Rail Scandal

or is it the corruption of Gordon Campbell...

In 1996, the Liberals lost the election in BC. It was seen by many as theirs to lose. The drummed up scandal around Bingo and Premier Harcourt, a good honourable man that had nothing to do with the Bingo stuff, was forced to resign.

In 1996 the Gordon Campbell Libcons were promising to sell BC Rail. This did them in as the NDP held onto enough seats in the interior of BC to squeak out a majority government. The Liberals, having seen victory stolen from them, ran in 2001 against a further scandalized NDP government promised many things. First was that they would not sell BC Rail and second that they would honour contracts with health care workers.

In both cases the Liberals lied to voters. Most folks in BC are aware of the promises to honour workers contracts with government. That all ended soon. Rapid de-unionization of health care took place. The second broken promise saw BC Rail was turned over to CN Rail for a pittance, one billion dollars.

The LIBcons tried to tell us they were selling the rolling stock and operations, keeping the right of way so they were not in fact selling BC Rail. Well, it was a sale of the railway and although British Columbia remains the owner of the land and tracks that BC Rail uses, CN Rail has a 900 plus year lease on its use.

No British Columbian could be faulted for feeling they had been had. The Libcons had in fact taken great effort to deceive us.

So much for trusting the Libcons. It turns out that the Libcons were planning the sale of BC Rail prior to the 2003 and likely entered the 2001 election understanding they would sell BC rail.

Read more at Bill Tieleman's blog. He has been following this scandal for several years now and has the latest.

You will also find much more from Libcon exposer, The Gazetteer.