DRIC: A Process Designed To Fail

It all came to me in a flash, another Eureka moment. It came in an aside from the Mayor that was caught on the microphone. One sentence of significance in all of those four and a half hours of talk, talk, talk. A piece of wheat amongst all of the chaff.

DRIC was a process designed to fail!

I needed my beauty sleep. No wise-cracks please. There was no way that I intended to stay up half the night writing a BLOG about my impressions of the Council meeting. It just was not worth it given the charade that was being played out yesterday.

Eddie is merely playing his usual game of trying to divide the Feds and the Province for his advantage. Remember when Dalton McGuinty was his buddy against the Feds. Now he has no problems with the Feds as he told John Fairley on Face-To-Face but the Province is the stumbling block as he tried to demonstate last night. Unfortunately, Eddie has not yet realized that both of them cannot tolerate him.

If last night was "real" and if Council wants to understand why there will be no co-operation with DRIC and the various Governments, the silliness at Council last night will be the prime reason. Last night was the kind of discussion that Windsor taxpayers are used to having at Council. It is all one sided with no desire to listen or to understand. It was clearly designed by the Mayor for the Mayor and for his future to pretend that he is not responsible for the border failure.

If there was a human on the Phoenix Landing craft that landed on Mars looking down on Earth yesterday and at the City of Windsor in particular, they would have called 911 to have the police attend at City Hall. You see there was a mugging by 11 men and women in the Council Chambers against some poor, innocent out-of-towners. Here is what was originally on the Delegation List:

• "Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC)
  -Dave Wake, Manager, Planning Office, Ministry of
  Transportation-Windsor Border Initiatives, Implementation Group;
  and Fausto Natarelli, Director, Ministry of Transportation-Windsor
  Border Initiatives, Implementation Group
  
  
  -David Estrin, Legal Counsel; Nasri Munfah, Parsons Brinckerhoff;
  and Peter Walker, Walker Nott Dragicevic Associates Ltd.-Planning
  & Urban Design Consultants (available for questions)

The phrase "available for questions" was removed sometime after 1:20 p.m. yesterday, the time when I copied what was on the City website. I was shocked that Mr. Estrin gave his performance yesterday for about an hour after what I had read. But that was the point wasn't it, to fool everyone. It was nothing more than manipulation of the Agenda as I have pointed out before to accomplish a purpose. In fact, if you look at the Order of Business, DRIC is not mentioned at all.

Last night was the coward's way out. An hour of Estrin huffing and puffing and trying to blow down the DRIC house by suggesting to them that what they did was in violation of the law and would give rise to a major lawsuit. But then we had the Mayor again asking for timelines and making it clear that nothing was going to happen until after December when the DRIC Environmental Assessment was complete. So we have about another six more months of this nonsense. If the Mayor wants to sue, then sue. If Mr. Estrin is correct, then the City already has the legal grounds necessary to stop the process. Why doesn't he do it? What is he waiting for?

Clearly, Eddie has no intention of doing so. It is another threat with no substance. Crying wolf again.

Four and a half hours last night was nothing more than Eddie Francis pretending that there was going to be litigation while in fact he is hoping for a settlement. The session was nothing more than trying to convince the DRIC that they needed to sit down with the City to avoid years of lawsuits. The trouble that the Mayor has with the Governments is that he has no bargaining position. If they decide to get tough with the City, they just walk away taking billions of dollars of investments and thousands of jobs with them. Even Eddie Francis with all of his cheerleaders and sycophants could not survive that.

As you will recall, the Minister of Finance has already threatened that Windsor could lose everything. Last night's extravaganza will be pointed to as the main reason why the Senior Levels could do nothing with the City of Windsor if that was to happen. We will have the fiasco of Highway 401 not be completed to the border all over again. History will have repeated itself with Eddie as Mayor this time. It would be his legacy and his shame!

Windsor would again make it to the record books with a road project as the City that squandered the biggest opportunity ever to get out of the depression that we are in economically.

I expect that the DRIC people at first were quite shellshocked at the intensity of the attack against them and the unexpectedness. I expect that the Councillor questioning was well orchestrated with Mr. Estrin sitting nearby to feed the Mayor additional questions as the night wore on. By the way, the Council chambers are becoming a platform for advertising with the Greenlink banner and the Red Bull cans last night. I can hardly wait to see the Mayor and Councillors in sweatshirts with some company's logo on it shortly. Perhaps that is one way to reduce the City's deficit.

The DRIC people were able to gather their wits around them quickly because frankly they didn't care. They had to put in a few hours of torture but then they were finished dealing with this Council for more months. Towards the end, there was some testiness in the answers to the questions that were being posed because I think by that time they had had enough of following orders that they clearly had received from Queen's Park to be polite and respectful.

I enjoyed watching the faces of some of their people last night on camera smiling smugly with a look of amusement as the Mayor and Councillors ranted on. Why should they care... the Premier and the senior Ministers from this area are on their side already.

That Mayor of ours is one tough Perry Mason. He was all over the DRIC people with his days of actual legal experience showing in his cross-examination attempts. I wonder what he will feel like when he is a witness in whatever lawsuit that he brings. I expect that he will fold like an accordion after a tough, experienced practitioner starts asking him questions. We have seen that already with him not being able to face criticism or blame. Just remember that pesky environmentalist who took him on successfully or the Bridge Co. President at Council!

To be direct about it, one of the main purposes of the evening was for Eddie to demonstrate that the City, and himself primarily, was not to be blamed for any delays in the process. Dave Wake was much too polite when he attributed the one-year delay to the foundation work that the DRIC had to undertake to find out if the brine wells and salt mines would cause any problems. I'm surprised that he did not talk about the Schwartz Report #1 and the full tunneling positions put forward by the City that never had a chance of ever being acceptable but which had to be examined in detail by DRIC as being part of the problem. Moreover, how much money is the City actually spending to support Greenlink as another stall device.

We now know that City's campaign was a failure after spending so much of taxpayer dollars. And it came out of the mouth of the Mayor. There are only 16,500 postcards supposedly in support of Greenlink that came in after the massive advertising blitz. Wasn't Eddie's number between 20 and 30,000? So he got about half as many as he optimistically expected. Last night it was also mentioned that amongst that number of postcard signers were people from the County. If the County is included than Eddie's numbers are even worse. That will hardly convinced DRIC to move forward by incorporating more of Greenlink into their Parkway.

It can hardly be made any clearer that DRIC has no interest in discussing Greenlink any further. They have incorporated in the DRIC Parkway that they have put forward everything of Greenlink that they are going to accept. All that will happen now is "refinement."

A big issue will be whether or not DRIC have the obligation to examine Greenlink the way Estrin said that they must. I'm sure that the Bridge Company will be able to use his presentation as the basis of their lawsuit against the Governments. I could not help but think last night as I listened to Estrin that what he was doing was helping the Bridge Company to sue to take the City off the hook so that it would not have to do so. Let the Bridge Company take the hit for costing Windsor jobs, not Eddie.

After all, if Estrin is right that DRIC had to examine Greenlink as a reasonable alternative, then DRIC also had to look at the Enhancement Project in the same way. Of course they did not do so. Dave Wake said that last night that it was DRIC that put forward the 15 Crossing alternatives as their own suggestions. None of the alternatives was the Enhancement Project but was DRIC's version of what the Ambassador Bridge was going to do. It bore no relationship to reality but was a good way to kick them out of the process to achieve their objective of forcing the Bridge Company to sell out cheaply.

The DRIC people are smart. If they needed to put in a comparison with Greenlink they would have done so. If they didn't need to do so, then obviously they wouldn't have done it. Of course, what we heard last night was the advocacy position put forward by the City's lawyer. Naturally it was going to be one-sided. But seriously, could DRIC be as stupid as Estrin was suggesting.

Let's assume that they are not stupid. Then the Estrin presentation was nothing more than another negotiating tool that just will not work unless the Governments are concerned that Estrin's lawsuit, even if it is frivolous, will be a stall. For that reason they might negotiate something.

But let's assume that Eddie was right. That the DRIC process was designed to fail by not properly examining Greenlink. Why would the Senior Levels do something seemingly so idiotic?

The answer is obvious: Windsor has been Delrayed!

For years we have been led to believe that we are going to have this magnificent roadway to the border crossing, 10 times more expensive than any other road project in Ontario. Why that video prepared by DRIC was fabulous. Parks, bike trails, green space... why it is heaven on earth. Of course, it is now receiving visibility from other areas like Sarnia, like Sault Ste. Marie and the Maritime provinces for all of the money that the Governments are going to spend in Windsor. Can you imagine, $5 billion for a Bridge here is being quoted. No wonder the rest of the country will want a piece of the action and their chunk of heaven too when a new roadway projects are to be built anywhere else in Canada.

This is just like in Delray when MDOT did their conceptual drawings for what the new Delray would look like after the Public Bridge was built. Of course, the US Governments would not pay for the improvement of Delray legally and it would be left for the financially struggling City of Detroit to redevelop or private enterprise and we know that's not going to happen.

It's no different here. We know in our heart of hearts that the Governments are not going to spend $1.6 billion on Windsor. We also know that our E C Row Expressway is going to be the main road to the border and will be upgraded and uploaded to the Province. We know that there will be some modifications to Huron Church Road to make it a better access route to the border. That gives us, or rather the Senior Levels, road redundancy to the border crossing. It all will cost significantly less than DRIC and will be consistent with what the Senior Levels have wanted ever since the Joint Management Committee Report came out in late 2002.

It will be so easy to do as well. The Senior Levels will denounce Windsor, upload the road very easily and use the new rules for Environmental Assessment that have a six-month maximum time period to do so. It hardly changes the timetable for what they Governments wanted to do in the first place. What it does do is give them the excuse for doing what they wanted to do in the first place.

Is Eddie a willing participant in this charade? It would not seem so after last night. I really have no idea. However, if the Province kicks in $75 million or more for the Tunnel deal, then one would have to be very suspicious. If the Feds propose a nice deal over Brighton Beach, then one would have to wonder. Remember, even the first Schwartz Report supported the upgrading of EC Row without saying so specifically. The issue about that road for the City has been timing, not whether it should be done or not. All one needs to do is take a look at is the drawing "Phase 3: Lauzon Parkway and Manning Road Extensions " to understand that.

A few more thoughts about last night. If you watched some or all of it, then Eddie's position was very simple, just like a spoiled child saying my road is better than your road. This was not designed as a meeting to try to get cooperation but as one-upsmanship and trying to force something down DRIC's throat. It makes a mockery of wanting to have a fruitful discussion with the Ministers from the area as well. Why should the City position be any different with them? It provides another reason for the Ministers not to meet.

My daughter towards the end of the evening came into the room where I was watching television and wanted to know if everything was all right. You see, she heard me screaming at the television set for Eddie Francis to shut his mouth.

This wasn't a session for Councillors to ask questions of DRIC but for them to be his foils. It was a session for Eddie Francis to show how smart he is and how irrelevant the Councillors are. It was an opportunity for him to demonstrate positively why he is the Voice of Council and that they may not discuss the border issue in detail without referring the matter to him to allow him to be the star.

How many times did he interrupt the Councillors? How many times did he take it upon himself to let DRIC know what the Councillors really meant by their questions? How many times did he take over the Councillors' questioning to try to score his cross-examining points? How much did he speak in total in comparison with Councillors? How many mayoral clarifications were there? I would be ashamed and afraid to show my face in public if I was a Councillor after the Council meeting yesterday. They have been made to look like fools and in public in front of electors by the Mayor.

Eddie Francis was incapable of keeping quiet last night. The one big thing that surprised me was that the Mayor did not give us one of has long, self-serving statements at the end of the meeting setting out his brilliance and summing up for us what the evening was about. The opportunity was certainly there but I expect that he did not want to do so at 11:30 PM at night because most people would have gone to bed after watching the hockey and/or the basketball game.

As Eddie Francis said in the Gord Henderson column today:

• "I'll tell you the reason why the bars were half-empty. It's because Windsorites were at Joe Louis (Arena) watching the game," said Francis. He said Torontonians might not understand this, because they don't get to go to Stanley Cup finals (and probably won't in this lifetime if the Leafs stay true to form), but thousands of Windsor area residents would have been among the more than 80,000 fans who took in a smorgasbord of top sports events Saturday, including the Red Wings game, the Pistons playoff game and a Tigers game."

As for Eddie, he will have lots of opportunity over the coming few months is to let us know how wonderful and intelligent he is since he will not sue no matter what Estrin said. Why would Eddie waste words at Council when no one at home is watching.

Last night was nothing more than a farce but part of a plan designed to show that we have a tough Mayor who forced the Senior Levels to blink with his strong threats. I guess he has spoken with the CAW's Hargrove and Lewenza already to learn how to claim victory in the face of utter defeat!

The Star story today was rather short don't you think. Wait until Gord's fuming column and the thundering Star Editorial.