"That council request TransLink and the other contributing agencies . . . to ensure that [their] forthcoming request for proposals for a design-build Richmond/Airport-Vancouver rapid transit line reflect [council's] conditions of support. . . ." - City of Vancouver, special meetings agenda May 13-15, 2003
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THREE fundamental principles underpin most legal contracts: the laws of disclosure, informed consent and the requirement for all signatories to comply with the conditions stipulated in the agreement.
Disclosure requires that all parties must be made aware of any item or situation that might affect their willingness to sign the agreement.
Informed consent goes a step further to ensure that the parties have been made aware of all material items that could alter their decision to conclude the agreement.
Failure by any party to meet conditions nullifies the contract.
So against that backdrop, let's take a closer look at the 2003 City of Vancouver decision to support the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver (RAV) transit line.
Following many RAV presentations and three days of public hearings, council considered the potential for adverse effects of construction on residents and businesses along the Cambie Street corridor. Based on numerous reports and what was later discovered to be only partial disclosure of RAVCO's plans, council gave its conditional support to the project.
The resolution listed no less than 19 conditions that TransLink and its agencies had to meet if city support was to continue.
Top of the list were two items relevant to today's beleaguered neighbours of Port Metro expansion projects in North Vancouver:
"That council advise the agencies that its conditions for the rapid transit system are as follows: (i) the City of Vancouver shall have input at every major decision point in the process; and (ii) [that the line be] in a tunnel from Waterfront Station through downtown and continuing to at least 46th Avenue. . . ."
What followed was a construction nightmare that included, not the bored tunnel the city had made a condition of its support, but four years of cut-and-cover construction that destroyed many businesses.
Not only was the switch in construction method not disclosed until it was too late to stop, it soon became obvious that a contractual condition is worthless if the offended parties - or a council acting on their behalf - are unwilling or unable to defend it.
Now let's ask why the Vancouver resolution may be relevant to Port Metro neighbours and to last year's deliberations by City of North Vancouver council.
In 2012, after months of discussions with staff, port representatives presented city council with a proposal for what it benignly labelled the Low Level Road Improvement Project.
Persistent questioning by both council and residents not only revealed the project to be a major port expansion project, it elicited significant additional information that had not been highlighted during earlier public information meetings.
Nevertheless, on June 18, 2012, believing all information necessary for an informed decision had been disclosed, council approved the project 5-2 with Couns. Pam Bookham and Rod Clark opposed.
Here is part of the city's tactfully worded online announcement:
"The project is being designed to allow for needed enhancements to port and rail operations, while also addressing important community interests, such as [LLR] slope stability, noise and community connections."
We now know council had not been informed about the already-in-play intentions of Richardson Terminals to double its grain silo operations. Nor did council know the magnitude of the "community connections" because there had been no disclosure from BC Hydro that it would need to route high-voltage (69-kilovolt) transmission lines along St. Davids - smack through the Moodyville neighbourhood.
So who is being cute here? And by "here" I mean the entire expansion package.
How many of the 2012 city-PMV discussions were held, or needed to be held, in camera?
When did PMV first learn of Richardson's plans - in 2011 or even earlier than that?
Did Richardson's expansion plans actually trigger the port expansion?
Important to the contract issue were the questions from Coun. Don Bell following the March 18 neighbourhood delegation to council:
"How many more changes are coming that we didn't see when we looked at the LLR?" he began. Not pleased that PMV's answer is always that Richardson's expansion proposal and Hydro's plans came after council's LLR decision, Bell pressed the point: "These keep coming as third and fourth waves; what else is in the way?"
Not in the way of PMV and its industries, it seems, are Moodyville's suggestions for alternate sites for the company's proposed new silos and the Hydro transmission lines.
Why has Richardson delayed clarifying that the high-voltage line through the neighbourhood is not needed for any expansion, but to replace a line that will be lost in the resiting of the Low Level Road.
Last Wednesday's PMV board decision to keep studying alternatives while the city commissions its own independent engineering report suggests little has changed but the talk.
Not that the city needs lawyers' fees to make matters worse, but what is its legal position?
Can BC Hydro be issued a stop-work order pending a PMV-Richardson solution more palatable to the other parties to this agreement - the neighbourhood and other North Vancouver residents?
Too late now to realize that council should have required the port to declare that, "The information provided is an accurate and complete description of all works included in the Low Level Road Realignment and Port Expansion Project" before it contributed $800,000 to the LLR design work and before it approved what it only believed to be the project.
To paraphrase a question letter-writer Randy Burke asked recently: Who else will stand up for citizens?
