Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail talks to Bertha Williams and throws doubt at the treaty, but misses at one significant point.

“The government desperately needs land for a massive container port to expand our vital shipping trade to Asia.”

That one sentence shows that she really has not done her homework. The government doesn’t “need” the land – it has chosen to allow itself to be dragooned by the Gateway Council into a Port Strategy that was ill thought out in the first place and now seems bizarrely irrelevant. The decline of cross pacific container trade has been going on for two years now, and rising fuel costs, a declining US economy and a change in world trade patterns due to the collapse of the dollar all point to a reduction in the need for container terminal facilities. But like the treaty process, the Gateway has been rumbling on for many years and the original justification for it has long since passed.

“Vital” ? Who for? We really do not need to import so much of what we use. Manufacturing in North America is starting to pick up again as fuel costs and long lead times cut into margins. Asia is an important market for our exports – but not much of that moves in containers. It is mostly bulk cargo. It may be in future that we will start to make things here again. Instead of exporting raw logs, we could be making bookshelves for IKEA (they currently come from China) from some of our lumber. I can think of a number of mill towns that would love that opportunity.

I think she hits the nail on the head when she identifies the need for the BC Liberals to actually produce something out of the treaty process, even if it did mean outright vote buying. But that pressure to be “seen to be doing something” does not make it a good treaty or a wise land use and transportation plan for the region. In fact it is monumentally stupid to build something we don’t need, that will not do what it is said to do and is also costing us a fortune that could be better spent on meeting real needs. Both here and on the TFN reserve.