Regional district director Julian Fell says he is following the Island Corridor Foundation’s money.
Fell, who represents Coombs/Errington, produced a notice of motion last week demanding the Ministry of Transport provide the regional district with a copy of a consultant’s report on the effectiveness of the proposed provincial and federal grants to the ICF for E&N railway repairs.
“We’re sitting here just waiting for the province to make up its mind — or at least to publicly make up its mind — concerning the funding of the ICF and I think they are going to twiddle around and doddle and do nothing unless we give them a push,” Fell said at last week’s committee of the whole RDN meeting.
In a close vote last year, the RDN decided to give the ICF almost $1 million to help revive passenger rail service on Vancouver Island. Fell, along with directors representing Bowser, Nanoose Bay, Qualicum Beach and Parksville, voted against the funding request, but the motion passed on the strength of the RDN board’s Nanaimo contingent.
The ICF has been seeking funding from both the provincial and federal governments after regional districts up and down the Island agreed to kick in a total of about $7 million. Matching funds from Victoria and Ottawa were supposed to give the ICF more than $20 million, money ICF CEO Graham Bruce has vowed will be enough to get the track operational.
But Fell wants to see it in writing.
He explained late last year the province hired a railway engineering firm to assess the realistic viability of the project, but the results haven’t been made available to local governments chipping into the revival efforts.
“The conclusions of these were available to the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MOTI) in February…MOTI has not made these reports public and every month of delay results in public money going no where,” said Fell in an e-mail to The NEWS on Wednesday.
“Until these are published, the owners (the regional districts) are unable to make any decisions about the future use of their asset.”
He said he’s hoping the notice of motion will get “the ball rolling.” It will be brought forward and voted on at the next regular RDN meeting slated for May 26. “If the outcome of the studies were positive, it would be reasonable to expect a very public ‘good news’ announcement,” said Fell. “This has not happened and the province is just sitting on the conclusions.”
Earlier this year, the ICF served Fell with legal documents asking him to show up in the Supreme Court of B.C. for allegedly making “serious defamatory comments about the ICF, its directors and staff in a July 2013 memo.”
Fell declined to comment on the current state of the lawsuit.
