Sunday, May 29, 2016

Nova Scotia's Irving Shipbuilders OWNs Seaspan's North Vancouver Shipyard

How do we know this to be a FACT?

In amongst the East Coast Irving Shipbuilders Inc. Website is a 'C' Class British Columbia Ferry departing from the Horseshoe Bay terminal in West Vancouver.  In the background is Bowen Island to port, and Gambier Island to starboard.



http://www.irvingshipbuilding.com/uploadedImages/Slides/Feb1716-MEOPAR.jpg

Thursday, May 26, 2016

When MP Justin Trudeau crossed the floor was it to join the Conservative Vote or the Party?

Winston Churchill did it in 1904 and then crossed back again in 1924... but not as a Prime Minister
 

Crossing the floor: Wikipedia

In politics, crossing the floor is when a politician changes their allegiance or votes against their party in a Westminster system parliament. Crossing the floor may be voting against the approved party lines, or changing to a second party after being elected to a first party.


CBC
 

In video from the House, Trudeau is seen walking toward Brown in a crowd of MPs in the Commons aisle, taking his arm in an apparent effort to move Brown toward his seat. While doing so, he encountered Brosseau, who was also standing in the aisle and was seen physically reacting after the contact.

"I was trying to start the vote, the prime minister grabbed my arm. I immediately told the prime minister to let go of me — now," Brown said in a statement released later. "Immediately afterward, the prime minister went back down the aisle of the House to confront other members of opposition parties."

"I later told the prime minister he should NOT have gotten out of his seat," Brown added.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Translink Seabus: Beats, Meets or Fails Transport Canada and Canadian Coast Guard Standards?

Muster Stations  Transport Canada

Instruction upon departure, ..... is supposed to take place without any distractions eg. electronic wizardry, ear phones, cell phones, computers...   Every day thousands of Metro Vancouverites take the Seabus from the North Shore to Downtown and never has there been a moment of fear, which speaks well for Translink's safety record but what of the disaster scenarios.

Schools and Hospitals are required to have emergency evacuations, at least once a year.  Has the Seabus fleet tried? Passengers trying? Cyclists bikes blocking the life preservers under the seats at the bow and stern and the Children's life jacket lockers?

Should the 'Exit This Side' display be on during the whole crossing or only upon arriving?

The video instructions are all about How To properly don a life jacket.

Obviously the point of having Muster Stations is to ensure that the quickest means of egress from a vessel in distress is to save lives with a minimum of fuss.

There are NO lines drawn on the Seabus Vessels carpet indicating which is YOUR Muster Station.

Muster Station on Otter II
   Left side / Port side on Red Background




Muster Station on Otter II
  Right side / Starboard side on Green Background


For landlubbers: lump less letters together as opposed to more letters:
 Port/Left/Red    vs    Starboard/Right/Green



The one thing that is common to both are the trash cans blocking the Muster Station areas.  In a case of emergency where are the trash and recycling bins moved to?

Shouldn't the Muster Stations be clear of ALL obstacles at all times?

Which crew member has the duty to move them out of the way in an emergency?  Other than the daily news ..... newspapers being handed out before boarding in the morning, is there really a need for four garbage bins on board when there are more bins on the floating terminals, and are they subject to Canadian Coast Guard regulations along with Transport Canada regulations?
TransLink has 'Rules and Regulations' are for land base activities, but there's nothing published for the sea based activities.

  Sep 18 2009 - Rules and Regulations


Transport Canada   Minimum Standards   Safety 

Burrard Otter II

 We were asked to put these plastic booties on. I think it was so we wouldn’t puncture the raft.

The new SeaBus does a rescue exercise!

The Burrard Pacific Breeze enters the west dock on the north terminal.
The Burrard Pacific Breeze enters the west dock on the north terminal.
I got to participate in a rescue exercise with the new SeaBus yesterday morning!
SeaBus staff ran through its man overboard procedures, and ran a huge group of people through its emergency evacuation process. All the SeaBuses do these exercises every year! And we all were quite thankful for sunny weather yesterday, since we all had to sit in a rubber raft and get towed to shore.
The new SeaBus will hopefully be in service this December — it’s awaiting certification from Transport Canada, and this exercise was part of the federal tests.
Here’s some photos of the day, and a sneak peek of the new SeaBus interiors!

Everyone gets ready for the exercise.
Everyone gets ready for the exercise.
Staff from TransLink and CMBC volunteered for the exercise, and a big group of students from BCIT’s Marine Campus also joined in. Here we are meeting near one of the docks in the North Terminal.
A video of us boarding the new SeaBus! The seats are lovely!
The middle of the SeaBus.
The middle of the SeaBus.
The centre of the SeaBus features two long rows of seats now.
Plastic booties!
Plastic booties!
We were asked to put these plastic booties on. I think it was so we wouldn’t puncture the raft.
Near one end of the SeaBus.
Near one end of the SeaBus.
The seats at the front of the SeaBus. Notice the “Exit This Side” LED displays!
We sailed around in circles for a little while. An inspector from Transport Canada was on board, inspecting the engines and other things.




SeaBus's little friend!
One of the SeaBus folks explained that a small boat is kept on shore to help out when a SeaBus has any issues. For this exercise, the boat was following the new SeaBus, and it towed our life raft to shore when we all evacuated.
The man overboard exercise.
The man overboard exercise.
SeaBus staff performed a man overboard exercise. (Nobody actually went overboard, but they did run through the procedures.) The marine attendant was hooked to the SeaBus via an anchor in the doorway. I also saw blankets pulled out on board to warm up the person overboard once they were pulled in.
Life vests under the seats!
Life vests under the seats!
Then marine attendants guided us through the evacuation routine, and we all pulled out our life jackets from under the seats. They needed a bit of tugging but we got them out!


PS
The reason for COMPASS cards..... missing body counts

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Do NOT Shake, Rattle or Roll when it comes to Releasing 'Ralph' c/w radioactive tracking 'toe nail' polish











Wikipedia


According to Rubio, "The most widely accepted hypothesis for the evolution of the rattle is that the rattle is a warning device for predatory animals that might be a threat to the rattlesnake. It produces a signal to drive them away."

The rattle is composed of a series of hollow, interlocked segments made of keratin, which are created by modifying the scales that cover the tip of the tail. The contraction of special "shaker" muscles in the tail causes these segments to vibrate against one another, making the rattling noise (which is amplified because the segments are hollow). The muscles that cause the rattle to shake are some of the fastest known, firing 50 times per second on average, sustained for up to three hours.

At birth, a “prebutton” is present at the tip of the snake's tail; it is replaced by the “button” several days later when the first skin is shed. However, no sound can be made by the rattle until a second segment is added when the skin is shed again.  A new rattle segment is added each time the snake sheds its skin, and the snake may shed its skin several times a year, depending on food supply and growth rate.

Rattlesnakes travel with their rattles held up to protect them from damage, but in spite of this precaution, their day-to-day activities in the wild still cause them to regularly break off end segments. Because of this, the age of a rattlesnake is not related to the number of rattles on its tail.

One of the differentiating features of males and females is the males have thicker and longer tails (because they contain the inverted hemipenes). Also, the tails of males taper gradually from the body, whereas the tails of females narrow abruptly at the vent.

Just a thought here, but, no rattlesnake is a perfect, they don't all have rattles that we love to hear as a warning shot to jump, flight or fight.  Predominately, the rattlesnakes that end up being hunted down, do have rattles.   Evolutionary ????? elimination of the 'fittest' rattlesnakes will be replaced by the rattlesnake without a rattle.

No warning, more deaths, no flight, no fight.

Of course not all of the rattlesnakes with rattles will ever be hunted down to extinction, but evolution is a funny thing.....

Thursday, May 12, 2016

John Horgan: Does anyone in the Premier's staff receive stipends from the B.C. Liberal Party? Christy Clark: I take it he's talking about me.

Remuneration definition:  money paid for work or a service.

Remunerative definition:  financially rewarding; lucrative

Brian Bonney?????   Received 100% of his salary from his OIC appointment in the Premier's Office during the Ethnic Scandal in 2013 (still before the courts) but then the in-house investigator, John Dyble, saw to it that BC Liberal Party Leader Christy Clark ..... cut a cheque and handed it over to Premier Christy Clark to deposit in the BC Treasury...... because Bonney was only working 50% of the time for each entity.  ouch....  Are there any other skeletons in the closets?

 http://www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/67_2014

 Outside Remunerative and Volunteer Work 
Political staff may hold jobs outside government, carry on a business, receive remuneration from public funds for activities outside their position, or engage in volunteer activities provided it does not:

• interfere with the performance of their employment duties;
• bring the government into disrepute;
• represent a conflict of interest or create the reasonable perception of a conflict of interest;
• appear to be an official act or to represent government opinion or policy;
• involve the unauthorized use of work time or government premises, services, equipment, or supplies; or
• gain an advantage that is derived from their employment with the Province of BC. 

Political staff who are appointed as directors or officers of Crown corporations are not to receive any additional remuneration beyond the reimbursement of appropriate travel expenses except as approved by the Lieutenant Governor in Council.
 **************
 Merv Adey's Post  @ BCVeritas.com

"Chief Ken Rea made the request directly to me" - Christy Clark

Which led us to see if there was another Brian Bonney working both sides of the table

 @
Hansard Blues

J. Horgan: I thank the Premier for that.

There's a regulation change: regulation 211/2014, B.C. reg 67/2014, Public Service Act, Standards of Conduct for Political Staff Regulation. It says "Outside remuneration and volunteer work.
Political staff may hold jobs outside government, carry on a business, receive remuneration from public funds for activities outside their position, or engage in volunteer activities provided it does not interfere with the performance… bring the government into disrepute, represent a conflict of interest…" and a number of other caveats as well.  I'm wondering if the Premier can advise if any of her staff hold outside positions.


Hon. C. Clark: I'm not aware of any staff members violating the code the member has talked about.


J. Horgan: That wasn't the question. The question was: do any of her staff hold outside positions?


Hon. C. Clark: Not that I'm aware of, if I'm understanding the question correctly.


J. Horgan: The question was…. After reading the regulation change that said that political staff may hold jobs outside…. Maybe I'll be more specific. Does anyone in the Premier's staff receive stipends from the B.C. Liberal Party?


Hon. C. Clark: I take it he's talking about me.

I'm not aware of that happening in my office with any staff members.


J. Horgan: If I can be clear, then, the Premier does not believe that any of the staff working in her office receive stipends from the B.C. Liberal Party. Is she aware of any of the staff in her office holding any other positions, running a business or a consultancy?


Hon. C. Clark: No.

**************
Are we waiting for the other shoe to drop? 

Ben James works for whom?   



a Ben James works for us!!!! in the Government Caucus or is it the BC Liberal Party
Director of Communication
Ben James bad mouthing Members of the Legislative Assembly??? on our dime??  Madam Speaker, Madman Speaker.....

************

Who else uses Twitter in the Office?


Shane Mills

Lorne Mayencourt

Brooke Cannon

Jordan Grimsud

Tracy Grimsud

Dave Paulson

Doug Secord

Marc Wang

Morida Weatherly



MLA David Eby on Ben James (not an MLA but paid for by taxpayers from Christy Clark purse) 
Publicly funded BC government Director of Communications .... Ben James

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Laila Yuile Post today? 'V35REPORTPREVIEW DO NOT FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO ANYONE' and 'Anyone' DID

Monitoring the monitors  - Laila Yuile

Is this sort of data available by an FOI request?

Is this the sort of data that the GCPE spends tax dollars on daily?  YES

Is George Gretes still working for the BC Liberals?  Possibly, after all, they need someone, anyone, with experience in triple deleting.

Hidden within the document, in HTML, is a note on how to handle the information, to 'Anyone'

Do Not Forward This E-mail To Anyone


In Laila's own words
A little funny thing happened on the blog today I thought I’d share because it’s another one of those things many people don’t know about government. They monitor media and not only do they monitor it, they rate it.

I often get incoming links from their daily rounds when a blog post or tweet has caught their attention but when you click on that link it always takes you back to a log-in page so you can’t actually see their list for whatever ministries list you are on.

Today though, something different happened. I clicked back on their incoming link and it took me directly to that page which shows the lists of things they monitored, including a tweet  where I linked to the recent Port Mann bridge story from Integrity BC.

This is the link, soon to be dead I’m sure:  http://tno.gov.bc.ca/tno/wapservlet/tno.otis.wapservlet?command=showonbb&key=MTU4MDEyNTc0LnRubw%3D%3Dtno

Snip


Monday, May 9, 2016

Mount Polley Mining Corporation Application to Amend Environmental Assessment Certificate: Conditions 3

April 13, 2016 





What's the matter with just not amending anything? Oh wait, Bill Bennett and Mary Polak have agreed to make the changes, or resign.
Proposed Amendments

 *******************

October 1992




Thursday, May 5, 2016

APEGBC on Bill Bennett's resignation ....... Mary soon to follow




APEGBC is reviewing the report in detail to determine what impacts it may have on members and the practice of engineering and geoscience in BC.  As a regulator, APEGBC’s primary interest is in seeking to minimise risk to public safety.

APEGBC currently has an investigation underway on the role of engineering professionals involved in the Mount Polley Mining Dam collapse.

Following up on the recommendations of the Independent Engineering Expert Panel Report on Mount Polley, APEGBC is continuing to provide input on the Ministry of Energy and Mines’s development of new codes for the mining industry and is working to clarify the role and responsibilities of Professionals of Record within this sector. APEGBC Council also recently approved the APEGBC Professional Practice Guidelines: Site Characterisation for Dam Foundations in British Columbia at their April meeting, with publication targeted for summer 2016.




Site Characterisation for Dam Foundations in British Columbia
Pleistocene valley fills containing glaciolacustrine and other fine-grained sediments commonly occur in many British Columbia valleys. Many of these deposits contain multiple glaciolacustrine units separated by glacial tills and outwash gravels, sometimes displaying complex stratigraphy. Processes active during and following deglaciation often shows evidence of glacial induced deformation and shearing. Many mine tailings and waste rock embankments in British Columbia are situated on these complex glacial foundations. It is imperative that site investigation methods adequately characterize the distribution and key geotechnical conditions governing stability and deformation of tailings dams and other containment structures situated on weak valley sediments.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

British Columbia was supposed to be a Penal Colony FOR Australia??


Page  38 of 134

On March 11, 1950, the centenary of the founding of the colony of Vancouver Island, the first British colony on the western side of America, was celebrated.  Richard Blanshard, the first Governor, reached his post by a voyage from England by way of the Isthmus of Panama.  Sixty years almost to a day before Blanshard's arrival, the British Government had issued instructions for the founding of a colony on the coast of what is now British Columbia as a dependency of New South Wales, Australia.  The first Governor was to have been an officer of the New South Wales Corps.   Had these orders been carried out the boundary between Australia and Canada might now be at the continental divide, or perhaps even further east.  The whole history of the Pacific Coast of North America might have been very different.

Idea of linking activity on the Northwest Coast of America with action in the Southwest Pacific goes back more than two centuries before the day when Governor Arthur Phillip of New South Wales was instructed to found a "Botany Bay" colony at or near Nootka Sound.  A definite English project for combining exploration and settlement in the Australian region with a search for the western end of the Northwest Passage, supposed to reach the Pacific not fare to the north of California, was put forward in the earlier years of Queen Elizabeth's reign.  In 1572 Henry Hawk returned to England from Mexico, where he had lived from 1567 to 1571.   He brought news of Mendana discovery of the Solomon Islands in 1567-1568 and of a voyage from the west
coast of Mexico to seek the western end of the Strait of Anian, the supposed North-west Passage leading from the Atlantic to the Pacific somewhere near Puget Sound.  When Mendana found the Solomons, he ........  University (of BC) Archives

The Old Print Gallery Blog

Tuesday, May 3, 2016