Keep on Trucking

In response to the recockulous increase in fuel

Prices, hundreds of truck owners took their plight

to the roads last Friday, staging a slow protest

through city streets. Normally known for undercut-
v2 <

ting each other’s rates, this was a single-day show of
solidarity by union and non-union members of the
Vancouver Container Truck Association.

While threats to block major access points such
as Patullo Bridge and Highway 1 were made at a
meeting the week prior, the protest only hindered
traffic; it did not stop it.

The VCTA protest did, however, cripple the
Port of Vancouver as only a hundred or so trucks
filed through a port that normally sees three- to
four-thousand rigs pass through on any given day.

While truckers still receive their regular wages,
the increasing fuel costs come out of their pockets.
In 1997, gas cost 37¢/litre and life was pretty much
downhill both ways; today it hovers around a loonie,
which is crazy high. While this is a burden for every
gas guzzler out there, it cuts deeply into the liveli-
hood of Canada’s truckers, who literally carry our
economy on their backs.

The VCTA is looking for some sort of compen-
sation—either through their employers or the
government—to ease the burden of fuel prices and
long waits at the port and border. This protest,
which is a first step in showing solidarity, was not
sanctioned by the truckers’ union, the Teamsters.

“All of these employers, they think most of the
truckers can’t get together, so they’re kind of dissin’
us and we just wanted to show our solidarity,” spat
VCTA spokesperson Paul Johal into da mic, flexing
his mad Ebonics skills. Word up, PJ.

Keep an eye out for next week’s protest, when
hundreds of SUV-driving yuppies will take to the
hills of West Vancouver and disrupt traffic as they
blare Outkast’s “Hey Ya” at levels so obnoxious that
it turns even diehard fans against Andre 3000 and
Big Boi.

6 | www.theotherpress.ca

 

_ News Wears Short Shorts

Brandon Ferguson, News Editor

Scandal Shmandal

Proving that government corruption
isr’t solely contingent upon US citi-
zenship, Canada has come out of the
closet as a world leader in political
misappropriations of monies and
abusers of power.

In what has become the central
distraction from, say, any actual work
being accomplished in Ottawa, Paul
Martin’s Liberals are under attack for
stealing money from a ridiculously
designed ad campaign to keep Quebec
in Canada. Appropriately, the contro-
versy has been labeled “Ad-Scam.”
Nice.

You’ve probably heard the rum-
blings that led up to PM P.M.’s
touching national address on televi-
sion two weeks ago. Cue the narrator:

“Recently, on a very special Oftawa
90210: Ex-PM Chrétien devised a
plan to filter money through Liberal-
friendly advertising firms to deliver
golf balls and bumper stickers to
Quebecers who were thought to be
susceptible to baubles and trinkets
over national identity, which led to the
padding of Liberal coffers on top of
the idiotic wooing of Francophones,
which led to the Gomery

 

Commission, which loaded the oppo-
sition parties up with ammo to hold a
possible vote of non-confidence and
dethrone the minority government
and force a new election.” Whew.
Take a moment.

With Stephen Harper’s
Conservatives and Gilles’ Duceppe’s
Bloc Québécois foaming at their
respective mouths and bouches, Jack
Layton’s NDP have suddenly become
the top dog—remarkable, considering
their piddly 19 seats. Layton, in a
closed-door meeting with Martin,

secured $4.6 billion in the
upcoming budget through
decreased corporate tax cuts
and increases to post-second-
ary education tuition relief,
foreign aid, re-routing of gas
taxes to municipalities, public
housing for the poor, and a big
step towards ratifying the
Kyoto Accord. All for the low
low price of propping up
Marttin’s teetering government.

While Harper and Duceppe
were crying foul, and Martin
was sending roses to U2’s
Bono to apologize for reneging
on his promise to increase
Third-World aid, Layton was
getting some goods for those who
matter. Has he saved the Liberals
from an early election call?

Nope. We the Canadian people did
that, with an overwhelming majority
of Canadians saying that they don’t
want an election call—even if it’s to
remove a blatantly corrupt and soon-
to-be criminally guilty
government—until after the Gomery
Report is released in December.

Of course, ’m sure they meant
well and have learned their lesson. Just
please don’t do it again, eh?

 

And Now for Your Daily Dose
of Death.

It pains me to no end to report of
another massive loss of life, this time
at the hands of man, or fate, or God,
or whatever—but not weather.

In Amagasaki, Japan, about 250
miles to the west of Tokyo, a com-
muter train derailed and crashed into
an apartment building on April 25. So
far, 95 people have been confirmed
dead, and 458 others injured.

“There were people everywhere
covered in blood—too many of them
to count,” said Ayumi Tanaka, a resi-
dent of the apartment building.

With the death toll expected to
rise, police have raided the offices of
West Japan Railway Company to see if
there are any incriminating records of
the wreck. Behind the wheel was a 23-
year-old driver whose experience, or
lack thereof, is being called into ques-
tion. Of course, the driver was
probably the first to perish, so it won’t

 

be much of a trial.

The driver had overshot the previ-
ous station by 130 feet, causing the
train to be 90 seconds behind sched-
ule, which may have rattled him. 580
passengers were on board the seven-
car train when it jumped its tracks in
this suburb of Osaka.

Japanese Transportation Minister
Kazuo Kitagawa (awesome name)
said that the investigation would
focus on ways of preventing future
accidents through training.

“The driver had only 11 months

of experience and we can only say
that West Japan Railway’s employee
training and its tests to evaluate the
suitability of drivers had problems,”
Kitagawa said in parliament. “I would
like to issue instructions to them

based on the results of our investiga-
tion.”

The devastating wreck is the worst
train accident since Godzilla used the
Bullet train as nun chucks to fight
Mothra with, which killed a few hun-
dred but thrilled millions.

May 11/2005