About bloody time. They should have put the politics aside and sold it like the Liberals planned to.

Government sellng a profitable asset? Keep doing this and our taxes will definetely rise in the future.

When else would you get top dollar for an asset? When it’s profitable, or when it’s losing money? Hmm…

They are not selling the Port Authority. They are selling a terminal operation, similar to operations such as the coal port terminal at Roberts Bank. That one is owned by Westshore Terminals Limited Partnerships.

An operation may be making money now and lose money tomorrow. Let private industry do that.

They did the right thing in this case, kick started it, go it going to make a profit to generate an interest in purchasing it, and then sell it when it looks like it will be a good investment.

Then move on to the next investment.

And the Chinese will be the first bidders. God help us.
Cheers

Uhhhhmmmm… actually… the Chinese will most likely be the first three lucrative bidders… and most likely all funded from the same pocket.

V.

Probably sell that place for a fire sale price too…would expect Progress Energy and Petronas to be one of the first to place a bid…

Those were my thoughts as well, that the Chinese will be the first in there. I agree with selling it though.

I don’t agree with selling it. It will just transfer from control of the Canadian government to ownership by the Chinese government and economic decisions will be made on that basis.

Ridley is essential to providing a free enterprise economy where economic opportunity is equalized based on merit to the Canadian economy, because Ridley is a choke point of essential infrastructure and is therefor vitally important to economic policy and a free enterprise economy not dominated by the insider club of monopoly capitalists.

This is just another example of our conservative government selling out free enterprise enabling assets to appease a hidden wall street agenda.

It is said the Chinese Asia will be the global powerhouse by 2030 surpassing the US and Europe combined, might as well get used to it. Hope that makes all the US bashers happy.

Be interesting when the Chinese and radical Muslins start getting into it.

Cool, now Hongcouver will have a sister city Hongrupert…We really should consider renaming Prince George too….hmmmm

Yep, lets sell our profit makers. The private operators need those profits more than taxpayers do.

Sell our profit makers?? ICBC next? Hydro after that?

Yeah, ICBC makes a profit by gouging us on insurance. Just sayin’.

If WE own ICBC, BC Hydro, Ridley Terminals, etc., and these things make a profit, where is our share of it?

If you own shares in a private company and it’s profitable, generally you get to share in it through dividends paid to you periodically. And/or an appreciation in the value of your shareholding, which you can cash in on through selling your shares.

But WE don’t get any dividends from any of these entities. The government does, and WE have no say whatsoever over how those monies will be spent. These things have long ago ceased to be self-sustaining “at cost” providers of services to the public. “Development vehicles”, as WAC Bennett described BC Rail, Hydro, and Ferries.

Today they are very definitely for profit, maximum profit through what the traffic will bear, cash cows for a government that doesn’t have to be responsible to anyone for how whatever is milked from them is spent.

If there’s a case to be made for keeping these things under ‘public ownership’, turn them into enterprises that are truly ‘owned’ by BC citizens. Each of us, as individuals. ICBC, for instance, could be re-organised as a mutual insurance company, whose policy holders actually also own its shares and receive dividends on them proportional to its profitability.

You can’t do that…then the government couldn’t raid the piggy bank and they would have to raise the carbon tax…

Sure we could, Jim. That ability to ‘raid the piggy bank’ is simply a means of taxation without representation. People wouldn’t stand for increases in the Carbon Tax if they had to made in place of milking Crown corporations, which in turn, milk us.

By doing what they do the way they do it now they are able to diffuse opposition to their fiscal incompetence. And this allows that incompetence to persist. Couple that to a bookkeeping set-up that only shows the government’s ‘liabilities’, and never a corresponding figure for government ‘assets’, nor anything for ‘capital’, and they’ve got the perfect set-up to continually rob us of the ‘purchasing power’ of which we’re already collectively (and artificially) short.