Ben, please leave this alone. You are driving some of the people on this site loony.

Cheers

Let the high flyers fly I'll take the buss.

Cheers

Now the high rollers in Vegas can fly directly to our Treasure Cove casino when they tire of winning there. Odds of winning in Vegas are better than in our casinos. So I understand. In Las Vegas you can drink while you gamble. In the Treasure Cove Casino you are not allowed to take your drink off the purple carpet. And no one here comes around with free alcoholic beverages while you fill the slot machines or lose at the tables. They come around with a cart and try and sell you Orange Crush or Diet Coke. Do you suppose they do that in Monte Carlo? And you need a card to get to the lobby of the hotel. I was informed as to the reason and the security guard said it is to keep the kids out. What a nickel and dime system we have here.

Keep us informed, please, Ben. The big argument used by the pre-liberal supporters of slot machine gambling in Prince George and elsewhere was "to prevent B.C. gamblers from taking their gambling dollars to Reno and Vegas."

Now, how about these proposed/hoped for direct flights to Las Vegas?

Is there a demand for that? Time will tell.

I hope some day the Airport Authority would re-visit the issue of not having a proper covered ramp for departing/arriving passengers (in minus 30 degree weather!) - a fact noted on the internet when Prince George Airport is mentioned.

I am one that my family had the "high flyers" as the bread and butter of my childhood years (income dependent of the airports in Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver). Whenever I hear and read of the Prince George airport expanding and doing well, I am excited of the opportunities that comes along with it and to the region. Congratulations to Ben for promoting the airport and especially to the Prince George Airport Authority for doing an awesome job in developing an airport to be proud of. (Unfortunately, I cannot be one of the "High Flyer" so I end up taking the bus and driving myself)

Airport expansion means jobs and other opportunities in many areas. Ben, keep up the good reporting on the airport and other great things happening in Prince George.

How anyone can put a negative twist on expansion and development is beyond me. Except I guess for those that don’t want to work, then every bit of good news is one less excuse they can’t use not to work?

I agree with you diplomat about the boarding bridge requirement. The departure lounge is a nice peice of architecture and very pleasant space to be in. However, with the amount of money being spent on the airport I really do not understand why one of the more basic passenger needs is not being properly accommodated.

The 4 to 5 million dollars cost will be covered by Airport Improvement Fees. Get used to this folks because now that they have a **Cash Cow** they will never stop spending your money on improvements.

Lets look at the situation 5 years from now and see what has actually transpired. There is no doubt the money will be spent on improvements, however we'll see if there will be any increased employment etc as a result. IMO not likley.

When I fly from Vancouver to P.G. I tell the stewardess to tell the pilot just to look for the wind sock near the cow pasture. Then he will be sure to find P.G. "International Airport ".

Some of you are so negative if you where put in a 'dark room' you would 'develope'...:)

>"The 4 to 5 million dollars cost will be covered by Airport Improvement Fees. Get used to this folks because now that they have a **Cash Cow** they will never stop spending your money on improvements."< End of quote.

Great! That's how Vancouver International became one of the world's most modern airports! "User pay" is fair and positive, as are improvements on a regular basis.

I am totally in favour and I don't mind paying the Airport Improvement Fees at all.

In fact there are other examples that I could think of that with user fees could be positively advanced.

You people are all the same when it comes to spending someone elses money. I agree that the Vancouver Intl Airport is one of the worlds most modern Airports however not one of you dudes have any idea how much it cost, or how much waste was involved, or how much money they generate from AIF or how much money they pay to the Federal Government in rent. (Double Taxation) Nor do you know that the Vancouve Airport is working with other Airports around the world ( 8 in fact ) trying to make additional money. (They failed in Jamaica) They also own the Private Airport in Fort St John (Peace River) and because it was private they have to collect the AIF under the Trespass Act.

If you want to discuss these types of projects you have to get beyond the local hype.

To follow your user pay mentality to its logical conclusion then we should have a user pay Government run by a Society. If we are going to allow the Government to download all its responsibilities to Societys, then why not go all the way. Something like the Penal System in the USA where prisons are run by Private Business.

The people who will benefit from these improvements will be the Contractors who build them (Short Term Jobs) The Airport Authority Management (Job Security) and the business that is located at the Airport. In other words those who benefit will pay little or none of the cost of the Facilities. These will be paid by Airline Travellers who go on vacation, or have to fly for any reason, and taxpayers. They will pay for it all. Why should the flying public pay for an Airport so that Private Foreign Airlines can land Cargo Jets as they fly to and from Foreign Countries, and create very little jobs.

The 33 Million plus could be better spent setting up some portable sawmills and cutting beetle timber. Whats the chance of that happening?

"To follow your user pay mentality to its logical conclusion then we should have a user pay Government run by a Society."

?????? We do!!!! The users are called taxpayers who pay user fees called taxes. In addition, they have regular general meetings at which the Board of Directors (the government in power) gets to give its report to the members of the society (taxpayers) who then vote who should be on the board of directors.

How can you fly with an owl when all you have on the ground are a bunch of turkeis.

I do have to make one exception and that is Pal as he/she is giving us some logical insight. And for those who think that riding on the bus is strictly for the unemployed think again. I am retired and and familiar with bus transpotation as it was a means affordable travel when I started to work and I worked and paid taxes for almost 50 years.

Cheers

What I mean by User pay Government Owl is that we would set up Societys and set up a board of directors from the general public and run the various levels of Government by **Private entities** or Societys, and get rid of all the Government workers, officials, and politicians. This of course would never happen, but you get my drift. We could do the same with the School boards. Why have elected officials run the school boards when we could set up a School Board Society and run it with fully paid members from the public, and we could finiance it by using the **User Fee Concept** Try to get that one accepted by people who have children. People without children would think it is great.

It appears that people have a problem grasping the reality of Governments having Societys take over some of their responsibilities, who like the Vancouver Transit System now have the ability to tax people to finiance the system. These people while having the ability to **tax** are not elected by the taxpayers and therefore evade the consequences of Politicians and Goverment which is that they can be thrown out.

The Airport Societies board of directors are appointed by the Feds, Provs, Municipal, Regional
Governments, however they are not subject to any re-election.

This is a relatively new concept by Governments to abdicate their responsibilites while continuing to collect the taxes for functions that they no longer have to finiance. This is where the double taxation comes in. You pay through income tax for Government services, and then you pay again when you get on a plane. Its just that simple. If they allowed people who paid the Airport Improvement Fee to claim this as tax deductible expense then maybe it would be more palatable.

How long IS the bus ride to Puerto Vallarta, anyway?

Sorry Death, us socialists can't afford the trip. Besides there is nothing but money grubbers at Puerto Vallarta. I can tell you tho that the ride from PG to Van is 10 hours and its a very relaxing ride. You know, "take the bus and leave the driving to us." Great drivers, great saftey record.

Cheers

I should set myself up as a "non-profit society" because when all three governments get their share of my dough through overtaxation, that is how I feel.

"What I mean by User pay Government Owl is that we would set up Societys and set up a board of directors from the general public and run the various levels of Government by **Private entities** or Societys, and get rid of all the Government workers, officials, and politicians. This of course would never happen, but you get my drift."

Palopu, I agree with kimbo that you quite frequently present some insight on this forum. I appreciate that very much. It makes me think about things quite often and research things a bit more.

However, this thing about Board of Directors and not-for profits has got me thinking that you do not understand organizations run by Boards and the notion of what a not-for-profit is. Or we are having a communications problem and I do not understand fully what it is you are trying to set up.

Only the smallest Board run organizations do not have staff, or they may have one or two staff with the Board members filling in gaps. Any organization of a reasonable size, or any organization which operates to some reasonable business standards will have a board which sets direction and a staff which implements the directions set by the board. It is as simple as that.

So, any credible organization of any size would have a paid work force. The "politicians" equivalent would be the marketing department and PR sub group. In fact, Boards should not micromanage the operational side of the house.

So, I simply cannot see an improvement by doing that. It is all the same old same old as far as I can tell.

"The Airport Societies board of directors are appointed by the Feds, Provs, Municipal, Regional
Governments, however they are not subject to any re-election."

Sure they are. Since the government in power appoint such Boards, the appointees tend to change as the government changes.

The School Board is not appointed. It seems to me that an elected school Board did not make school closures any less easy to bear. Technically an appointed board would report to the government in power and an elected board would report to the people in the community.

I see no evidence of an elected board being any different than an appointed board in that and many other cases.

Owl. Here is how I see it.


The Airport was run by the Federal Government for years, they charged the Airlines Landing and Take Off Fees. In addition they rented or leased property to independent business such as Oil Companies to fuel planes. Restaurant, Lounge, Car Rental Agencies, etc; At the end of the day if they did not generate enough money, from the Airport they made up the difference from Tax Dollars. So we can at this point say that the Airport was owned and operated by the Federal Government, which of course is the Taxpayer.

Flash forward to 2003. We now have the Federal Government setting up an Airport Authority to run the Airport. The Authorities directors are appointed by the four levels of Government, and they in turn hire a CEO/and top Management personel. The Airport Authority takes over the operation of the Airport and now collects the money for landing and take off fees/and rents out the facilities, and signs a 60 year lease with the Federal Government and will commence to pay rent to the Government in 2011. In addition the Authority has been given the OK by the Feds to impose a Airport Improvement Fee on airline passengers and the money collected is to be used for Airport Improvements. This is a thinly disguised way of taxing some Citizens for the improvements to the Airport.

I am not aware of any reduction in taxes because the Federal Government no longer runs the Airport.

So we can make the following assumptions.
(1) The Federal Government continues to collect taxes from Canadian Citizens to run the Airports, while at the same time they are collecting rent from the Authoritys running the Airports and are making more money than they did when they ran the airport themselves.
(2) The Airport Authoritys are charging an Airport Improvement Fee $10.00 each time you step on a plane,and this money has to go into airport improvements.

(3) Under the old system any improvements that were considered necessary would have been made by the Federal Government. As it is now, the Feds take no responsibility for improvements, but continue to make money off the rentals, and Airline Passengers pay for the improvements.

(4) In the first 5 or more years of operation the Vancouver Airport Authority paid the Federal Government over $50 Million per year in rent, only God know how much they have paid to date, however that money went back to the Feds. we continued to pay the same amount of taxes, and the Airport Authority made all the improvements by taxing Air Travellers.

To me this in nothing more than a **sham** created by the Federal Government which works well for them, and the Airport Authoritys , but does nothing for the taxpayer, or air travellers.

In 2005 the Federal Government after reviewing their Rent policy to Airport Authoritys set out a new rent system that would reduce rental payments on the balance of the 60 year leases from $13 Billion to $5 Billion. The Government hopes to see a reduction in airfares as a result of the decrease in rents, that were considered to be a threat to long-term financial viability of the Airports.

So you can see that the Feds were collecting horrendus amounts of money through rents, while not spending any on running the Airports.

Even with the reductions in rent, the same thing applies. Taxpayers and Air Travellers are taken to the cleaners.

So in essence we now have another level of taxation that was slipped through under the guise of Airport Improvement Fees.

This same type of thing is being done in many other areas too numerous to mention at this time, however it does not bode well for taxpayers of the Country over the long haul, as we lose track of where the money is going and who is spending it, and who is responsible to who.

We must not forget that not all airports in Canada have airport authorities. We must not forget that the feds provided funding to many airports on a project by project basis.

I believe what is happening is a Robin Hood situation. In fact, the airport authority of the Victoria Airport is on record as saying that smaller airports such as Victoria should not be paying rent at all, while the 8 busiest ones can pay for the rest in the sytem which has access to federal operating and capital project funds.

The following is from this booklet about airport capital assistance from the feds:
http://www.tc.gc.ca/programs/airports/acap/docs/ACAPEN.pdf

For eligible projects of the 1st and 3rd priorities, except for Aircraft Firefighting Services projects as required by regulation which are reimbursed at 100% of eligible costs, TC will
contribute towards an Applicant’s project according to the following table, subject to the level of airport activity, based on the average of the statistics (identified by Statistics Canada or by statutory declaration) for the most recent three calendar-year period:

Scheduled Commercial Passengers

1,000 - 49,999: 100%
50,000 - 74,999: 95%
75,000 - 99,999: 90%
100,000 - 124,999: 85%
125,000 - 149,999: 80%
150,000 - 174,999: 75%
175,000 - 199,999: 70%
200,000 - 224,999: 65%
225,000 - 249,999: 60%
250,000 - 274,999: 55%
275,000 - 299,999: 50%
300,000 - 324,999: 45%
325,000 - 349,999: 40%
350,000 - 374,999: 35%
375,000 - 399,999: 30%
400,000 - 424,999: 25%
425,000 - 449,999: 20%
450,000 - 474,999: 15%
475,000 - 499,999: 10%
500,000 - 524,999: 5%
more than 525,000: 0%

There are some very strong words from the larger airports, yet nothing has been done about it by either the liberals or the conservatives, even though it appears Harper promised to do something and the federal minister of transportation also wanted something done.

That being said, the empire state building in NYC still charges rent based on what the market will bear, not on what the situation is with respect to loan repayments on the property. That is the way of the real estate world.

Airports are not the only situation in Canada where economic rent is paid by such governance instruments as crown coporations.

BTW, for those who have not visited the Transport Canada site recently to read about the ministry's take on these matters, here it is:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/air/airport-rent/menu.htm

Notice the date and notice the minister's speech on the matter.

So what has Harper been doing? He has a bunch of guys and gals sitting around doing diddly while he does everything because he is afraid that they actually have a thought of their own and that it may not be quite what he thinks?

I think that the airport matter is a minor problem compared to the problem with the government in power and the obvious difficulty we have in this country with the transition from one government to another.

The table set out by the Governmet was to assist those Airports that cannot generate enough revenue from Airport Improvement Fees to do any significant projects, and therefore they can get some Government funding. The reason it is graduated with the Airports with the most passengers getting less money is because those with huge passenger loads get Millions of dollars from AIFS and therefore do not need any money from the Government. The Vancouver Airport made approx $46 Million per year from Airport Improvement fees since 1993. In addition they paid the Government Approx 40/50 Million a year in rent from **Other Income** Gave $300 Million to the Transit Authority for their contribution in having the ALRT run to the Airport, and of course have a significant amount of money, somewhere in the vicinity of $500 Million in contingency fund investments. Its pretty obvious they do not need anymore Government funding, however they have been crying since day one that they are paying to much rent.

Excerpt from Newspaper Article.

((Vancouver Intl Airport will need a new $1-Billion terminal by 2015, and a third runway-worth *hundreds of millions of dollars* by 2025 as surging passenger traffic pushes existing facilities to full capacity, airport authority president Larry Berg said. Thats on top of an estimated $1billion the airport expects to spend over the next four years on the Canada Line, gate expansions to the international terminal, a new structure linking the domestic and international terminals and associated improvements.

So Airport improvement fees that have raised close to $600 Million since 1993 will remain a fact of life for the foreseeable future, Berg said.))

Vancouver Intl Airport had 16.4 million passengers last year and therefore this would put them in the 0% range for Government funding, however if you assume that half the Passengers were enplaning, and paying a AIF of $10.00 they would generate $82 Million dollars per year. YVR now has the financial capacity to borrow the money needed for future capital projects.

In any event this brings me back to my original question:

Are all Aiport improvements actually needed or necessary, or are they being driven by the fact that money collected from Airport Improvement Fees have to be spent on Airport Improvements, or the Fees have to be reduced, or removed altogether.

My point is that they will never stop finding new ways to spend this money, and will never reduce or remove the fees. If they made the necessary improvements and then reduced or eliminated the AIF's then I would support this type of project to some degree, however as it now stands, it is little more than a **Scam**