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Who's the man at the Port Alberni Port Authority?

It's not to hear about the flowery things the Port Alberni Port Authority is up to but one reader wants answers to some critical questions.

To the Editor,

How nice to hear how wonderfull the port authority is and how much we all need them.

Funny how beauracracies love to grow and become important.

Notwithstanding, there are three things of interest:

What sort of security is in place to prevent smuggling and the shipping in of drugs and dangerous terrorist oriented things? How well are the people vetted that work there?

Are there payoffs, corruption, mysterious containers going here and there?

Second, why all the secrecy? Should unelected persons really have control over an organization that claims to have such a big impact on Port Alberni?

If the impact is that big, then the board ought to be chaired and directed by people who are elected by the local people to keep it in line with community values.

Third, yes the port is an asset and an economic driver; however if it stops proposing and pushing for such hare-brained schemes as trucking in coal, and gets a route figured out to take the heavy trucks off our roads, it would be even more useful and less criticized as a noisy, environmentally deleterious eyesore occupying good waterfront.

These are all normal questions one would ask of any isolated port taking in goods and containers from foreign countries.

Insofar as a place to conveniently strip our forests and sell raw logs, it’s just too bad. Everyone there was probably bamboozed by the minister of forests’ double talk about raw log exports being needed to provide logs to local sawmills.

Finally, kudos for the port and its economic impact thus far and for its help in waterfront redevelopment, i.e. the quay area. However, this sort of large federal agency power must be reigned in and locally controlled.

Let’s lobby for a democratic process for representatives, (how much do they get paid anyway?).

Mike Wright,

Port Alberni