Straight Talk

Suspended Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows NDP MLA Michael Sather will speak at an anti-Gateway rally outside the Westin Bayshore hotel on September 29.

The event is a "welcoming" rally, starting at 5 p.m., to "demand action on climate change" as former U.S. vice-president Al Gore meets with Premier Gordon Campbell in an official reception in the Bayshore, located at the foot of Cardero Street in Coal Harbour. The Web site www.gatewaysucks.org/ has a poster for the event, which is billed as "Hello Al, Goodbye Gateway". Sather, along with Delta councillor Vicki Huntington, federal Green party deputy leader Adriane Carr, Richmond councillor Harold Steves, and NDP MP Peter Julian (Burnaby–New Westminster) will speak in opposition to the B.C. Liberal government's $3 billion Gateway program.

"It [Gateway] is a difficult issue," Sather told the Straight by phone. "I know [NDP Opposition leader] Carole James is working out a statement very soon, so I am going to wait and see what she has to say. I am suspended, but I am going to defer to caucus [regarding the NDP position]."

Sather confirmed that Gateway 40 Citizens Network founder and event organizer Donna Passmore invited him to speak. Sather was suspended from the NDP caucus on September 7 for saying he would vote against ratification of the Tsawwassen Treaty.

"I am going to talk about the impact of the Tsawwassen Treaty on this," Sather added. "The whole head [starting point] of the Gateway is where the container facility [that the treaty would allow] is going to be."

The Gateway program, spearheaded by B.C. transportation minister Kevin Falcon, includes the twinning of the Pitt River and Port Mann bridges, the widening of Highway 1, and the construction of the South Fraser Perimeter Road through Delta. According to Ministry of Transportation communications director Rob Duffus, Falcon is unavailable all this week because he is away in Europe at the Paris World Road Congress.