Arnie makes Carole James's Port Mann flip flop look even sillier

With Arnold Schwarzenegger praising the BC Liberal Government for doing Public Private Partnerships (P3) well, it seems all the sillier to look at how Carole James flipped her position on building the Port Mann Bridge component of the provincial Gateway Program.

James and her MLAs have gone out of their way to diss the bridge twinning project, going so far as to call it “…a colossal waste of taxpayers' money.” Of course, back in the 1990s the NDP were pushing for the bridge to be twinned, but obviously holding one opinion for any length of time is hard for the NDP.

And now the Georgia Straight caught James out again for a flip flop. Despite her 2007 talk of the Port Mann twinning being a bad way to spend public money, she told the Straight last month that now it seems like a good idea to her:

“You have to have a bridge. You have to have a crossing across there. It's very clear that the traffic is high enough that you need to have a bridge there.”

So it was no surprise that James’ flip flop brought out B.C. transportation minister Kevin Falcon to call a spade a spade. He termed it one of the “most extraordinary backflips I’ve seen in politics.”

Falcon added:

“I have sat for two years and listened to Carole James and the NDP say this would never get done, just like I had to listen to them say for two years that the Canada Line would never get done. So as we deliver the Canada Line ahead of schedule and on-budget, and as we move this project forward—and it’s going to be on-schedule and on-budget—I imagine I’m going to hear the same thing from the NDP.”

Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.