LATEST NEWS 
April 20, 2006
B.C. highway construction on, despite protests
VANCOUVER
B.C.’s transportation minister, Kevin Falcon, is standing firm on plans to build a $130-million four-lane highway, despite the resolve of protesters to the contrary.
District residents can protest all they want, but they will not alter provincial plans to build the highway through Eagleridge Bluffs, Falcon said.
“My resolve is full and total. There is not a chance in the world that we are changing direction,” the minister said.
Falcon made the comments as a group of protesters began setting up a camp at the bluffs overlooking Horseshoe Bay in anticipation that logging and construction on the highway will begin this week.
The Coalition to Save Eagleridge Bluffs, led by former Green Party deputy leader Dennis Perry, erected tents and built numerous copies of the inukshuk logo of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games as part of a campaign to get the province to not build the highway through what they say is an ecologically sensitive area.
The group wants the province to either build a four-lane divided tunnel or add a third lane to the existing highway in order to save the bluffs, which are in the way of a $600-million upgrade of the Sea-to-Sky Highway.
Perry said the change would add about $70 million to the project, but would protect wetlands, and the striking and visible bluffs.
But Falcon remained defiant and defensive. He rejected the options as too costly, adding they would increase traffic fatalities along one of the most dangerous highways in B.C.
“There is no room for cooperative negotiations, or any negotiations,” Falcon said.
“We have already looked at all those other options and I have spent more time on this decision than I have on any other decision I’ve made in government.”
Falcon said protesters who get in the way of the construction face arrest and even having to pay for any delays they cause.
“If there are going to be any delays that cost us financially, I will certainly be pushing to have those costs appropriately apportioned,” he said.
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