Dear Neighbours:

For several months I’ve been working to support your efforts to find out what use the provincial government has planned for the current site of the Metro Vancouver works yard. As you know, government has refused to grant a long-term lease to Metro Vancouver and is evicting them from the provincially owned site. I filed a Freedom of Information request to government many months ago asking for “any and all records related to an alternative uses for the current public works yard”. Yesterday, I received a response. You can download the response package to read it by clicking here; however, I might be able to save you some time. The package contains 48 pages of partially redacted content, none of which give any information about planned or anticipated uses for the site once Metro Vancouver is evicted. 39 pages are completely redacted, and were not provided in the package at all. The secrecy goes so far that even two notes that are titled “UEL – Use of Crown Land/GVRD Space Top Messages” are fully redacted, with the top government messages for the public on this issue apparently too confidential to release to the public. The current government clearly has a great interest in hiding their actual plans for the works yard site, assuming there are any plans at all. I will continue to pressure the government to keep the works yard on the existing site unless they have some compelling reason to move it that they’d like to share with the community. Any relocation will have significant impact, either through the loss of community greenspace, or through the loss of provincial park land. Neither community impact needs to take place if the works yard stays on the existing site. Yours truly,