I just received this email
Charles,
Sometimes I wonder if you could address one problem that we have here in New Brunswick.
The problem is the lack or non existant Rest Area in this province.
When you travel you are obliged to stop at an Irving garage or other garages and feel like you have to buy something in order to use their washrooms.
It is ok for a man, they pee on the road or if you travelled lately look at all the yellow bottles of pop or whatever bottle filled with pee.
When you go to Quebec or other provinces, they have washroom facilities for the travellers.
They want tourists but do not want to make their stay a pleasant one.
Just an idea.
12 comments:
"THE IRVINGS ARE DENYING THE GOVERNMENT TO BUILT REST AREAS???"
Making a bit of a stretch there, aren't ya Charles?
It makes me laugh how everything is a conspiracy between the Lord Gov't and the Irvings!
How do you freaks sleep at night knowing the Irvings could be hiding under your bed?? lol
If you have travelled by 4 lane highway in NB and NS then you would know that in order to pee you have to exit and go to an Irving gas station. This all cannot be co-incident. Either governments are utterly stupid, including Lord Government, that proper washrooms are not provided and people pee on roadside or there is that conspiracy to direct traffic to Irving gas station. Coincident, absolutely not.
Charlie you're in the Capital, Could you tell us or could you find out if when Canadian Tire started a Gas price war over the weekend and the other stations lowered their price to match that of Canadian Tire did Irving do so too???? Because in all the stories on the news on this subject comming out of Fredericton and of all the major stations they showed I failed to see any Irving stations on any of the news stories..
I don't think this is a question of an Irving 'conspiracy', if you live in New Brunswick you have the face the fact that Irving pretty much runs the government. You don't cross somebody with that much clout. So it's doubtful if the province even came up with the idea of a rest stop.
OF COURSE the Irving's don't want one, and if anybody tried, no doubt they would put their foot down, it's doubtful in this province that any bureaucrat would try.
So it's not a conspiracy, a conspiracy only exists when things are done secretly. If you don't think the Irvings control most aspects of the provincial government you're pretty blind to reality. You think the St. John deal is an exception?
Keep in mind that it isn't just the Irvings, in Quebec they have beautiful rest stops, but in Ontario they are all 'Wendy's' or 'McDonalds',they aren't government ones. So yes big business doesn't want government encroaching where money can be made, and yes in NB and NS that big business is called Irving. It's hardly rocket science, I don't see why people would even CALL it a 'conspiracy' or put question marks behind it.
The effects of big business in politics is like the old saying that the biggest con the devil ever pulled was pretending he didn't exist. People-you ain't living in no democracy, who do you think runs the province?
That is the oddest post so far. There are no rest stops but there is no conspiracy. So what is your point? That is exactly what is being said that because of Irvings there are no res stops and people have to pee on the roadside like dogs. Have seen it and done it. Talking about hair splitting. Call it by any name. Government is slave to Irving and public's convenience can go to hell.
Call it splitting hairs or whatever you want, but to me it's NOT a conspiracy if its not SECRET. My point is that this is simply how government functions-at least in Canada-some provinces moreso than others. Big businesses control the agenda, the only things that get done against theyre wishes are when people radically stand up to them. Unfortunately in our society there are few options for 'standing up to them'. You basically have to wait four years and try to get 'the other guy' elected and hope he will stand up for you (which I think is doubtful, but who knows). Even though polls show New Brunswick WANT public insurance, Lord almost lost the election on it, however even the liberals aren't making an election promise to bring it public insurance.
Keep in mind that Charle's didn't even use the word 'conspiracy', either he never thought of it, or he knows what I said is true, that the government simply doesn't go against the Irvings, in effect the Irving's are a branch of the government. They have far more clout than even a Cabinet member.
So YOU can split hairs if you want, but this is important stuff to understand. It's not a case of some guy secretly lobbying the government for a favour-which probably happens all the time- but simply the way our government works. So you can call it a 'conspiracy' if you want to, but that basically means that our entire Parliamentary system of government consists of big business and elected officials and bureaucrats conspiring against us. No doubt some people are quite happy defining government that way, but most people aren't, hence I avoid using the word conspiracy, which has very negative connotations.
Conspiracy is very "negative" and what government in collaboration with Irvings is doing very "positive" then. What is the point? Now it is clear like mud. Talking about circuiteous argument. It is like saying "It is not raining it is just water falling from the sky."
Wow, somebody didn't take their brain medicine this morning. Should I write it as a childrens book?
Conspiracy: in common usage is the act of working in secret towards a common goal, usually with negative connotations.
Now, every government department essentially works in secret, and even the Legislature makes it darn hard to find out what is said. But it isn't 'secret', you can go and watch them every day. They just make it pretty darn hard to find out.
Let's make it easy. If I whisper something to you and tell you not tell anyone, and we make decisions based on that, it is obviously secretive.
But likewise I can tell you something then tell everybody else: "you're free to find out what was said, it's written in a box in China". So technically its not a secret, but its bloody hard for anybody to find out, just like it's hard in our society when government committees and the house meets all the time and yet the media almost never reports what is going on.
That means EVERY government law, function, statement is a result of a conspiracy-sort of.
If you say that to MOST people, the idea that in a modern democracy they effectively live under a conspiratorial collusion between government and business, they would think you extreme. Many no doubt are quite happy to agree with that, but I chose not to define it that way because most people do not see their government that way. Once you say "it's a conspiracy", there's a good proportion of people which simply dismiss such people as paranoid kooks, as the first poster to this thread has shown.
You are coming across as a paranoid kook to insist that your convoluted argument has a merit.
When Government officials/ministers meet Irvings in complete secrecy then what you call it.
Did government make an announcement that they are not going to make provision for rest areas because of Irvings? You are suffering what is called a serious case of semantics. Only one who needs a brain medicine is you. Disease of semantics is curable, you know. Get help.
As far as this negative & positive bull is concerned, such argument is used when there is no real argument.
I wish we had rest stops too. I travel frequently thorughout the Maritimes and to Ontario via Quebec, and less frequently to New England on the I-95.
Now, I know someone will coreect me if I'm wrong, but I think Quebec is the only palce I've seen that has government rest stops. Everywhere else, the rest stop is run by a multi-national corporation -- a gas station belonging to Irving or, more commonly, to a company waaaay bigger than Irving, and/or a fast food restaurant.
As usual, I raise my eyebrows at the conspiracy fans. My guess is, we don't have them because no company has decided it's be profitable enough to build them. Of course, that's partly because there's already so many gas stations adjacent to the highways in NB, and they are mostly Irving. (Not all: I use Esso almopst exclusivley, and don't have trouble finding one anywhere. And there's a fair number of Petrocans around too.)
As for the govt building them and maintaining them as in Quebec, I don't want any other govt programs cut to pay for this. These things are not a necessity.
And by the way, I spend enough money on gas that I don't feel any qualms whatesoever about going into a gas station and using their washroom when I need one, without buying anything. I drink way too much coffee to only pee when I need gas. :)
Rest stops are needed does not matter who provides them. It is stupid of governments not to do something about it. Give a contract to Irvings, MacDonalds or Wendys. It does not matter. Right now people peeing by the roadside is not a pretty picture.
This is a story that I read about ages ago, so I can't footnote it, but essentially Irving was very interesting in spreading they're very profitable gas stations into Ontario. Basically Esso, which as mentioned above is a MUCH bigger company, told them that if they started competing heavily in other gas markets, Esso would begin competing heavily in New Brunswick and the maritimes. So they backed off.
So why there are no other companies has nothing to do with government whatsoever, no doubt the government would LOVE other companies around so that Irving doesn't always have them by the balls.
Why there aren't more is also fairly obvious, gas stations are at least 100 KM apart in Ontario, more if possible. You'll notice that Irving stations are fairly evenly spread along the TCH, providing stops specifically for travelling families or people who stop often. In Ontario you can skip one or two, but in NB you pretty much HAVE to stop at their stations, or at least they do everything possible so that you'll have to.
THere's no doubt that McDonalds or Wendys would be interested, the idea that there is not enough money in it is crazy. McDonalds is very cost effective, they can operate a store very cheaply, there's one in town's with populations as small as 8000 people. Probably more than that drive on that highway each day. However, most spots are pretty rural so it would be hard to find employees.
However, it's not a political issue. How do you make something a political issue when Irving owns all the papers? It would be dirt cheap to simply have a turn off and some picnic tables, if you had a voluntary contribution box you'd probably have enough to cover the building and maintenance.
After reading about how Irving basically told St. John they wanted a tax break and the provincial government bent over to accommodate them, I don't see how people can reasonably argue about Irving's clout. Here's a company with more money than the government.
You don't have to play with semantics, call it a conspiracy if you want to, or simply call it a company looking out for it's own interest. Why would they act any differently? It seems pretty crazy to assume that Irvings sit on their butts and just let 'nature take its course'. If you want to test it, start a petition or pick a spot on the highway and try to get an MP to present the case and try to get a rest stop around Gagetown or somewhere and see what happens.
Irving's pretty much have their work done for them, as the above poster claims, they don't want to see ANY more money spent by the provincial government, even if it might benefit tourism. Take everything you know about government and think about where those ideas come from.
PS: out west in Manitoba and Saskatchewan are public reststops as well. That changes in Alberta, then changes back in BC.
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