The Bureau: Bureau contributor Stanley Tromp filed an access to information request to the Public Safety department seeking documents on BC Ferries’ contract with China Merchants Industry Weihai and the associated national security risks. The request took a year to produce a response. When 166 pages finally arrived, virtually all of them were blacked out.
What survived the redactions — brief passages in a bullet-point list — establishes that Public Safety had identified potential sensitive-site risks associated with the transaction, concerns that went beyond the loss of Canadian shipbuilding jobs.
“BC Ferries is the main connection between mainland British Columbia, Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast and the Gulf Islands, for moving both people and commercial goods,” the text reads. “Any disruption of that service would have a major impact on logistics in BC, as well as the daily lives and livelihoods of people living in island communities.”…