Promise to earthquake-proof B.C. schools called 'hollow'

A plan by the B.C. government to spend more than $1.5 billion to upgrade schools in the province to make them earthquake-proofwithin 15 years was a "hollow" promise made before the last election, according to the head of Families for Seismic Upgrading.

Dr. Tracy Monk said Thursday that, from what she sees, work is proceeding no faster than it was before the announcement by Premier Gordon Campbell in 2005.

"The 15-year commitment seems hollow if the mechanisms to achieve it have not been put in place," she said.

Campbell also said 80 of the most vulnerable schools would be fast-tracked at a cost of more than $250 million. They were to be finished within three years.

Figures from the Ministry of Education show that work has been completed on only four schools. Seven others are under construction, and feasibility studies have been done on 48.

"We are going to keep the commitments we made. We are working with the school boards. We are moving it forward as quickly as possible," Education Minister Shirley Bond said.

But NDP MLA David Cubberly said the minister isn't facing reality.

"This was a paper program to begin with. It was designed for the election campaign. She has done nothing with it," Cubberly said.

Meanwhile, B.C. children continue to attend classes in schools that could fall down in an earthquake, he said.

"Seismologists always tell us it's not a matter of if [there's an earthquake], but of when," Monk said. "Nobody knows what the hand of fate can hold but, at the end of the day, we need to be able to say we've done our best, and we had our priorities in the right, and at the moment, I'm not sure we can say that."