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The next couple of years

Jul 3rd, 2009 by admin

It’s interesting to speculate on what government is going to look like for the next couple of years.

When the House sits we will, right off the get-go, see a budget that bears little relationship to the one brought down a short time ago to carry the Liberals to its electoral victory. It will be a “fudgit budget” like that of Glen Clark in front of his election budget in 1996. Will we see the same folks that fought Clark’s budget in the courts rise to protest this one as they did in former times?

We will see the beginnings of serious civil disobedience over fish farms and erroneously so-called Run of Rivers projects. This will not be the usual “rent-a-crowd” but people from all walks of life and political persuasions standing up for the fish and rivers of our beautiful province. As usual, there will be sit-downs followed by the company getting injunctions with breaches of those injunctions going to jail. Except I believe that there won’t by just one or two but dozens. Continue Reading »

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Our 2009 visit to London

Jun 29th, 2009 by admin

A couple of weeks ago Wendy and I took off for London. I was bushed having campaigned, unsuccessfully all over the province against the erroneously so-called “run of rivers” policy. I hate to say it but we at Save Our Rivers will be proved right and we’ll see the end of our rivers, the end of BC Hydro and the end of sovereignty over both our energy and our water.

Sour grapes?

Not a bit of it; just a prediction of what will happen during the next four years. How sad it is that the environment movement was hit by the defections of David Suzuki and Tzeporah Berman. The long term cost to the environment is incalculable. What happens next is not hard to predict. The Bute Inlet project will bring civil disobedience as the company, with the help of the government, will get court orders which will be enforced against protesters. What a sorry pass we’ve reached when people trying to protect the environment from ravishment and save our wonderful public power system will be thwarted and jailed by those who put their own enrichment ahead of our environmental values and are able to abuse the legal system
to enforce their greed and help elect their accomplices.

London is in a strange economic situation these days. In the four blocks between our hotel and our tube station, 13 businesses large and small have gone bust since we here at New Years yet the signs in the real estate offices show a 2000 square food flat, with no view selling for just under 4 million POUNDS! The smallest of the 25 or so ads we looked at for flats was just under 1 million pounds! Unemployment is the highest in decades, money is tight yet there is a market for multi million pound apartments. Continue Reading »

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The Queen and the 2010 Olympics

Jun 28th, 2009 by admin

I see that the Monarchist League of Canada its Union Jack bloomers in a twist because the Queen won’t be opening the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Did it ever occur to the Monarchist League that if Canadians gave a fiddler’s fu… er,fart about the monarchy there would be no need for them?

When I grew up on the west side of Vancouver, the love of the monarchy was touching. When God save the King was played, even at home, one stood up. We sang the Maple Leaf forever, with special vigor when it talked of Wolfe coming and thrashing the hated French. Oh Canada then said “At Britain’s side, what e’er, unflinchingly we’ll stand”. In those days, Hockey on Saturday only featured the Toronto Maple Leafs, it being assumed that no red-blooded Anglophile would want to hear the gutless, treasonous frogs from Montreal. It was a great time for monarchists and their anglophile organizations like The Imperial Order of Daughters of the Empire (IODE). Continue Reading »

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Advice for the new Minister of Health

Jun 27th, 2009 by admin

It’s my fault, really. I should have taken young Kevin Falcon aside and given him the benefit of my wisdom, earned the hard way.

Back in 1976 I was a newly minted member of Bill Bennett’s first cabinet as Minister of Consumer Services. Early on, after a very long cabinet meeting, I did a long, rambling interview with Mike Grenby, then of the Vancouver Sun. I assumed that we were just in a sort of friendly chat about consumerism generally - it was, but not off the record with Mike. During the talk as I was waxing eloquent on my virtual non knowledge of the subject and I offered the off hand remark that it’s probably a good thing that consumers got a kick in the ass once in a while to sharpen their consumer awareness.

Well, it hit the fan with coast to coast coverage. “BC Consumer minister says consumers should get a ‘kick in the ass’”!

If I do say so myself I turned out to be a damned good minister but I never fully recovered from my remark, (Incidentally, Mike was just doing his job and I had no quarrel with him.)

When I became Health Minister in 1980, and got back to my office from the swearing-in ceremony, I was “scrummed” by the press. I think it was Allan Garr who asked me for my views on the Long Term Care program.

I had learned my lesson.

“Ladies and Gentlemen”, I said, “I’ve been in this job for 45 minutes and I will have no comments until I’ve read my briefing books and had a chance to talk things over with my predecessor, Bob McLelland”.

I should have told Mr. Falcon this story as it may have prevented him from commenting, with a couple of days as Health Minister, that he rather liked the idea of some private medical care and since has fallen all over his tongue trying to extricate himself.

I’m surprised that Mr. Falcon, in his years of cabinet experience, has not, if only through osmosis, learned that this is a very hot potato and, amongst other things, has serious constitutional implications.

I feel for Mr. Falcon - he’s a combative chap as I am. But perhaps I can leave him with this thought - in order to survive as a minister, it’s perhaps a good thing if he gets a good kick in the ass once in awhile.

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The lost emails

Jun 26th, 2009 by admin

Re: the “lost” emails in the Virk Basi case.

This travesty is being played up as either a matter of following normal procedure or an error or both.

It’s clear that the government was under no obligation to delete this information.

Here is the sticking point for the government.

The Attorney General is the law officer of the Crown and has a duty to see that the administration of public affairs is in accordance with the law.

Here is what the Act, in part, says:

Duties and powers

2 The Attorney General

(a) is the official legal adviser of the Lieutenant Governor and the legal member of the Executive Council,

(b) must see that the administration of public affairs is in accordance with law,

(d) must advise on the legislative acts and proceedings of the Legislature and generally advise the government on all matters of law referred to the Attorney General by the government,

(f) must advise the heads of the ministries of the government on all matters of law connected with the ministries,

(g) is charged with the settlement of all instruments issued under the Great Seal of British Columbia,

Surely even the most narrow of interpretations of the above would compel the Attorney-General, from the outset to make it clear that all documentary evidence including emails, especially emails, must be retained and made available to Crown Counsel and, upon demand, by defense counsel.

I don’t say that the “fix was in” only that this is an interpretation one might suspect given that the case is an embarrassment to the government, at least one former cabinet minister is under a cloud, and that it would be in the government’s interest to have this case go away.

This simple question must be directed to former Attorney-General Wally Oppal “Did you, upon learning about the Virk/Basi case immediately advise all government ministries and, particularly Premier Campbell that ALL documents in possession of the government concerning this case be retained and made available to Crown Counsel?”

Whatever answer Mr Oppal gives will cast some light on whether or not the Campbell government behaved properly.

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The fish farm legal victory of Alexandra Morton

Jun 25th, 2009 by admin

I suspect that the fix is in with Alex Morton’s recent victory which I reported to you. In essence what happened is that the Province decided not to appeal the part of the decision saying that the federal government, not the provincial government, had exclusive jurisdiction over fish farms. They clearly did this because they didn’t want to appear the bullies they are during the last election.

Now we have Marine Harvest, the huge fish farming company from Norway deciding not to appeal the “constitutional” issue either. This has given great joy to Alex Morton and the thousands of her supporters very much including me.

Here is the “flies in the ointment” I see.

What if the Campbell government and/or Market Harvest made a deal with the federal government where the government and Marine Harvest would not fight the constitutional argument if the Federal Government agreed not to bother Marine Harvest’s fish farming interests on the west coast and assured them that they could expand their licenses and get new one’s?

What if we see a reply of the Delgamuuk case where then Premier Harcourt changed lawyers on the appeal telling their new ones to abandon a constitutional position the government of BC had initially raised? In that case the Court of Appeal, regardless of the fact that this constitutional argument had been withdrawn called upon the government’s previous lawyers nevertheless to argue this point. In short, what if the BC Court of Appeal says “we don’t care that this issue has been withdrawn we want to hear argument anyway?

I smell a rat.

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Thoughts on the end of the Cold War

Jun 22nd, 2009 by admin

Today, in 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union less than two years after the world shocking Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement in August of 1939, and just days before France and Britain declared war on Germany. Despite warnings from Churchill who was picking up German messages through the Ultra Machine the Brits had, Stalin was taken by surprise and the Wermacht made huge gains in the early going. Indeed it took Stalin two weeks before he could get himself together again and rally the nation – and rally them he did.

Communism does not work except when the only customer is the state and there it works very well. To see this picture clearly, I recommend Hedrick Smith’s The New Russians, Random House, 1990 (it has been updated to include the fall of Gorbachev.) Because Communism has no marketplace demand is created by supply, not the other way around. When demand is by a government at war the marketplace are the armed forces. By war’s end. Soviet tanks and fighter aircraft were considered by many who know about these things, to be the best in the world.

What is little remembered is that in 1938 and 1939 Soviet and Japanese armies tested each other in two full-scale battles along the border of Manchukuo. Ironically, a neutrality pact was signed in April 1941 – two months before Germany invaded the USSR with Germany acted as intermediary!

The war deaths in the USSR are estimated to be over 26 million.

Fast forward to April 1945 when the so-called “Big Three”, Prime Minister Churchill, American President Franklin Roosevelt and Stalin met at Yalta in the Crimea. It has been said that the Churchill, weakened by a crumbling empire, and a dying Roosevelt lay down before the Soviet dictator and let him get away with what he wanted in Eastern Europe. This just wasn’t so. Stalin simply refused to pay any attention to the agreement once the Soviet army had Eastern Europe and much of Germany under its control and as Churchill observed, there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Stalin’s objective was what had always been “Mother Russia’s desire - to have its borders buffeted by neutral and friendly countries. Once Czechoslovakia went communist in 1948 and Mao’s Peoples’ Liberation army had secured Russia’s western extremity in 1949 the buffer had been completed. (It should be borne in mind that the USSR had already neutralized Finland while nations to her south hated the west as much as it feared the Soviet Union. Continue Reading »

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A Federal election in the Fall?

Jun 15th, 2009 by admin

The election is dead! Long live the election!

I believe that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will go to the people this Fall mainly because he doesn’t want to have to bring down a budget in early 2010 knowing that it will be chock-a-block full of bad news. We in BC always think that our votes are critical but that’s not always so. If a party can get either Ontario with a reasonable number of MPs from Quebec or vice versa it’s a slam dunk. I don’t believe that Mr. Harper can get that combo so will be heavily reliant on the Atlantic Provinces, the Prairies and BC.

Likewise Mr. Ignatieff will need votes outside the “golden triangle” if he’s to become Prime Minister and he knows it.

High on Mr. Harper’s never-to-be-mentioned concerns is that Mr. Ignatieff is already is and will be more popular than he. A good part of this is because the PM has the personality of a discarded Barbie Doll and really is a hard person to like much less love. Unloved politicians can win – as Bill Bennett showed Dave Barrett in their times at each others’ throats – but it’s better to be liked. It’s sort of like Damon Runyan’s statement that “the race is not always to the swift, nor the contest to the strong – but that’s the way to bet”.

Mr. Ignatieff has that “something” that Pierre Trudeau had. Hard to define, some people can, through force of intellect, or perhaps a better way of connecting with people, develop charisma. A good example is the speeches at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863 where two men spoke, long time Senator and Harvard president, the respected Edward Everett, and Abraham Lincoln. Continue Reading »

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Let Lennikov Stay

Jun 8th, 2009 by admin

Mikhail Lennikov and his family. Photo by CBC.

Mikhail Lennikov and his family. Photo by CBC.

In this nation of second chances, he’s earned one.

We’re a province of wimps as the recent election demonstrated. Where was the anger at the Campbell government forcing BC Hydro to contract with private power companies for power they don’t need, these contracts now at $31 Billion and climbing? Where was the swell of public anger at the Campbell government setting BC Hydro on a course to bankruptcy? Where indeed the outrage is over the recent approval of the Glacier Howser project in the East Kootenays, which project doesn’t even put the rivers back into the river bed after their diversion but dumps them into a lake?

The NDP version of outrage came from Norm Macdonald, MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke suggests that since the projects are put in the hands of private companies like AXOR, questions need to be asked about motives when considering the studies they publish. He prattles on about a number of concerns with nary a word about how Hydro doesn’t need the power nor the huge additional burden Hydro will bear when it must give the developer, Axos, its share of the lolly to be added to the $31 Billion.

We are at least one half a province of wimps since half of us, who could have saved BC Hydro didn’t even get off our asses to vote the Campbell government out because they would rather see their environment and BC Hydro killed than vote NDP.

It will be like a four year movie you can watch scene by scene that chronicles the death of our rivers and of BC Hydro. For those who voted Liberal or didn’t vote at all, enjoy.

There is one non wimp in this province, Pastor Richard Hergesheimer of First Lutheran Church who had given the Russian deportee Mikhail Lennikov sanctuary in his church.

The legal right of a church to provide sanctuary in cases like this is questionable but in admittedly limited research I could find no Canadian legal authority on the subject.

I did, however, come across a revlew of a book called Sanctary, Sovereignty, Sacrifice by Dr. R. Lippert of The University of Windsor with this quote from the University’s review.
“Facing immediate deportation, a lone Guatemalan migrant entered sanctuary in a Montreal church in December 1983. Thus began the practice of sanctuary in Canada. By 2003, thirty-six incidents involving 261 migrants had occurred nationwide.

[In] Sanctuary, Sovereignty, Sacrifice  … Randy Lippert suggests that, far from being a coherent social movement, sanctuary practice is a localized and isolated phenomenon, and often not primarily religious in orientation. It is also remarkably successful - in every documented incident, state authorities were kept at bay and providers avoided arrest. In most cases, migrants also ultimately received legal status.

Many of you will, at this moment, be well to take a nip of Grandma’s brandy before continuing. Continue Reading »

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Can the NDP Reinvent Itself?

Jun 2nd, 2009 by admin

Vicki Huntington rode Delta anger.

Vicki Huntington rode Delta anger.

Notes on Huntington’s win, James’s loss, Campbell’s heir.

First, heartiest congratulations to Vicki Huntington in Delta.

Liberal Attorney-General Wally Oppal said he didn’t realize how angry people were at the government. If the previous MLA, Val Roddick, had bothered to turn up to any of the rallies against overhead transmission lines or the new highway and passed those concerns on to cabinet, they would have known, just as I and my colleagues did, that this Liberal bastion was in deep, deep, trouble.

NDP missed its chance

And what was the message, province-wide, for the NDP? The party has some serious stock-taking ahead. They lost the election more than the Liberals won. I say that because with half the electorate staying away, you have to conclude that a lot of these people didn’t want to support Campbell but were unsure about the NDP. And it’s understandable.

Consider, for example, how they missed their chance to campaign strongly on saving BC Hydro.

From the start, a couple of facts. You cannot store electricity in bulk, so it must be used as it is made. BC Hydro “stores” electricity by storing the water needed to make it. Private power plants — which don’t have storage reservoirs and are proud to boast that — are dependent on the flow of water to be high enough to turn the turbines. That only happens at spring run-off and a while after that.

What if a truthful government had told the voters with ads to suit, “BC Hydro owes $31 BILLION to private power producers for power that they can’t use because it’s produced when Hydro’s reservoirs are full? Hydro must, then, sell that power to the U.S. at a huge loss. Every time another private power scheme gets a license, Hydro must make the same deal with them so they go further in the hole. This will bankrupt BC Hydro.” Continue Reading »

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