CKNW Editorial
for August 2, 2000

Let’s take a kick at a couple of cans this morning.

I received an angry email from Martyn Brown of the Liberals yesterday pointing out that I was in error saying that the Liberal ads – that ridiculous crap you hear on this station and elsewhere - are being paid for out of caucus funds. They’re not, evidently but come from party funds. This is a distinction not a difference. Both sums come into the pinkies of Gordon Campbell and co and I would have been much more careful with my declaration if the Liberals had, in the past, carefully spent their caucus funds on high level research and stuff like that. As we know, they haven’t done that but have used the funds of heavy duty partisan mail-outs.

Mr Brown is cut to the quick to think that I’m suggesting that the man in the street interviews were in any way faked or cherry picked. Right, Martyn … soon we’ll hear the man saying he thinks Gordon Campbell is a stuffed shirt, plaid of course.

My main point, Martyn, which evidently from your missive needs further emphasis, is that this is stuff from the 70s and 80s when so-called man in the street endorsements and back pages full of pictures of supporters were all the rage. You and Pat Kinsella have evidently not noticed that the public has become a bit more hip when it comes to these things. You are dealing with a highly intelligent mass of opinion makers out there who no longer can be manipulated by media flim flam. Let me spell it out for you … you’re wasting your money, whatever the source, on ads that make people laugh at their childishness.

Neither of you guys has ever won anything – Kinsella always alleges that he won for the Socreds in 1983 which is quite a stretch … and is, after all, 17 years ago and you’ve won diddley-squat. Let me make a suggestion. Run, don’t walk, to the nearest phone and call Bud Smith who really did win the 1983 election for Bill Bennett. Pay him what he asks and sit back and watch how a political campaign is run.

And never mind thanking me, I’m always willing to help those who are bent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Now to the NDP. Just where the hell have you been with this Sumas II project? You claim to be greener than green yet when it comes to British Columbians who don’t live in NDP ridings you just couldn’t care less. And where was the minister, Joan Sawicki. It’s utterly unthinkable that the Ministry of Environment wasn’t first in line for intervenor status and then standing up for the well-being of British Columbians even though they don’t vote right.

This whole thing stinks in more ways than one. As I understand it, BC Hydro can end this matter by refusing to allow the plant its transmission lines. Whatever the story really is, one gets the uneasy feeling that somehow there is a hell of a lot not being disclosed to the public here.

This was the party of concern for people, the party of environmentalists, and the party which put health and safety above all other considerations. This in fact is the party that doesn’t give a damn for any of this and only cares about its own core support … support that they’re so busy getting back in the fold that thousands of British Columbians can load up their lungs on noxious fumes for all they care.

And might I ask in conclusion – where is the federal Ministry of Environment in all this?