Vancouver Courier
for January 14, 1998

The New Democratic Party has always had an imperfect - hell, lousy - understanding of how business works.

Back in the Barrett days there was this "jack-knows-better-than-his-master" sense as the NDP took into office convinced that to implement their favourite social policies, they need only go to the Treasury where, they supposed, all the money was hidden, and start spending.

Or they could tax industry which, as everyone knew, had tons of dough tucked in wall safes just waiting to be grabbed.

Premier Barrett bought a restaurant for us because it was in trouble - it was immediately dubbed "Barrett's Beanery."

In a flash of patriotism mixed in with artsy-fartsyism, the NDP bought up hundreds of dreadful paintings by the worst painters in recent days and stored them in the basement of the Parliament Buildings where, so far as I know, they remain. While no expert, I do have a bit of an eye for Canadian art and when I was in government I toured this collection to look for something to hang in my office. If any of it had been hung in a jail cell it would have constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Barrett bought a chicken processing plant - Panco Poultry, thereafter affectionately known as Pinko Panco - because it was in financial trouble.

Early in the game, the NDP bought an entire town - Ocean Falls - whose pulp mill had gone broke. These financial wizards decided that they could repeal the law of the marketplace by rejecting the basic premise of capitalism which not only permits people to make profits but to go broke too. It was left to the following Socred government under Bill Bennett to clean this mess up.

There was another boondoggle which got no publicity. This was called Swan Valley and was a potato chip factory in the Kootenays. The reason it got no publicity was because the NDP didn't want to talk about it.

Reputedly the brainchild of Dave Stupich - remember that name? - this brilliant entrepreneurial exercise was going to corner the french fries market and had, so the government thought, contracts from all the major sellers of potato products.

They had no such thing of course - just some letters of very guarded interest. Worse, after a careful examination by well known businessman Bill McQuade, it was clear that even if Swan Valley had a world wide monopoly on their product, the hugely expensive plant was virtually useless and in the wrong place to boot.

Now to the present.

The Skeena Cellulose bailout exemplifies perfectly the utter contempt the current NDP government has for small business and their inability to understand that by buoying up a failure they've seriously jeopardized the viability of other mills.

Socialist are suppose to love small enterprises. They're supposed to be not only the party of the unions, the poor, the college professors and school teachers but of the shop keepers as well.

Let's look at two examples.

Back to Skeena Cellulose. Look at who's being saved and who isn't.

Saved are the banks and secured creditors - the big boys. They're fine.

The Union is looked after. The jobs at the plant have been saved. (Nothing wrong with this - unions are supposed to save jobs and so are the people who have them. It's the comparison we're looking at here.)

The government is saved - for the moment. Most of the workers live in Helmut Giesbrecht's riding and he needs all the help he can in the Recall campaign against him.

Who's not OK?

The small business people who supply the essential outside services. Even if they do get a better deal in the next few days, they will have been screwed.

Worse, they know that it could well happen again - and soon.

Then there is the Corporate Capital Tax which taxes not a corporation's profits but its assets.

Why, you ask, shouldn't the big guys pay a bit of tax based upon the value of their holdings? After all we homeowners do.

Because for the most part, the tax doesn't hit the corporations at all - they simply pass it on.

Think back on what's happened to your favourite shopping mall the past few years. Has there been a time when one or even several businesses haven't been boarded up waiting for new tenants to try their luck?

Hardest hit, you will notice, are the very sorts of businesses you would think that the NDP would most want to support - the craft shops, the small book store, the specialty store and the like.

The marketplace isn't forcing them out of business. It's the government and its Corporate Capital Tax on the landlord, passed on pro rata to the little guy, which is killing the small entrepreneur - the backbone, as the NDP often reminds us, of the business community.

If we want business in B.C. to prosper and our economy to grow, we must elect a government which at least understands what business is all about.

This one sure as hell doesn't and never has.