Writer Nelson Algren had as three rules of life: “Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

To this I might add a new one appropriate to these times. Never ever believe a politician, nor expect the mainstream media hold one to account.

A recent example is that of John van Dongen demanding that the Campbell/Clark government be held accountable for the BC Rail case. Postmedia writers Vaughn Palmer and Mike Smyth have adopted van Dongen as Public Hero Number One, as he makes a release a day on this issue. He is being portrayed as a man of great integrity, laying down his political life for his province. Read full article at The Tyee

Political times have changed mightily since I left the legislature 32 years ago.

Of course one would expect change over such a long period, but I’m not talking about the coming and goings of leaders and such. I speak of a sea change. The challenge now has become the corporatization of our government and thus the corporatization of us as citizens.

We are seeing our social and political takeover by unelected faceless private bureaucracies.

In 1980, premier Bill Bennett was able to prevent a sale of what was then our industrial icon, MacMillan-Bloedel, saying that “British Columbia is not for sale.” He was able to do this because the government controlled the timber licenses. That’s all gone, for a number of reasons — one of which is the internationalization of capital and the ability to transfer it in nano econds. When Mac and Blo was sold to Weyerhaeuser, many were astonished to learn that the majority of shareholders were offshore. Read full article at The Tyee

There are 600,000 British Columbians with mental health issues. I am one of them.

If the physically ill in our province were dealt with as mentally ill people are, the legislature and its lawn would be crammed with irate people and there would be violence. I mean that.

I was diagnosed 25 years ago with depression manifesting itself as an anxiety syndrome. I was lucky as hell that when I crashed my doctor’s office demanding immediate treatment for the liver cancer I had (I diagnosed it in the Columbia Medical Encyclopaedia), that he saw me and, after some ultrasound tests, vainly tried to convince me I had gallstones. He then asked me when it was my daughter had been killed. Read full article at The Tyee

Premier Christy Clark is in a lot of trouble — especially if she loses the Chilliwack byelection to the Conservatives which, with John Van Dongen crossing to the Conservatives, is almost a certainty.

That she’s in trouble anyway has been (finally) canvassed by the mainstream media. The HST has been a horrifying failure. There’s no way the average taxpayer can accept the proposition that it must stay in effect until a year this April.

The Liberals are in a trap of their own making. If, as they swear up and down, the HST wasn’t on the their “radar” in the 2009 election but came about like a flash of light a month or two later, then why cannot it be disbanded as quickly as it happened? If, as most people believe, including me, that it was in the works long before 2009, then Campbell and then-finance minister Colin Hansen had been preparing the HST months before the election, then the Liberals won an election by deception.

If they did indeed have a Damascus-like conversion, then why does it take two years to get out of it? The Liberals can’t have it both ways.

And now, as if to compound the sense of disarray and erosion, their Finance Minister Kevin Falcon is hemming and hawing about whether he’ll even run for office next election.

The poisoned chalice

The Clark government has been stumbling from the moment Premier Clark was sworn in. Not all of that was her doing, of course. She was handled a poisoned chalice by the disgraced Gordon Campbell. The fact remains, however, that Premier Photo-op has stumbled from one goof to another since the beginning and she will pay the price, perhaps sooner than we think. The reason has to do with our system of government.

Under first-past-the-post, the government must fall if it loses a money vote or one of confidence. This means that the backbench must support the government when it’s nut-cutting time.

So far as I can tell, only once in Canadian history has a prime minister/premier with a majority been turfed out because he couldn’t command a majority anymore, and that was Sir John A. Macdonald in the wake of the Pacific scandal in 1873 when party discipline wasn’t nearly as rigid as it is today.

This doesn’t mean that a first minister cannot be driven from office without losing a vote, as seen in recent years in B.C. with premiers Vander Zalm and Glen Clark.

For one to understand the reasons first ministers can thusly be turfed, one needs to understand the system.

In first-past-the-post, the backbenchers have no power to really affect policy. They can raise hell at caucus meetings, but rarely does that affect government policy. Moreover the backbencher has promotion on his mind and hesitates to upset the applecart otherwise known as the premier.

The methods of compulsion are varied and brutal. The recalcitrant backbencher thinks that he is better, indeed much better, qualified to be in cabinet than those already there. It’s as Napoleon said, “Every French soldier carriers a marshal’s baton in his knapsack.”

One of the problems is that government backbenchers have little if anything to do. This calls for make work projects to keep “idle hands from doing the devil’s work.” Some backbenchers, Ralph Sultan of West Vancouver comes to mind, really believe that these projects are important to the government, but most know that it’s all bullshit.

During relatively quiet times the backbencher, like the hopeful player as the captain creates the team, is pointing to himself as worthy of attention. There are goodies to be had which enhance the hopeful’s chances of making the team.

The best one, short of cabinet, is to be made a parliamentary secretary to a minister which pays more than the MLA’s stipend and gets the backbencher’s presence closer to the action. Then there is the whip and the deputy whip — two jobs where there isn’t anything to do except deposit a bigger paycheque. Even when Campbell had an over 70-seat majority, these “jobs” were filled. There is the deputy speaker and the chairman’s spots to hand out to boys and girls whom the premier wants to be ever so nice to him and cabinet.

In the “stick” department is the power the prime minister/premier has to kick naughty children out of caucus and refuse them the right to run under the party banner. That is a very big step implement of compulsion indeed!

Who would pick up a sword?

There is an additional problem facing Premier Clark and it is critical to her survival. Everyone in that caucus (except the hopeless Harry Bloy who was put in full cabinet, then demoted to a minister of state, then axed because he made a secret missive available to members of the public) supported someone else or sought her job themselves. In other words, from the start they’ve had a death wish for her. We needn’t look that far back to see a prime example of what that means.

Bill Vander Zalm took over the Socred leadership with everyone except Jack Davis in caucus and cabinet having done everything they could to defeat him and he was dead in the water. It showed almost from the start as he lost key ministers Grace McCarthy and Brian Smith from cabinet, both powerful ministers. Eventually several MLAs resigned from his caucus to sit as independents.

(Pay no attention to good sportsmanship expressed by political losers to the winner — unless the new leader has and demonstrates firm control, they are bread soon to be toast. The toaster is humming.)

I believe that there are two moments in time, shortly to come, when several more of Christy Clark’s backbenchers will move to independents.

The first move was signalled when my MLA, Joan McIntyre, walked out of the House when Premier Clark was speaking which, coupled with Van Dongen’s departure, indicates that the movement might be sooner than later.

MLAs, like any group, at the best of times like to bitch and that brings those of similar complaints together. Of course there’s been talk. And this is not the best of times.

The usual signs of rebellion are in place. They have nothing to do, they fear an election with the premier still leading them and, at least in theory, they want to save the party that they see as needing a new leader to survive. If the B.C. Tories win Chilliwack and the NDP Port Moody, those seat changes, added to the two independents, put Premier Clark in a position where just four more defections make her beatable in a confidence vote.

Mostly MLAs, they want to save their own skins. And seats.

Conservatives as game changers

If the Conservatives win in Chilliwack, there is a new very powerful influence in place. A party which many MLAs to the right of the Liberal Party will see as attractive if only because it makes them more secure in their own ridings. Moreover, how can crossing the floor be worse than staying where they are?

You can bet the ranch on this — many backbenchers have been wooed by the Conservative Party, although John Cummins has probably absented himself from direct involvement.

Would this enhance the chances of the Conservatives in the May 2013 election?

Yes and no and maybe.

Yes in the sense that they will be in the hunt for second place, just as the Gordon Wilson Liberals were in 1991.

But the Conservatives have an Achilles heel in their positions of support for the Enbridge pipeline and tanker traffic on our coast. Frankly, this Cummins’ position is puzzling. Here’s a man who has devoted all his political efforts to save our salmon and now he is bent on destroying them. If he reversed his position, he would lose none of his support in the Fraser Valley and would give himself and his party a fighting chance in many other ridings.

One thing is for sure. Premier Clark is on a roll over the waterfall and won’t have any of her parliamentary party with the slightest desire to toss her a lifeline.

In fact, the party would like to dump her but a messy leadership convention would put them even deeper in the hole.

Forgive the self-congratulation, but I said from the beginning that Christy Clark doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader.

Let's bring our reps voices to the foreground

Under a premier’s iron fist, our representatives quiver. Here’s the fix.

I’m going to vouchsafe unto you the secret of radically improving government.

On Dec. 11, 1975, I was elected MLA for the then-single riding of Kamloops, on the Socred ticket under Bill Bennett.

During my time as a minister, I had the extraordinary good luck to do a lot of fascinating jobs, including be unofficial spokesman for constitutional affairs, and this latter “post” gave me an extraordinary opportunity to examine how other countries govern themselves. The late Melvin Smith, QC, Deputy Minister for Constitutional Affairs — who reported directly to the premier — and I travelled all over Canada, and went to West Germany and Switzerland to study their systems.

Later, I was given a bursary by the U.S. State Department to examine whatever part of the U.S. I wanted, and I chose to learn how the budget was worked out by the President and Congress, and the way states governed themselves. This two-week seminar took me to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Columbus, Ohio.

I also spent a lot of time studying proportional representation, either on its own or mixed as it is in New Zealand.

I came away from all of this with two main conclusions — people didn’t trust their representatives, and under the first-past-the-post system, party discipline is so strong that the premier runs the show, with virtually all advice coming from unelected advisers.

I saw how “responsible government,” where the premier and his cabinet are “responsible” to the legislature, in practice is quite the other way around. Government MLAs do exactly what they are told to do. In this situation the cabinet becomes arrogant, I no less than others, I’m ashamed to admit.

Private members can table bills, but they won’t be called for debate unless the premier so wishes — which is not very often.

Life under the premier

How is this discipline maintained?

By the judicious use of the carrot and the stick.

For the former, the premier controls who goes in and out of cabinet, who gets neat extra pay jobs like parliamentary secretary to a minister, party whip, deputy party whip, deputy Speaker, Chairman of the House in committee and other pleasant perks. (I pause here to digress — in the first Campbell government where he had a 74-2 majority, there was still a party whip!)

On the stick side, the premier controls caucus and decides if any member can run under the party banner. There are outspoken and critical backbenchers, but they are few and far between and have sentenced themselves to oblivion.

What this means is that every iota of policy comes with the premier’s consent. As an example, if a backbencher tables a bill it must first pass the “planning and priorities” committee. Chaired by Guess Who? If the premier was away, I always postponed planning and priorities until he returned.

In short, your MLA has little to do with government legislation, so that his vote is not by conscience or duty to his constituency, but duress.

The ‘secret’ way forward

Many say they want to see how their MLA votes. But we know in advance how he’ll vote! As he’s bloody well told to.

There is a way around this and it’s simple — use the secret ballot on all money bills including the budget if, say, 25 per cent of the legislature calls for it.

I can assure you that you will see a conversion in the premier’s office right up there with Saul’s on the road to Damascus.

What would this accomplish?

Because government could not ram things through, your MLA’s vote would mean something. And:

1. All legislation would be thoroughly examined by caucus before it was tabled in the house.

2. The budget (which is really what government is all about) would be examined by caucus.

3. The opposition would receive notice of what policy or legislation is coming.

4. Your MLA would have the power you think he has, but doesn’t.

Cartoon by Ingrid Rice

Driven by one irrational fear, business leaders ignore host of financial pratfalls by Campbell/Clark.

The emperor has no clothes, nor has the empress for that matter.

As I read about the fawning receptions by the Vancouver Board of Trade for former premier Gordon Campbell and the present premier, I found it nauseating and bewildering — but expected.

The theme of the business folks response was, evidently, that Campbell/Clark have kept the accursed NDP from power and that no careless depletion of the public purse should interfere with the worship of gods and goddesses, no matter what financial screw-ups took place on their watch.

The myth these stalwarts of the free market perpetuate is that the NDP were so fiscally incompetent that they can never ever be trusted again, and that any qualification of that dogma means some sort of treachery to the holy cause.

(The last NDP government claimed that they had two balanced budgets, with the last one not on such a thin foundation as its predecessor. The quarrel with the last one is that it required a healthier dividend from BC Hydro than the Opposition thought advisable.)

The governments of Harcourt/Clark/Miller/Dosanjh undoubtedly often looked like the gang couldn’t shoot straight. So did the the Vander Zalm/Johnston era immediately prior. The last Social Credit government under Vander Zalm/Johnston, an unholy mess, had the good folks at the Vancouver Board of Trade giving them the applauding seal treatment because, after all, they weren’t those socialist hordes of Dave Barrett, were they?

The applauders were duly rewarded when the Liberals (hard-right Tories in drag) took office and gave them all a substantial tax cut, an assault on the treasury, even though the government was in a deficit position. Evidently these paragons of fiscal prudence didn’t know that while the NDP did double the provincial debt, that starting from a much larger base the Liberals have tripled it!

Asian Flu was real

The NDP claim — with considerable accuracy — that the crash of the Thai baht, spawning what became known as the “Asian Flu” crippled B.C.’s export economy, yet they either balanced the budget (for believers) or damned near did according to the rest. Indeed, the NDP left a treasury in good enough shape that Campbell could, within milliseconds of taking office, repay his supporters with that $1.5-billion tax cut.

The Liberals brought in a budget, with which they ran the 2009 election campaign, that had a deficit of about $500 million. This was a remarkable feat given the dire North American fiscal situation. Maybe His Excellency was a fiscal genius.

Ah, it appeared that it wasn’t quite so as we learned, for as soon as the election was safely won, it appeared that they were a little off in that budget — $1.4 billion off!

The premier and finance minister had a good excuse. They were sideswiped by the Wall Street crash and the deep recession in the United States.

Really?

It takes the breath away! This business-oriented government, when it came down to explaining their little error, said that they were side-swiped by the U.S. economy! These prudent protectors of the public purse evidently didn’t know about the Wall Street crash and U.S. recession in 2008! Somehow those little incidents had been missed when the phoney 2009 budget was crafted.

(It’s important to note that when the Asian Flu happened, it did indeed come as a surprise to the world and thus presented for the NDP a financial disaster that they could not have predicted. The same can’t be said for the recession of 2008 and its aftermath, though the BC Liberals claimed the repercussions months later caught them unawares.)

Let me tell you how a prudent minister of finance acts.

In 1979, at a time the economy seemed to be quite satisfactory, finance minister Hugh Curtis came to cabinet (I was there) and told us that the figures, according to his officials, foretold a recession just around the corner.

Curtis did as all good finance ministers do. He kept on top of financial matters by listening to public servants who, by assessing things like the sales tax revenues, income tax revenues, stumpage revenues and mining revenues, and sizing them up against government spending, could and did predict the financial weather.

Upon getting his expert opinions, he brought them to the Treasury Board and full cabinet.

Premier Bill Bennett and the Treasury Board immediately went to work. The Dentacare program, which I had just put in place, was cancelled. The sails were trimmed in every ministry. Ministers now even had to get the Treasury Board’s permission to travel and the economy cabin was where you sat.

The result was that B.C.’s government finances weathered the recession that Curtis warned us about much better than the rest of Canada’s.

You don’t reward incompetence

If the deputy minister of finance, while preparing the 2009 budget, did not warn of the consequences of Wall Street and the recession, he should be fired. However, that the premier and finance minister might not have noticed these events strains credulity to the breaking point. The obvious conclusion must be that the Campbell government knew the reality of the government’s financial shape and chose to ignore it.

I suspect that the deputy did bring this information to then-finance minister Colin Hansen and I base that, in part, on the fact that Hansen had a detailed ministry report on the issue of the HST, recommending against it, two months before the election when Hansen and Campbell said that such a prospect wasn’t even on the radar screen. In my opinion, they were being egregiously economical with the truth.

Right after the election was safely behind, no doubt by an amazing flash of light as hit Saul on the road to Damascus, Hansen saw a new radar screen which urged him to bring in the HST!

In their fawning over the Campbell/Clark government, the Board of Trade hasn’t noticed a few bits of fiscal improvidence, such as $483-million overrun on the Convention Centre, $600 million for a new roof on BC Place, the aforementioned $1.4-billion miscalculation of the 2009 budget, $1.6 billion given and now taken away by the feds for the HST, and one more big item. BC Hydro traditionally has paid, annually, several hundreds of millions by way of dividend. That is no longer possible, I’m afraid, because thanks to the government’s right-wing commitment to private power, BC Hydro is now bankrupt — or I should say that, if it was in the private sector, it would at best be in bankruptcy protection.

As the late U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen once said, “a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money!”

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the Campbell/Clark government will stand mute as Enbridge pipelines will despoil what Grace McCarthy called Super Natural B.C., then stand aside as tankers destroy our coast.

There’s the Liberal record in a nut shell. And it’s the NDP the Vancouver Board of Trade is afraid of?

Alberta Premier Alison Redford stated in a recent speech that her government is looking to “clear a path for the oil sands through British Columbia by upping the economic benefits for its western neighbour — including the option of paying to modernize and expand West Coast ports.”

Premiers don’t just throw that sort of stuff around and I believe that this speech foretells an ever increasing policy of the federal government and Alberta to bribe First Nations and the rest of B.C. citizens alike.

Here is why we must not take the bribe.

Ruptures of the pipelines. Carrying condensate mixed with the bitumen (gunk) from the tar sands, the pipeline is bound to rupture at some point. This is not a risk but an absolute certainty. Enbridge has admitted there will be ruptures. Enbridge’s pipelines have recorded 811 ruptures since 1998.

Myth of a clean-up. Those ruptures will happen in areas where only helicopters can land, so machinery for clean-up is out of the question. Even in accessible areas, there cannot be any real clean-up, as the Kalamazoo spill in July 2010 eloquently demonstrates.

Tanker leaks. These, too, are a certainty, While double-hulling helps, in the past two years there have been four major spills with double-hulled ships. We know from the Exxon Valdez what a spill means.

Opposition continues to build

Two weeks ago, I gave the keynote speech at a gathering against Enbridge’s proposal in Prince Rupert. I heard affected members of First Nations firmly re-state their opposition to the pipeline and the tanker traffic. Particularly emphatic statements came from natives on the coast. If there is no approval from coastal nations the prospects must be dim for the pipeline.

Opposition is fast increasing, as well, among the non-native community. This is not going to lessen as time passes.

In a way this reminds me of the Meech Lake/Charlottetown accords of more than two decades ago, which took so long to craft, present and debate — from 1986 to 1992 — that people actually found out what it was all about. An informed public is anathema to governments. Proof is that the Charlottetown referendum went down in a crashing defeat, especially in B.C. where almost 70 per cent opposed. Day after day, as the public gets more and more information, its resolve against the pipelines and tankers grows and firms up.

Which raises the key question. Will that opposition grow so strong that no bribe of any amount from Alberta or the federal government can reverse it?

My educated guess is that Premier Redford’s sweet talk was known to if not approved by Stephen Harper as the first step in softening up this province. It’s significant to note that the head of Enbridge was part of the recent Harper visit to China.

Harper has, in my view, made a serious mistake of plumping for Gateway without knowing, nor I suspect caring, what the people think. This casual approach to our province will, I predict, harden B.C. opinion against the project.

Will First Nations hold firm as the offers of money roll in?

The short answer is that no one knows. I believe that the majority will, especially those on the coast. If this project, to start in 2013, is opposed by the people of B.C., both First Nations and the rest of us, a very serious roadblock will develop which will in my view lead to a confrontation like nothing we’ve ever seen in this province.

No middle ground

The problem is that there is no compromise position available. It’s either a full steam ahead or no damned way.

The face of the environmentalist has changed. What I call the three-piece suit and pearl necklace crowd are getting more and more active. Rallies against overhead wires and intrusion into sensitive areas like Burns Bog showed these new faces. When I was given a “roast” last in the WISE Hall in East Vancouver last November, I saw people who a year or two before would rather have been caught in a house of ill-fame.

The issue is not money, or at least it ought not to be. The issue does not pit left against right. Rather, the issue starkly defines right versus wrong.

It’s not often I’m at a loss for words, but recently one of my co-panelists on the CBC radio program Early Edition stated that we must approve the Enbridge pipeline linking Alberta’s tar sands to Kitimat in the “interests” of Canada. In other words, we must sacrifice our pristine wilderness in the “national interest.” I was reduced to spluttering babble!

How can we make the Great Bear Forest hostage to money in the short term and catastrophe in the future?

How can we condemn the most beautiful — and dangerous — coastline in the world to spills of oil in its most toxic form, bitumen, because we were offered large amounts of money?

Have we as a people lost our moral compass? Are we prepared to condemn our heritage to death over large chunks of lucre? Do we not care about losing the soul of our beautiful but prefer obeisance to Mammon?

Will we be, in Wilde’s words, a people who know the “cost of everything and the value of nothing?”

British Columbians will find out what they’re made of as the offers of money in exchange for our natural heritage come piling in.

Cartoon by Ingrid Rice

Eight old dents in believability Clark’s polish hasn’t fixed.

So, Adrian Dix is higher in the polls than Christy Clark.

It comes as no surprise to me, who has said from the beginning that Christy Clark did not have what it takes to lead a party, much less a province. If she were not premier, I would call her an airhead.

It’s interesting to note that only one person in her caucus supported her leadership bid, and he had to be shuffled into cabinet obscurity after screwing up his first minister’s post. This is an important point because under the British system, when a prime minister goes, the caucus declares who the successor will be until the next party convention. A party-wide vote, democratic though it may be, is a popularity contest, while the caucus votes the most competent successor which they are best qualified to determine. At the very least, before a leadership convention, the caucus ought to be polled and the poll made public. As expected, Premier Clark refuses to face issues by changing the subject when she is asked tough questions to her amazing plan to make B.C. the most this or that, blah, blah, blah.

Before continuing, Premier Photo-Op has refused to cancel the HST as the people demanded. In my opinion, she is very hesitant to do so for a very good reason. Clark must obey Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s every wish or Harper will queer any HST concessions. Premiers used to stand up for our province, while Ms. Clark genuflects before Prime Minister Harper as she holds out her begging bowl.

Most of all, today I want to look at some of the Campbell/Clark government’s most egregious sins which should stand out there for all to see.

This is not intended to be an exhaustive exercise. Rather, I’ll look at the Campbell/Clark government’s parsimonious use of the truth. These incidents stretching credulity I will number for your easy reference.

1. BC Rail. Let’s start with the 2001 election where Campbell promised not to privatize BC Rail. This promise was actually made in the previous election.

2. Leasing? Really? Campbell said he was only “leasing” BCR — right, for 990 years! My previous observation remains valid. “I can’t tell you what things will look like in 990 years time, but look back 990 years and Ethelred the Unready was King of England!”

3. Botched bidding. Campbell said that privatizing BCR would be above board whereas, as we now know, it was not done without a monstrous abuse of power by two criminals.

Former attorney-general and finance minister Colin Hansen now enters the narrative in a big way.

4. Rivers of promises. When promoting the virtues of run-of-river projects, Hansen has strained credulity to the breaking point, as I have argued in some detail.

5. The harmonized sales tax. Let’s move to Hansen and the HST. In the election campaign of 2009, he told us that the HST wasn’t on the radar, yet we find out after the campaign that he had a large study of this tax done, and that report was in his office six weeks before the election. In fact, the HST was laid on the table just a few days after the election.

As one who has been a minister, I can say that federal/provincial deals of this sort take many months to negotiate and so I consider it likely that Hansen and of course the premier were negotiating the HST months before the election.

We’re not finished with poor old Mr. Hansen yet.

6. Unreal budgeting. In February 2009, the government projected a rosy fiscal economic picture and that was the budget the Liberals touted throughout the election as proof they were great managers and the NDP proved wastrels. In fact, the projections in that budget were well over a billion dollars short.

The official line from Hansen and Campbell was that they were blindsided by the recession! This business-like government, the one best suited to handle our money, apparently had not heard of the stock market crash of 2007 nor the recession starting in 2008! More likely, the Liberals faked it in order to win the 2009 election.

7. Hosing Hydro. The Liberals have repeated that BC Hydro is the sacred jewel in B.C.’s possession and always would be so. Yet they forced Hydro into buying private power at a time when BC Hydro didn’t need it — and at a cost far more than were Hydro to generate its own power. For this and other reasons built into the Campbell/Clark government’s deal with private power producers, Hydro is placed at such a disadvantage that if our crown jewel were in the private sector, it would be in bankruptcy.

First it was BC Ferries, then BC Rail. Next up, BC Hydro.

8. Waking the debt. The Campbell/Clark government alleges that it is the best suited to manage our fiscal affairs and that the NDP would bankrupt the province. The fact is that while the NDP were in, the “Asian Flu” had all but wiped out our forest industry, doubling the provincial debt. Now are you ready for this? The Campbell/Clark government, starting from a much larger base, has tripled our debt!

Move on, they say

Adrian Dix did a very wrong thing during the NDP years by producing a memo and then back-dating it in an effort to make it appear that then-premier Glen Clark had instructed him to keep him at arm’s length from the process of awarding casino licences.

There is no doubt that this was egregiously wrong, but he admitted what he had done and was punished.

What the Campbell/Clark government has done is also egregiously wrong, but they have denied it and continue to deny it.

It does no good to state over and over that this was history. It’s no longer enough to invoke the timely excuse of politicians in trouble and just say, “It’s time to move on.”

Then again, maybe it is time to move on. The best way to do so is to throw this untrustworthy and incompetent bunch out on their duffs.

Cartoon by Greg Perry

Keystone is no victory if dangerous bitumen instead pumps through Kitimat or Vancouver.

What will happen to the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to Houston, Texas? Will it finally be a go after the November presidential election, or will it be tubed?

Before I go on, Damien Gillis, the master filmmaker and I, are co-founders of The Common Sense Canadian — an environmentally-based organization — and do it with virtually no money. We are both several-generation British Columbians but, if there is someone out there who wants to give us some badly needed money, with no strings, obvious or subtle, your nationality is irrelevant.

It was, I hate to admit, with mixed feelings that I heard last Wednesday that President Obama announced he would not approve Keystone XL. Now it appears that it only received, as Bill Tieleman says, a “flesh wound.” The global environmentalist in me rejoiced, but the British Columbian in me was disappointed.

It’s this way. Alberta’s tar sands industry has three ways to transport their bitumen — through the U.S. via Keystone; to Kitimat, then via tanker abroad; and the Kinder Morgan line into Vancouver’s harbour to be loaded there into tankers. If Keystone doesn’t pass muster, that will put enormous pressure on Canada’s federal government to approve the Enbridge line and increase capacity of the Kinder Morgan line.

The Enbridge proposal is to send oil by two pipelines across the wilderness of the B.C. north, over the Rockies and Coast Range — and the last remaining large rainforest in the world – to Kitimat, thence abroad to China and the U.S. by tankers up to 300 per year.

Actually, they are really two lines side-by-side — one containing bitumen and the other to take back to its source the condensate that was mixed with the bitumen to make it easier to ship.

I want to talk a bit about what this means, but first these three facts.

1. A rupture of the Enbridge is inevitable. We must stop calling these ruptures “risks” — they are mathematical certainties. The consequences will be calamitous.

2. A tanker catastrophe is also a certainty and the consequences unthinkable.

3. There is no way these “accidents” can be effectively managed.

Incidentally, since 1998 Enbridge and its subsidiaries have had over 800 spills!

On the last point, the Enbridge line will be through 1,100 kilometres of some of the wildest terrain in the world accessible only by helicopter. There is no way they can get a crew and its equipment into the site if there’s a spill. And here’s the kicker — even if they could, there is nothing they can do anyway with this stuff. Nothing.

With tankers it’s the same — a certainty that can’t be cleaned up, with disastrous consequences.

I emphasize these points because the political process is underway. If the Keystone XL line is not approved, the only outlet for the tar sands is through British Columbia. And the governments, especially the Harper one, will be pushing big time for Enbridge and the expansion of the Kinder Morgan capacity.

The big pitch

Harper will use the carrot and the stick.

For the former, he’ll tell us about the billions of dollars we’ll get and the thousands of jobs we’ll get.

(I’m reminded of the story about the irascible Harry Truman who didn’t mince words. His wife was told that her husband should stop saying “crap” whereupon Mrs. Truman replied, “You can have no idea how difficult it was to make him use that word”.)

I will, comfortable in the fact that 2012 is a long way from 1948, use the only term adequate to this bit about billions and jobs — it’s plain bullshit.

Where the hell are these billions coming from — rights of way over the land we’ll abandon to destruction? The plain fact is that we get next to nothing and bear the consequences of the rupture or spill to come.

There will be short-term jobs but most of them, the skilled ones, will go to outside crews experienced in building pipelines. In the longer term, there’ll be few caretakers after it’s completed.

Then there’s the little matter of First Nations, 131 of which are opposed to all three B.C. lines, each of which can seek court support which, based upon Supreme Court of Canada decisions, will almost certainly be granted.

I was at the news conference where 131 chiefs signed on to fight this battle, and both Damien and I came away convinced that they would remain so committed. The government and Enbridge assume that this agreement is just a bargaining chip. We’ll see. But it only takes one First Nation to successfully sue to tube it all.

We are expected to see our forest and coastline condemned to spills which will wreak havoc on animals and our precious salmon without uttering a murmur of dissent.

The public will

Here is the terrible aspect to it all. Canadians and especially British Columbians will be at each others’ throats. There will be violence God only knows how serious. This will, of course, be attributed to those who oppose this dreadful policy. But it is the oil sands backers who are asking for it. Blame the victim is the cry!

Neither government cares a damn for us or for our environment. We are, in the minds of the Harper government, hewers of wood and drawers of water, and we should just accept what we’re ordered to do.

British Columbians back in 1992 were presented with a constitution, the so-called Charlottetown Accord, and voted it down 70-30. I have no doubt that, given the chance to vote on the pipelines, they will give a similar response.

For there to be, in the words of our constitution, “Peace, order and good government,” Harper must provide the last. And best he start soon.

On New Years Eve, in addition to looking to a new year like the rest of you, I started my ninth and likely last decade.

Before going on, let me thank all of you who helped celebrate my roast back on Nov. 24. It was a night I’ll never forget and I spent the lot of it shuffling through tears and laughter.

(In the laughter department, as well as in the teary part, the editor of this journal, David Beers, brought the house down!)

Sadly, the Vancouver Island group, including Mike Smyth and Moe Sihota, were kept away by high seas and no ferries. I was especially sad that Dr. Gordon Hartman, one of the celebrated “dissident scientists” from the DFO, who helped so much to win the Alcan struggle with his honesty and integrity, was stuck home in Nanaimo.

Gordon fashioned a beautiful walking stick for me, to be presented that night, made from a rare B.C. willow and an even rarer African hardwood. On the cane itself he has etched many of the environmental battles I’ve been in over the years — the Skagit, the Nechako (Alcan), Fish Lake, fish farms and private power. If you chance upon me in your travels — I mean this — ask me to show it to you. It means a great deal to me.

It’s traditional at this time of the year for loud mouths like me to look into the crystal beer glass and pronounce upon what is to come.

Since the beginning of time, the struggle has been between them that has and them that hasn’t. This goes back, I daresay, to Uncle Uglug’s time, as he fought over hunting grounds. I know that what I’ve just said seems trite but it is especially worth pondering as we look ahead to 2012 and beyond.

The less advantaged levels of society have always fought for whatever they could nip from the pie, always securely held by those who control the treasury and the law, controls that largely pass from generation to generation.

History, largely written by the “haves” (of which I and my family are a part), tells us that the progress from feudalism through the Renaissance/Reformation, the 100 Years War and the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries has brought a steady supply of positive change to lower income groups and that things changed.

Looked at objectively, that’s a hard case to make. The Reformation didn’t break the power of the church, just made a few more of them. Powerful priests remained, moderators and archbishops replaced cardinals, and took a little power from the Pope and spread it around a bit. The 30 Years War made countries into nations but scarcely ended wars, which, as always, are soldiered by the “lower” classes; the Industrial Revolution brought even greater prosperity to the rich (rather it created a whole new rich class) while devastation for labourers who lost their jobs to machines; revolutions came and went leaving little to show other than grudging extensions of the franchise, gradually to women and to men who owned property; revolutions or fear of them forced western “Establishment” to recognize, grudgingly, some rights for others; slavery was abolished in the U.S., 80 years after their lofty Bill of Rights was passed — in actuality it wasn’t really abolished, it was just that “massa” had to pay (pitiful) wages and he couldn’t sell his labourers.

It’s hard to detect any comparative change — if the poor did improve their lives, the improvement of the richer class was proportionately greater.

What was created was a “middle class,” which to the poor was indistinguishable from the upper class.

Rights grudgingly granted

But didn’t 19th-century democracy bring the trade union? The vote? The right to property for all? The right to seek the justice of the law?

Marginally.

After uprisings like the Tolpuddle martyrs, the blood of the Peterloo massacre, The Haymarket massacre and the fear of worse, the Establishment grudgingly expanded rights, always keeping their hands on the till, on the justice system and the tools of governing. In fact the yielded rights did nothing to erase the caste system and the “rule of law” meant laws set down to preserve the status quo. The inner cities of the Industrial Revolution have been replaced by the ghettoes and homeless in that part of our cities the nice people choose to ignore.

We are witnessing the “Arab Spring” as millions, here in the 21st century, seek, in the same way as in olden times, equality and freedom, the right to prompt and just justice, the right to vote and have that vote count. The Establishment will, maybe, ease the burden of the poor by gently transferring chump change to the poor from the rich without them fussing too much. The reality mostly being “same old, same old.” My point is a simple one. The powerful, be they Uncle Uglug, Henry VIII, Napoleon, or the evil dictators of the 20th century or the governments of so-called democracies — the names may change but political and economical reality hasn’t. If you have the bucks you get what you want.

What do we have in Canada today?

Much better freedom and justice than, say, Pakistan, North Korea or Saudi Arabia. But do we have a democracy where everyone counts and justice is free, prompt and just?

Of course we don’t — and our so-called justice system is none of the above. Judges are selected by the “haves” behind closed doors, the time the system takes as it mosies along at its leisurely pace is contemptible and the cost puts the system beyond the reach of all but the rich. What is or is not a crime — and the punishment — often militate against the poor and often forgive the well off.

Do we have a stratified system?

Of course we do and any who strays outside the acceptable bounds of dissent is “sent to Coventry.” The Mainstream Media is owned by the Establishment and those who work in it either self-censor or are censored. The “journalist” doesn’t need to be told what to say or write. As the wise man said, “You cannot bribe or twist / Thank God the British* Journalist. / Considering what the man will do / unbribed, there’s no occasion to.” (*Put in any nationality to suit.)

Ask anyone who’s been jailed for defending ordinary citizens against the bulldozers of the large corporations how fair the system is.

Ask those who want to protest conferences or other gatherings of heads of state and government who, in a just world, would be behind bars.

Ask those who protest the building of a highway through pristine natural preserves.

Illusion of democracy

What we have in Canada is the appearance of democracy, but as the scales fall from our eyes, we see the sham. In the U.S. we see millions being spent to elect a governor who makes $250,000 a year, hundreds of millions to elect a president who makes half a million. Are we to assume that no payback is expected for this, ah, generosity?

In Canada it’s no better. We spend hundreds of thousands electing MLAs and MPs who have exactly zero influence on what government does. We say “let’s vote for Bloggs, he’ll make a great MLA” — even though he goes to Victoria as a slave to the premier. Indeed the premier likely pays more attention to his barber than poor Bloggs or any one in his caucus (Maybe he should!).

Think upon it. If you are a Canadian voter, in your hand is the ballot paper, the key to power and the exercise of that power, right? Permit me to put a few questions,

How much say have you in permitting salmon farms? In their proliferation? What say do you now have as the licences increase?

How much say did you have in saving BCRail? In fact, Premier Campbell promised not to sell BCRail but did it any way. Did you have any say, Hell, knowledge, of the criminal aspects to how it was sold?

How much impact have you had on an energy policy that devastates our rivers so that private power companies can sell the power to BC Hydro, which though it doesn’t need it must buy it for double what they can re-sell it for? When did you vote to change a public-power system into a private one? What power do you have to save BC Hydro from the bankruptcy it’s technically now in?

How much say will you have stopping pipelines carrying tar sands gunk to Kitimat to be sent by tanker down our coast, at the same time the most beautiful and treacherous coastline in the world?

Here it is in a nutshell. We, the people of B.C., have not had and never will have the slightest impact on these decisions, which will destroy our way of living. They’ll all be made by CEOs, approved by a paid-for premier or prime minister, who having no one to stop him will have it approved by a captive cabinet then by the lickspittles on the government backbench.

We have never needed democracy more than now and the lack of it will cost us dear. For unless there’s a sea change in how we’re governed, we will have violence. The public knows that our environment is in serious jeopardy because our governments are so in thrall to the corporate boardroom that they dare not fight them. The public sees that the democratic option is gone.

End of their tether

Now we see Premier Photo-Op surveying the scene, pronouncing that she will have no opinion on the Enbridge pipeline and the consequent tanker traffic until the Environmental Assessments — the “rubber stamp” process — is complete!

Any damned fool, with the exception of Premier Clark, knows that pipeline ruptures and tanker spills are not risks but certainties waiting to happen. By approving the pipelines and tanker traffic we will have certain disaster… not perhaps, not maybe, not only if we have bad luck, but certain catastrophe.

What can the enraged and neutered populace do?

Do we allow these desecrations to our home take place without a fight?

When an all powerful autocracy emerges, history teaches us that the resultant combination of frustration added to anger turns good men and women to civil disobedience,

You tell me, Madam Clark, Mr. Harper — what are we to do?

Depend on Parliament/legislature? Depend upon the courts to back us up on our quest to save and return our heritage? Uphold the rule of law when it has been reduced to that which suits the powerful only?

I put it to the captains of industry and their purchased politicians — read your history! See what happens when the public has reached the end of its tether. Then ask yourself, what’s different today?

And how long do you think the public will take this shit without fighting back?