This is the all time shortest.

Within the next four years, BC Hydro, once as good a power utility as there  was in the world, will be broken up.

It is, you see, presently bankrupt by private corporation standards, and only keeps, barely, afloat because it can and does go to us the taxpayers and consumers for more money.

This will end because the taxpayers/ratepayers will be tapped out.

Just what form the break-up takes, we’ll have to wait and see, but as sure as God made little green apples, she’s a goner. Read full article at The Common Sense Canadian

The story is more than a matter of manners, for the truth is that Adrian Dix blew the election – big time.

I warned the NDP over and over about how their campaign was letting the Liberals get back into the fight after the NDP had a 20 point advantage in the private polls.

With over two weeks to go in the election, I wrote in thetyee.ca and on this website:

It surprises me that Adrian Dix is playing softball with these issues. This is looking like ’09 all over again.

Mr. Dix, your position on the Kinder Morgan tanker port proposal was nice but marred by the delay. I told you many months ago that if you were opposed to Enbridge that logic should make you opposed to Kinder Morgan as the issues are the same. Read full article at The Common Sense Canadian

“Christy Clark has on the side of her bus, ‘Debt Free BC’. We owe $171 Billion dollars! Since the Liberals came to power, our per capita share of debt has gone from a little over $5,000 to $40,000 – every man, woman and child…Ask the folks in Greece or in Cyrpus or in Italy what happens when the day of reckoning comes. And the day of reckoning is going to come with this.”

Throughout the emotional 10 min address, Mair speaks of his concern for today’s youth and future generations. “We have now a situation in British Columbia that keeps me from shutting my mouth. I can’t do it – not as an old man. I see the country literally at a watershed. I see the province at a point where if proper decisions are not made promptly, we’re condemning our children and grandchildren to eternal debt.”

Required viewing for all British Columbians on the eve of the May 14 election.

Cartoon by Ingrid Rice

They’ve proven to be no friends to BC’s finances, nature or the truth.

The polls are “tightening”? Have we taken leave of our senses? Surely the people of B.C. can’t endure another four years of corruption and mismanagement!

Here are my top five reasons why Christy Clark and her party must be refused a new mandate:

1. The BC Liberals have been lousy fiscal managers.

This gang, Jesse James in drag, in 2008 presented an election budget that later turned out to be $1.2 billion out of whack. Now they expect another chance?

Since 2001, the Liberals have increased the individual debt of every man, woman and child in this province from about $8,000 to $40,000. That’s nearly five times more, and in a non-inflationary era. The province on the Campbell/Clark watch is in hock for over $170 billion. (To see how I come by these numbers, read this earlier column by me.)

British Columbians are accustomed to ignoring these sorts of numbers as being just accountants’ jargon they need never be concerned about.

Well, friends, that same sentiment not too long ago prevailed in Iceland, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain. They learned as we will that size does matter.

2. The BC Libs destroying three public jewels created by WAC Bennett.

WAC Bennett brought us BC Ferries to extend the highway service to remote places. He gave us BC Rail to help “outer” BC develop. And BC Hydro was developed to bring us cheap power in our homes and our industries.

Let’s look at BC Ferries. The Libs managed to give it away to a private corporation but still has to pay the bills and straighten up the never ending screw-ups.

BC Rail was a fraud steeped in financial stink — surely this alone should consign this bunch to the political dust bin!

We once had one of the best power companies in the world. Now, thanks to Liberal giveaways to private pals, Hydro is forced to buy power it doesn’t need from environmental rapists in corporate boardrooms at more than double the market cost. BC Hydro owes these government pals more than $60 billion over the next 20-30 years with plenty more to come. If BC Hydro, once the jewel in our crown, were in the private sector it would be bankrupt. It is only kept afloat because it can pass all these political pay-offs to us the users. The dots are easy to connect — Campbell/Clark forces Hydro to pay outrageous slush money to private pals for power it can’t use then has Hydro raise its rates to get the bribe money!

3. The BC Libs have lied about their fiscal plans.

This is the same bunch that wants our trust after they promised in the 2009 election that a Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) wasn’t even on the radar screen. Then, seeing how badly they had bungled the budget, brought in the HST; then after a huge public outcry had to hold a referendum, cancel the tax leaving untold — as yet — the vast amount we owe to the federal government.

4. The BC Libs deny the facts about oil risks.

Premier Photo-op will give us pipelines because she will enforce severe, world class safety rules. She can enforce any laws she pleases but there will still be terrible spills. Enbridge, with its appalling record, demonstrated in Kalamazoo, Michigan that even when the spill is close to home it cannot be cleaned up. What then of our spills which will happen in the Rocky Mountains, the Rocky Mountain Trench, the Coast Range and the Great Bear Rain Forest as certain as God made little green apples? Even if they could be cleaned up — which they can’t — how the hell do you get crews and machines to these places?

Ocean spills are too terrifying to contemplate. A tanker spilling bitumen would likely create a mess making Exxon Valdez seem like a dog peeing on a carpet.

In spite of Clark’s assurances we will not have spills on land and sea, we will, and spill by spill, destroy our pristine province. Instead of being rewarded, the lot of them ought to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

5. The BC Liberal pitch is a dangerous get rich scheme built on dubious dreams.

Fracking is a process that drills deep into the shale fields to find and extract trapped oil and gas, using huge quantities of chemical-laced water to force the gas and oil vertically to the surface.

Where does this water come from?

What’s done with the polluted and poisoned water afterwards?

As it stands, Premier Clark is building Site “C” to provide subsidized power to the fracking process, we’re told. Industry is unable to make capitalism work in this case.

By 2017, says Ms. Clark, why this fracking will pay off our provincial debt and put $100 billion in a prosperity fund to keep us and our kids rich forever more.

The scheme raises some awkward questions, including: Where’s the market? China claims to have enough shale gas and oil to last them 500 years! Russia has the two largest deposits in the world. North America is awash in the stuff.

The furthest ahead in getting into the fracking game is Australia which has dumped billions of taxpayer dollars into the fracking market which, to date, has not materialized.

The polls are “tightening” you say? Could that really be because we are so sadly susceptible when Christy Clark tells us this fairy tale:

“Remember Mr. Dix’s falsified memo while forgetting our multitudinous scams and dirty deals and look ahead to seeing us retiring our debt and putting our province on easy street just after the election of 2017!

“And oh yes, cameras at the ready! Where’s my next baby to kiss?”

This could mean one of two things – we are now debt free or we will be. Either way, this statement stands as the all-time whopper in BC history and that covers a hell of a lot of territory.

I do not rely on politically-oriented think tanks for my information, rather noted independent economist Erik Andersen. If you add the $70 Billion in direct debt projected in Clark’s latest Budget to secret “taxpayer obligations” relating to private power contracts and public-private partnership (P3) infrastructure deals, you get – wait for it – over $170 BILLION, that’s with a “B”.

What is important to know about the debt is that in 2001, when the Liberals took over, every man, woman and child owed a shade over $8,000. Today we each owe $40,000 – five times what we owed before this so-called business-oriented, fiscally careful bunch of cheats and hypocrites took over.

No matter how you crunch the numbers, the NDP governments in their decade look like misers and skinflints next to this bunch.

Assuming that Premier Clark is referring to her “Prosperity Fund”, this is pie in the sky and cow pie at that.

You may remember that the Premier first announced this as imminent. Now it is after the 2017 election! It might be added that by then, BC will be in even deeper financial trouble than today.

There is little, if any, certainty that the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) will ever come on stream. There must be markets for it offshore, since the domestic market is flooded in natural gas from “fracking”. To give you a bit of a feel for this, only a few months ago, the industry and government flacks were talking about the huge Asian need for our gas in LNG form, then we recently learned that our biggest potential customer, China, was sitting on some of the world’s biggest unconventional gas reserves. Russia has the largest supply of gas in the world.

The plain truth of the matter is that a large scale LNG industry in BC is speculative at best.

Let’s look at a couple of natal difficulties faced by companies.

A long-term market demand such as would justify LNG from BC just isn’t likely to be there in four years’ time.

Secondly, the LNG industry faces huge environmental hurdles. Two major questions in that regard are:

1. Where will the masses of water needed come from? We simply don’t have “free water” available.
2. After this water is laced with highly toxic chemicals, where will if go? Into the water table?

These two matters only touch some of the environmental issues – which include the climate impacts of all the greenhouse gases associated with this industry.

The underpinning of the industry is hundreds of millions of dollars in pipelines and port facilities. Premier Clark wants voters to brush aside these and many collateral concerns, thus convince voters that in four or five years all these issues will be resolved, including air-tight contracts with Asian customers to take this LNG. (It should be added that if, say, China, signs such a contract, the minute they no longer need our product they will vanish into the atmosphere.).

It surprises me that Adrian Dix is playing softball with these issues. This is looking like ’09 all over again.

Mr. Dix, your position on the Kinder Morgan tanker port proposal was nice but marred by the delay. I told you many months ago that if you were opposed to Enbridge that logic should make you opposed to Kinder Morgan as the issues are the same.

Your position favouring LNG plants is puzzling, if only because you seem to be following Clark’s pied piper’s seductive path to supporting a dream that is almost certain never to come true.

To you, Mr. Dix, there is no way this government can win on its merits – you have to give it to them and you seem to be trying your best to do just this. What is truly troublesome is your amiable Adrian approach, with an endless stream of small policy announcements – sort of a fart a day.

I realize that people tell you that they want a politer politics in BC. That’s what Bob Skelly tried in the 80s and you know what happened to him.

Politics is a blood sport and your nicely, nicely approach is letting Premier Clark get away with murder. Despite a fivefold increase in the provincial debt, she’s painting you as wastrels and her government as  careful money managers!

Your best issue, the appalling fiscal policy of the Campbell/Clark government, is being used as a positive thing for them and you are responding rather than attacking. We’re seeing a tactic similar to when agents acting for George W. Bush, a draft dodger, denigrated the much-decorated John Kerry’s war record so they could lay claim to being strong on national defence. You’re becoming the essence of John Kerry, reacting weakly on issues that should have you on the attack!

On environmental issues you seem to be passive and non-threatening! These issues, along with the dismal Liberal record on money matters, ought to have you leading firmly, not cowering behind a cloud of good manners.

Mr. Dix, it’s yours to win and to quote the Baseball manager Lou Durocher, “nice guys finish last”.

I think Adrian Dix would be mad to “debate” with Premier Clark one on one.

I realize that as one who thinks Premier Clark and the entire BC Liberal government have been a catastrophe you might expect I would feel this way.

In the three elections that pitted Bill Bennett against Dave Barrett, Bennett refused the “one on one” and won all three. He said, essentially when you debate Barrett you don’t know if you’re “debating Karl Marx or Groucho….” The real reason was that Bennett knew that Barrett was the better showman — Bennett didn’t have any showmanship that one could detect and that he wanted to be premier not court jester. The public evidently agreed.

The main objection from Dix would be that as the leader in the polls he has much more to lose than Clark, thus why so put yourself in harm’s way more than you have to?

In my own small way, in the two successful campaigns I had for the Legislature I refused one on one debates.

Is this being a chicken?

I don’t think so. It’s about a debate that has no relation to a real debate. That the media calls them debates indicates they are afraid to call it for what it is — a media event where reporters try to attach themselves to bad sound bites.

On a range of topics the mainstream media’s opinion page editors and columnists have proven themselves generally biased on a range of issues, from fish farms to tankers along B.C.’s coast. And, certainly, biased in favour of the BC Liberals. What happened to the Vancouver Province and Sun which, during the New Democrat decade, held the government’s feet firmly to the fire?

If you were Adrian Dix would you trust your debate interrogators to be fair?

One line can change an election

Having said that, we have come to expect a TV debate and neither Clark nor Dix can avoid that.

The notion that our TV “debates” are in fact debates was dashed in 1991 when then Liberal leader, Gordon Wilson (without a seat in the Legislature), got off on a one-liner that catapulted his party to 17 seats up from zero. We learn from that that the party that has nothing to lose relishes these meetings.

It happened like this — NDP Mike Harcourt and then premier Rita Johnston were scrapping and Wilson shot out with “that’s why nothing gets done in this province.” In fact scrapping debates — of which Wilson was a master — are that which leaves us with a tiny bit of democracy in this province. But it killed the Socreds, never to rise again.

Global is not trying to be public spirited but to sell soapsuds. The media questioners will be looking for sound bites, not answers.

Ratings over insights

Now to the all-candidates debate. It would be courting disaster for Dix to avoid that even though he and his advisors no doubt discussed that. No doubt the usual suspects will be asking the questions.

The “debate” the media relishes is not an exchange in ideas but a political homicide. The essential weakness in both what Global proposes and the all candidates version is that a slanted media gets to ask the questions designed to increase ratings – not to find out policy but extricate one-liners. The questions asked are loaded statements with a question mark after them rather than simply raising of serious issues.

A pointed and apropos question would be, “Since the private power scheme came in, BC Hydro has become in bad shape financially. Do you agree and if so why? And if not, why not?”

Another: “Do you or do you not approve of pipelines carrying dilbut (bitumen) across the province and tankers shipping them out of ports, whether Kitimaat, Vancouver or wherever? If you agree, why? If you don’t agree, why not?”

“Do you support ‘fracking,’ there having been almost no study of the environmental issues?”

“Do you approve of Site “C” being developed at a cost of $8 BILLION+ so, as the premier has said, it can support the creation of liquefied natural gas, or for any other reason?” If you oppose, why?

“Do you approve of forcing fish farms to go on dry land? If so, why? If not, why not?”

“Do you approve of land being taken out of the ALR for industry?” Is it OK some times and not others?

“In the ’90s, the NDP government doubled the provincial debt. In the last 12 years the Liberals tripled it. What, if anything, do you propose to do about it? Will you raise taxes to carry on? What is your tax policy?”

Greens and Conservatives welcome?

I must confess to being reluctant to have parties which have no seat in the legislature be part of the debate. If you do that, what about independent candidates who are already in the legislature? Shouldn’t they have a place too? Indeed, how does one draw the line? What about “fringe” parties? How do you tell, in this case, two parties without seats, the Greens and Conservatives, that they can take part without allowing in other parties? What about the modern version of Screaming Lord Sutch and his Raving Loony Party? Sound silly?

Where do you, and how do you, draw the line?

As far as the proposed Global two-person debate, Adrian Dix has made the right decision even though this might eat into his support. Premier Clark has nothing to lose and can say what she wishes. She can be the proverbial loose cannon while every utterance by Dix will be gone over with great care as the interrogators look for unhelpful quotes.

The debate would be good for Global but that’s no concern of Adrian Dix’s.

Who will cover the cleanup costs of an oil spill like this one by Enbridge into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River?

The news out of the Joint Review Panel looking into the Enbridge pipeline should have a profound effect on us all.

One of the conditions is a requirement that Enbridge carry close to $1 billion in insurance, plus $100 million on hand to cover losses from spills.

I find this interesting, since normally an assessment of future damages covered is accompanied by an assessment of the risk to be covered. What is the size of the risk and how big a part of that risk will be taken? This so in every kind of insurance – be it life, casualty, automobile, what have you. This means not only must there be an assessment of the risk – i.e. is there likely to be a loss – but how much is a loss going to cost? This is especially true of casualty insurance, as the Joint Review Panel is dealing with here.

The second critical point is whether or not the insurer will continue to cover Enbridge after a loss has occurred? Can they cancel, leaving Enbridge’s further damages up to us the people?

This story will be seen (Enbridge hopes) as an encouraging sign, because opponents will be shut up now that these big numbers are involved.

I am not impressed – indeed quite the opposite – for this indicates that the Joint Panel thinks that there’s a risk involved. There is in fact a certainty. Dealing with this as simply “a risk” and announcing the coverage required is asking us to accept that “risk” because the damages are prepaid. Moreover, the amount of insurance involved is nowhere near what the ultimate cost will be and ignores the question: what will the long range cost to our environment be and how do you comopute that loss? If one uses, as an example, the Enbridge spill into the Kalamazoo River, two years later they had used up all of their insurance of $650 million. The cleanup continues and the cost is expected to be over a billion dollars and much of the damage is forever.

Enbridge will be required to demonstrate insurance coverage at $950 billion – roughly equivalent cost of the Kalamazoo spill. BUT, the Kalamazoo spill was easily accessed. There were no mountain ranges like the Rockies or the Coast Range; no Rocky Mountain Trench; no Great Bear Rainforest to contend with. Let us, for God’s sake, ask a key question: How does Enbridge have access to spills on land? How does it get labour and heavy equipment to the spill? Doesn’t the Kalamazoo spill demonstrate that there can never be a total cleanup?

The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has cost, so far, about $36 billion and rising.

Another critical question is who insures oil tankers, especially when many of them will be owned by companies flying a flag of convenience like Panama, the Cayman Islands and the like?

How is a coastal spill to be cleaned up and at whose cost?

What the people of British Columbia are certainly to have are spills on land and sea for which they will pay much of the cleanup out of their taxes. What we are also certain to have is enormous environmental damage forever.

Finally, the pronouncement of the Joint Review Panel should be assessing the frequency and probability of damage and laying that before the public for a decision as to whether or not these pipelines should be built in the first place.

This won’t be done and the Harper government is on record giving its approval of these pipelines no matter what the National Energy Board recommends.

Given the Kalamazoo experience, how does Enbridge control and clean up a spill when the only access is by helicopter? Every way one looks at this case shows huge costs – much paid by the public – with permanent damage to our environment.

I’m not so naïve as to think I’ll ever be satisfied, but neither is anyone else. Unless we’re members of a party or one of its cheerleaders we understand that human institutions will contain the human frailties we all have.

First, I want an understanding of this simple proposition – the NDP in the 90s were hit by the failure of the Thai baht, which crippled our forestry industry, thus our provincial coffers. The NDP had no notice of this event nor did anyone else. During their time in office, the BC Debt increased two fold.

On the other hand, the Liberals suffered from the crash of the stock market and a fairly deep recession. They did or ought to have had notice of this. All the signs were there. The longest Bull Market in history. Bad mortgages being bundled as “securities”. An over-heated economy. If the BC Ministry of Finance didn’t report the obvious signs, they should have been cashiered to a person. Or, more likely, if the Finance Minister didn’t demand the key figures on a regular basis, or didn’t report the truth to the cabinet, he should have been cashiered. But I go further – it wasn’t just the Minister of Finance who had that obligation but Treasury Board. I’ve been there and know how the system is supposed to work.

During the Liberal years the provincial debt and other hidden “taxpayer obligations” – which are a debt, just by another name – have more than quadrupled!

Secondly, I want a government of people for people, not political hacks governing for the few.

During the Liberal era, we’ve seen the privatization of BC Ferries, the giveaway of BC Rail and the essential bankruptcy of BC Hydro.

Let’s deal with the latter. And I suggest that the main reason the Campbell/Clark Government hasn’t been more answerable for Hydro is that no one can believe that any government could be so goddamned stupid as to force BC Hydro to take private power, whether they need it or not, at more than double the market price and up to ten times more expensively than Hydro can make it itself. BC Hydro has gone from being the jewel in our crown to a faded rose that owes private companies about $60 BILLION, which will be paid off by the taxpayer.

That, sad to relate, is not the only bit of bad news from Hydro, which is fixing to build Site “C” as an $8 billion dollar support of the natural gas industry and its commitment to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). This will be done notwithstanding the distinct possibility that there will be no long term international need of our gas. Site “C” will destroy more than 4,000 hectares of some of the finest farmland in the country. This isn’t supposition – Premier Clark has dedicated Site “C” power to the making of LNG.

Thirdly, I want a government that cares about the environment. The Liberals are very good at saying they are for the environment but that sort of Orwellian bafflegab ought not to fool anyone.

It is they who are responsible for the death and disease to our wild salmon by farmed Atlantic salmon cages.

Not only have the Liberals not stood against sending bitumen in pipelines across our province – they have, through the premier’s mouth, supported one for David Black’s proposed refinery in Kitimat. It follows from this that the Clark government supports oil tanker traffic in at least three ports in BC, including the port of Vancouver.

I want a government committed to the preservation of farmland – not one that gives it away in Delta and destroys it in Peace River country.

I want a government that is committed in fact to the concerns of First Nations.

I want a government that does not spend public money on party business.

I want a different attitude than expounding tenets of the Fraser Institute, where help for people is given grudgingly and then only because they must; I want a government that looks after people because it is the right thing to do.

Finally, I’m just tired of this bunch. Perhaps it’s BC Rail and the private power bust-up of BC Hydro that has me most upset. These two acts were not a mistake…or perhaps just a deal that didn’t work out. The former wouldn’t pass the most elementary smell test and the latter is plainly a pay-off to pals. In both cases the damage to our economy has been enormous and in the latter case ongoing.

If nothing else, it’s time for this bunch to sit in the sin-bin and watch for awhile.

In simple terms, we owe Ottawa $1.6 BILLION by backing out of the HST. It’s not brain surgery – any deal Prime Minister Harper makes to lessen this burden will require Premier Clark to not oppose the pipelines.

What other explanation can be made when you consider how quickly and enthusiastically she supported David Black’s proposed refinery in Kitimat? How is the bitumen to get to this refinery? By carrier pigeon?

Going back to the beginning of her premiership, Clark has shown sympathy for pipelines, albeit opaquely at first, until she moved to the position that if the money’s right, no problem. Of course she will demand that the pipelines be built very carefully and that any leaks are promptly taken care of by “world class” methods and, of course, Enbridge will – cross its heart and hope to die – promise that this will be done.

In reality, it’s down to money. There is now a price tag on her approval and that will, she supposes, make it all better for those nutty citizens who are so opposed to “progress”.

The Campbell/Clark government is utterly without a soul. Social costs are paid grudgingly. They love building things, no matter what the environmental cost will be. They are astonished that so many British Columbians regard the Pacific Salmon and the waters in which they reside as sacred. They think that all they must do is approve a project in principle then run it through a phony economic and “environmental assessment” process and they’ve been good little boys and girls.

This government assumes the corporations are telling the truth when they promise to practice according to the rules, so they never police and enforce rules. If a corporation does disobey the rules, they need  have no fear, because even if the government does inspect, there won’t be any fines or other punishment – in fact with fish farms, when they were fined for breaches of the rules by an NDP government, they were instantly refunded when the Liberals took over. Indeed, the minister in charge used to warn the fish farms when the enforcers were going to visit!

The NDP policy re: pipelines is timid to say the least. We will see their actual policy when they lay out their platform in a couple of weeks.

What we know for sure is that Enbridge – indeed all corporations that wish to destroy our environment further – will jump for joy if the Liberals win.

And when that happens, the British Columbia we know and love will no longer be protected, for this surrender to large government and corporate interests will be the precedent by which further and more serious incursions will be approved by our political masters.

Postscript: The latest buzz word for those who support the despoliation of our land, which includes the Federal Conservatives and Provincial Liberals to a person, means that there must be a trial before the hanging. It denotes a cute little pas de deux, where the government says OK – but only after an environmental “process”. A little thought shows that we are deprived of saying we don’t want the damned thing in the first place.

There is no better example l know of this than the proposed McNab Creek gravel quarry. We are all invited to suggest environmental safeguards instead of being asked if we want it at all.

Here is one of three salmon spawning rivers in Howe Sound and we’ll throw that away for a gravel pit!

If you were to ask the local MP to help stop it he would say it must go through the “process”, which is a sham like the old Soviet Union “show trials” were.

Cartoon by Ingrid Rice

Surveying the BC Liberal wreckage brings to mind Cromwell’s famous exhortation.

Judging from the madness coming from Victoria the gods must be very angry indeed.

The premier promises to pour more than $100 billion into a so-called Prosperity Fund (this from a government that has tripled the provincial debt since taking office). The money is supposed to flow from development of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), the riches at first promised to arrive three years from today, and now projected to be five years away — safely past the 2017 election. All of those billions are to be generated by a source that may not even exist if natural gas prices don’t rise and the betting is they won’t.

In fact Russia has now identified the two largest shale gas deposits in the world and the latest from China is that she has sufficient energy to last her 500 years. America will be self-sufficient in two years using, ironically, tar sands oil. Whether these stories turn out to be 100 per cent right remains to be seen. “Fracking” shale gas in quantity is new on the world energy stage but it does tell you that this is not a very good time to be declaring huge Prosperity Funds from gas sales five years hence. Moreover, even if LNG does turn out to be a moneymaker for B.C., thanks to the fiscal ineptness of the Liberals the money will be badly needed in general revenue.

Time out to look at that last bit. The Liberals claim that their fiscal woes came from a recession they couldn’t see coming. That is, as my old St. Georges master used to say, tommyrot. The only way they could have been surprised was to avoid paying attention. If my wife and I could see it coming, and act upon it, surely the minister of finance could have, indeed should have, seen it too. The stock market was over-heated. It was the longest bull market on record. All stock brokers were selling instruments which bundled unsafe mortgages. The real estate market had gone nuts. But somehow the Campbell/Clark government didn’t sense that something was wrong with this picture!

In 1980, during very good times, finance minister Hugh Curtis came to a cabinet I happened to be in, saying that bad times were imminent. He knew this because of figures the ministry of finance gave him about sales tax revenues, stumpage and other indicators. The government immediately put in a restraint program whose first impact was felt by ministers themselves. In 1983 Bennett ran on a “restraint” program and won handily. They were tough times but B.C. did better than anywhere else in Canada.

The NDP during the 1990s do have a fair excuse for their fiscal problems for when the Thai baht suddenly crashed the entire world was caught by surprise. To all intents and purposes B.C. lost its forest industry.

Tallying the damage

Back to today.

Premier Clark has done nothing but flip flop. She has not shown a soupcon of leadership on any front and has been appalling on environmental issues at a time, as never before, that subject has British Columbians seriously concerned.

It’s not brain surgery, folks. Pipelines will burst and tankers will sink and when they do, they will be impossible to clean up because of the substance being transported, bitumen, is heavier than water and and more viscous than molasses, thus fatal to all that comes in contact with it. The consequences are horrible — see the billion dollar Enbridge Kalamazoo spill for an eye-opener. And unlike there, B.C.’s rugged terrain offers no way one can get equipment into the areas these pipelines traverse.

Under the Campbell/Clark government we’ve seen 70 rivers in one state of ruin or another in what has euphemistically called “run of river,” while putting a very healthy BC Hydro into what in the private sector, would be bankruptcy. For those who haven’t followed this, under deals the Liberals have forced on BC Hydro, it must buy all the private power produced at more than double the market price and about 10 times what they can make it for themselves whenever it’s produced! The biggest production of private power comes with the run-off when BC Hydro’s reservoirs are full and it doesn’t need it. (No, it cannot be stored.)

I know it’s hard to believe that any government could be so stupid but political power does go to the head and full election coffers are a joy to behold. When one includes the BC Ferries shenanigans it’s surely fair to label this government as corrupt.

Despite all this and more, the Liberals, with breathtaking chutzpah, will be running on their assertion that the NDP are bad monetary managers while they are super.

The election in May will see the Liberals running on issues of the 1990s, never letting us forget that Adrian Dix once backdated a sensitive document — for which he resigned, something Gordon Campbell didn’t do when he shamed the province by going to jail for drunk driving.

Just go

Apart from all other considerations this government has been in power too long.

To the meat of the matter. Christy Clark bodes well to become the Ujjal Dosanjh of 2013 with the same consequences and they have something in common – both were actively disapproved of by their caucuses from the beginning.

One must always start the next point by saying that in politics six weeks is an eternity and that strange things can happen in elections. Having said that, why doesn’t the premier step down and let someone with the confidence of the party, both the caucus and the membership, take over?.

It surely can’t be that she’s dumb enough to think she deserves another go at it! Could it just be hubris? Does she really think that she will do better in the election than, say, George Abbott?

Is it a matter of personal pride? Does she not care that because of her personal desires she destroyed the Liberal party?

Surely she knows that if May 14 produces a wipe out the result will not be like 2001 when the NDP were wiped out, because they still had a vibrant party on which to rely. As with the Socreds in 1991, the “right” will go through political convulsions before they can establish a new coalition. Does the premier not understand that? Does she care?

The truth is that Christy Clark has been a disaster from the start, as I predicted when she became leader. Now she’s about to pull down her party and send its core support into the ether, only to be recaptured after a minimum of four years but more likely at least eight or even more.

Now we see Liberal candidates, obviously ashamed, playing down their party.

As Cromwell said to the Rump parliament, repeated by Leo Amery referring to Neville Chamberlain on May 10, 1940:

“You have been sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”