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Liberal Opposition will make life very difficult for NDP-Greens

Jul 12th, 2017 by

BC Liberal MLAs in the Legislature (Province of BC / Flickr)

I wish John Horgan and his new government well. He has his work cut out for him.

There has been a load of pollyannish bullshit spouted by the media about what will and what will not happen to his shaky government when it finally gets going. And that’s my first note. As soon as the LG called upon him to form a government, Mr. Horgan should have done so. After his time watching his colleagues in opposition, surely be could have have presented a Council to Her Honour in 24 hours.

Is the answer to the delay perhaps that this matter had not yet been settled with Dr. Weaver? That’s an unnerving thought and raises the first worry wart. Just what is the arrangement? Continue Reading »

Posted in The Common Sense Canadian | No Comments »

Know Thy Activist

Jul 8th, 2017 by

Photo: Tasja via Wikipedia

On Carrots and Sticks in Parliament

I’ve been an activist for too many years to count. In earlier times, I’d catch hell when my Establishment mother heard me rant on the radio, but knowing her love of nature, I think she was secretly a little proud! Do I support protesting Kinder Morgan and the proposed LNG refinery on Squamish? You betcha, on both counts. I’ve watched activism become more acceptable to more people. Sadly, some activist groups have much to learn about the subject for which they claim expertise – and about basic honesty. That’s what this article is about.

First, let’s remind ourselves why there is activism.

Merriam Webster defines activism as “a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue.”

Jesus was an activist and an extremely effective one, such that it cost him his life. His throwing money-lenders out of the temple and the giant rallies he held were substantial threats to the elite, and, as the scriptures tell us, they lay in the weeds until they could nail this dangerous activist and put him away once and for all. Continue Reading »

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NDP-Greens good to govern – but beware Weaver’s IPP support

Jun 27th, 2017 by

Andrew Weaver (left) and John Horgan (Photo: BCNDP/Flickr CC Licence)

Looking ahead at our political situation in BC and assuming that the NDP will govern with a one vote majority, perhaps it might be well to consider what that actually means.

An accepted authority is  HOUSE OF COMMONS PROCEDURE AND PRACTICE, edited by Robert Marleau and Camille Montpetit

This on “Confidence”:

What constitutes a question of confidence in the government varies with the circumstances. Confidence is not a matter of parliamentary procedure, nor is it something on which the Speaker can be asked to rule. It is generally acknowledged, however, that confidence motions may be:

• explicitly worded motions which state, in express terms, that the House has, or has not, confidence in the government;

• motions expressly declared by the government to be questions of confidence;

• implicit motions of confidence, that is, motions traditionally deemed to be questions of confidence, such as motions for the granting of Supply (although not necessarily an individual item of Supply, motions concerning the budgetary policy of the government  and motions respecting the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne. (my emphasis)

What this does not mean is that every time the government loses a vote it must resign. That is plain fiction encouraged by the fact that when such a vote is lost, cries of “resign!” are shouted from the Opposition benches with enthusiasm but no justification. Continue Reading »

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True Patriot Love: Why the Kinder Morgan pipeline will never be built

Jun 19th, 2017 by

The Trans Mountain pipeline [Kinder Morgan] expansion project will never see the light of day.

-Grand Chief Philip Stewart, Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs

Photo: Damian Manda / Flickr CC License

If you live anywhere in Canada other than British Columbia, you’re probably convinced that the Kinder Morgan (Trans Mountain) pipeline from Edmonton to Burnaby, BC will be built, since no less than Prime Minister Trudeau says so. Well, you may get a shock with this candid advice but you’d best accept the fact that this pipeline will never, ever be built, period.

Many much wiser and more powerful British Columbians than I will tell you the same in even stronger terms.

In light of the domination of the mainstream media by the oil industry, with dedicated lackeys running our governments, you may not have heard the British Columbia side of this story. Here it is.

Might my story not be biased? Of course that conclusion’s an option since there is no more loyal British Columbian than I, but remember that we who will fight Kinder Morgan have only one interest: the beautiful land and water we hold in trust for those as yet unborn. We have no Tar Sands to flog, no political payoffs owed, no juicy House of Commons seats to covet, no faraway investors to enrich, no personal ambitions to fulfill, no face saving to be done – all that’s at stake for us is the salvation and preservation of our home. Continue Reading »

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Posted in The Common Sense Canadian | 1 Comment »

We will not give in on Kinder Morgan

Jun 3rd, 2017 by

Kinder Morgan protest in Vancouver (Photo: Lu Iz/Facebook)

Those who think that the feds and Alberta have got the only quiver with arrows in the Kinder Morgan fight are very sadly mistaken indeed.

The overriding factor is the deep resolve of an angered British Columbia to keep out what are seen as almost foreign despoilers of their land. Damned near everyone is a British Columbian whether born here like I was or recently arrived, a dedicated convert of which there are thousands. The love of the British Columbian for the West Coast is very deep indeed and Kinder Morgan can’t be just counted as were environmental outrages of the past. We’re not talking here about beehive burners, leaky sewer pipes or distasteful, unhealthy and stinky garbage dumps. We are talking about something that is the heart and soul of British Columbia much like St. Paul’s Cathedral is to Londoners. If you think this is a stretch, please bear with me.

One could say that St. Paul’s is simply a church dome and not even as big as St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and nowhere near London’s oldest building.

Tell that to the Londoner who sees this fairly recent icon as the soul of his city, indeed an effort to destroy a beautiful edifice for a development would bring inconceivable reactions from a normally peaceful people – at least when they are civilians. Continue Reading »

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NDP-Green pact should mean good riddance to Kinder Morgan, but Liberal opposition won’t make life easy

May 31st, 2017 by

John Horgan and Andrew Weaver seal their pact (Photo: @jjhorgan/Twitter)

It will be a much postponed verdict but my initial reaction to the NDP-Green deal is positive.

Whether so motivated or not, Andrew Weaver has done the right politically moral thing – contradiction in terms though that is – by agreeing to support John Horgan and the NDP. It is particularly laudable in the form of being support not coalition. His obligation is twofold – first to the public, to give them the best possible governance option and secondly to the Green Party, which is the reason he has the options in the first place.

Dealing with the latter point, that’s a bigger obligation than might first appear. The Greens are a worldwide “movement” with obligations outside BC and Canada and have ambitions for political power with reasons to believe they can, with time, succeed. The political persuasion that supports Green certainly is not compatible with the BC variety of the Liberal Party and Dr. Weaver has correctly borne that in mind. We will always suspect, with good reason, that in rejecting Ms. Clark, he turned down a pretty good personal offer. Continue Reading »

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Posted in The Common Sense Canadian | 1 Comment »

The Goddard Report: Tribute to Grace McCarthy

May 30th, 2017 by

Jim GoddardRafe’s appearance on May 29, 2017, as a guest on The Goddard Report. The topics include, can the new Canadian Tory leader beat Trudeau?

Click here to listen.

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Rachel Notley can go to hell for threatening BC over pipeline

May 24th, 2017 by

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley (Flickr CC Licence / Premier of Alberta)

You can go to hell, Rachel Notley.

Now, everyone, repeat after me. OK? Here we go.

There is no risk in transporting Alberta’s bitumen through our forests, over our rivers, past our sparkling, azure lakes, through our cities, into Vancouver Harbour, over the Salish Sea, past the Gulf Islands, through the Straits of Juan de Fuca. No risk involved at all, just an absolutely certain ongoing series of accidents, small, big and enormous just waiting to happen like the flipped penny waits for heads to turn up. In fact, I can tell you after listening to companies and governments lie through their teeth for a great many years that there’s a maxim here, the origin of which is credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson but may go back further: “The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons” – freely translated, the more they downplay and minimize the consequences, the worse they’re sure to be.

Ms. Notley is afflicted with the same problem as Premier Photo-Op in our province – she finds it not just difficult to tell the truth when a big fat lie is available, but impossible. Christy is still lying through her teeth, strictly by accident of course, alleging that LNG is a less harmful fossil fuel to burn than coal, which, besides being untrue, is rather like the ad years ago that went, “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette”. Continue Reading »

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Posted in The Common Sense Canadian | 1 Comment »

Weaver would be crazy to make pact with Christy; NDP should have nailed Libs on economy, LNG

May 11th, 2017 by

The three BC leaders at the televised debate (Photo: Broadcast Consortium)

It’s May 10, 2017 as I write this, an appropriate date to examine the election, being the anniversary of the Nazi invasion of France and the Low Countries in 1940 and the day Winston Churchill came to the rescue. Like then, much of the information during the campaign was questionable and virtually all of the mainstream media suppositions by a lamentable herd of trained seals unable to report intelligibly or intelligently. The stage was set by 16 years of kissing the backside of the provincial government, the print media distinguishing itself by managing to avoid the number one story of the times – their own newspapers’ deal with the oil industry ensuring that the latter always looked good in the newspapers and governments that wanted good press would be kind to the fossil fuel industry.

How annoying it was to hear the Global gabbers pontificate that when one party, with 100 votes cast, had 46% and the other 44%, thus the former had a “two point lead” – a piddling, meaningless statement. They used the same method with 5000 votes cast where that 2% was a substantial and perhaps final margin. In baseball, it’s percentages of hits per at bat; in politics it’s the number of hits that count. One might have expected the political pundits might have picked that up somewhere along the way. Continue Reading »

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Christy Clark and LNG exports

May 6th, 2017 by

I had intended, with my latest article in the Common Sense Canadian, to end commentary on the May 9 election but Premier Clark, Hall of Fame fibber and hypocrite, has outdone herself with her proposed $70-a-tonne carbon levy on exports of thermal coal from British Columbian ports, a move that will devastate producers in both the United States and Alberta.

Her reason (here one clutches the heart): “I think in the fight against climate change, we all have a responsibility,” Ms. Clark said Tuesday during campaigning for the May 9 provincial election.

But surely this line calls for a massive barf from one end of the province to another. For this is the same premier who’s staked her all and pledged our money towards creating LNG plants by the score and has flown the world trying to flog what we don’t produce to countries who are not buying, at prices that are too high if we had the stuff and they wanted it. Continue Reading »

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