All posts by Rafe Mair

About Rafe Mair

Rafe Mair, LL.B, LL.D (Hon) a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, was Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. In 1981 he left politics for Talk Radio becoming recognized as one of B.C.'s pre-eminent journalists. An avid fly fisherman, he took a special interest in Atlantic salmon farms and private power projects as environmental calamities and became a powerful voice in opposition to them. Rafe is the co-founder of The Common Sense Canadian and writes a regular blog at rafeonline.com.

Time Enviros Tune into in BC Politics

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada, ,
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The time has come, the walrus said…no Rafe, the Liberal leadership only looks like Alice in Wonderland.

It is, though, time for all environmentalists to start looking very seriously at BC politics because after the NDP convention, we’ll be in the countdown to the next election. Even though the election will still be two years away, that will be the time we who care about environmental values must start turning it up, notch by notch.

In doing this I ask to you bear in mind my biases. I don’t give a damn who gets in as long as he/she opens up the private power file, produces all the secret energy purchase contracts so we can see which, if any, are in the public interest and axe the ones that aren’t, then cancels the Campbell Energy Plan, and, after consultation with the people, presents a new one.

When I say I don’t care who gets in this is not a light statement to be ignored.

Let us assume that, in our zeal to save our province, we elect a government that hashes things up but does save the environment, our farm land, our wildlife habitat, our fish, our rivers and their dependent ecologies, and BC Hydro in the bargain, we can then elect another government to clean up the mess.

It gets down to choices (the name of the game in BC politics as elsewhere)  – will you trade away Beautiful British Columbia for a short term bottom line? And while we’re on the subject, I would argue that on virtually every point the Campbell government is worse than the NDP of the 90s. I admit that’s damning with very faint praise but make your own comparison even of fiscal policy, bearing in mind Campbell’s gifts to the rich, his inability to see the obvious coming recession, his lying about the 2009 budget and the state of the deficit and provincial debt.

Those who support Gordon “Pinocchio” Campbell’s fiscal record by claiming that he was hit by hard times should go back to the time “Asian Flu” hit the NDP government and see how the Liberals in opposition gave them no peace regarding something over which they had no control and came as a surprise to everyone.

I cannot see any Liberal candidate who will change a thing.

As you follow the debates, see how often the environment/energy issue or BC Rail comes up!

Kevin Falcon is Gordon Campbell, plus, plus, plus. Christy Clark has good looks and glibness but nothing else. George Abbott hasn’t the jam to deal with environment/energy issues by letting the public have a say and Mike de Jong has been an integral part of the Campbell government throughout and is the man who paid the money to end the Basi/Virk case and continue the government cover-up of the BC Rail mess.

A pox on all their houses!

What about the NDP?

They have a big problem with their optics. The real problem with the NDP of the 90s wasn’t fiscal but an inability to look like a government what with its scandals and revolving door leadership. What this demonstrated more than anything else was a lack of discipline.

For one, I have a problem with party discipline where it chokes off independent opinions which is what happens in all Canadian parliaments. That said, there must be sufficient discipline to keep the ship from hitting the Lorelei.

Unfortunately, the public seems to like tough, uncompromising discipline and somehow the NDP must square this circle.

As I’ve often pointed out, the NDP is, by nature, a disputatious lot.

The only candidate to have spoken out, forcibly, on the environment/energy issue is John Horgan. I’ve met and spent some time with Horgan and I believe he means what he says about opening up the IPP contracts and ending the rape of our rivers.

According to a recent Ipsos-Reid poll, the leaders are, in descending order, Farnworth, John Horgan, Nicholas Simons and Adrian Dix.

I’ve spoken about Horgan, who is clearly the soundest on our issues – now let me deal with the others.

Farnworth is a fine man and would, in my estimation, be a good choice depending on his stand on the environment/energy issue. Accordingly, I suspend judgment until we know what his position is.

Adrian Dix carries an open political wound over his fake e-mail in an attempt to cover-up the problem Premier Clark got in over his neighbour who helped fix Clark’s house at the same time he was making an application for a gambling license. Dix, to his credit – and unlike so many politicians – ‘fessed up promptly.

He is a pit bull much like Kevin Falcon and if that match-up came to pass what excitement that would bring to our politics.

Adrian Dix has been outstanding in the Legislature and I look forward to learning his position on the environment/energy.

Unfortunately I don’t know Nicholas Simons except to say hello, so judgment must be suspended. He, like all the candidates, has been offered a blog on our website (www.thecanadian.org) on environment/energy matters..

I’ve already wasted time typing this but the Conservatives may and only may take a few votes from the Liberals.

It’s interesting to consider a third party and the only one with a chance is the BC First Party under the pro tem leadership of Chris Delaney. I’ve been following this with considerable interest since, it seems to me, there is a great gap in the middle and that Delaney has moved from the right (Conservative) seamlessly. I’m not surprised because I believe this has been happening for a long time.

My read of it is that Delaney couldn’t stomach the Liberals so tried other avenues which, to date, have failed.

I believe that Chris has blotted his copybook staying with the Recall movement more out of loyalty than conviction. But time will tell.

There are two times in my memory when a “third party” has been successful – 1952 and 1991. 2013 looks like the situations back then.

In 1952 the Liberal Coalition crumbled and this left a huge gap in the middle which W.A.C Bennett charged into with his HMS Pinafore-like Social Credit Party.

In 1991, again the middle opened up as the Social Credit Party collapsed and the Gordon Wilson led Liberals went into the fray with no seats and ended up with 17 and Official Opposition status.

Speaking of 1991, what will Gordon Wilson do? He’s a political animal as is his wife Judi Tyabi-Wilson. I would be very surprised to learn that they haven’t been talking to Delaney. It would be a very powerful combination especially since the Wilsons would offset any concerns that Delaney was too far right.

The Green Party is the hardest one for me to handle. I’ve voted Green three times but strictly as a protest. On environment/energy issues they are clearly on our side.

Problem. Big time problem. Under our “first past the post” system they can’t win in spite of a good leader in Jane Sterk.

Try as they might, they can’t convince voters that they’re more than a one issue party. And that’s a damned shame.

One thing’s for sure – for political junkies it’s going to be a helluva ride!

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Issues NDP Can Win On…If They’re Smart Enough

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The New Liberal leader will, on several questions, be like the fighter sitting on his stool and refusing to answer the bell because he knows he’s going to get the crap knocked out of him.

One of those is BC Rail.

Another is private v public power which, in essence, is combined into Campbell’s so-called run-of-river policy.

We must all know that no matter who the leader is, he/she will duck these issues and they will be greatly aided by the mainstream media people who are not allowed, apparently, to bring them up.

For the NDP this is a glorious opportunity to win, outright, two huge issues – but before they can do that they must establish their understanding of these two issues and offer solutions.

The NDP didn’t have the opportunity to really deal with BC Rail for the serious stuff was before the courts and no one would have believed that the Liberals would shut the case down just as former Minister of Finance, Gary Collins, and the Premier himself were to give evidence.

On the Energy/Rivers issue the NDP was woefully weak in the election campaign. For much of the campaign the NDP candidate could only sloganize (a new word I just invented) with such puffery as “we’ve got to stop giving our rivers away”, which was true but scarcely did the issue justice. The NDP have a history of sloganizing – neat little ditties that mask ignorance or lack of courage or both. They bring an appropriate giggle and applause at NDP bun tosses but do nothing to enlighten the voter or present a solution.

First, then, the NDP must show that it understands the colossal and perfidious – in the sense of cheating citizens – policy the Gordon Campbell government have us involved in. The giveaway is immense – large corporations get subsidized by the public to get paid double or more what their power is worth by BC Hydro (at a huge loss), for power that’s not for British Columbians but for export.  

Read that again. It defies belief doesn’t it? And until this issue is understood by political parties it won’t be understood by the public.

The secret contracts BC Hydro is forced to make are unconscionable. The NDP must pledge to make them public and if they are indeed unconscionable, refuse to honour them. The analogy is rather like the mayor elected to clean up city hall, then, when elected, promising to honour all the sweetheart deals his predecessor made with his family and cronies.

Politics is a tough game and demands courageous answers to difficult questions. This means that the party itself must understand the issues and have the platform very firm on what’s wrong and what must happen.

This is not easy, for the business community will scream and the NDP has done a lot of work to make inroads there. Business people, in general, don’t like the NDP anyway but smaller business people are far easier to deal with. Once the policy is in place, NDP spokespeople around the province must speak, with knowledge, to the people all around BC, the business community being welcome. They won’t be the only ones out in the communities speaking on this subject.

I do know of one NDP candidate who thoroughly understands this issue – John Horgan. Others may also understand and we at The Common Sense Canadian would welcome a blog from any other leadership candidate interested in letting our readership hear their view.

I’m often accused of being a turncoat because I was once a Social Credit Minister.

Sticks and stones etc … I’ve been a strong environmentalist for a great many years. I don’t believe for one second that Premier Bill Bennett would have jeopardized – hell, killed – BC Hydro for any reason much less by forcing them to pay private companies double for energy it didn’t need meaning they had to export it at a huge loss.

If he had believed that, we’d never have met, let alone become colleagues.

I believe with every fiber that the saving of our environment – our salmon, our rivers and the ecologies they support – is far and away the biggest political issue of the day. As I often said during the last election – a government might be a very bad government on fiscal issues but if it is, that can be fixed by a new government.

Once you lose your farmland, your fish, your rivers and the ecologies they support, you can never get them back.

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Environmental Battles Unite British Columbians

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With the leadership of both major parties up for grabs you should know what The Common Sense Canadian will be doing from now until the next election.

First let me assure you that we are not party-political. We simply support the party that declares for the environment.

Thanks to a conspiracy of silence, the mainstream media have simply ignored environmental issues with the exception of making Letters to the Editor and Op-ed space available to those who would desecrate our environment.

We have seen some significant changes in the environmental movement over the last couple of years with much fuller contact between various groups. More and more The Common Sense Canadian has had speakers and other support from colleagues and we’ve been returning the favour when we can. To name but a few, people like Joe Foy and Gwen Barlee from he Wilderness Committee, the in comparable Alex Morton, Rex Weyler, Donna Passmore, many others and I have found ourselves on the same platform, meaning, among other benefits, we get to know one another better. Our collective pledge is to help each other and to ensure each of us that their struggle is ours too. For far too long governments have been able to divide us and I believe we are quickly coming together – as we must.

We are working hard to bring expert opinion to our web page not only on our own account but from others as well.

We have both senior governments to thank for this because they have assaulted the environment in so many fields it’s galvanized those who care and brought unity where there was once conflict and indifference.

Damien Gillis and I founded The Common Sense Canadian because in fighting for our rivers in the ’09 election we saw that our talents mixed beautifully. We’ve assembled a marvellous group of contributors, advisors, and even a first class cartoonist, Gerry Hummel, whom you’ll be seeing much more of.

We are and have for a long time been appalled at how the desecraters of our environment have got away with it. There are exceptions – thank God for that! – in smaller communities, and we’ll be asking them to help us let the public know what we’re up to and when Damien and I are coming to show his videos and hear our message.

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Pinocchio Campbell - detail of Common Sense Canadian cartoon by Gerry Hummel

BC Liberals’ Four Big Lies & Why the Media Ignore Them

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From my present vantage point a very long way from home the news briefs and emails I receive are very disturbing. It seems pretty clear that the next premier will bear no scars from his/her involvement with the Campbell administration. Indeed, it almost seems as if the media are already looking back at the Campbell times with a melancholy longing for those great days.

One expects that sort of rubbish from the Liberal Party itself, but from the media?

In due course, before the new leader is nominated, there will be a big banquet for Campbell as if he deserved honour instead of contempt. He will be the man that brought the economy back from those bad old days of socialism and marshaled our resources, blah, blah, blah…

As has been well said, one is entitled to one’s own opinion but not to one’s own set of facts.

Let me try using the truth, leaving the benefits of policy open to everyone’s own opinion. I say to you, however, that on four material issues – issues that go, as the lawyers say, to the root of the matter – the government, either through ministers or the Premier himself, lied. I know that’s a harsh word but how else can one describe falsehoods in the face of clear evidence to the contrary?

Let’s start with BC Rail. The lies are firmly on the record. Campbell, in the 1996 election, to try and save his electoral bacon, promised not to privatize BC Rail. He made the same solemn vow when he was elected in 2000. Not only did he lie, the deal does not, to say the very least, pass the smell test.

Now let’s look at the Campbell lies during the 2009 election about the financial affairs of the province. By almost every reckoning the figure is much higher, but out of caution, the difference in the state of affairs between the 2009 budget and the reality was at least $1 billion and both his toady Finance Minister, Colin Hansen, and the Premier stated that they didn’t have any idea that such was the real state of the province’s finances during the election when they were telling the voters that they were superb trustees of the public purse. This is as impossible to believe as any little boy who’s stolen a candy bar and, with chocolate all over his face, denies it. If the Deputy Finance Minister and his crew of able economists did not know by the time of the 2009 budget that the province was in trouble big time they should all have been sacked. Never mind the subtleties, a look at tax figures, which are readily available on a current basis, would have set alarm bells ringing. I know that from personal experience when my colleague, Finance Minister Hugh Curtis, correctly predicted a year or more in advance the recession of the early 1980s and demonstrated to Cabinet the evidence, which was not rocket science.

The lies by toady Hansen and Pinocchio Campbell on the HST scarcely need repeating. The evidence that they had decided to implement the HST long before they were denying it on the hustings is blatant.

Campbell and Hansen have also lied through their teeth on the broad issues of energy and the environment. I think one reason these bastards are getting away with it is because the series of falsehoods is so egregiously corrupt that normal people have trouble believing it.

Many environmentalists, closer to issues than I, have spoken out on the assault on the Agricultural Land Reserve, the desecration of wilderness, and consequent massive assaults on the atmosphere. Donna Passmore has been tireless and we can only thank providence that she and others like her have their health and dedication.

Rex Weyler, one of the most respected environmentalists on earth is leading a fight against Tar Sands Oil being piped to our South Coast into supertankers. A punctured pipeline or wrecked tankers are not acceptable “risks” – they’re not “risks” at all, in fact, but mathematical certainties. Rex has the full support of The Common Sense Canadian on this front. Our allies on the North and Central Coast, such as the tireless Ian McAllister, are waging a similar battle against the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline from the Tar Sands to Kitimat.

I have no idea how Alexandra Morton keeps going as she fights huge international corporations, both senior governments and an industry that spends millions on sugar-coated lies as she carries on her fight to save our precious salmon from destruction from the impacts of lice and disease infected fish farms. We at The Common Sense Canadian have fought shoulder to shoulder with Alex and the fight goes on.

How to begin the defence of our rivers and the saving of BC Hydro?

Colin Hansen is a good place to start. A particularly telling interview of his is still online.

This is the senior cabinet minister we’re dealing with and every statement he makes in this 1:51 interview is false – I would accuse him of lying but I don’t want to deprive him of the defence of being a damned, easily led fool.

He tells us BC is a net importer of power – we aren’t. Sometimes BC Hydro imports power from its neighbours in Alberta and Washington State, only to sell it back to them at a profit soon thereafter. The fact is that BC is as a rule a net exporter of power. Hansen claims private power plants are little operations that don’t impede the flow the river – it’s “run of the river”. I’m tempted to call this one as it is, a goddamned lie!

These are small sort of Mom and Pop undertakings! Right, Colin, like General Electric, Ledcor and the Dupont family!

This private power will help BC be energy self-sufficient. Honestly, folks, it’s getting very hard to keep my pledge! The short answer to this is that private power is for the most part generated during the Spring run-off when there is sufficient water for them to produce. This is precisely the time BC Hydro doesn’t need power yet they must take it anyway under the agreements they’ve been forced to sign.

Here’s the skinny. BC Hydro must take private power on a “take or pay” basis, meaning it must pay for power it doesn’t need. Now here comes the neat part – the price BC Hydro must pay is 2-3 times what it can export it for! Or about 12 times what it costs them to make it themselves!

I must move on but here’s a little cherry for your martini. Traditionally BC Hydro has paid a dividend to our government to build hospitals, schools and so on. Now they will have no profit so no dividend because all the profits are going to large corporations. Now, even of you still believe the Campbell/Hansen bullshit – try this. BC Hydro has applied for a rate increase, out of your hides so they can give some of it back to you by way of that dividend!

Why has all this happened? God knows – so does Wendy! – how often I’ve asked myself that question. It’s sheer madness! No man or government would do this to their province, would they?

Only one answer makes sense – political philosophy can account for this. This is Milton Friedman stuff. It’s Fraser Institute holy writ! (Fazil Milhar, former senior fellow of The Fraser Institute is the Editor of the editorial page of the Vancouver Sun, which may help us understand the media’s role in this).

It’s Bilderberger, Davos stuff. It’s the New Order, Corporate World. It has nothing whatever to do with the good of the people. The same people bundling sub-prime mortgages, going broke, taking government handouts then paying themselves million dollar bonuses are running things all over the world.

Re-read or read for the first time Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree which explains what has happened and did it before it happened.

We have only one chance left – we must throw this government out at the earliest opportunity! No ifs, ands, or buts – this rotten bunch has to go.

It will be tough because they have a strategy – don’t answer any questions by The Common Sense Canadian, Donna Passmore, Rex Weyler, Alex Morton, The Wilderness Committee. Ignore them as if they didn’t exist! Fight the next election on other issues and remember that the folks in the media who used to ask tough questions aren’t asking them any more. Read Vaughn Palmer, Mike Smyth, listen to Bill Good or Christy Clark and tell me when over the past decade any of them covering BC affairs as an editorialist have truly held the government’s feet to the fire on the issues I’ve raised here.

There are only two answers – either all the fighters I’ve mentioned are full of crap, or the fix is in.

The next British Columbia electorate will decide, and for a very long time, whether the province is to be run by corrupt corporate boards with a bought-and-paid-for government or by us.

 

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Reflections from Soulless Dubai

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This discourse is indeed about the environment but you must be a tad patient.

I’ve long been interested in matters of the soul as first introduced to me by my Mom. If I couldn’t see that a cloud formation looked just like a man on a horse she’d mildly chide me, “Have you no soul Rafe?” Her Dad, my Gandhi, used to take me into the woods that abutted his farm in Burnaby – yes, in Burnaby – and show me the moss on the north side if trees, the salamanders in the pond, and he’d make a slingshot for me out of a Maple sapling. He talked a lot about the soul – it was that, not substance that really mattered.

Now let me tell you a story written by G.E.M. Skues .

Mr. Castwell, a wealthy, devoted fly fisherman, having made his last cast, passed away and found himself on the most beautiful trout stream he had ever seen. There was a man there who introduced himself as his keeper and handed Castwell a beautiful Hardy rod and reel and pointed to the river where there lay four beautiful trout, each five pounds, easily.

Have a cast, said the keeper and Castwell was into a fish first cast. The next cast was an identical result as it was thereafter – a cast made, a hook-up, a fish landed, and a new fish took its place.

And so it went and each time Castwell would suggest to his keeper that a rest would be in order he was told that the “Master” wouldn’t like that.

When the time came that Mr. Castwell thought was surely the end of the day, he asked the keeper when one quit for a nice drink, dinner, and bed.  The keeper replied “sir, you don’t stop – the Master wouldn’t like that.”

“Hell!” yelled Castwell.

“Yes,” replied the keeper.

Castwell, the man without a soul, saw that what he valued most was now a merciless sentence when seen only for itself.

In this context I considered the afterlife of The Fraser Institute folks and those true to their notion that if only the stupid lower classes would let the rich get even richer, why a cascade of riches would trickle down amongst them – punctuated by mind-numbing nonsense about how all boats rise on the same tide, and so on.

I thought of the corporation folks who recognize that some people see a value in the environment so hire hugely expensive PR flacks to make people believe the pipelines, tanker traffic, alienated farm land, massacred fish, and shattered rivers were actually good for us all. Very good things to have as we “move forward,” says the song of the polluter. All the time, of course, the flacks tell about their client’s deeply-held commitment to “green-ness”.

And what of others who, in Wilde’s words, know the “cost of everything and the value of  nothing” – like Gordon “Pinocchio” Campbell and his mindless band of toadies – what should happen to them when they hop the twig?! If they were like Mr Castwell, what would be their eternal reward?

I discovered the answer when Wendy and I went to the Land of Oz, to Emerald City, aka Dubai –  Las Vegas writ large. Wendy and I spent 10 hours touring Dubai and saw that it hasn’t got a single vestige of the outdoors in it. Everything is man-made. There is nothing to turn your attention from the bricks and mortar. Dubai is utterly soulless. There was the phallic symbol that was their answer to Toronto’s CN Tower. Sadly, the grand prize for national idiocy and hubris has gone to a new idiotic spire of steel and glass in Shanghai.

There’s a building shaped like a watermelon on end, one like a giant wave of surf and so on.

There are no rivers or babbling brooks to interfere with the noise of bustle. No clumps of trees with the irritating chirping of birds. The only animals are in the zoo which the voice in my ear proudly says holds 50 imported animals from all over the world. One Aquarium boasted 89 kidnapped dolphins…or was it 189? Whatever it was, we felt instantly ill.

Dubai is the second largest of the United Arab Emirates, that being seven federated sheikhdoms. It is governed by a “ruler”  who is also prime minister of the UAE. Citizens are not bothered by decadent customs like voting or democracy – Kevin Falcon, who once expressed a desire for development rules being like China, would love Dubai, where only a little token of one’s esteem of the ruler is required. No one protests. Anyone used to reading the Vancouver Sun and the Province would feel right at home reading the government “rag”.

Dubai, the voice in my ear tells me, is almost all Islamic, but that great tolerance is shown Catholic and Protestants. Nothing was said about Jews – perhaps just an oversight. 

There are no liquor stores – this would no doubt merit Mr. Campbell’s approval – but how do naughty citizens get booze (the “rulers” are not subject to prohibition)?

Our server in the bar smiled…”There are ways”.

You can, of course, get lots to drink in the innumerable bars in the never-ending supply of hotels.

We were taken to the courthouse and told that Egyptian law prevailed and that there was almost no crime. I assumed that the paved area in the back was for stoning fallen virtue.

There is outdoor skiing all year round on genuine snow!  Where a city in which 22C is considered a cold snap gets this magic “genuine” snowfall remains a mystery.

There is, of course, an ice rink the size of ten football fields – or was it 20? Or 200? After a bit of listening to mind-numbing superlatives for 10 hours, it all become hard to absorb.

There is every physical joy one can conceive of in Dubai – it’s an engineer’s or money man’s dream come true.

Alas, there’s naught for the soul.

Dubai is the Fraser institute, Gordon Campbell’s and the developer’s ultimate icon – the embodiment of all they stand for. In their life to come, Dubai surely represents their idea of God’s work and proves once more that engineers with money can improve nature’s legacy…

I promised that this column would be about the environment and here goes.

The UAE is one of the world’s largest consumers of water and here – wait for it – is how they get it. Nearly 80% from desalination!

Having almost no fresh water, Dubai takes the salt out of the abundant ocean. It costs a hell of a lot more than our system does but, not having fresh water, they must “mine” it.

This makes you think a bit. If California needs water, why not take if from their endless supply of ocean? Why not “mine” salt water, and distribute it by pipeline across their country?

It’s not that the US hasn’t got water – 80% of the earth is water. What the US lacks is the desire to pay for it (not having Dubai’s access to cheap, abundant oil)!!

Question: WHY THE HELL SHOULD BC SELL THEM OUR WATER JUST BECAUSE WE CAN GET IT CHEAPER?

This question applies with the same, indeed greater, force to power. Why should British Columbia ruin more and more of its rivers and streams so that the US can buy it for less than it would cost them? And with the profits not going to BC but large international corporations! Why do we virtually give these companies licenses so that they can use our rivers to finance their massive theft of our resources? Why should we desecrate our rivers, and the ecologies they support, so that Americans needn’t do so to theirs?

No doubt the US would have to find power and it might well come from fossil fuels or nuclear. But there are ways to do this well within clean air requirements. The only reason they’re not doing this is because we relieve them of the burden.

While I wish the Milton Friedman acolytes, the Fraser Institute, and Campbell et al. an eternity in Dubai – riding rider-less monorails, going up and down in outdoor glass elevators, or sitting forever on the top of a “Big Bus” sightseeing bus, in the manner of Mr. Castwell – in the meantime we in BC must stop this environmental bleeding before it’s too late.

 
 
 
 

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Why Christy Clark Sees no Need for Railgate Inquiry

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There’s the old saw, “if a husband sends his wife flowers for no reason, there’s a reason.” So be it with the BC Rail scandal – if Christy Clark, Deputy Premier at the time of the “negotiations,” or “fix,” choose to suit, sees no reason for a full-fledged investigation into the mess, there’s a reason. The same applies to the other candidates for Liberal leader who were in cabinet at the time.

The reason an investigation must take place is to see if there was a crime, or more than one crime committed. I do not say that there was criminal activity, besides those of ministerial aides – but to discover the truth is critical so that if there was a crime it is disclosed and disposed of, and to remove the stain of suspicion that presently exists and may or may not be unfair.

Take for example this salient fact that arose out of the Basi-Virk case – two men close to a minister and reporting to him have admitted that they committed a crime. The logical question to arrive at is simple: if these aides committed crimes while doing work on a minister’s instruction, did that minister commit a crime?

The minister, of course, was Gary Collins, then Minister of Finance. Mr. Collins was not given the opportunity to clear his name because Crown Counsel, Bill Berardino, QC, settled the case on the eve of Mr. Collins’ appearance on the witness stand. Presumably Mr. Collins was on the list of ministers for a reason and one can assume that the Crown didn’t want him to demonstrate the innocence of the two accused.

You will remember the Sherlock Holmes story where he mentions to Watson about the dog barking at the scene and when Watson says, “but Holmes, no dog barked,” and Holmes replies, “Quite. Why didn’t the dog bark?” One can apply this to Gary Collins. For several years, whenever BC Rail was mentioned, Mr. Collins’ name came into the conversation as the minister responsible. Why did he never deal with the suggestions that he may have been up to no good? Isn’t that what you would do in his place?

And, when Mr. Collins was spared the witness box, why wouldn’t he then make it clear that he personally was clean, even though his employees weren’t. Isn’t that the natural thing to do? Isn’t that what you would do?

The same applies to the Premier, who was scheduled to give evidence after Mr. Collins. He might be forgiven for refusing to talk earlier – though I don’t see why – but surely he owes it to his colleagues, his supporters and, yes, the public to demonstrate that he’s not, well, a crook.

Cabinet has been silent. I don’t listen to kissy-ass radio so I’m not sure what Ms. Clark has said, but I’m advised that this has not been a big time topic on her show (though I am told her replacement Mike Smyth is taking up the issue and has given his predecessor a thorough grilling in her old time slot).

The media has a huge amount to answer for. People like me can do editorials based upon suspicions, but we have no large newspapers, TV, or radio stations to do investigations for us. I ask the columnists in this province if they applied the same standards of accountability to the Campbell government as they did to the NDP governments of the nineties. I don’t expect any answer much less an honest one.

The sale of BC Hydro in itself was a disgrace. The dream of WAC Bennett that we the citizens would get ferry service even though our community was too small to make a profit, rail service to open up the province, postponing profit, and a power company that would provide cheap power domestically and industrially has been shattered by this government.

The very least the public can expect is that these rotten decisions were made and administered honestly.

BC Rail simply doesn’t pass the smell test.

There must be a royal commission and one suspects that the politicians who resist the notion because there is no reason to, like the husband, don’t want us to put that decision to the test.

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An open net fish farm in BC's Broughton Archipelago

Making the Environment a Key Political Issue in 2011

Canada, Energy and Resources, Politics, Tar Sands, Western Canada, , ,
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A new year and I enter the last year of my youth – I just celebrated the 40th anniversary of my 39th birthday. This is the year for my first great grandchild – a daughter will be born to my grandson Ty and his lovely wife Rhea in April. And it has all seemed to happen so fast.

This year will be a very important one for us who love our province and want it to be saved from those who, in Oscar Wilde’s words, “know the price of everything and the value of nothing”.

Why is this such a special year?

Because it’s one that will be chock-a-block with electioneering as the two major parties in BC select new leaders, we see if a third middle party may emerge, and the feds almost certainly will have an election.

We have a critical job to do – and an unusual one.

Let me explain.

Until recent times, the public could rely upon the media to present them not only with issues but points of view surrounding these issues. There was always a debate going on and there was a reasonably informed voting public. Since 2001, when the Campbell government took over, the media have been, for one reason or another, defanged pussy cats. You only have to look back at the great work Vaughn Palmer did on NDP Premier Glen Clark’s “fast ferries” issue to see how a public could be informed very much against the wishes of the government. The NDP government of the day pulled out all the stops and had people like me, in the media, pressed to come and see these magnificent vessels that so clearly were the wrong boats for the waters they were to ply. All to no avail – not just because of Palmer but because the full media coverage made it a large and legitimate issue.

It was scarcely just fast ferries – the media made the government’s life miserable, which is what they did to the government I was in. And they were right to do so.

Of course there were excesses – that’s what democracies are all about. That’s the premium we pay for free speech.

Since 2001, the government has got away with whatever they wished to do and in 2009 we saw what that meant – a 50% turnout at the polls. And what should have been a huge issue – the environment in general and a disgraceful handling of fish farms, highways, and rivers in particular – simply wasn’t because these issues didn’t seem to be real. How could they be real when Tony, Vaughn, Mike, and especially Christy didn’t talk about them? How could they be issues when the opposition who followed the poll numbers instead of making them hadn’t the foggiest idea what was going on and campaigned in slogans, as so long has been their wont? I campaigned around the province for the NDP – not, for God’s sake, because I had become an adherent to that party but because I wanted to see the environment saved and they were the only possible alternative to the Liberals.

Most NDP stalwarts will now agree with me that their campaign, especially on the environmental issues, was appalling. We, the members of the voting public now have the solemn obligation of making sure that this doesn’t happen again.

The “environment” isn’t a non-issue because it isn’t an issue, but because both political parties, for one reason or another, haven’t made it one. In other words, it’s like the tree in the forest – if no one’s there to listen, there’s no noise when it falls.

As many of you know, I’ve been asking people to pass on that which I circulate and other stuff that comes to my attention. While I believe that what I say is right, that scarcely makes me right. What I do say with more confidence is that it is an important part of the debate that ought to be. And this is what we must, in my opinion, concentrate on – namely making the environment not just a real issue but one which will decide the government at election time.

Forgive my repetition on this point but if a government screws up the economy, a new government with time can make it better. What we cannot ever do is get back our rivers, our fish, or our farmland once destroyed.

Please, then, for the sake of those to come, get behind us at The Common Sense Canadian and help us make the environment the #1 issue such that political parties no longer can avoid.

Let me close by telling you one of the reasons we call ourselves “The Common Sense Canadian.”

Both Damien and I, the founders, are huge fans of Thomas Paine, the failed customs official from England who was both catalyst and chronicler of the American Revolution, starting with his blockbuster bestselling pamphlet called Common Sense.

With this and other pamphlets, he circumvented the censorship of the aristocracy and reached the “common man.” Google it and read it yourself – it makes damned good reading today.

With TheCanadian.org, we are trying to follow Tom Paine’s example. For 2011, please resolve to help us do that – by sharing our work with others and getting involved in your own way in these vital issues.

I have full confidence that if the public of BC is fully informed on the issues at hand, we shall see justice and common sense prevail.

Happy New Year!

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Tough Energy and Environmental Questions for 2011

Energy and Resources, Tar Sands, WATER, , , ,
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In looking ahead to 2011, I see a very troubled environmental scene. This is because of one thing mainly: with our governments money talks and big time money talks big time. This will reflect itself in several ways and places.

In order to understand this, I think, it must be remembered that corporations don’t give a rat’s ass about the environment. They would pollute all water, destroy wildlife, and desecrate the environment generally. Every tiny bit of environmental restraint has been and always will be imposed by government and it will be resisted and ignored by the corporate world. Many of my generation and others have been brought up to respect government authority and to assume that the world was full of “good corporate citizens.” We, in fact, marveled at the great construction taking place such as Alcan even reversing rivers and creating huge artificial lakes. We developed a public mindset that marveled, uncritically, at development.

There is no question that much of the world will need power; more and more every year. What’s interesting is the lack of an intelligent debate on the subject both at a local and global level.

We have industry and environmentalists fighting but it’s scarcely a fair fight. On the Enbridge proposal to build two pipelines from the Tar Sands to Kitimat and back, industry is out-spending the environmental community 100-1. All the magazines I read carry huge touchy feely ads from huge corporations who tell us in full page ads that they are working just as fast and as hard as environmentalists to make all their creations green.

Much of the problem has been created by an uninformed and ill-informed public which refuses to critically consider anything they’ve been brainwashed into believing or disbelieving. We in the environmental field, me very much included, have decided that certain issues cannot be discussed. These beliefs have become a hardened catechism that brooks no debate.

I have written in the past about nuclear power, for example. This is wrong, we all agree. They explode like atom bombs or melt down. If you live near them or work in them, you’ll be nuked. And there are the calamities at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.

In the first case there was a disaster, and at Three Mile Island there was a dangerous near-miss. And these and other scares tell us that if you do nuclear power and don’t keep up safety programs it’s only a matter of time before you have very bad news. Nuclear plants are hugely expensive to maintain and no one has found a safe way of dealing with the waste.

Does this mean that nuclear can never be debated again? Do any of us know what research has been done in recent years? In a moment I’ll tell you why this is an important question.

On the other side we’re told that wind power is the way to go because it’s “green” and that’s good. (“Green” is now a weasel word used by polluters to gloss over their destructive policies). The fact that wind power is hugely expensive and invariably set up with taxpayers money, that it is unreliable and environmentally unsound is not dealt with, for this is the reverse of the uranium argument – nuclear is bad and wind power is good, now let’s have no more arguments. While we’re at it, the future is electric cars and that’s that! Never mind asking where the electricity is coming from and how green that source is – this matter has been decided, period!

Right behind nuclear power comes fossil fuel power. This source of power is evil, so no more discussion please.

I would advise one read the lead argument for the use of coal in this month’s Atlantic Monthly. Here is a pretty strong argument which, in a nutshell says “we’re not going to eliminate coal as a source of power for a very long time to come. Isn’t the object to lower carbon emissions, so if we have no alternative for coal we should work harder at reducing the carbon footprint of this and other fossil fuels? Are there not, coming out of China for God’s sake, new techniques which have dramatically reduced the unhappy consequence of burning coal for power?”

My point is that of a British Columbian who wants to save his province’s environment. If I fight on the mantra that fossil fuels and nuclear are bad for the environment so that their use must be eliminated, doesn’t that lead to the conclusion that hydroelectric power is the only way to go? Of course we have wind power, tidal, and solar power but until they can supply the world’s needs for power, what is left?

Do we not see that by saying that other countries must stop all nasty sources of energy we are inviting them to look to us to supply the power from our rivers?

The demand for energy must go somewhere and rudimentary economics tells us the demand will lead to and find a supply – and we’re it! That demand is going to increase so that every piece of water that moves in BC will become a potential source.

This is the great evil of the Campbell Energy Plan (based largely of private river diversion projects), which has been sold on the basis of our own needs – which is plain barnyard droppings. Not only is it going to outside consumers, it is saying “look, neighbour, don’t you worry your pretty little heads about designing your own sources of energy and don’t bother for a moment with conservation because there’s lots more where that came from!”

I will soon be accused of all the usual sins – Rafe Mair favours nuclear, fossil fuel power, etc. – but I am not. What I’m saying is that our energy policy has us financing, out of taxpayers’ pocket, large international corporations who build their plants to produce power for somewhere else.

How are we financing these corporations? This is not hyperbole at all. We buy their power at 2-3 times what we can sell it for and that is money in the bank that otherwise would have to be borrowed or used out of the company’s assets. British Columbians are, therefore, not giving away power to other jurisdictions so that they needn’t make any sacrifices themselves – we’re financing the operation!

We’re saying to American governors: don’t worry about your environment, don’t fret about how you deal with carbon emissions, don’t give more than a passing thought to conservation – BC rivers and streams are yours for the asking!

It’s one thing to be a good neighbour but don’t you think this is a bit too much!

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Raid on the Ministry of Finance nd Ministry of Transportation at the BC Legislatue in 2003

Tsakumis’ Must-Read Basi Files: Shocking New Twist in Railgate Scandal

Canada, Politics, Western Canada, ,
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Alex Tsakumis is a journalist in the style of journalism in days of yore, when political reporters were expected to hold the “Establishment’s” and especially government’s feet to the fire. The days when there was incisive reporting with columnists staying with the story until the end are, alas, of a bygone era. Journalists were like pit bulls that you could not easily dislodge from the seat of your pants. Where are the fearless fighters for the truth that seemed to vanish after the NDP were defeated in 2001?
 
Because those days are gone, the Campbell government and others’ fear of exposure of wrongdoing were minimized, if not eliminated – were it not for the Basi-Virk trial. Now it’s gone.
 
Alex has come into possession of four memos-to-file by David Basi which were certified by lawyer George Jones, QC. That doesn’t mean the contents were true, of course, but it does raise serious questions about the role played by a number of people both inside and outside of the BC Cabinet. It has not been denied that Crown Counsel had possession of those documents.
 
I urge everyone to go to Alex’s website and read the memos from David Basi to the file. If they are true, serious misconduct by the government occurred during the sale period.
 
I must say from the outset that I’m not accusing specific people of any wrongdoing. What I am going to do is deal with the settlement of the Basi-Virk case and ask some pointed questions. Absent a court case, it is you, the jury of citizens who must decide.
 
The issues started shortly after the 2001 election in which Premier Campbell pledged he would not privatize BC Rail. With the election behind him, Campbell asked for bidders and three came forward.
 
Let’s try to look at this 7 year case in a nutshell.
 
Nearly a year after police raided the offices of Gary Collins, then Finance Minister, Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk were charged with multiple counts of fraud and breach of trust. The two men were said to have, amongst other things, accepted benefits from one of the bidders for the Roberts Bank spur line in return for handing over confidential documents. The defendants maintained that they had instructions from Cabinet ministers to keep the bidding going because while CN was the favoured bidder and Campbell wanted the bidding to look good because CN was run by one David McLean, long a Liberal bagman and bosom buddy of his. Indeed that’s the essence of Basi’s memos.
 
The list of witnesses in the trial for the Crown included two Cabinet Minsters with several powerful public servants. To add to this murky pond was a $300,000 payment by BC Rail to Liberal eminence grise, Patrick Kinsella, for “consulting fees during the bidding process.” Not surprisingly, this prompted the other bidders to holler foul, claiming that the government favoured CN all along and that the others were just window dressing to make the bidding look real and mask the truth that CN had a slam dunk.
 
Let’s look at two things – why Crown Counsel stopped the case just as important witnesses were to be heard, and what the crash of the case meant.
 
The short answer is that the accused men wanted to “cop a plea” and plead guilty to a couple of charges, getting away without going to jail and having their $6 million legal bill paid by the government.
 
This raises, to me at any rate, the obvious question: why did Special Counsel Bill Berardino, QC, accept?
 
Berardino knew he had a strong case, obviously fortified by the fact that defence counsel were admitting, off the record, that their clients were guilty, and the strongest part of his case was yet to come.
 
Asked if there was any government pressure to end the trial, which had so far contained embarrassing allegations for the B.C. Liberal Party, Berardino said: “This is my decision. I made it on my own by myself.”
 
I’m sorry, I don’t believe that and subsequent statements bear out my skepticism. When I and others expressed our incredulity at Berardino’s statement, it was then admitted that, of course, the Assistant Deputy Attorney General, knew about it but he was by statute removed from the politics and that we should recognize that “cast in stone” independence the Crown Counsel Act vested in him.
 
It’s impossible for me to accept that the Premier didn’t instruct Crown Counsel to seek terms and, after the terms were given, order their acceptance. I don’t say that Crown Counsel was untruthful, just that I don’t believe his story.
 
I’ve been in government, folks, and I know governments don’t pay out $6 million, plus another $12 million in legal expenses without knowing why.
 
Indeed, a bit of further prodding and the Deputy Attorney-General was admitted to be part of the deal, and shortly after that we learned that the Deputy Minister of Finance was also involved. Now, instead of Crown Counsel being the only one involved, the proposed settlement meant that payment would have to be authorized by Treasury Board, meaning that if Campbell didn’t know all about it before, he sure as hell did now. To me, all suspicions were confirmed – the key point being not what Mr. Berardino said or did, but the irresistible inference that Gordon Campbell and his flunkies not only knew about the deal but gave the instructions to settle.
 
Let’s look at it from another angle – why would Campbell want this trial to end ingloriously when victory was as assured as such can ever be? He knew it would look like hell to the public. Obviously this means he knew it would be even worse if he and others were forced to testify. The only possible reason Campbell could have for stopping this 7 year legal odyssey was to avoid the damage surely to come if he and former Finance Minister Gary Collins had to testify and if Basi and Virk had a chance to give their version of events.

Here’s where Alex Tsakumis’ dogged determination to discover the truth comes in. He learned that Dave Basi wrote at least four memos-to-file certified by a prominent lawyer and got possession of them. If you read them – and they are available on Alex’s website – it’s all there. The bribery, the deals, the lies, and the sleaze. Could one not infer from Campbell wanting the case to end that Basi’s memos are truthful? Doesn’t this make it pretty clear that Campbell knew what was in those memos?
 
If that’s the case, Campbell knew that further testimony could place him, former ministers Gary Collins, Judith Read, and even the untouchable Patrick Kinsella in serious legal jeopardy?
 
In the famous words of Emile Zola in the Alfred Dreyfus case, “J’accuse”  the government of BC, and Premier Campbell of perverting the course of justice, then stonewalling an Independent Commission to look into this entire sordid mess. Assuming he and his colleagues’ hands are clean, wouldn’t they want to demonstration before an independent commissioner?
 
Surely, if they are innocent they would be begging to have a hearing.
 
But they aren’t. The former deputy premier during the sale of BC Rail, Christy Clark has made it clear she wants no scrutiny into her acts at the time.
 
If the Campbell government does not instruct a Judicial Inquiry, one can only conclude that Basi is telling the truth.
 
That being so, other heads should roll – but of course they won’t.

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Sadly, Violence May Be on the Way in Battle for BC’s Environment

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I don’t like the way things are heading in this province for I foresee violence.
 
Damien Gillis and I, the “owners” if you will of the Common Sense Canadian (TheCanadian.org) wish to make it abundantly clear that the very last thing we want is violence. At the same time we feel an obligation to assess what is happening and report that assessment to you. To be silent, in the face of the evidence we feel would be irresponsible.

There are situations developing which past evidence clearly tells us that we must be deeply concerned. Violence happens when people, being so much less powerful than their oppressors – large companies and government – become frustrated with the inability to be heard and have their concerns listened to. Any who have attended one of the so-called environmental assessment meetings – as Damien and I have – will sense the deep anger and, that word again, frustration as they see the government and industry all but in each others’ arms as they deny the public the right to be heard.  If, God forbid, violence does come, the large companies and the senior governments will be clearly to blame but will piously cite the “rule of law,” saying that they are merely taking what the law gives and that the public must accept that.
 
The underlying truth is that the public is sick and tired of government and industry lying. If you look back in history, most civil disorder has been because the situation is not as the authorities and those who hide behind their skirts say it is.
 
First let’s look at the fish farm issue. I know something about this subject because I involved myself in it from the beginning. For nearly 10 years now the Liberal government has known about the disastrous harm these fish farms do to migrating wild Pacific Salmon. Over and over the government has been shown by experts to be wrong in its policy and over and over the government has bobbed, weaved, and lied.
 
Aggravating the situation big time has been the media who, rather than examine the evidence, have ignored it and given column after column on the op-ed page to supporters of the industry, especially to the environmentalist turncoat and failed fish farmer, Patrick Moore, and Mary Ellen Walling, the Executive Director of the Fish Farmers Association. Incidentally, Moore is now advising a large lumber company in Indonesia on how to wipe out their ever-diminishing rain forest and look “green” as it does so.
 
There are signs of life coming from the Cohen Commission on disappearing Fraser River sockeye, where the Commissioner has ordered fish farms to release data on sea lice. There is not, sad to say, similar action being taken by governments on Independent Power Projects (IPPs), nor pipelines and tankers on our coast. And this is where the violence will come, from unless a sea change is seen in government policy.
 
The Axor Glacier-Howser undertaking in the Kootenays is the most serious IPP situation because the public has made it abundantly clear that they will do whatever is necessary to stop the project. I have no doubt that they mean it. I’ll do more on that in columns to come but for today let’s concentrate on the oil pipeline and tanker issues.
 
First, the pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to Kitimat proposed by Enbridge, whose safety record is appalling, is approximately 1200kms long over all with about 2/3 running across BC. In fact it’s two pipelines – one to take the Tar Sands crud (aka bitumen) to Kitimat and the other to send back to Alberta in what they call “condensate,” a liquid natural gas product. (Bitumen sludge is so viscous that it can’t be pumped through a pipeline without first being diluted by condensate).
 
Isn’t this neat-o? We get twice as many chances for a spill!
 
Second, there is the issue of transporting the Tar Sands gunk down the BC Coast. (Don’t forget that this shipping catastrophe in the making is already in place in Vancouver through the Kinder-Morgan pipeline, but that for another day).
 
The governments involved (Federal, Alberta, and BC) and Enbridge don’t want you to notice that the pipeline and the tanker are the same issue –  like Doris Day used to sing about love and marriage, “you can’t have one without the other.”
 
Let’s not overlook another important point: These aren’t risks involved here but certainties waiting to happen.
 
Imagine a revolver with 100 chambers and one bullet. If you put that to your head and say you’ll just pull the trigger once, the odds are there and obvious. If you say you’ll it for a year the odds are shorter but still you’re assessing a risk. If you say you will do it forever, it is no longer a risk but a certainty.
 
Then there are the consequences to deal with. If the bullet is made of marshmallow, who cares? If it’s a bullet, it’s death!
 
The Tar Sands gunk is not marshmallow.
 
If there aren’t risks involved, why would the company concern itself with what isn’t? But listen to what Enbridge spokesman Allan Roth had to say about tanker traffic:
 
“There’s been a tremendous amount of engineering studies and risk analysis studies. Extraordinary measures are planned with respect to marine safety and these are the highest modern standards for engineering…The risks have to tell us the probability (is) as close to zero or very close to that (my emphasis) before we would even propose the project.” (The words “very close to that” must send a shiver down the backs of all British Columbians).

This reminds me of a story. Many years ago I was in the Anchor Pub in Greenwich, England and went into the loo. On the condom machine was etched “These condoms manufactured up to the UK’s highest standards,” over which was scribbled, “So was the Titanic.” There you have it, Mr Roth, highest standards don’t count when tragedy strikes.

Let us not overlook the pipeline itself. The ca. 800 km in BC transverse superb wildlife habitat including some 1,000 rivers and streams. Once permission – God forbid! – is granted Enbridge will go into its environmental protection mode, which is to do no serious inspections and, if tragedy strikes,  bring help to bear in leisurely fashion as they did with the Kalamazoo River a few months ago, Of course they will explain their slowness saying that it’s because the damage is in wild remote country – which is the reason they can’t be inspected regularly and a very strong reason it should not be done. One need only look at the Kalamazoo spill to see what Enbridge’s attitude is to spills – lethargic is too energetic a word to describe it.

In keeping with the morality of this industry, truth is no barrier to self-serving flackery. The usual corporate tactics have recently been exposed as Enbridge, with the airy wave of the hand, stated that First Nations are getting behind the projects .

Really?

Clearly Enbridge hasn’t seen Damien Gillis’ “Oil in Eden: The Battle to Protect Canada’s Pacific Coast” (on this website), where President of the Coastal First Nations, Gerald Amos, and the formidable Gitga’at elder, Helen Clifton, made it abundantly clear that, in Chief Amos’ words, these projects “are not going to happen.” They were also caught off guard by an unprecedented joint declaration against the project by over 60 First Nations last week, the day after they tried assuring the public and media everything was falling into place for the project with First Nations.

I sadly, but honestly believe that a showdown on the pipeline/tanker issue will raise tempers too short to handle. And there’s another factor involved – the governments will point out that China has “invested” nearly $2 BILLION in the Tar Sands and the bitumen is largely for them. Thus they will say we must give into China.
 
Thus we will have the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. 
 
There is no compromise. You can’t have a little bit less of a pipeline. It’s all or nothing at all.
 
When the inevitable happens, the usual procedure will take place. Protesters will refuse to go away, the governments and companies will call the protesters nasty names and people will be jailed for contempt of court, a gross distortion of democracy that turns a civil dispute into a crime if that’s what big government and big business so desire – and they will.

The blame in fact will rest with the governments, joined as they are at the hip with environmental predators who keep their campaign coffers filled.
 
The plain fact of the matter is that all three governments involved don’t give a rat’s ass for the environment or those who live in it and feel a sacred obligation to nurture it and pass it on intact for those to come.

How’s this?

Times are changing and governments don’t understand that. Citizens have little respect for what in my early days were called “our betters.” I can’t get my MP, Conservative John Weston, to talk to me about environmental concerns, and coincidentally the other day I received a letter from another of his constituents with the same complaint. Why the hell should he care? He’ll win because the Liberals won’t and that’s all that matters.

I hate to talk about the “old days,” but in my lifetime I’ve seen an enormous disconnect arise between the governed and the governors. When I was in government, my colleagues and I constantly faced a hostile media who didn’t believe a thing we said. My home city of Kamloops had small town versions of the Jack Websters and Marjorie Nichols who would nail me as soon as I got off the plane. I had to answer for my actions or be found guilty in absentia.

Politicians now, hearing no tough questions from the media, and seeing and hearing nothing in the print or electronic media, assume that there are no tough questions to be asked.

In many ways, the overflowing discontent I foresee can be blamed on the free ride politicians get from the media.

Harry Belafonte once said in one of his great songs “don’t turn your back to the masses, mon” – good advice that those who sit in authority over us should, in my not so respectful opinion, pay heed to.

If they won’t, they must answer for the consequences, not the public that has been cheated of its democratic right to be heard prior to the decision having been taken.

But they won’t. 

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