I see that Premier Photo–Op has appointed George Abbott, Education Minister, to work on revamping the Liberal Party to get it out of the ditch prior to the May 2013 election.
 
Good luck, George – you’ll need it.

My latter day concerns have been about environmental issues, something I don’t believe the Liberals can do, or even want to do anything about. The government would go a long way down the path of reconstruction if Premier Clark did four things: put a moratorium on fish farms along with a program of getting them on land; put a permanent stop to any new so-called “run of river” projects; announce the end of Taseko’s Fish Lake project; announce that no oil tankers will ply BC waters.

The trouble with the first three is the Campbell/Clark government doesn’t have the political courage to do them and, moreover, doing so would cost the party substantial political donations – a telling point with this bunch to whom election funds always trump honesty and honour..
 
The fourth one is tricky. The provincial government probably doesn’t have the authority to do anything about the pipelines but it sure as hell does over tankers – and without tankers there will be no pipelines. The Campbell/Clark lack of courage is because of its stupidity with the HST and it’s now so deep in debt to the feds they dare not oppose them. Yes, folks, the HST has us in thrall to Ottawa, something that in my time has never happened. In plain language the feds hold Premier Clark in a blackmail position – if BC is to be shown any mercy over the HST cock-up it must permit the Fish Lake project to proceed, make no noise on the Enbridge pipeline project and approve oil tanker traffic on the coast.
 
This, dear readers, is one reason Gordon Campbell was eager to clear out and one of the reasons Prime Minister Harper gave him that plum job in London.
 
Those are not the only problems Mr. Abbott has. The underlying malaise that the C/C government must deal with is that they have done a lousy fiscal job. While painting themselves as the fiscally sound party, they have kept the story of NDP fiscal sins front and centre, for wasn’t it they who bollixed up our economy?
 
The answer is no. The NDP look like Ebenezer Scrooge compared to the government of wastrels we’ve been governed by for the last 10 ½ years. It started right after the May 2001 election when Campbell gave away more than a billion dollars in taxes on the well off.
 
From that point until now, the Campbell/Clark government has more than tripled the real provincial debt, putting the province in hock for as far as the eye can see.
 
Because of the lousy media we have, it wasn’t much noticed that when the Liberals came down with their unbelievable 2009 election budget – which was over a billion dollars short of reality – that it was phoney as Hell and that the Liberals knew it throughout. This came out when, after the election was safely behind them, the government said that it was all the fault of the Recession. To accept this bullshit would mean that the Liberals didn’t notice the Stock Market crash in 2007/08, nor the recession that followed! They also had to ignore the information that the Finance Ministry had that tax revenues were dropping.
 
In short, the Liberal government either was so stupid as to not notice a market crash, a huge dose of criminality on Wall Street, or the severe Recession that followed – or they deliberately lied.
 
Then there was the HST that one need not mention.
 
In short, the Liberal Party’s renowned fiscal prudence is a crock of crap. And it’s worse – the government ought have foreseen the fiscal problems even before it hit the fan – reading numbers and foreseeing trouble is what Finance Ministries are all about.
 
To Mr Abbott – while you’re reorganizing your party, looking to the future as politicians always say, I must warn you that you will be looking to the past as well as you will be asked questions. There are, even in your own party, a great many British Columbians who want answers, no matter how awkward it might be to give them.