Another of Christy Clark's sparkle ponies dies

Let's see ... how should we word this?

You may not like fucking BC Ferries, but BC Ferries likes fucking you!

BC Ferries, A CORPORATION IN WHICH THE ONLY SHAREHOLDER IS THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA which is wholly funded by the taxpayers of British Columbia, which makes it a citizen owned entity, has announced that it is building its next three ships in Poland. 

Isn't that just about the most interesting thing you've heard in the last ten minutes?

Seaspan, the only Canadian shipbuilder on the short list for construction, withdrew its bid because it could not guarantee delivery before 2017. Its order book, according to Seaspan, is full, primarily due to a federal government order for an entire fleet of new ships.

Except for one small item. They haven't even ordered the steel for the ships ordered by the federal government because the Harper government has played this like a dog fucking a football.

And Christy Clark? Well she's a mid-day radio blather-head so far out of her depth as to be laughable if she wasn't so goddamned dangerous.

Here you go Clark! Chew on your own fucking words!

"It won’t be just a matter of us building BC Ferries," Clark said. "We want to build ferries for countries all over the world here."

 When that pitchfork hits her in the ass we can only hope she deflates as fast as her sparkle ponies.

It's time BC teachers realized that the woman in the pink shirt is a bloody bully

Christy Clark takes credit for creating Pink Shirt Day, an initiative intended to combat the bullying that occurs in BC schoolyards. It was a useful illusion to help her fulfill her political ambitions. There's only one problem: Christy Clark is one of the most notorious bullies in British Columbia.

Christy Clark is the one who tore up collective agreements, repeatedly violated the constitutional rights of teachers and has brutally starved the provincial public education system at all levels. It makes one wonder what it is this daughter of a BC teacher has against education in general and public-school teachers specifically.

She has enlisted her populist water-carriers in the media to refer to the BC Teachers Federation as "militant", an unwarranted term used without a shred of substantiation. As The Gazetteer points out, it was Clark who tried to provoke a strike, violated the constitution, ignored the rule of law and tore up contracts. Yet none of those media pundits have taken to calling Clark what she is: an extremist and a bully.

Jim Nelson does a great job of laying out the history of the BCTF and the fact that they're anything but militant. Forced by then-premier Bill Vanderzalm into becoming a union, teachers, by their very nature go out of their way to avoid conflict and confrontation and they do it at their own peril. Further, they have caused less classroom disruption due to labour concerns than the Campbell/Clark regime has done with a fiscal hatchet.

Jim Nelson used an interesting analogy when he put Christy Clark's behaviour with teachers against the backdrop of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Interesting that he should use that particular group because the ILWU marine component has just experienced a single outrageous act on the part of the employer and they didn't hold back. A strike vote was swift and unanimous.

Seaspan, the largest tug, towing and vessel escort company in BC, unilaterally imposed a new contract on both officers and ratings, stripping them of established working conditions and placing a higher demand on call-out crews. The ILWU and the Canadian Merchant Service Guild (representing officers) were understandably outraged at the move. When Seaspan appeared intransigent the ILWU received unanimous approval from its members to go to a strike. The CMSG also announced a strike vote prompting the federal labour minister, Kellie Leitch, to get involved. The officers have agreed to an arbitrator and not to strike providing Seaspan does NOT implement the new contract. The ratings aren't being quite as nice about it. They expect negotiations to resume immediately, failure of which will lead to 72 hours strike notice and a virtual shut-down of shipping all over BC by Sunday.

Now, if I were betting on what's happening now, (and having had a couple of conversations with some tug captains), I'd bet that Seaspan expected a strike and then expected the anti-labour Harper government to legislate crews back to work with an imposed agreement ... favouring Seaspan's owners.

Tug crews are a tough lot. They have difficult, dangerous jobs requiring exceptional skill and a high level of knowledge. When they, without hesitation, threatened to get tough and get tough fast, they brought down their bully. There is no doubt the officers and ratings made it clear to Leitch that they wouldn't and did not need to back down. You see, the crews, particularly the officers, hold the hammer, something I'll describe if and when it appears they may close to swinging it.

The teachers haven't been getting the same kind of action. They've been bullied since 2002, yet they've only pulled themselves out to the picket line for 14 days since 1995. They've watched their working conditions deteriorate, at the hands of Christy Clark and have appeared powerless. The courts find in their favour and Christy Clark ignores it.

Time to get tough. Find the hammer handle and threaten to swing it. When Clark and Fassbender (who should be described by the media as an extreme fundamentalist) attempt to ignore the threat, follow through. Are there going to be hard feelings? Of course. You don't pull down a bully by being nice.

And the next time Christy Clark puts on a pink t-shirt everyone needs to mark her for the bully she is. 

Rotten to the core

BC premier Christy Clark is not known for honest dealing. She and Harper work out of the same playbook and regularly employ the same people to work the sewers of a political system rife with cronyism and putrefied by secret back-room deals and political corruption.

This time, a judge has just handed Clark her ass. She violated the constitution when she was education minister and then did it again, on the same education issue, as premier. The stench emanating from her overly-expensive waterfront Vancouver office is palpable. Clark is as dishonest as the liar she replaced. Families first? Not yours. (Bold mine)

... a tale of a government secretly wanting to provoke a strike that year for political reasons. There are always cynics who read political motives into big public labour disputes. But it’s startling to see a judge blame months of disruption in schools firmly on the crass political motivations of a government.
Justice Susan Griffin, who has been dealing with the differences between the government and the BCTF for a number of years, concluded “the government did not negotiate in good faith .... Government representatives were preoccupied by another strategy. Their strategy was to put such pressure on the union that it would provoke a strike .... The government representatives thought this would give government the opportunity to gain political support for imposing legislation on the union.”

Summary:

... she was the premier of a government that, according to the B.C. Supreme Court, ran a lengthy con on parents and children to engineer some dim political advantage...

Grifter.

Y'know all those "made in BC" jobs Christy Clark promised ...

Well, the actual contract hasn't even been inked yet and Seaspan is looking offshore to fill the positions necessary for the vessels they will (supposedly) build.

Seaspan is a Canadian shipbuilding firm which has recently been given a contract to build 17 ships for the Canadian Navy.
Now they need skilled workers to move to Vancouver and help build the vessels – and they have got their eye on Portsmouth workers.

The real hairball will get coughed up if the Canadian public finally wakes up to the fact that Harper's ship procurement fairy-tale is actually way off the rails, seriously under-funded and probably won't happen in anything like what is being advertised by the Harper Hillbilly Government.

At least, according to Christy Clark, BC is "family friendly" and the unicorns sprinkle sugar everywhere.

Added: To enhance clarity, Portsmouth is in England, Hampshire County, UK. 

A Christmas message from BC's biggest liar

The sellout of British Columbia's sovereignty

 #NorthernGateway #BCpoli #Cdnpoli -

On 21 June, 2010, soon-to-be-ousted-premier Gordon Campbell allowed the signing away of the sovereignty of British Columbia and any right to intervene on the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project to Stephen Harper and his petro-masters in an unannounced back-room deal.

This past Thursday, Robyn Allan, an economist and former CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, wrote a letter to Campbell's successor. I post it in its entirety:

April 19, 2012

Dear Premier Clark,

Your government has not spoken out for or against the Northern Gateway pipeline proposed by Enbridge Inc., rather preferring to wait until the National Energy Review Board process is complete.  I am writing to you today to explain that, unfortunately the current Northern Gateway environmental and public interest process is flawed and as a result the public interest of BC is not protected.

The Federal government, as I am sure you are aware, has publicly endorsed the project, stated it is in the national interest of Canada, and has systematically demonized individuals and groups who oppose the project.  This behaviour has made a travesty of the necessary arms length relationship between government and an independent regulatory body.

As long as there was some sense that the Joint Review Panel (JRP) was independent and had the authority to reject the proposal regardless of the political pressure imposed by the Prime Minister’s Office, a semblance of due process was maintained. That necessary condition was violated when Federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver unveiled proposed legislation on April 17, 2012.

The Federal Government now intends to further weaken environmental protection and favour large oil companies operating, primarily, in Alberta.  This has betrayed any remaining trust in federal energy decisions as they relate to the province of British Columbia.

With the overhaul of the environmental assessment rules and process, and making final decision on oil pipelines—such as the Enbridge Northern Gateway and proposed Kinder Morgan projects—a Federal cabinet prerogative, there is no confidence that the Government of Canada will make decisions that will be in the best public interest of the residents of this province.

A major change in policy in the midst of nation breaking events such as Northern Gateway or Kinder Morgan requires deliberate action on the part of your Office to protect the public interest trust and rights of BC residents and First Nations.

Certainly when the NEB process for Northern Gateway commenced in June 2010, the BC government thought the JRP would be objective and have the power to recommend a binding decision which would reflect the public interest of British Colombians and Canadians.  I can imagine that the safety and efficiency inherent in one independent review body—which the NEB was believed to be at the time—and the belief that our public interest would be protected were reasons why the Liberal government of BC under the leadership of Gordon Campbell, felt it acceptable to sign away our right to conduct an environmental assessment under B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Act.

During my review of the Enbridge economic documents as part of their Application to the NEB, I wondered why there was no real or meaningful review of their case by various ministries of the BC government.  The deliberate intent in the Enbridge documents to increase the price of oil for Canadian consumers and businesses, and the lack of concern over the impact our petro-currency has on forestry, agriculture, tourism and manufacturing, appeared to be glaring examples of an economic case intent on presenting only the benefits to the oil industry without due consideration to the economic costs for the rest of us.  The development of a strategy to export raw crude to Asia at the cost of value added jobs and control over environmental standards also seemed worthy of provincial comment.

I felt surely, there should be professional economists, paid by taxpayers, that would stand up and present a fair picture of the macroeconomic impact rapid resource expansion and export has on the economy of British Columbia, not to mention the threat to the environment and First Nations rights.   That is when I discovered that BC had signed away the right to actively assess the project.    I then understood that not only have you, as Premier, elected to remain silent on the issue, but our provincial departments have effectively been muzzled as well.

I draw to your attention the Environmental Assessment Equivalency Agreement signed between the NEB and BC’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) on June 21^st, 2010.  I have attached a link to the agreement for your ease of recall.

Essentially the agreement states that the EAO will accept the NEB’s environmental assessment for four proposed projects, including the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project, which would otherwise have to be reviewed under BC’s Environmental Assessment Act.  The NEB’s review would be treated as an equivalent assessment.

If the province of BC had not signed away its right to the NEB, under the terms of the legislation the EAO would have had to undertake a review.  According to the EAO, it is a “neutral agency that manages the review of proposed major projects in British Columbia, as required by the Environmental Assessment Act.  The environmental assessment process provides for the thorough, timely and integrated assessment of the potential environmental, economic, social, heritage, and health effects that may occur during the lifecycle of these projects, and provides for meaningful participation by First Nations, proponents, the public, local governments, and provincial agencies.”

We have the power within BC to undertake meaningful environmental assessment within provincial jurisdiction, but signed it away.   However, not all is lost.   Clause 6 of the Environmental Assessment Equivalency Agreement states:  ”Either Party may terminate this Agreement upon giving 30 days written notice to terminate the other Party”. 

May I recommend that the Government of British Columbia inform the Government of Canada that the province is now exercising its right with 30 days notice in order that it may undertake a proper environmental assessment under the terms of the provincial Environmental Assessment Act, for the Enbridge project, and it will not entertain signing such an agreement for the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline.

This action will ensure that the public interest of the people of BC will be protected and will not be severely curtailed by the actions of the Government of Canada favouring primarily Alberta’s oil producers.

Sincerely,

Original Signed by Robyn Allan

Robyn Allan

cc.  Dr. Terry Lake, Minister of the Environment
Mr. Adrian Dix, Leader of the Opposition
Mr. Rob Fleming, Environment Critic
Mr. John Cummins, Conservative Leader
Mr. John van Dongen, Conservative MLA
Mr. Bob Simpson, Independent MLA
Ms. Vicki Huntington, Independent MLA

Since the signing away of the rights of the citizens of the Province of British Columbia, Stephen Harper and Joe Oliver have labeled First Nations and activists opposed to the project(s) as terrorists, unpatriotic and only stopped short of declaring them treasonous.


They have also moved the goalposts.


Where we might have been able to view the surface activities of the Independent Joint Review Panel as being able to provide a reasoned assessment of the Northern Gateway proposal, Harper has now gutted that process and placed the final decision in the hands of the federal cabinet.


If you have any doubt as to the shape of the final decision now, you've been living under a rock.


As Laila points out, we have less than a month to exercise the withdrawal option provided in Clause 6 of the Environmental Assessment Equivalency Agreement.


Christy Clark has been telling us that she won't have a BC government position on the Northern Gateway project until the JRP completes its work. Even she knows that by then it will be far too late.


All of this provides an even better explanation as to the sudden influx of Harper operatives into the inner circle of the office of the BC Premier, and why Christy Clark's chief-of-staff is a former Enbridge lobbyist. 


People of the Province of British Columbia, you've been fed a massive bill of goods. And we've all been had.

Following the crumbs

Back here I told the story of a frustrating bit of research where I ended up finding a small bouquet of strange connections between the Harper Conservatives and the BC Liberal party of Christy Clark. The problem was, I felt there had to be something more or, at the very least, something substantive. 


The other problem is that connections like this don't exist in a vacuum. There had to be some form of political courtship and there had to be an event when it all came together.


I was pretty much knackered at that point but thought that rather than just leave it dangling I should offer up the connections I had and see if the finest people in the world, our readers, could see something significant. Cookies were offered. 


Now, rather than give the entire synopsis, I'll link to the connections that were found in the order they were gathered. You go to each one because they each have extensive research for you to gather in.

First to jump into the swamp was RossK, our inimitable Gazetteer. Assisted by one of the only people who can dig a cockroach out of a database full of rats, North Van Grumps, he came up with a new name: Nina Chiarelli.

Next to wade into the illustrious pond of castor canadensis was the most excellent Alison, who, being something of a beach watcher in her own right, gave us a newer arrival: Dimitri Pantazopoulos. She also makes the point that Ken Boessenkool was a lobbyist for Enbridge ... our Northern Gateway crowd.

Once again NVG pulls some files from his wicked archive and RossK  finds another angle that cannot be ignored.  


Beijing York, in the comments section waved an idea around. Were the Harperites infiltrating beyond their precincts? 


It turns out our intrepid BY had something. We found Harperite connections in the Ontario PCs, the Alberta Wild Rose party and, (it should go without saying), spilling over a chair in the Toronto mayor's office. 


So ... what else?


Well, there is just what we've got. Alison's connection is significant. Pantazopoulos appeared to be on the public payroll on 4 April 2011, after working on Christy Clark's leadership bid. And, as RossK points out there was public knowledge of Pantazopoulos' hiring on 17 March 2011, just 3 days after Christy Clark was sworn in as Gordon Campbell's replacement. 


Now.


Add this. Harper's operatives were here during the BC Liberal leadership campaign, as we have already seen. 


Were they here by request? Were they here to secure an HST friendly premier, no matter what he or she looked like? 


Gordon Campbell was squeezed out by his own caucus over the plummeting fortunes of the BC Liberals over the HST. To this day, you would have to root deep into a badger hole to find anybody who doesn't believe that Campbell and his cabal didn't have the whole idea planned before the 2009 provincial election. And an FOI request proved it. 


Campbell was in the Harper boat.


Did Gordon Campbell drop a Harper bomb on BC?

True colours . . .

Premier! What a cool idea!

I've been tossing around some confusing thoughts about who it is I'm reminded of whenever I see BC premier, Christy Clark come out and speak publicly.

Then Rod Mickleburgh wrote this:

Increasingly, it appears that Ms. Clark simply liked the idea of being Premier, without much thought of what to do after that. Almost willfully uninterested in policy, she’s been lurching from slogan to slogan, while claiming to be responsible for virtually everything good that moves.

It’s not working.

Veteran political analyst Norman Ruff, who has seen premiers rise, and mostly fall, in British Columbia over the past 40 years, says Ms. Clark is the victim of her own shortcomings.

“There’s a gap between her smile and her actual performance,” says Mr. Ruff of the perennially-upbeat Premier.

Rather than establishing substantive programs of her own, Ms. Clark has spent most of her time reacting to events, and that’s not cutting it with British Columbians, according to Mr. Ruff, professor emeritus at the University of Victoria.

Then I ran across something at Balloon Juice. 

Yup. Pretty much the same thing.

A strange scattering of dots (Updated twice)

Updates at the bottom.

Very strange. It all started with a quick search. I was looking for a link between two ridings for not-so-obvious reasons. For the time being, they'll probably remain that way but I'll toss out the items and perhaps the sharper minds of others can make some further connections. (Click on all images to expand)

1. On doing a google search for "Julian Fantino" + "Randy Kamp", this is what appeared before me on hitting one of the top returns.

It took a minute, but I realized I was looking at Randy Kamp's bio on Julian Fantino's webpage. So I tried a few others and apparently didn't hit them quite right. So, I figured I had a choice of digging further into either Fantino's or Kamp's website. I picked Kamp's for a domain search and got this.

Then a domain search on Fantino's page turns up this.

2. The common thread? Backbonetechnology.com. I also have the IP address which is shared by both Conservative MPs, so I decided to do a reverse look up. Got this.

That is a giant bouquet of Harper MPs, from Ben Lobb to Tony Clement, first names being alphabetically significant. There are a few other outfits, unrelated to the Harper mob, sharing the same IP as the who's who of the Conservative party.

But this doesn't tell us much really. It's no big deal. 150 different websites sharing the same IP is common in a large organization. The commonality, however, is backbonetechnology.com, so it was time to have a look. First thing? Do an IP check on the domain.

Huh?!!! bcliberals.com ? That created a WTF moment. At least until I realized that both the shared IP for all those Harper MPs and the IP for the BC Liberals fell within the same NetRange.

3. Time to go look at Backbone technology. Click on PORTFOLIO and quick as a flash ... samples of lots of developed websites including two for the BC Liberals, several for the BC government, two different provincial health authorities, the 2010 Olympics (BC government), and, (I like to think of this as a find), the BC government campaign to convince everyone that the HST was just the peachiest tax you've ever heard of.

These guys are connected and, not to put too fine a point on it, there is a gray area there. Having both the BC Liberal party and the BC government as clients might be viewed as some as being ... well, you can figure it out.

The problem was that there was nothing to indicate they had done anything for the Conservative Party of Canada. Sifting around the site didn't produce much. Stop for a coffee and stare at the home page. They have production in three languages. Only an idiot would hit Greek if he doesn't speak Greek. So I click on Greek. Why not? Hit PORTFOLIO again.

Oh! Would you look at that? Right at the bottom of the page. Find out more.After reading about the client, the solution and the result, in their own words:

Today, Backbone's relationship with the Conservatives is stronger than ever as Expression continues to adapt to the party's needs. Quite simply, Backbone's experience – combined with its Expression platform – has given the Conservative Party of Canada enterprise-level performance that continues to offer a high return on their investment.

Excellent. Glad to hear it. (And it wasn't even in Greek!) Happier than you know because, (assumption), I'm willing to bet a dollar to a hole in a doughnut that there isn't a political party in this country who doesn't demand exclusivity from a contractor. That can come in many ways, from political donations, to service in kind, to a legally bound document which states in many more words, "you won't so much as have coffee with our enemies". (Enemies is a Harper concept transported from his western firewall days which would be viewed as political opponents almost anywhere else).

Which would mean, you don't do business with political parties which don't pass the Harper smell-test. Which means the BC Liberals ... do.

4. Who runs this politically connected outfit? A quick look at the Industry Canada company directory and we get Marc Charalambous. Hey ... I know that name from somewhere.

5. A quick search of the name produces this little gem:

The government office running the province's pro-harmonized sales tax campaign secretly doled out contracts to two Liberal-connected companies and a former aide to the minister who introduced the tax, records show.
...

Internal government guidelines would normally have required those contracts to be awarded via a competitive process because they're valued at $25,000 or more. But the guidelines allow that process to be circumvented - and contracts awarded without public notice - if it would "compromise government confidentiality."
...

$52,746.75 went to Backbone Technology Inc. to develop the province's HST information Website. Backbone has worked for the Liberals since 2001, setting up a private intranet for the party executive, as well as the Liberal Website.

Company president and chief executive officer Marc Charalambous acknowledged those Liberal links, and confirmed that party information director Hoong Neoh provides advice to Backbone on an informal, volunteer basis.

But Mr. Gordon said it was the company's "good reputation" for delivering high-profile government projects on time - including Websites for reviews on health care and postsecondary education - that got it the contract.

"I was called to look at doing this in a short timeline - which is typically the kinds of work we've done for the government. We've done quite a few projects over the last five or six years under such an environment," added Mr. Charalambous.

... (and backtrack)

Campaign Research Inc., which worked on cabinet minister George Abbott's unsuccessful campaign for the Liberal leadership, got the biggest contract - receiving $167,800 for conducting the government's telephone town-hall meetings on the HST.

The company didn't respond Monday to a request for comment. Mr. Gordon said Campaign Research wasn't given that work because of its Liberal connection but rather because it provided the best value out of three quotes privately solicited by the government.

Ummm. First off, what possible "confidentiality" was involved with a referendum on a tax? Secondly, Campaign Research Inc. was not what appeared on the contract. In fact it involved an Ontario numbered company which turned out to be Campaign Research Inc. The BC Government knows which Ontario numbered companies to call for an open street-fight referendum? How very cool.

Have I written down Campaign Research Inc. enough?

This Campaign Research Inc.

Backbone Technologies: Federal Conservative and BC Liberal linked.

Campaign Research Inc.: Federal Conservative and BC Liberal linked.

BC Liberal premier Christy Clark's chief of staff? Posted into Victoria directly from Harper's office: Ken Boessenkool.

BC Liberal premier Christy Clark's director of communications? Posted into Victoria directly from Harper's office: Sara MacIntyre. (Complete with a shitty attitude and 48 cases of chewing gum).

(As an aside, I am fairly confident that there is a Canadian Army general who was probably very relieved to see this pair fly out of Ottawa).

So, I got nuttin'. I went looking for one thing in particular and came up with something completely different. And, yes, it's all been out there in bits and pieces form. I just wonder when the Clark/Campbell crowd will start calling themselves the Harper Government?

Aside from the issue of the BC government under premier "photo op" violating their own tendering rules to accommodate their paranoia, there is nothing to suggest that anyone or anything has committed a legal breach. A bad smell doesn't constitute evidence of anything except ...

That doesn't mean that there isn't more. That's where you come in. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take those points and see if there is a line going somewhere significant. If it does, credit will be provided in a future post. (And I'll make cookies).

UPDATE: The Gazetteer (working with the inimitable North Van Grumps) has started to stride and pegged the Harper infiltration of the Christy Clark enterprise at before the arrival of the two Ottawa spawns mentioned above. Quick summary: Nina Chiarelli, arrived in Victoria from Ottawa, in June 2011. That was just one month after the 2011 federal election. Chiarelli had been acting communications director for the Harper PMO during the campaign. Chiarelli was, according to the information I just read, still the director of communications for federal Transport, Infrastructure and Communities up to July 2011. It looks like Chiarelli held down both jobs for a short time. Go get more cookie-worthy details at The Gazetteer.

UPDATE II:  Alison weighs in with another revealing find. Dimitri Pantazopoulos, with Reform Party and US Republican baggage, drifted into the Christy Clark/BC Liberal fold in April 2011. RossK has sharpened the focus on the arrival of Chiarelli. 

Keep in mind, despite the fact that this may be the most accidental post I've ever done, that the significance of this Harper infiltration is profound. This is an endeavour to Americanize not the just politics, but the way politics is done in this country. This is the Reform movement at work. From the Ontario PCs, to the Toronto mayor's office, to the Alberta Wild Rose Party, to the BC Liberals, this is an attempt at a Reform power grab. 

Oh yes. Those recent off-writ Harper-style attack ads. NVG has the story.
  

The punishment budget

Kevin Falcon is pissed. So is Christy Clark.

What has them pissed? Somebody whizzed all over their parade. That's what.

In the hours since the delivering of the BC provincial budget I have tried to rationally analyze what part of the Falcon budget makes sense. I have even taken the dive into fiscal prudence and still, there is no answer which can reconcile the fact that Falcon's budget penalizes British Columbians for their simple existence.

It's all about the Harmonized Sales Tax.

Falcon is a Campbellite. The HST, introduced to the citizens of BC from the blind side, was supposed to be a given. With an unworkable recall legislation, (the only one in the country), the Campbellites were confident that they could dump a change in the provincial tax system on the people of BC without a problem and with enough time until the next election to have it pushed back in the memories of the electorate.

The backlash was swift, ugly and huge.

I don't know many people who would come to the call of  Bill Vanderzalm, but the HST issue got a once reviled provincial premier an unbelievable amount of popular support in the fight to get rid of it. It wasn't so much the tax itself that energized a movement. It was the underhanded methods used to implement it. There are few who could be made to believe that then-premier Gordon Campbell did not lie to the voters when he told reporters that HST was not on the radar just a few months before introducing it.

The forcing of a referendum on the HST cost Campbell his job. Unfortunately what emerged as a premier and ministry turned out to be nothing but the same Campbell water-carriers heaped with the baggage of a corruption investigation tied to another Campbell lie - the sale of BC Rail.

Then there was the attempt to cloud the HST referendum question. Instead of learning from their past dishonesty, the question put to the electorate on the HST was twisted into the negative. Again, people were angry, not so much about the tax, but because the political power elite presumed that voters were stupid enough to fall for a cheap trick.

The political power elite got handed their asses.

The afterglow of the Vancouver Olympics, for the few who actually believed there was one, lasted for all of two minutes. The rejection of the HST and a demand to return to the previous two tax regime had almost nothing to do with the tax itself; it was a response to the behaviour of current provincial government. The lying, the arrogance, the corruption and the gimmicks were put to a direct test. The right-wingers were given a beating their egos still cannot handle.

And that is what the Clark/Falcon budget is all about. It is punishment being meted out to the voters for getting inside the Campbellites private game.

-----------

For what it's worth, Falcon's budget, peppered with Thatcherist moves, has raised another issue. These people are still trying to run a private game.

CKNW was never on the ballot

BC Premier Christy Clark needs to be sat down by the Lieutenant-Governor and lectured on the propriety of leaving this bit floating about.

"In place of a formal Throne Speech, the Premier will be appearing on CKNW’s Bill Good Show to outline the government’s agenda for the spring session," said an email to press gallery members from Clark's deputy press secretary and communications officer Rebecca Scott.

So ... the Gordon Campbell model of selling off everything to corporate interests has now penetrated the offices of government, 100 percent of which are funded by provincial taxpayers.

The people who elect the members of the legislative assembly which will either support or demand the end of any given government regime have the right to know what the government's agenda is, in formal terms, and then have it debated in an open session of the legislature.

To do less, and this dangerous idea is much less than the people of the province deserve, is to violate the privilege of power granted by electors and hand it over to unelected corporate insiders. It is no less corruption and an abuse of power than to deny an elector access to a ballot box.

To answer The Vancouver Sun's Jonathan Fowlie, no, Bill Good will not be the next lieutenant-governor. He will remain a flack for the Clark/Campbell "thing". Some people would call it a government, but they're dropping that distinction faster than a BC Liberal smart phone can speed-dial Keith Baldry.

It's time the Honourable Steven L. Point, OBC, exercises the reserve powers of his office and forces Christy Clark to meet the obligations of her office.

Over to The Gazetteer.

The train wreck that keeps on wrecking

The sale (OK 99 year lease) of BC Rail is still fresh in everybody's minds. Truthfully, it's smelly and the sudden turn of Basi and Virk to a guilty plea will never be something easily swallowed.

Somewhere, somehow, a deal was made, involving taxpayers money, at the eleventh hour, which kept Gary Collins from having to testify and becoming the subject of an intense cross-examination.

There will be head on a plate. If it's not Campbell's, then the next leader of the BC Liberals (not to be confused with real liberals) will be sufficient.

So, no, Ms. Clark. It isn't over and it hasn't been dealt with. It isn't and never was within your province to make that proclamation in any case.