In November 2001, after NDP MLA Joy McPhail reported a government plan to increase medical service plan premiums, Canadian Press quoted Liberal Health Minister Colin Hansen,"Joy MacPhail needs a new Deep Throat because we have no plans to change MSP premiums in British Columbia."Weeks later Health Minister Colin Hansen announced he was increasing health care premiums by 50%. Since then, MSP premiums continued to rise at a rate well above inflation.
This is just one element of a philosophical aim to redistribute wealth, from poor to rich. Liberals rolled back income taxes on corporations and high earners and slashed revenues from natural resources while they increased subsidies and exemptions enjoyed by big business.
User fees, tolls, clawbacks, carbon taxes, electricity prices, vehicle and property insurance, property taxes and other imposts rose materially, affecting the majority of citizens. Meanwhile, for many, incomes in real terms declined while government removed worker protections by politicizing Worksafe BC and turning the Labour Relations Board into an instrument of employers.
If one examines the 2013 Liberal election platform, lies are immediately apparent. A central part of the document is a "Debt-Free B.C." That is particularly cynical, considering the Clark government has added debt at an unprecedented rate and plans to continue doing so. As well, there cannot be a single person - even among Liberal cheerleaders in the media - who believes the promise that natural gas will lead to 114,000 new jobs, which would be almost a 40 fold increase. Does anyone with a brain accept this statement from the Liberal platform?
"We can create $1 trillion in economic activity and create the BC Prosperity Fund with $100 billion over 30 years."The reality is that Liberal politicians believe there is no need to tell the truth and little need to hold sessions of the Legislature. No pundits in the Press Gallery will hold them to account nor will they report the detail of opposition statements, either in question period, debates or in public events. During the education dispute, instead of meeting with constituents, Liberals have locked doors to their office. In at least one case, a Liberal MLA called the RCMP to remove a group of people who waited at her office, hoping to speak.
People, our democracy is dysfunctional.
The truth has no agenda
ReplyDeleteBut Norm--
ReplyDeleteAccording to the good Mr Palmer, he of the Vancouver Sun, that initial MSP increase was actually triggered in response to the Doctors's contract awarded in the wake of binding arbitration.
Or some such thing.
.
Maybe a plane load of TFW's for the classrooms?
ReplyDeleteActually, the pendents in the Press Gallery from the MSM, hold them to account even when the Legislature is in session.
ReplyDeleteRead Palmer’s and then Smythe’s columns today – almost identical in attack of teachers and defense of the government. Who is supplying them with the words as if we didn’t know? They might as well fire all reporters and save the cash and just have Marrissen (Clark’s ex) write the propaganda. How do you get a Premier to live up to her promises when she has never kept one in her life? How do you get the public online with what is going on when they believe the BS that is fed to them through the likes of Palmer, Smythe and Baldrie? Yesterday Globull even removed the story about the two staff being charged with electioneering from their website so as not to irritate the crown princess. As for the BCTF it’s hard to fight the Big Bad Wolf when you have a bunch of Bambies expecting things to be done fairly and reasonably. Teachers are not for the most part combative or militant whatsoever. They are cooperative and expect the same in treatment. What they are up next is neither cooperative nor fair in treatment. I fear that evil will triumph in all of this because the public is complacent and accepting all of this by the media as gospel. I don’t know what your readership is Harvey but it is nothing compared to the propaganda that Clark can muster against teachers and getting school opened. Where are all the parents right now? Happy that Hamish Clark is being allowed to go to private school thanks to the generous voters who gave Clark her in? Where are the high school students? Happy that their education is being short changed thanks to Factbender? Why aren’t they doing something? Lots of stuff to ponder. And the most important question of all. Where do we go from here?
ReplyDeleteIt is time for a general strike by everyone, not just public and private unions.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a plane load of TFW's for the classrooms?
ReplyDeleteHow about a planeload of TFW for the legislature in Victoria and do away with the Liberal MLA's - you would get more work done for a fraction of the cost to the taxpayers.
Thanks
The citizens of this province voted the lieberals into office by either voting for them, or not voting at all. Now we all get to live with it, or in some cases even die because of it.
ReplyDeleteIf people want to believe the lieberals and MSM good for them. when it comes back to bite them in the arse, they can come back and read all of your columns. It wasn't as if they weren't warned.
Many don't want to believe the truth about the lieberals, because if they did, they might have to do something about it. Its like once you acknowledge the problem, you might have to do something to solve it and its always easier, for some to bury their heads in sand or Mount Polley mine tailings.
If you still think this provence deserves what it's getting because the liberals prevailed in that election by playing fair and square, then you are beyond naive and/or beyond obtuse. And the same goes for anyone else who still thinks that all of the polling, and all of the analysis was so mysteriously inaccurate. Lol! You people have no problem believing in conspiracies where Marrissen and Kinsella, et al, preside over an army of secret, anti-democratic enablers and facilitators - - - but when it comes to the larger issue, all of a sudden your imaginations hit their ceilings and you spit out *the exact* conclusions that they hope you will because they keep you perpetually from getting to the truth; "What a shame that people are too apathetice to vote, or are too ignorant to vote intelligently." Really?!
DeleteIt's time to grow up and see what has happened, has been happening, and which coninues to unfold. The government has been captured by private interests and doesn't really care at all about endless complaints because the old system of accountability (voting) has been gamed. There is so much evidence that not only has this occurred, but how it likely happened and is happening all over the world. Google "diebold election Bush" just to whet your whistle.
It's time to either understand how our collective adversaries are subjugating everything for the interests of their bosses, or just give up, because this incessant circle-jerk of complaining is futile and does a profound disservice to Mr. Farrell and his brilliant, courageous work. He can lead you to the water, but for all of your feigning, he obviously cannot hydrate anyone whose scope of consideration is so desperately narrow. It's time to grow up and realize that the people in power don't abide by the Marquess of Queensbury rules; only their subjects do.
dysfunctional by design I might surmise, Norm.
ReplyDeleteIt is a democracy only in name, and the voting process now is nothing more than windowdressing to fool the public into thinking they still live in a democracy and still have a say. If we really have a democractic system Christy, have your MLAs show up at the rallies outside their constituency offices to respond to the concerns of their constituents. Be present during each day of the next sitting of the legislature to answer all of the questions about your attack on the education system and other matters of concern such as, oh, let's say your government's ineptitude in the Mt Polley disaster instead of running off to hide on another "trade trip."
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One of the main problems in this day and age is that only a minority take the time to look at and research and discuss what is going on around them and in the world at large. The majority either don't give a hoot or are so uninformed that they are easily fooled by liars.
I have the TV on in the background as I write this and, while it is lovely that one of the ships of the Franklin expedition has been found, and Stephen Harper is making a huge deal out of it, and "one of the great mysteries of all time" has been solved, what else is going on in the world that we are being distracted from?
Perhaps I digress, but not really. It is all dysfunctional, by design.
BC says on
ReplyDeletetv that 200 dollar property tax / 5 cents more a liter to fund teachers .Nothing on royalty rates or top income bracket
Quebec changed its method of taxing mining production and took in more in the first year than it had received in the ten year preceding.
DeleteMostly foreign owned resource companies produce more than 10 billion dollars a year in BC and pay a tiny fraction to the public by way of royalties and pay surprisingly little in the way of corporate income taxes.
Government spent almost a billion dollars for the northwest transmission line and subsidizes both resource companies who use the power and energy companies who sell the power. Taxpayers are the losers.
There are ways to improve funding of public education without loading that cost on those with the least ability to pay.
But, sponsors of Christy Clark have no interest in paying their own fair share.
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/05/06/quebec-government-to-raise-mining-royalty-rates/
DeleteHey BC -9 METRR tax rate(giveaway?)
http://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/050/documents_staticpost/63928/90971/2.pdf
Now you just have to get all this information to the masses.
ReplyDeletehttp://credbc.ca/norways-oil-gas-policy/
ReplyDelete