The Globe & Mail has already forgiven and pardoned the Premier.
In an editorial this morning, they sidestep the thorny issue of culpability, perhaps criminality, certainly obstruction of justice, by calling the wilful destruction of emails "ineptitude."
Cute.
For the rest of us, let us remind ourselves what this is all about.
This government sold BC Rail to CN for $1 Billion in 2003.
In the Basi-Virk trial, which has been going on ever since, questions are being raised about corruption, privileged information, payoffs and the like.
First we learned that hosts of emails from the office of the Premier and cabinet members had been "lost" or deleted.
Now, we are told that these missing pieces of evidence in a criminal trial may have been deleted as recently as this May.
The Premier remains closed-mouthed about the entire affair. Quoting the departed Opaque One, he tells us that this all before the courts.
Right.
The stench is unbearable.
Defence lawyers are quite right to ask the BC Supreme Court to demand that the government produce these email records.
And the opposition NDP are quite right to call for a special investigation.
The stench is unbearable.
Doesn't anybody in this province care about democracy and the law?
The New Age Mayor, who has dedicated himself to eradicating homelessness in our lifetime, has a problem.
Rich Coleman, the Provincial Housing Minister, has called Hizzoner "a rank amateur."
How it pains me to credit a BC Government Minister with anything, but in this case...
The Mayor opens two shelters "under the Granville Bridge."
Get serious. For 30 years now, "under the Granville Bridge" has meant multi-million dollar view condos, Beach walks and a short boat trip to Granville Island.
There's a coffee shop I favor in that neighbourhood. The owners and the regulars will rant and rave about the drug addicts and needles and pee and poo at the drop of a cappuccino spoon.
As they should. Who asked for this?
Of course, like the Burrard Bridge idiocy, this council doesn't even have the courage of its own wonky convictions. The Bicycle lane musical comedy is a 3 month trial. At one point something million. Nice trail.
The shelters are trials.
Surveys are being taken as we speak.
It's not bad enough that they don't know what they're doing and that they are doing the wrong things in the wrong places.
Destruction of e-mail records puts heat on B.C. Premier
British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell.
Court filing says employee was ordered to delete records that lawyers in a government corruption trial have insisted are critical to the defence of their clients.
When Kevin Falcon was appointed BC Health Minister recently, I predicted trouble with a capital "T."
Falcon is now saying that he will impose financial penalties on executives in the pubic health care system who fail to meet their financial and performance targets.
Listen to his philospohy in his own pea-brained words:
"That's how most people in the real world operate and it should be no different here."
Really, Kev?
First, this statement shows that Falcon doesn;t understand for a split second the role of government in a modern Western democracy. He also doesn't understand that governments, especially in their management of social programs, are exactly NOT like the private sector. The public governance of health care is a universe unto itself with different rules, targets and agendas.
That does not mean for a second that anything goes or that sloppiness with public funds is to be tolerated or excused.
It does mean that the model is significantly different and that outcomes and expenses need be measured in slightly different ways from say...General Motors! Hahahaha.
Which leads us to Falcon's second problem. Or better, our second problem with the Good Minister.
His role model is "the real world."
He means, we can only surmise, the real world of GM and Enron, Goldman Sachs and Bernie Madoff.
Lovely.
Those are the role models we want to be emulating when it comes to our care of the elderly and cancer and diabetes.
For the past several months, I have been "clocking" bicycle traffic on the Burrard Bridge.
The largest number of bikes I have ever counted, including at rush hour, is eleven. Yes, 11.
The average is six.
Now, for this, we the taxpayers have spent $1.3 Million to create the famous bike lane madness.
Yesterday, I avoided the Burrard Bridge going downtown.
Coming back several hours later, I witnessed and experienced first hand tempers boiling over at Thurlow and Pacific and at the entrance to the Bridge.
The time was 4:40 pm.
There were seven bicycles. Coubnt 'em. Seven.
Now, this action by this dedicated council may or may not be a good thing for them politically, but that is hardly the point, is it?
The point is expensive tinkering using the public purse to further partisan and ideological aims that border on fantasies.
The Mayor and his Hollyhock Happy Planet dwellers can get all their bicycle friends out in full force for the Big Foto Op, but it won't change the reality.
There is not and never has been a bicycle problem on the Burrard Bridge.
Let Gordon Campbell, the thrice-elected Premier of the Province of British Columbia, stand up in public and say in some recognizable language, "I have nothing to hide."
Let him borrow for the moment the immortal words of Richard Milhouse Nixon and tell us in an open field, "I am not a crook."
The revelation this morning that Mr. Campbell's cabinet has erased 4 years of e-mails will make both of these declarations hard to swallow.
The news is part of the on-going melodrama known as the Basi-Virk Trial. It all has something mysterious to do with selling a publicly-owned railway.
Turns out the law says that electronic files must be kept for seven years.
Will Campbell and his friends and colleagues be charged with a criminal offense?
Or does this just fall into the "business as usual" barrel?
Why would these honorable ladies and gentlemen risk breaking the law by erasing history?
Hm...
Why was the real state of the provincial budget kept from the voters before the last election? Turns out there were more unfortunates on welfare than we had been led to believe. Turns out the actual numbers were suppressed by well-meaning bureaucrats, bless their hearts.
s if all of this isn't frightening enough, we now have to contend with Kevin Falcon being the new Minister of Health.
No man on earth is as beloved of Campbell's obsession with private-public partnerships than Mr. Falcon, who can now be predicted to do everything in his considerable power to fashion utter havoc with the health care system.
You are the folks who elected this government - just barely.
May we all survive the next four years of mangled truths and strangled services relatively unscarred.
Dear David, This was a great day. The Cambie merchant won and Stonewally was beaten. A great Day for sure. Regards, Bill.
SHE WON!!!
Susan Heyes, owner of Hazel and Company, that small maternity shop once located on Cambie and 16th and now on Main Street, has won her court case against the City of Vancouver, Canada, the Attorney-General, South Coast BC Transit Authority, Canada Line Rapid Transit Inc. and Intransit BC Partnership.
She had one lawyer, Cameron Ward, and they had four.
Donna and Goliath.
Mr. Justice Ian Pitfield has awarded Susan $600,000 for loss of business during the deceitful and underhanded cut-and-cover debacle of the past two years and ordered all of the defendants to pay all of the court costs.
Our confidence and faith in the courts has been sorely tested over and over again in recent years. This decision does not entirely restore that faith and confidence, but it sure don't hurt.
Susan is our Local Hero.
Give her all awards and citations available for sheer determination and grit. For saying loudly and clearly and publicly, "FUCK YOU!" to the arrogant, thoughtless powers that be.
This is a clear piss in the face of Gordon Campbell, whose ears remained conveniently and consistently shut to cries of compensation from the many mom-and-pop shops he destroyed with indifference.
* * *
And The Opaque One is gone. We will have a new Attorney-General.
Of course, the fix was in way back when.
Kash Heed was offered the position months ago. Run for us. You'll win. Wally will run somewhere else, and win or lose, we'll give you the office.
Nothing illegal or sinister about that. It's called politics.
And Kash Heed will no doubt make a much better AG than His Opaqueness. My Aunt Tillie would make a better AG than...
Somewhere in those mysterious actuarial gardens where numbers grow unbidden like kale come post election polls.
Last week, we were first meant to believe that the voter turnout in the BC provincial election was a mythical 52%. Most of us knew, and it was later confirmed, that 48% was the much more accurate and darker truth.
Less than half the eligible population of this barely civilized outpost left their important rounds long enough to appear at their local elementary school gym to exercise their franchise.
How many millions took up arms and died merely 60 years ago for such privilege? How do we honor and remember them?
The explanation for this shame is twofold.
New Canadians
We have all done a woefully inadequate job of integrating immigrants into the real fabric of our mythically diverse society.
So many recent immigrants from many countries, especially Asian countries, have no knowledge of and no interest in local affairs. What Val Someladyorother or Wally Whatsis has to say about salad or sambas or bicycle paths on throughways carries no weight for these folks. In fact, they don’t even hear the messages.
Whose fault is this?
Yours, theirs and mine. That’s whose fault it is.
Immigration Canada demands not enough. The settlement societies are too defensive and negative, looking more for Canada to accommodate the new than for the new to develop an awareness of Canada. And the so-called ethnic communities are largely focused on creature comforts. The same obsessions that I will discuss in a moment with reference to Old Canadians – consumerism and marketing. New Canadians want an SUV or two, 4,000 square feet in the burbs, hockey equipment. That’s the Canada they have bought into. What’s voting got to do with all this?
Old Canadians
The other group that couldn’t be bothered to turn out at the voting booth last Tuesday was the thirty-somethings who are second and third and fifth generation Caucasian Canadians. Old fogies like me showed up, and thankfully some young voters appeared, but the backbone of the community was busy with their cell phones, blackberries, SUV’s, hockey leagues, bar dates, plasma TVs and all the other myriad forms of mindless amusement that passes in this neck of the woods for culture. What is, in fact, a society of brain-dead shoppers, ennobled by being made a part of the Consumer Index.
American public schools cannot hold a candle to ours, but they do have one glaring advantage. They maniacally, often jingoistically, but with good reason and result, teach something called “Civics” throughout the school years.
This is your government. These are the documents and struggles that brought it to birth and to date. This is how it is supposed to work.
Not that it is the “truth,” or even something approximating reality. But it is something.
It forces on young minds a burgeoning awareness that the democratic process and dream have a history and a prize.
***
It doesn’t really matter that much in the long run which of the scallywags won office last week.
What is more important – and disheartening – is that so few people found import in this moment.
The politicians are not to be blamed – except, of course, for their own low quality of character and offerings.
We are to blame for not finding enough excitement or vision in our own holy enterprise.
When we care little enough to send the very worst, this is what we get.
When we care little enough to remind ourselves and our neighbours about the rewards and demands and responsibilities of citizenship, this is what we get.
Citizenship is being lost. May it soon again be found.
I am the host and moderator for these debates. Come on along. And visit our website at www.langaradialogues. ca
THE ELECTION IS OVER. NOW THE FIGHT FOR BC RIVERS REALLY BEGINS!
Please join us for THE LANGARA DIALOGUES
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 7:30 PM Alice Mackay Room, Lower Level Vancouver Public Library, Downtown (Homer & Robson)
Resolved: PRIVATE POWER HAS AN IMPORTANT PLACE ON OUR RIVERS AND IN OUR ECONOMY
Arguing the AFFIRMATIVE: Steve Davis, President, Independent Power Producers of BC
Arguing the NEGATIVE: Gwen Barlee, Policy Director, Wilderness Committee
Steve Davis
Steve Davis, is the President of the Independent Power Producers associationof BC (IPPBC) and head of Steve Davis & Associates Consulting Ltd, aconsulting firm providing commercial, and strategic market advice ondeveloping green power projects in BC.Steve has been developing green IPPs in BC since 1990. He ran the projectdevelopment subsidiaries for BC Gas and Ledcor and developed biomass, co-generation and small hydro IPP projects in BC for 12 years prior tosetting up his IPP consulting business in 2002. Steve has been an IPPBC Director since 1992 and President since 2001. He hasco-authored a dozen major IPPBC reports and commentaries and provided regulatory testimonies in BC Utilities Commission hearings. Steve's consulting company has; performed due diligence on investments in IPP projects, created pro formas for small hydro projects, analyzed dozensof BC IPP projects and development companies, reviewed agreements between IPPs and First Nations and Local Governments, prepared site tenure applications for IPP developers, and assisted on preparing IPP project proposals to BC Hydro. Steve has a Civil Engineering degree from UBC and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario.
Gwen Barlee
Gwen Barlee has been involved in the environment movement since 2001 and is presently the Policy Director with the 30,000 member Western Canada Wilderness Committee - Canada's largest member-based citizen-funded wilderness preservation organization
Her campaigns in recent years have focused on environmental degradation and the erosion of the public good through privatization initiatives. Gwen's current projects with the Wilderness Committee include working to introduce provincial endangered species legislation, protect parks and public lands, and address the proliferation of private power projects in British Columbia. Gwen brings an essential environmental perspective, as well as social policy and communications expertise to her work with the Wilderness Committee. She is also a Board Member with the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA), BC Citizens for Public Power and serves on the Advisory Board of the Orion Grassroots Network.
I have now written over 3,000 posts and been visited - if ever briefly - by over 135,000 people.
It's been fun, but it's time to move on.
I am 66 and I don't feel old, but I do feel different. Some sea change has occurred.
I read the paper and barely react to most stories. Afghanistan, Israel, Gordon Campbell, Carole James, the RCMP "managing" information, Iggy Pop...yawn.
The blog takes up one to two hours of my energy every morning.
I've decided that I need that energy for my work and for other things I am writing.
I have now written two drafts of a book about my years in the drug rehabilitation business. Good, as far as it goes, but I need a third draft.
I'm blessed.
A month after heart surgery, I'm playing tennis, swimming, riding my bike and walking. I have a lovely home, great friends and two wonderful grown children.
Baruch Hashem.
You folks who have been reading the blog and writing in have been wonderful. Your comments have been exactly what they should - funny, incisive, argumentative, spirited.
Time for some of you to entertain and inform us with your own blogs.
May we keep our eyes on the prize - good health, companionship, love, community, the spirit.
Books, movies, art, sport, gardening.
"Do unto others" will not be going out of fashion.
Sayonara, auf vederzein, shalom, ciao, baby, ciao, kum sumnida, taijian, au resevoir...
David,I just heard a gentleman on the radio discussing AA. He is an alcoholic but has has been clean & sober for 40 years.The host asked him whether he considered alcoholism to be a disease. He adamantly said he did not and then went on to explain why the medical profession had been trying to label it a disease.I'd be interested in your thoughts on this!Robert
(This, of course, will teach you to stop listening to the radio.)
For many years, alcoholism was seen as a shame and a dirty secret. Cancer had the same public perception. Nobody wanted to admit to either.
About 40 years ago, doctors did the world a favour and convinced us all that alcoholism was something that had to be dealt with, not hidden away. They legitimized the problem by calling it a disease.
Fair enough...as far as it goes.
The only trouble with this approach and this history is that doctors then started to believe their own press kit. They came to believe that alcoholism is really a disease and that therefore it is something for doctors to treat.
Ouch.
Big boo-boo, kids.
If I have a heart problem (and apparently, I do), the doctors at VGH can weave their way through my arterial systems and clear a passage and put in a stent and send me home. My job is to eat well, exercise, not yell at bozos in traffic and take my medicines.
Alcoholism is different.
Doctors can do next to nothing about it. It is not a random disease picked up by using public washrooms.
It is a sickness alright. But a sickness of the soul and spirit. Some people can drink and some people can't.
If you are one of the people who can't, you have only one choice.
Stop drinking now.
Begin to live The Examined Life.
Learn who you are and how you function and mal-function.
Focus on values and helping others while you help yourself.
I have always been baffled by why any doctor would want to invest all his/her learning working with addicts and alcoholics.
Livers, kidneys, eyes, ears, noses I understand.
Alcoholism and drug addictions are for alcoholics and drug addicts to work on.
Did you watch the so-called "Leaders' Debate" last night.
Good.
That makes 6 of us.
Three of the others were TV columnists.
Of course, putting this somnambulism on air at 5pm on a Sunday right after that Oscar contender "Fast Food High" is not exactly helpful.
And if this is someone's idea of "live" television, let's hear it for the dramatic improvement in cryogenics.
And didn't our local CTV station - pleading and fighting with the CRTC these very days for more money, more concessions - really out-do themselves with just about the cheesiest set design and lighting since Captain Kangaroo?
These guys blather on - the TV execs - about their commitment to local programming and then they give us...this? Brother!
Anyway...let's get to the substance.
Uh...
I said, "Let's get to the substance."
I know, it's a stretch to call these gaseous fumes weighty or meaty or even souffle.
Here's what I found pleasantly surprising. Or surprisingly pleasant.
Carole James came across very well.
Calm, strong, organized, knowledgeable. NOT strident or shrill or kvetchy.
I was particularly impressed by her skewering of the Premier on his fudging the numbers with long-term care beds for seniors and how he's fighting crime by cutting services. Ha!
What I found most peculiar, if not downright frightening, was how creepy Gordon Campbell appeared.
Desperate, pugilistic, bug-eyed. Has anyone ever told this guy that not everything in life is high school basketball?
What a vision he brings to the arena. Kill or be killed. Very helpful. Very mature.
The party's over It's time to call it a day They've burst your pretty balloon And taken the moon away...
Patrick Kinsella, friend and colleague of the Premier who would like to be your Premier again, is mighty miffed that anyone is suggesting that he had any undue influence in the government's decision to sell BC Rail.
So miffed, in fact, that he has somehow managed to get access to transcripts in the Basi-Virk affair - transcripts that are supposed to be privileged and not available to anyone who does not have standing in the court case.
How is that possible?
Is "privileged" the operative word here?
Could this business smell any higher?
Is there no way the crusty old amateurs who are running the NDP campaign cannot carry this ball over the finish line? What more do they need?
Imagine the telephone book getting something right that has so far eluded every intellectual, government official and doctor in Canada.
This morning I was looking in those first few pages of phone book for a Telus service.
I came across a list of social service, and what do you think it said under "Addiction Services?"
Not Insite or Harm Seduction or any of the other blathering bad public policy mistakes of the last 20 years.
No.
It said in plain English and bold type ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS and NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS.
These two organizations, with no money and no publicity and no fame and no kvetching, of course, help more human beings to live clean and sober than all of the other thousands of fakers who suck the Great Tit.
Steve Davis
Gwen Barlee 
