ERASE IT!

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.