TAKING CHARGE -MOSCOW STYLE

The news that the B.C. government has taken over Tourism BC - previously an arms-length Crown Corporation - is both good and bad.

The good is that someone should have wrested this agency away from its handlers ages ago. Any supplier who has had contractual dealings with the office will testify that professionalism and street smarts are not singularly evident.

Frankly, the place has been in snooze and comfort mode for a while.

The bad is that the government is behaving like Big Brother.

You just seize an operation and pull it into the bunker without any conversation?

Kevin Krueger, the Tourism Minister and ICBC claims adjuster, has some special skills in this area? He ran a front desk at a Best Western?

What gulag are we living in exactly?

Ah, yes, the Winter of Our Discontented Games.

2010 trumps all policy decisions.

Know it. Face it. Get used to it.