Analysis of Premier Clark's first year

The Daily Twigg Vol. 1 No. 26  March 15, 2012 (revised version March 19)

In This Issue
1. Analysis of Clark's first year as Premier
2. NDP caucus critiques Clark's first year
3. NDP caucus chair slams Clark's budget
4. Cummins cites Clark's accomplishments


Premier Clark cited misleading job stats
to minimize her first year's poor record


By John Twigg

Christy Clark observed her first year anniversary in the B.C. Premier's Office yesterday and typically she did it with manufactured distortions, including selecting facts and statistics that were deliberately misleading.

"I am proud of the progress we have made, our continued growth and the number of new jobs added to our economy. Our government remains focused on the priorities of B.C. families: jobs, economic growth and opportunity," she said Tuesday morning at a manufactured photo opportunity at Seaspan Marine Corp. shipyards in North Vancouver, reports from which made the evening television news and the front page of Wednesday's Vancouver Sun - though it looked and sounded like the shipyard workers withheld their applause, and well they might have because her claims were exaggerated, and were more partisan talking points than factual reasoning.

"According to the latest data, we are seeing real results from our focused efforts. British Columbia has added 39,900 net new jobs to the economy," she said in an accompanying news release, which became a rounded 40,000 jobs in the newspaper's headline the next day.

But what neither the news release nor the newspaper story made clear was that she was citing seasonally adjusted data from a Statistics Canada survey and when the "actual" numbers are used the job gains were somewhat higher - the stats are readily available from the BC Stats website -  [http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/LabourIncome/EmploymentUnemployment/LabourForceStatistics.aspx]

While a net gain of 40,000 jobs in one year is not bad, it tends to disguise the reality that job creation in B.C. could and should be a lot more robust than that, and only now is the B.C. economy catching up to the number of jobs reached in 2008 and then lost in a global crash, and in several key industries such as logging, sawmilling and paper-making the tens of thousands of lost jobs might never be recovered..


That may seem like a trifling technicality to supporters of Clark's fading and troubled regime but it is an important distinction for at least two reasons: it is yet another example of Clark's tendency to engage in dissembling mendacity (which as I explained in the previous issue means deliberate deceit), and it is another indication that her claims about economic growth and job creation are flawed in numerous ways - both of which are key parts of her strategy to win the next provincial election by hook or by crook.

Regrettably such deceits are now routinely found in Clark' s political statements and even in her apparent strategies, such as boosting and boasting about the merits of private-sector job creation while neglecting to admit let alone give due credit to the very large amounts of public-sector projects that have been propping up B.C.'s job numbers for several years now, nor did she admit that while private-sector job creation is much to be desired there also are many merits and necessities in public-sector job creation too, of which the federal-provincial infrastructure projects were an excellent example, and really the ideal is to have both public and private projects working together to maximize bangs for the bucks.

In fact it's a bit amazing that a federal Conservative government and a provincial Liberal government were able to co-operate on so many infrastructure projects in B.C. in recent years, from small sewer and water systems to massive bridges, in what was rightly seen to be a "have" province. It was an improbable sort of non-partisan Keynesian mind-meld that helped Canada avoid the global recession. [And note that Keynes did not advocate prolonged deficit stimuluses, he advocated extra taxes on the rich in good times to build up a sort of Josephite reserve for the lean years, which Canada and B.C. more or less did.]

But just look at where Clark chose to boast about her much-ballyhooed B.C. Jobs Plan - a shipyard just starting to work on an $8-billion program from the federal government! And that contract award was aided by only a few small investments by the province in some long-neglected training programs.

Indeed analyses of industry-by-industry employment trends, of which there are several on the net, and of overall employment, unemployment and participation rate trends, show that B.C.'s employment rate has declined somewhat in recent years and lately has been relatively flat at around 60%, that its unemployment rate has declined slightly from about 8% to 7% and some of that decline is due to an apparent "discouraged worker" effect because the participation rate has fallen from 65.8% in February last year to 65.1% this year.

The employment changes by industry sector are a bit more mixed and complex so I'll avoid trying to explain them here but the gist is that self-employed and service jobs are up while goods production has declined, with some resource industries up and others down, but the full-employment Nirvana is still in a galaxy far far away, and the Clarkites meanwhile are adding about zilch to direct job creation and work training for disadvantaged workers.

Clark repeatedly cited list of coming megaprojects

Clark evidently so enjoyed citing the litany of major industrial development projects coming on stream in the next few years that she cited them several times, starting at the North Van event Tuesday, then the Globe 2012 opening event Wednesday morning in Vancouver and again in Question Period in Victoria yesterday afternoon as well as in some media hits along the way.

Interestingly that list of coming megaprojects also was cited by this newsletter when we analyzed Clark's new budget and discerned that the government's forecast revenues had been low-balled by about $1 billion and the existence of those projects seemed to have been deliberately ignored in the GDP forecast, and the huge Site C dam project was even omitted from both the major-project and debt forecast lists.

But Clark herself has done little or nothing personally to bring forward those megaprojects, apart from prematurely announcing her intent to proceed with building the Site C dam even before the formal environmental and feasibility studies have begun - which she did so the power from that dam could be pledged to supply the needs of about three more proposed LNG plants and so the water collected by the high elevation dam can be used to expand natural gas fracking as well as to backstop the North American Water and Power Alliance system that almost no one is willing to admit even exists let alone being already a done deal (it was done secretly by Clark's predecessor, Gordon Campbell).

So exactly what has Clark done, actually? Lots and lots of photo ops and not much debate in the Legislature, including almost missing her moment to close debate on the budget then providing not a peep on Bill 22 the Education Improvement Act, which is exceedingly misnamed as well as being another prime example of Clark's incompetence or even worse: her self-serving malice, because she is using the Bill (which is being done this week by closure) not to benefit the school system but instead to damage the election chances of the B.C. New Democrats by forcing them into defending what Clark hopes will become an unpopular group: the teachers and their B.C. Teachers Federation - which Clark pointedly calls a union.

But so far the polls indicate Clark is losing that battle too, as we noted in the previous issue, just as she is losing many other battles now, including probably both of the byelections she has been neglecting to call (she said they'll be called in about two weeks), and more and more she is looking like a politician running scared, such as Wednesday morning when her new press secretary Sara McIntyre shielded her from a media scrum at the Globe 2012 event, which itself became a hot item in the mainstream news and internet media.

Everything is focused on 2013 election

It sure looked and sounded like she was trying to handle Clark like an Ottawa cabinet minister, as if they could do political damage control simply by putting Clark inside a security bubble to keep her away from certain reporters. It’s another sign Clark is running scared over botching so many issues because now everything – everything – is focussed on building slush funds and creating talking points to help them steal the next provincial election – much like Campbell cheated to win in 2009 – and thereby maintain the coverups of scandals like BCRail and many many others.

Happy first birthday Christy - are you having fun yet?

Actually Clark at one reflective moment did admit that she knew the job would be difficult, which she again blamed on the problems left by "my predecessor" and which she tried to downplay as merely "a bump in the road" to have been expected, but that too is an example of her habit - which is more than a tendency - to prevaricate and posture in whatever ways she believes will help get her re-elected, such as minimizing concerns and putting away her old red outfits and instead wearing only Tory blue ones now - not to mention structuring all of the budget and legislative measures in ways that pander to Conservative supporters and ways that create difficulties for New Democrats.

A good example of that is a newly-promised job relocation program in which welfare recipients from southern B.C. will get help to relocate to northern B.C. where there are many unfilled jobs. It sounds great, and overtaxed entrepreneurs will love the sound of it, but few of those job vacancies are for unskilled workers so will the program include the lengthy high-skilled training and costly housing and other supports such as counselling needed to make it work in a big way (as blogger Laila Yuile also asked)? Probably not, because that would cost a lot of money at first, and instead what we'll probably get is merely a few token pilot projects, just enough to support a photo op and some partisan talking points in the 2013 election campaign.

No mention of Campbell's carbon tax

That was kind of like Clark's appearance at Globe 2012 too, which featured some photo ops with her at clean-technology exhibits but did not include any tie-ins to the troubled carbon tax issue or the showcasey Pacific Carbon Trust, both of which are dubious legacies from Campbell and both of which are on the chopping block of B.C. Conservative leader John Cummins, and probably deservedly so because they are dysfunctional. (see my analysis on the Commonsense Canadian site)

Clark may not be governing according to polls - or she may be trying to but hasn't been succeeding - but she certainly is trying anything and everything she and others can think of to drive up the popularity of the badly-wounded B.C. Liberals, which party is looking more and more like a mortally-wounded beast with each passing day in the Legislature and around the province (they recently had a staff purge). In order to try to stop the flow of Liberal supporters to the B.C. Conservatives she has been taking ever more extreme measures and those obvious policy contortions are making her look more and more desperate and incredible.

Small events such as the dispute between Clark's government and Telus Corp. over the naming and signage rights for B.C. Place are relatively minor, like maybe $50 million over 20 years, but they are still contributing to the perceptions that Clark is running a bumbling and bungling regime, but now it has come out that the B.C. government has also been negotiating a $1-billion long-term service deal with Telus, which sounds like a sensible deal from what we know of it, but what is surprising is that the rival bidders are now openly alleging and perhaps litigating that the process was biased and unfair. (See scooper Bob Mackin at his 2010goldrush blog for details.)

That sounds remarkably like the bungled and biased process the B.C. Liberals used to sell B.C. Rail a few years ago, which led to spectacular litigation and should have brought down the Campbell Liberal government (of which Christy was deputy premier at the time and was connected to some wrongdoers when she resigned) and it would have brought it down if the private-sector media and business establishments were not so unwilling to tolerate an NDP replacement, and if the judiciary and Ministry had been more brave and independent. (Imagine what the media coverage would have been like if Premier Mike Harcourt or Glen Clark had done what Campbell did! But it was "better the crooks we know than the socialist hordes we don't trust".)

Coverups of coverups characterize B.C. regimes

If things in B.C. really are as rosey as Ms. Clark claims, why is she not scheduling more media availability sessions? And why is she attending less than half of the Question Periods? The answer is obvious to insiders: she's struggling to cover up perhaps dozens of scandals, and she's very afraid of getting some rogue questions, such as whether she really did lobby the India Consulate in Vancouver to get a travel visa for a Liberal Party activist from Surrey who happens to be a convicted Indo-Canadian gangster who helped gather memberships and donations for her leadership campaign - all as alleged in some detail on the Alex Tsakumis blog and raised at least in part elsewhere, such as by The Sun's Kim Bolan, B.C. Conservative leader Cummins and briefly by the NDP in Question Period.

On one level Clark can be a friendly and charming person, widely liked in a surficial personal way somewhat similar to Bill Vander Zalm's renowned charm, but privately when it comes to political strategizing she seems ruthless and unethical, willingly resorting to blatant misrepresentations if she believes it might advance her political career, which has been more checkered than most, from troubles on SFU student council through a botched run for mayor of Vancouver to a somewhat theatrical stint as a talk show host. And now she has tried out being Premier for a year and appears determined to go for two and hope for four more after that.

Some players with vested interests have convinced themselves she's done enough to be kept around, and so far there have been no signs of any defections by a group of dissenting Liberal backbenchers, but the more she touches the more she seems to bungle and if that keeps up she'll become a disgrace to the office and be B.C.'s version of Kim Campbell (who turned an inherited Tory majority in Ottawa into an electoral wipeout).

Maybe that prospect is why some prominent anti-NDP political backroomers are rumoured to be retiring and/or preparing to leave the province. Maybe when they're down in Palm Springs they'll find a horse descended from Chompers, a nag made famous in the infamous Bennett-Doman scandal....

Or maybe they'll flee to distant Australia or at least try for anonymity on a small Gulf Island, where they can hope to be safe from being accessed by process servers.

I've mentioned several times in recent weeks, and again above, that one of Christy Clark's main duties has been to maintain coverups on perhaps dozens of nasty and messy scandals, and really most people would be shocked if such things were all revealed. Yes the Pickton pig farm cannibalism is a part of that (who knew??), but it's only one iceberg in a whole floe of outrageous wrongs perpetrated by a generation or two of essentially corrupt free-enterprise regimes, who may also have been mere puppets of international fixers who can perpetrate massive financial frauds and timely regime changes too.

So Christy narrowly won the B.C. Liberal Party leadership and appears to have done so aided at least in part by a gangster and maybe by other dubious means too (hints of stolen PINs?), and then she may have tried to help him get a visa? That's peanuts compared with privatizing utilities, giving away assets, destroying fish streams and fish runs while protecting fish farms, draining the treasury, placing pension funds offshore, hiring and severing friends and insiders, cutting taxes to favor campaign donors, misrepresenting financial and economic stats and covering up scandals left by previous regimes. Not to mention abusing Freedom of Information rules, paying $30 million for misfeasance against Boss Power, underfunding health, education and social programs, boosting raw log exports to record levels while local mills starve, breaking promises, dissembling, prevaricating . . . and on and on.

Meanwhile there is a very wide range of policy areas in B.C. in urgent need of rebalancing (to use a polite euphemism for deconstructing and rebuilding) but Clark's regime generally is only making things worse rather than better.

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B.C. NDP critiques Premier Clark's first year:

One year later, new premier brings more chaos, little change

The New Democrats say a review of Christy Clark's first year on the job shows
a government spinning its wheels and generally carrying out Gordon Campbell’s term.

Shortly before being sworn in, Clark promised change, saying “When I talk about change, one of the changes people are going to see in government is we are going to move fast.”

But Shane Simpson, New Democrat caucus chair and MLA for Vancouver-Hastings, said, “We’ve seen little real change, many flip-flops and more chaos in the way the Liberals do business under Premier Clark.

“What change we’ve seen has hurt more than it has helped the middle class and working British Columbians.”

Simpson said that in contrast, Adrian Dix and the New Democrats are offering positive and pragmatic solutions to address social, economic and environmental challenges and will continue to focus on the issues and the everyday concerns of British Columbians.

The year in review:

Leadership: Photo ops over substance

She may not wear red mittens, but the new premier continues to put photo-ops over real leadership. Premier Clark used the Kitwanga Mill in a “jobs plan” announcement about how important mills are to British Columbia’s economy. The mill has since shut down and the company has filed for bankruptcy. The premier was nowhere to be found when it came to helping the mill stay open.

Less money in your pocket

Gordon Campbell’s legacy was to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy while families paid more for long term care, medical services premiums, tuition fees, hydro rates, ferry fares and more. Under Premier Clark it is more of the same. We are still paying the HST, with the Clark Liberals foot-dragging on the transition back to the PST.  Ferry fares will increase even more on April 1. And Clark’s first budget includes another medical premium increase, for a combined Campbell/Clark increase of 85 per cent or $732 per year for families with children.

Mismanagement and boondoggles

This week it’s the B.C. Place/Telus naming fiasco where the Liberals walked away from $40 million and counting, but we’ve also seen the $30 million payout to compensate Boss Power, $6 million to convicted Liberal insiders in the B.C. Rail scandal, $100 million blown on a K-12 student information system, and the billion dollar B.C. Hydro smart meter program.

More dubious pre-election budget claims

Remember Gordon Campbell’s 2009 pre-election budget, with the $495 million “maximum” deficit that ballooned to six times that amount shortly after the election? Premier Clark now predicts a miraculously balanced budget by 2013 - right after the next election. Her plan relies on a massive fire sale of public land and assets with no provision for major new costs like the federal crime bill.

Dropping the ball on post-secondary education and skills training

Gordon Campbell’s last budget froze funding for post-secondary education. Premier Clark tabled a jobs plan with no training plan. Her 2012 budget cuts funding to B.C.’s colleges and universities by three per cent over the next three years. Despite the premier’s so called jobs plan, the Liberals have put zero new money into skills training, and are even cutting their contribution to the Industry Training Authority.

More inequality

Growing inequality continues. B.C. has ranked worst among the provinces for eight years in a row for child poverty, but Premier Clark has no poverty reduction plan. On the Missing Women’s Inquiry, Clark’s initial claim to want to hear all the voices did not translate into real support for aboriginal women. As a result, the inquiry is unravelling with aboriginal organizations and legal counsel deserting.

Still picking fights in education

One of the most confrontational ministers in Gordon Campbell’s cabinet, as Minister of Education Christy Clark picked fights with teachers, stripped contracts and brought in funding formula changes that have hurt students. With Bill 22, Clark’s Liberals are again fighting with teachers, and hurting students and public education.

More raw logs shipped and fewer B.C. jobs

Gordon Campbell’s Liberals sat idly by as tens of thousands of forest jobs were lost and dozens of mills shut down. Under Christy Clark, the problem has only gotten worse. Job losses now total more than 35,000, while mills shut down for lack of wood. Clark's forest minister is issuing ministerial orders that deprive local mills of wood (putting B.C. jobs at risk) and allowing an increase in raw log exports against the recommendation of his own committee.

Environment takes a back seat

Premier Clark continues to support more oil tankers on our coastline. She said it was "dumb" for the federal government to reject the Taseko mine plan, despite strong First Nations concerns and serious threats to an ecosystem. And we have yet to see legislation banning cosmetic pesticides.

Failing grades from auditor general, ombudsperson

February’s scathing report on forest health found that we don’t really know the true condition of our land base after a decade of underfunding and lack of leadership. The Liberal response was to argue about the auditor general’s numbers and deny the problems. We have seen an ombudsperson review outlining the sad state of seniors care after 11 years of Liberal policies. And a tragic report on the deaths of three children at the hands of their father found numerous failings in the child protection and legal system.

British Columbia courts in shambles

By the time Gordon Campbell left office, B.C. courtrooms were in serious trouble. During Christy Clark’s first year as premier, the number of delayed and cancelled trials has shot up, meaning more criminals have walked free without seeing justice. And the Liberals can’t give us the cost the federal crime bill which could add hundreds of millions of dollars in new justice services.

(above was an unedited release)
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NDP caucus chair slams Liberal failings

By Shane Simpson
(excerpted from Legislature's budget debate Feb. 29)

The other thing is that it's not just in this year. This is a government that will tell us that they want us to believe that they've done a good job. So let's look at just a couple of numbers about how well they've done. These come from the Progress Board. You'll remember that we did have a Progress Board. And I'll tell you, when the Progress Board was put in place, I thought: "Well that's a body that's probably going to end up a shill for the government."

I was wrong. The Progress Board did some very important work over the time that it was in place. It took its work seriously, and it did the work. And what did they tell us in their last report before the Premier killed them off? What did they tell us? Well, they gave us a little bit of an update on how things are going.

They told us how in the year 2000 British Columbia was fourth in the country in real GDP per capita and how in 2011 we're fifth in real GDP. We've fallen. They told us how in personal income in the year 2000, real personal income, we were third in the country and how in 2011 we've fallen again to fourth. They told us how in the year 2000 in terms of job creation we were fifth in the country and how in 2011 we are seventh.

In key area after key area after key area this government has failed British Columbians. It's failed British Columbians. Part of the big problem here is the legacy that they will leave behind, and this is a serious challenge. In '09-10 in the public accounts we learned that this government has signed $53 billion in contractual obligations. That's a pretty big number. One year later that number has grown to $80.1 billion of contractual obligations.

Now, what we will learn from people like Mr. Drummond, who did work recently in Ontario, and others is that these are obligations. The biggest problem with these obligations is that they remove the capacity of government to be innovative and make decisions. And the way they do that is that these are obligations that we've got to pay for, and we don't get to change that. So unlike operating matters, where you can be flexible and you can be innovative, these are obligations that you cannot change.

The largest number there are in power purchase agreements, essentially — a large number of power purchase agreements — where we're buying power at a price that's higher than we can sell it for. That's the absurdity of this government's rationale.

We have a budget that has no vision, a budget that is pedestrian in its thinking, at best. We have a budget that does nothing for the most vulnerable people who need its support. We have a budget that is selling off British Columbia's assets — assets that belong to the people of B.C., not to the B.C. Liberals.

It's all about trying to survive an election next year. What I would say is they're trying to survive an election, but I'll tell you this: the people of British Columbia will get to make that choice in 2013, and all of the tricks and all of the spin in the world will not save this government from British Columbians' total disappointment and lack of confidence in the abysmal job that you've done for a decade for the people of British Columbia

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Conservative Cummins cites Clark's accomplishments

Premier Clark's first year in power: a record of higher taxes for BC families

March 14, 2012 - Vancouver - Today marks the one year anniversary of Premier Clark being sworn into office.

"In her first year Premier Clark's government has made BC more expensive for average families, raised the cost of doing business, let spending get out of control and made our justice system less effective," said John Cummins, Leader of British Columbia's Conservatives. "In honour of her first anniversary as Premier we are publishing a list of Premier Clark's accomplishments."

• The average BC family pays more in taxes than in any province west of Quebec
• Income taxes raised on the lowest income British Columbians. Everyone making more than $11,000 will pay about $75 more in income taxes.
• Gas taxes are going up in the Lower Mainland by 2 cents per litre - on top of already having the highest gas taxes in Canada
• The Carbon Tax went up 1.1 cents per litre of gas last July and will go about another 1 cent this summer
• MSP Premiums are going up 4%
• Hydro rates are going up
• ICBC rates are going up - on top of BC already having the second highest car insurance rates
• With all these taxes more people left BC for other provinces than moved here
• BC has the highest unemployment rate in Western Canada
• The government overspent their budget by $881 million
• Premier Clark's budget will see real spending soar by $1.1 billion this year
• The provincial debt will double between 2006/07 and 2014/15
• Blew nearly $35 million by cancelling the sale of BC Place naming rights
• The Small Business tax cut was cancelled
• The corporate tax rate is going up 1%
• The minimum wage was increased, which according to the BC Liberal party will cost as many as 50,000 jobs
• Over 2,500 criminal prosecutions are threatened by lack of resources in the justice system
• Sheriffs who protect courtrooms have been cut.
• Hospitals and schools were forced to redirect $18.2 million from front line services to purchase carbon credits