The Daily Twigg Vol. 1 No. 25 March 13, 2012
Mounting evidence of bungled issues
supports more calls for Clark's ouster
By John Twigg
Last week I called on Premier Christy Clark to resign or be fired because she had mishandled so many issues, and of course she did not do so, but now one week later there is even more evidence she and the people around her have badly mishandled numerous important issues, and now even more people are openly questioning her acumen and fitness to govern too.
While Clark is trying to appear unflappable there are more than a few signs she is running scared, such as trying to laugh off questions about the government's apparent bungling of a $40-million deal to rename B.C. Place, avoiding the legislature and instead doing photo ops, and delaying the calling of byelections in Port Moody and Chilliwack.
It also was apparent that Clark was still studiously ignoring some new allegations by big blogger Alex Tsakumis that she was knowingly involved in some questionable Indo-Canadian politics involving a convicted gangster in Surrey who collected memberships for her leadership campaign that were possibly tainted. Though Clark has claimed to not know the man, Tsakumis alleges Clark lobbied the Consulate of India in Vancouver to get a visa for him, which claim Tsakumis supported with a photo of her there with the Consul-General.
Clark preoccupied with partisan posturing
An analysis of Legislature business meanwhile shows that almost every item raised by the government is focussed first on trying to help the re-election of Clark's B.C. Liberal Party government in 2013 and only secondarily with the well-being of the province, if at all. Thus the Liberals last week called a special debate on the merits of retaining B.C.'s triple-A credit rating, introduced a hokey and flawed Private Member's Bill to elect Senators, and forced forward Bill 22, the blatantly misnamed Education Improvement Act - all of which were designed to pin the New Democrats into an untenable corner and enabling the Clark Liberals to pander to right-wing voters being pulled away from the Liberals' coalition by the B.C. Conservative Party.
"This disgusting Machiavellian politicking by Clark and her backroom managers must end soon, one way or another," I wrote, which is even more true now that the government this week is using closure to ram through its draconian Bill 22 by Thursday, which contains massive penalties against teachers and union leaders who strike or even just mention class size and composition, as well as a ridiculous 10-years-long retroactive clause, and the imposition of a mediator with no powers to negotiate anything other than net zero - the overall purpose of which is to manipulate the New Democrats into defending an untenable position of support for the teachers' extravagant initial demands moreso than it is to repair a long-damaged relationship between teachers and the government.
"They essentially said to teachers, with respect to collective bargaining, that you can't negotiate wages, and you can't negotiate working conditions. It's sort of collective bargaining by Franz Kafka," NDP Opposition leader Adrian Dix said in debate on March 7.
“What we saw today was the Premier deliberately playing on the fears and anxieties of parents and students for political gain,” said NDP education critic Robin Austin. “This is about the lives of students, parents and teachers, yet the Premier seems to view it as just another opportunity to drive wedges between people. The government has chosen a mediation process that deliberately stacks the deck in its favour. This legislation will hurt students, further alienate teachers, undermine relationships within our schools and deliver another blow to our public education system."
To an objective observer it must seem strange that a government would put partisan machinations ahead of the public interest in that way but hey that is what Christy Clark and her people are doing - you can see and hear it for yourself or read the transcripts, all at the excellent B.C. Hansard site.
New poll bad for Clark too
B.C. voters meanwhile have shown a high disapproval of both the provincial government and the B.C. Teachers Federation in a new poll by Ipsos-Reid, which surveyed 1,200 people on March 9-12, with BCTF at 38% approve and 54% disapprove and the government at 34% approve and 58% disapprove even though Bill 22 itself was only 47% approve and 49% disapprove. But the greatest disparity of all was regarding the ratings for Christy Clark personally which came in at 28% approve and 58% disapprove - which further supports the notions that she herself is now a big part of a big problem for the B.C. Liberals.
But alas the butchering of the teachers' interests for partisan gain is not an isolated aberration, it is only one example among many, the largest of which probably is this year's budget which tries to posture as a prudent purveyor of fiscal restraint but which really is a grand deceit of low-balled revenue forecasts based on low-balled economic outlooks intended to hide the existence of probably $1 billion or more of potential revenues and expenditures (for details see The Daily Twigg #23 at www.thedailytwigg.blogspot.com - there's about $600 million just in the low-balled GDP forecast).
Other areas of concern recently have included worsening conditions at B.C. hospitals, such as a persistent infection of C difficile at Burnaby General, which the government tried to cover up but which doctors and NDP MLAs made public - in which the main problem was insufficient staffing possibly in combination with privatized janitorial services.
Yet another concern is regarding children in care and families at risk, with a new report on the Schoenborn family revealing that the deaths of several children could have been prevented if the existing systems were working more effectively and properly sharing information - especially if previous recommendations had been implemented instead of ignored. So the government has promised a belated restructuring, and there is some new money in the budget for social services and programs, but it too is another example of too little too late.
Another emerging scandal is how Independent Power Producers have been killing fish by releasing insufficient flows into rivers and streams, according to studies winkled out of government departments. But again part of the problem is understaffing - the province lacks not only the will but also the staff to monitor and supervise such operations and instead lets the foxes run the chicken coops on an honour system.
While one can appreciate that any government would want to hide its ability to afford modest wage increases when almost the whole public sector is about to see their contracts expire at the end of this month, as is the case now with nurses, hospital workers, government employees and others, what the Clark Liberals have done is downsize staffing even further while distorting the finances of the province not only to suppress those wage demands but also to create slush funds that they can use to attempt partisan gains next year. Which by the way is also exactly what former premier Gordon Campbell did in the odious run-up to their morally fraudulent 2009 provincial election win.
Clark bungled negotiations with Telus
In recent days it also has become more clear just how badly her government bungled the negotiations with Telus Corp. to sell the naming rights to BC Place, which by the time litigation is over probably will have cost the taxpayers about $100 million. They lost about $40 million that Telus was offering for a 20-year naming right plus there were millions more spent by Telus on advanced "wiring" (with fibre-optic cable) and signage under an agreement in principle, which will have to be refunded or purchased, plus there will be major legal costs to do so.
Though Clark and others such as Jobs Minister Pat Bell tried to mock NDP questions about the botched negotiations, such as painting the NDP as supposedly against the BC Lions, the Grey Cup and the soccer Whitecaps, it was obvious that something more serious is going on when it came out that Telus president and CEO Darren Entwistle had deliberately not invited Clark to the company's recent announcement of a plan by Telus to invest $3 billion in the province including a $750-million head office tower in downtown Vancouver but he had instead invited NDP leader Dix and local NDP MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert to the event - which given the history of B.C. politics was another huge optical signal of a sea change in partisan trends.
Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer reported that the naming negotiations had been going well until Clark took office last March, and other journalists such as freelancer Bob Mackin (www.2010goldrush.blogspot.com) drew big adverse inferences from the more or less simultaneous resignation of powerful businessman Peter Brown from the B.C. Pavilion Corp. board of directors (a Crown corporation that owns B.C. Place), since Brown has been a major backer of the Liberals' coalition. (Brown claimed he is merely cutting back after turning 70.)
B.C. Conservative Party leader John Cummins also couldn't resist joining in, claiming to have information that the Liberals backed out of negotiations "on the spur of the moment" and so left taxpayers holding the bag.
"Rejecting the $40-million payment is one more irresponsible and expensive Liberal decision that the people of B.C. will have to pay for," he said. "This is on top of the MSP hike, the gas tax hike, the carbon tax hike, higher ICBC rates, and higher B.C. Hydro rates," he said, noting the average family now pays more taxes in B.C. than in any other province west of Quebec.
Even the Sun's conservative editorial writers chimed in: "It smells not only of a story that is only being half told, but of the cavalier treatment of B.C.'s largest private-sector employer and one of the biggest investors in the future of this province," they wrote on Friday, noting it's a terrible signal to other investors and urging Clark to quickly provide a more credible explanation if she has one. But Clark had flown off to Ottawa and since has said nothing.
More recently there have been suggestions that Clark may have been favouring the interests of Vancouver Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot, apparently a friend and major backer of hers, whose soccer team is sponsored by Bell, a major rival to Telus, and who had been trying to get the field renamed as Bell Pitch, and they even went so far as putting up signs to that effect at Saturday's home opener even though Pavco chair David Podmore had warned them not to do so because of the conflict with Telus's rights.
Today the Vancouver Sun is reporting that the negotiations broke down because Finance Minister Kevin Falcon and Jobs Minister Pat Bell became exasperated with what Bell alleges was Telus's ever-changing demands for larger external signs, but that sounds a little strange to be the final deal-breaker, which is a change from the reason being supposed affinity to the B.C. Place name.
Clark claims issue was taxpayer benefits
And Clark at a jobs-related photo op event in North Vancouver this morning said the reason was the same as she has always said: that overall it was not a good deal for taxpayers.
So where and how all that will shake out remains to be seen but for now it adds another blotch onto Clark's already-shakey record and that at an inopportune time on the eve of the byelections too.
Clark probably believes she helped her re-election chances greatly when she flew to Ottawa on Thursday with new chief of staff Ken Boessenkool (ex of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's staff) to star as the Friday morning kickoff speaker to the Manning Networking Conference hosted by Reform party founder Preston Manning and indeed she did generate some coverage about how much Manning admires her as Canada's new "Iron Snowbird" because she's a Liberal who understands the necessity of maintaining a coalition with Conservatives in order to keep the NDP out of power.
Clark also made time for a quick visit to Global TV's new weekend politics show the West Block hosted by Tom Clark to tape a brief segment in which she defended her position to take a wait-and-see approach on the cost-benefits of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which was a bit interesting because she noted that the province would be taking most of the risks and receiving few of the benefits, which echoes an analysis done by this newsletter (and others) back in January.
Clark also scored some cheap points when she repeated that she was proud to have presented the most Conservative budget in Canada (which it really isn't) and then added the false truism that the only way to avoid tax increases is to freeze public-sector wages, which may sound like music to the ears of hard-right conservatives but which sounds like nonsense to most accountants, economists and political scientists with any experience in government budgets and thus aware there are numerous other levers to push or pull.
An excellent example of dissembling mendacity
That in fact is an excellent example of what Hercule Poirot in a recent episode called dissembling mendacity, which are big words for knowingly deliberately lying about something in order to deceive people away from the truth, because her budget is hiding large amounts of cash as mentioned above, it continues to permit false-economy spending cuts such as driving up hospital costs due to lack of spending on extended-care facilities, and overcrowded courts and jails, untreated mental patients etc., and it fails to grow the economy apart from trying to ride some upward resource-industry winds. Among many other lost opportunities.
So in other words taxpayers will be paying for Christy's trip that was primarily a partisan event - to hobnob with folks who specialize in coaching activists in how to win elections by robocalling and other more or less cheating techniques and doing anything and everything to stop the socialist hordes at all costs. Google for a recent expose of such activists by University of Victoria prof John Fryer, which was picked up in several blogs.)
Unfortunately Christy doesn't need much coaching in those areas because her government is already playing such games, such as using taxpayer dollars for advertisements about the budget and about the contract dispute with teachers that present misleading and one-sided views of disputatious issues.
A good example is her budget's allocation of $165 million to a B.C. Education Plan which ostensibly aims to help teachers become better teachers by training them in how to use computers more effectively, which may sound like a good plan to simplistic readers but which really is a put-down of teachers and an insult insofar as there were no dollars for extra assistants in classrooms overcrowded with special-needs students, no dollars for smaller class sizes and certainly no dollars for any wage increases even though there are a few extra dollars to pay a few hundred dollars extra to teachers who get stuck with too many extra special-needs students - even though most teachers would prefer class sizes that are more manageable and more beneficial for the students.
"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," said NDP MLA Shane Simpson. "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."
So there's no new money for some areas, but there is new money for other areas, which illustrates well how Clark's governance is skewed by capricious partisan and personal interests.
Clark won leadership with tainted votes?
That's also reflected in the Surrey Indo-Canadian politics game, in which there are stories on the Tsakumis blog and elsewhere of numerous photocopied membership forms being accepted by Liberal Party headquarters when they shouldn't have been and for dubious signups of numerous similarly-named people all supposedly living in one house, and no certainty that each person paid for their own membership as supposedly required - a process which Clark supporters participated in as much as or more than any other camp, and which could have been the difference between her winning or losing the Liberal Party leadership contest last year. And it's not a valid excuse that other parties have used such tactics too to varying degrees - such as some dead people and animals voting in the B.C. NDP's leadership contest in 2000 and some bulk sign-ups questioned in 2011.
That increasing systematic frustration and perversion of democratic processes is truly troubling; we can expect Putin types to drive around busloads of repeat voters but here in Canada we are subjected to that plus other dirty tricks such as dissuading opponents from voting - and even worse: some or much of this is being organized with the help of taxpayer dollars! Is it too late to be stopped?
How can we believe anything that Clark says now? She has zero credibility now - so the Liberal government should fire the Premier forthwith, withdraw the closure on Bill 22 and move forward with a leader who has more talent and integrity.
And if the party brass can't do that then some of the backbenchers with integrity should break ranks and sit as Independents. But Clark seems to have no shame, no humility, and only a desperate desire to maintain coverups of scandals and win a provincial election by hook or by crook.
"They're just blundering from one error to another," Cummins told The Daily Twigg, pointing especially to the last-minute snubbing of Telus as an especially bad signal that will discourage other investments but also citing several flaws in the Senate elections Bill suggesting its main purpose was merely to influence the byelection in Chilliwack.
"They just don't have a handle on things. They're hiring spin doctors like Boessenkool, not managers who can get things done," he continued, noting that's good for his party but not good for the province.
A snippet of B.C. Politics Trendwatch
Those sentiments are being heard now from numerous quarters, such as Province columnist Mike Smyth recently telling CKNW's Jon McComb that Clark has been a disappointment even to Liberals who expected her to lead a populist revival.
There was a new tone too on Bill Good's Edge of the Ledge segment on Friday with both Vaughn Palmer and Keith Baldrey citing numerous examples of where Clark has been failing to perform and Good was no longer leaping to her defense.
"That's a big dark cloud that's hard to get out from under," said Baldrey about Clark's reputation for bungling, which further suggests a sort of sea change is taking place in B.C. political trends.
Finally, when McComb did a call-in poll, seven people got through and five were strongly opposed to Clark and only two were supportive, which proportion is roughly consistent with the new above-mentioned Ipsos-Reid poll on her handling of the dispute with teachers.
So while Clark is busy trying to pretend she's a Conservative, it's obvious that many many important issues needing to be rebalanced are instead being ignored and/or mismanaged, and that should not be allowed to continue.
For those who like to connect such things to musical references, the lyrics to Led Zeppelin's Heartbreaker come to mind, notably the line "go away you heartbreaker".
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For a detailed analysis of the flaws in the carbon tax, see my article at
http://thecanadian.org/item/1355-review-of-bcs-dysfunctional-carbon-tax-aims-for-repairs-in-2013-pre-election-budget
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