Category Archives: Momentous Event

Tell the Truth?

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I come to bury Caesar…

The outpouring of adulatory sentiment in the wake of the passing for former PM Brian Mulroney leaves me somewhat bitter and scratching my head. While not totally unmitigated, I can only see his time in office as a disaster. He was less elected in 1984 than John Turner was turfed unceremoniously from office  for leading a tired and scandal-ridden régime left in his charge by a Pierre Trudeau become arrogant frustrated, and impatient, promising a new government of openness, transparency and honesty. It was a manner of only weeks before the Oerlikon scandal broke, only the first in a long series that eventually consigned the Mulroney to a fate similar to John Turner in 1993, where the Conservative Party was reduced to two seats in Parliament. Despite shepherding some “green” initiatives and working to end apartheid in South Africa, Mulroney’s close relationship with a caustic US administration based on a personal relationship with Ronald Reagan and a community of interest in expanding unfettered capital dominance across North America and around the world worked to ensure that no meaningful action would be taken to mitigate most of the looming environmental crises or the damage to society from the privatization of public assets and the institution of Free Trade, NAFTA, and the GST.

Various laudatory bits on Briam Mulroney from the Globe and Mail

Oh, Brian, did we really know ye?

A raft of politicians of many stripes ran to the  nearest microphone to sing Mulroney’s praises, but there was little mention of all the dark and dubious transactions that marked bhs time in office and the aftermath, wherein he continued to be a standard bearer in the international community for the Con program of privatization and austerity that continues to plague us with very real consequences to this day and well into the foreseeable future. As we can see from the front page of the G&M’s site, the same treatment is being prepared for out current PM, though he’s young enough that we have to wait some time to see the outpouring of fawning smarm.

This happened again recently with the passing of a local politician who was praised to the heavens for her profound influence on local politics… politics that have remained unaltered since long before her election to council and that are likely to persist well into whatever future we may face. This is not advocacy for speaking ill of the dead, but rather for telling true stories, however uncomfortable they may be. As long as we keep those rose-coloured glasses perched on the end of our noses, we are unlikely to engage in the hard work of facing down nasty environmental, social and economic quagmires.

 

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxwo2pDmLRMFtbdknFnEBoYn_X4Ox38IL-?si=u_oKHM1bj20SNncc

 

 

By Any Other Name

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BC Liberals meeting in Penticton have accepted a motion to explore a name change, reminding me of how Arthur Andersen Accounting emerged from the Enron scandal as Accenture, and has been a burden on the public purse in that guise ever since. We must recall that the BC Liberals emerged under Gordon Wilson from the 1991 election that finally drove a stake through the heart of the Social Credit party, but the mantel of Liberal was soon cast aside in a palace revolt that brought Gordon Campbell to the leadership of the party, a man whose star rose with the advent of rampant crony capitalism and kleptocracy that will hobble the public treasury for decades to come.

It’s quite laughable to listen to the BC Libs in opposition as they not only switched sides of the house in 2017, but they now decry the same practices they instituted under Clark and Campbell, things like freedom of information, government advertising, and vanity projects requiring exorbitant spending. They’re sometimes right, because the New Dippers have turned out to be very much like the former governments in their disdain for the vast majority of the public and for the environment.

Rebranding is basically inferring that the zebra has changed his stripes and is substantially something other than what he used to be. I’m betting that the newly-named party will be very much the spitting image of the old in all manner of policy and execution, continuing the duopoly in BC politics, where the duality is mostly a matter of name and where good governance is hiding in the furthest corners of the back benches. Makes Furstenau and Olson look really good, but for their narrowest base of support.

 

Thanks to Anna Pavlin for posting this image at Unsplash.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  –William Shakespeare

“Beauty’s only skin deep, but ugly is to the bone.”   —Alberto Gianquinto

 

Misplaced Priorities

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So Mr. Horgan will spend the better part of a billion dollars on a rebuild of the Royal BC Museum and tout it as a vital step in reconciliation with First Nations…

I believe that it’s a good thing for a society to maintain artifacts that document its history and cultural antecedents, but this project speaks to a level of extravagance that defies comprehension. We have to wonder how much consultation there was with First Nations about the disposition of such a large whack of provincial funding at a time when the health system seems to be coming apart, when forestry is in ruins, when there are staffing crises in most sectors of the economy, and where civil service bargaining is on the horizon.

Is this the way that FN would choose to spend the loot? might there not be a need to reorient forestry and mining jobs to focus on a truly ecologically sound economy (Clean BC and current forest practices being basically business as usual)?

Here’s a cheap start: take the Royal moniker off the establishment. The Crown continues to be exploitative and contributes nothing other than some phony cachet to our institutions. We may not do so terribly well at governing ourselves (look at the two parties that have alternated in power and their tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum approach to multiple existential crises), but the need for this other layer of Crown interference perpetrates a long tradition of colonial exploitation and pomp that helps to exclude the little folk from the business of governing (as opposed to the political shenanigans that take up the bulk of question period).

Also, lest anyone think of this as an endorsement of any party currently active in BC, let the intellectual net be case a little more widely. The Green caucus has emitted a steady diet of common sense and bold initiative that is a marked contrast to either Liberal of NDP sludge, but a caucus of two and the lack of a coherent party apparatus (which may be what allows the quality of thought to seep through) eliminates the possibility of a government in any foreseeable future. The NDP has dropped the ball on so many fronts that they become almost indistinguishable from the Liberals who preceded them, and the current version of the Liberal Party seems to be just chomping at the bit to get their faces once again fully immersed in the trough of public largesse.

The prospects for both near and distant future become increasingly bleak with each advancing session of the legislature, and wandering off in the weeds with a cool billion is emblematic of our current willingness to bury our concerns in a stinking heap of indifference and vanity.

Addendum: note that Mr. Horgan, following cancer treatment is less filled out than he once was previously. This puts me in mind of a quip from Bertrand Russell that I quoted a couple of times to Scott Fraser when he was our MLA and held ministerial portfolios. The first time it was cautionary, the second in anger at the two-faced nature of the government in relation to Indigenous Relations and to all aspects of environmental policy. I’m feeling the same way with our current MLA and Minister of Municipal Affairs, Josie Osborne:

“No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.”

“No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.”

—Bertrand Russell