FACE TO FACE: They agree Christy Clark has been bad - but who's better?
From my considerably right-wing colleague to the most doctrinaire of socialists, most British Columbians agree that our BC Liberal government has got to go.
For 10 years, we have excused multiple government disasters by parroting the tedious Liberal mantra: "Remember the Fast Ferries? Glen Clark's sundeck? Businesses fleeing the province? Bingo-gate? You wouldn't want to repeat the '90s, would you?"
Even such ideologues, however, are reluctantly admitting that this BC Liberal government is the most odious ever.
To blame its unethical excesses on Gordon Campbell won't wash nor will extolling Campbell's leadership and blaming Christy Clark. They were all involved with the BC Rail Scandal, the HST snafu, the dismantling of BC Hydro and myriad other disasters.
The BC Liberals have lost their moral right to govern and most British Columbians want them to go away for a while.
So now what do we do?
Well, to remedy the situation by giving the BC Conservative party a tumble next time is like hiring Col. Sanders to catch the fox who has been killing your chickens.
To replace right with further right implies that trickle-down policies are viable; that it was only unscrupulous people who were the problem rather than disastrous right-wing policies. It wasn't.
The huge BC Liberal tax cuts of 2001 lost enough revenue to starve social programs for more than a decade. They also spawned budget deficits serious enough to necessitate the Libs sneaking in the hated HST. It was bad fiscal policy rather than bad people that led to the HST disaster.
The scandals and dishonesty of the BC Liberal government were mostly the natural consequences of disastrous right-wing fiscal policy, away from which we now need to quickly run.
When you tell everyone your focus is education, health care and the family, and your policies consist of tax cuts for the rich and giving money and public railroads to friends, you will, at some point, get caught lying.
The political pendulum in B.C. needs to swing away from catering to the rich and towards a single-minded concern for social programs, the middle class, the working poor and the elderly.
But please, not the BC Conservatives. Let's not entrust Col. Cummins with our chickens.
Face to Face columnist Jim Nelson is a retired Tri-City teacher and principal who lives in Port Moody. He has contributed a number of columns on education-related issues to The Tri-City News.
