IamCraig.com Rotating Header Image

christy clark

OMG, the entire continent of North America is a joke!

Dec 21st, 2024
by Craig.
No comments yet

(OK, sorry, I had to start two blog posts with “OMG” just to show that Canada isn’t the only basket case on the continent. And I apologise for excluding Greenland, Mexico and the Caribbean from the definition, but I’m sure that in this case they won’t complain!)

USA

All I’m going to say about the USA though is that their “experiment with democracy” isn’t going so well. I’m not even referring to their electing an admirer of dictators and “strong men” who is expected to turn his back on the rule of law; I’m referring to their inability to manage to govern their country without facing a government shutdown, seemingly every few weeks but in reality it seems to be every couple of years. I mean, I understand that the legislative side of the government needs to vote money for the administrative side of the government to be able to do the jobs defined by the legislative side of government, but really? I suppose the United States does have a record of slavery — which is the only way to describe being forced to show up to work for no pay cheque (“check” to you Americans) — so what’s the big deal with bringing it back temporarily every few years? I don’t get it.

And after 248 years — almost a quarter of a millennium — why not “experiment” with the executive side of government? This notion of a president and a vice president is so old-fashioned, so the administration-elect is experimenting with a new triumvirate: I’m not sure how to characterise it, as it seems to be rather unofficial at the moment, but it looks like it goes something like this:

  • Super (unelected) president: Elon Musk
  • President: donald trump
  • Vice president: JD Vance

Or maybe it’s like this:

  • Unelected president: Musk
  • Vice president: trump
  • Tea boy: Vance

(South Africans [including Musk] and southern Americans will nod their heads sagely at my thinly veiled racist term for Vance, which is entirely appropriate for the take-over of America by the citizen of the Third World country to which I’m referring. [And yes, you can quibble with me on my definition of the “Third World” here too, but since 1994 South Africa has been clamouring at the door of the club.)

Canada

The turmoil in Canada continues as well!

  • First of all, the antiquated electoral system of this country means that I will *GUARANTEE* that next year we will be bowing and scraping to Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre. Anyone — including Justin Trudeau! — who thinks otherwise is clearly smoking something very potent. I was talking to someone today who suggested that if the Liberals get a new leader they might do a little better than if Trudeau was leading them, but in my mind that may mean three seats instead of two. The coming defeat of the Liberals will rival or perhaps even outshine John Turner’s in 1984.
  • I have no doubt that perhaps, back in the day, Trudeau may have had a vision for where he wanted to lead the country, but it’s as plain as the nose on my face that today he is only thinking of himself. If he is indeed “reflecting” on his future as has been suggested, somebody also needs to suggest he give Joe Biden a call to get a lesson on humility and thinking of his country first. Of course, that didn’t work out too well for Biden and his party, so I suspect that Biden is the last person Trudeau will call for advice. Or maybe Trudeau is hoping for a snow storm this Christmas or over the New Year, and he will take a walk in said snow storm in the same way that his daddy did in 1984.
  • I rarely agree with anything Poilievre says, but how can one disagree with his current characterisation of the Trudeau government as a “chaotic clown show”? Someone on the CBC’s “At Issue” panel (probably Andrew Coyne) described the new cabinet, shuffled yesterday, as “Fanatics, loyalists and members of the prime minister’s wedding party.” Of course, the deliverer of the “clown show” remark then made it clear that the clown show will continue when he becomes prime minister because he also suggested that if he writes a letter to Santa Claus (or the governor general) he could get his Christmas wish of becoming prime minister sooner! God help us all.
  • To me the Trudeau government has become like that old, second-hand car you used to own. It’s completely unreliable, you know that the chances of it failing to get you to work tomorrow morning are far greater than 50%, but you somehow think that you can will it to get you there! Sound familiar?!

But the main issue I want to get to that has been bothering me for months now is all of the idiots who keep uttering the name Christy Clark as a possible successor to Trudeau! What are you people smoking?! (Sorry for all the marijuana references, but we’re talking about politics after all!) Yes, she was the leader of the BC Liberal Party, but the BC Liberal Party was a liberal party in name only! I distinctly remember Raef Mair questioning Gordon Campbell on this issue during an interview on Mair’s CKNW talk-radio programme many years ago, when Campbell became the leader of the BC Liberals, or was running to be. Mair asked Campbell to define “liberalism” with reference to the name of his party, and Campbell simply couldn’t do it! Mair may have been a bit of a pedant in that moment, and perhaps the definition of liberalism has changed over the centuries — or maybe it comes down to the different definitions of “freedom” that those on the left and right sides of the political spectrum use — but the fact of the matter is that in the years since Campbell became the premier (followed by Clark) up until the party folded earlier this year, the BC Liberals were — as described in the Wikipedia article on the party that replaced it, BC United:

conservative, neoliberal, … occupying a centre-right position on the left–right political spectrum … a “free enterprise coalition” [drawing] support from members of both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties … the main centre-right opposition to the centre-left New Democratic Party …. Once affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada, the British Columbia Liberal Party became independent in 1987.

Their name reminds me of something my Grade Seven teacher (Mr. Cuttel) told the class one day, that he found it ironic that countries in the world that were widely known as being anything but democratic seemed to like using the word in their names to cover up their lack of democracy, e.g., German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), etc. Perhaps the BC Liberal Party was using that logic!

If you don’t live in BC and just can’t quite grasp the nomenclature, I strongly recommend you read the CBC article “Why the B.C. Liberals are sometimes liberal and sometimes not“, with a video with excellent (i.e., corny) sound effects by Richard Zussman, who now reports for Global BC. It’s really not that difficult; as illustrated above, people can call their countries whatever they want, and those countries are named by political leaders who lie just as much as political leaders everywhere on the spectrum.

If Clark even runs in an expected leadership race I’ll be surprised, but if she does and wins, I’ll be handing in my licence to run this blog.

BC's Liberal Party does not equal Canada's Liberal Party.

BC’s Liberal Party does not equal Canada’s Liberal Party (CBC)

Updated, 2024-12-22: Some minor changes (mostly formatting), plus added the screenshot of the CBC video to which I link. Also, apparently this is the third post title I’ve started with “OMG” recently! All because of politicians!

2015 Metro Vancouver Transportation and Transit Plebiscite

May 28th, 2015
by Craig.
Comments are off for this post
Notranslinktax.ca Logo

Notranslinktax.ca Logo

I finally delivered my ballot yesterday, choosing to deliver it directly to a Plebiscite Service Office rather than entrusting it to the useless Canada Post Corporation at this late date. To get there I drove a car; I suppose I should have caught a bus, but there are only so many hours in a day.

At this late date I won’t be the first to pontificate on this subject but, if the “no” vote wins, the powers that be need to be aware of the fact that a no vote is not a vote against all (or any) of the wonderful goodies that are listed on the ballot. The greater Vancouver area certainly does need all of those things; we absolutely should have a “world class” (a term overused to describe the rather self-centred provincial town of Vancouver) public transit and transportation system. What we also need — conspicuous by its absence on the ballot — is intelligent and accountable management of our regional transportation system and the funds needed to run it.

This plebiscite is a boondoggle for several reasons, not the least of which are:

  • It is an abrogation of the responsibility of the officials we elected to make these decisions for us. (I’m looking at you, Christy Clark and co.) I am all in favour of democracy (even some measure of direct democracy), but we’re already paying elected politicians to run our cities, region and province, so why are they spending the money required to mount this plebiscite to offload that responsibility onto the people that elected them? I know why: It’s so that they can blame us (like Jim “Look in the Mirror” Prentice of Alberta fame) when we complain down the road about something to do with regional transportation or transit. The fact that this is being presented as a “take it or leave it” proposition by these shirkers is particularly galling.
  • We already pay taxes. The trend in recent years has been to make government “smaller” (or so politicians claim) by introducing “user pay” schemes — e.g., bridge tolls — so that those people who don’t use bridges don’t have to subsidise those of us wastrels who do. However, taxes still stay the same. (Someone should run that simple mathematical formula past your average numerate child and see what he or she has to say about it.) The fact is that governments take taxes from us. It adds up to a lot of money, and the citizenry needs to see some collective benefit from these taxes to feel that they’re justified. Increase the tax rate by half a percent here and half a percent there and you’ll soon find out at what point there’s a tax revolt. What service that we’re already paying for will the next plebiscite be about?
  • Taxes don’t go away. We all know the apocryphal story about how the first tax was a “temporary” measure. Even if the politicians promised that this tax would end on some specific date in the future, if nothing else a yes vote simply shows the politicians that there is room to increase taxes, and on that date (or shortly after it to allow a cooling-off period of unrestrained joy amongst the populace) the provincial tax rate would be raised to equal the former combined rate. What pet project would we be paying for then?

So, yeah, it’s probably not difficult for you to determine which circle I selected on my ballot.

Come clean, Christy Clark

Jun 6th, 2014
by Craig.
Comments are off for this post

As a tax-paying British Columbian, I should love Christy Clark. I should. But I don’t.

She is a divisive character in BC politics. She’s not the first, that’s for sure, but you’d think that people would learn. Not “we the people”, but the politicians themselves. Nobody likes a divisive leader. They didn’t when Bill Vander Zalm was around, and they don’t now, so what does Clark think she’s gaining by her divisive style of leadership that Vander Zalm didn’t back in the late 1980s? If she’s gaining anything, it’s only with her cronies in the BC Liberal Party, not with any members of the voting public. Is that really putting “[BC] Families First”?

I’m moved to write about this at this time because of the dispute between the BC Public School Employers’ Association (BCPSEA) and BC’s public teachers. I could point fingers at both sides in this dispute for various reasons, but Clark particularly stands out for rebuke. I say that because no member of the British Columbian public really sees this as a labour dispute between a monolithic employer that doesn’t actually employ any teachers (the BCPSEA) and the BC Teachers’ Federation; it’s Christy and her sidekick of the moment in the education portfolio (Peter Fassbender as of this writing) versus the teachers. It’s an open secret that sealed court proceedings accidentally revealed by the NDP show that the current BC government — strongly led by Clark, so there’s no doubt who is driving this — has a policy to provoke a strike by BC teachers. Imagine! Any thinking leader — especially one with an alleged “Families First” agenda — would not set out to “provoke” anything, never mind the total disruption of the lives of BC’s families!

This won’t be a long post because I really want to get to what I believe is the crux of the matter here. This won’t address issues such as liveable wages in one of the most expensive places to live in the world, and a little thing called inflation. It also won’t address Clark’s contempt of the courts and her preference for fighting and defying their rulings on the legality of her actions dating back over a decade, actions that would get you and I thrown in jail!

Let’s look at Clark’s record with the education system. As Education Minister in the early 2000s she implemented changes that were unpopular with school boards and teachers. While it’s not my contention that popularity is the measure of success, popularity is the basis of democracy. And here we are, over a decade later, and the school boards are still struggling to provide services that are expected by the public and the provincial government on the pittance provided by the latter. Quite frankly, if it wasn’t for the dedication of those people on the ground — teachers, administrators and school board employees — the BC public school system would collapse. With her own child in a private school — a privilege affordable for only 11% (2012 figures) of BC pupils — one really can’t help but wonder if this is actually Clark’s intention.

But enough about that. It’s widely known that Clark’s father was a teacher, and one can reasonably assume that she herself attended at least some school. And here is where I get to the crux of the matter as I see it, and it’s the seldom asked question (at least publicly) on the tips of the tongues of just about anyone I talk to about the war between Clark and the teachers: What formative experience did Clark have — either with her father or one of her own teachers — that seems to put her at perpetual odds with educators? (By “educators” I include more than just teachers.) I’ve heard the term “daddy issues” used often enough to wonder if this premier’s divisive style of leadership — if you can call it “leadership” — is personally-driven rather than based on arguable ideology or coherent policy.

Is it, Christy? Is it time to come clean and excuse yourself from any involvement in the negotiating strategy with the BCTF or, for that matter, any of your government’s education policies that so negatively affect families and the education of their children? Is it time to put your son in a public school — like 89% of your constituents in this province, who feel their children are being used as pawns in a fight between grown-ups who should know better — and suffer with them through this labour strife that you have intentionally provoked?