October 29, 2003

Right Hook

  

J.J. McCullough
OP Columnist.

It’s rare to hear praise of our provincial
government these days. Talk on the
street, college campuses, and the media
all seems to be overwhelmingly nega-
tive. To be sure, some of this animosity
is well deserved. As I will mention, the
Campbell Liberals have made a series of
stupid decisions, that the public is well
justified in criticizing. However, at the
same time, the outrage at a few missteps
has allowed many of the government's
successes to be getting lost in a sea of
blatant condemnations.

There should be little doubt that
electing the Liberals into government
was absolutely necessary and well over-
due in order to ensure BC’s economic
survival. More than a decade of the
NDP’s socialist rhetoric, statist policies,
and expansionist bureaucracy had made
our province into a joke at best and
nationally irrelevant at worst. Excessive
regulation, taxation, and other wacky
wealth redistribution schemes drove out
BC's best and brightest, not to mention
huge chunks of the business sector who
realized that they could seek higher
wages and less government intervention
in places like the US or Alberta. The
NDP in essence, launched a decade
long “war on success” in which anyone
who dared to earn wages or live in a
house with a dollar value that exceeded
the NDP’s magic numbers of “accept-
ability” were taxed to death while their
benefits were slowly hacked away. At
the same time, the “poor” were given
handouts galore, removing all incen-
tives for working and thus creating a
cycle of uninspired poverty and welfare
dependency. It was class warfare in the
purest sense. Rich people are evil and
deserve to be punished and poor people
are all heroes who deserve our money.
Long live the proletariat!

Of course, eventually this idiocy col-
lapsed, and the NDP were driven out of
power in one of the biggest electoral
landslides in Canadian history. The for-
mer champions of class warfare are now
struggling to find employment in the
society they tried to destroy. I think the
most satisfying conclusion to the whole
NDP saga was when disgraced Premier
Glen Clark, long the symbol of BC
socialism, finally accepted the realities
of Canada’s economic world, and
promptly went to work for Jimmy
Patterson, the quintessential symbol of
BC capitalism.

The Liberals had a huge challenge in

 

   

store upon assuming office. Socialism is
not reversed easily, especially when it
has been institutionalized for so long.
Challenging socialism is always diffi-
cult, as socialism is largely an ideology
for the lazy, while capitalism is one that
encourages hard work. Years of NDP
thetoric had encouraged British
Columbians to develop a very odd rela-
tionship with the state, in which the
government was seen as some sort of
bottomless piggy bank, obliged to con-
stantly dole out enormous piles of cash
to help smooth over financial incompe-
tence. Struggling to reverse this destruc-
tive mindset is by far the Liberal’s hard-
est task. After all, who wants to work
when the government will pay you not
to?

Two weeks ago the Campbell govern-
ment implemented massive layoffs to
hundreds of “government employees,”
which is politically correct media-speak
for “useless bureaucrats.” Many of these
“jobs” had no purpose whatsoever,
other than providing outlets for patron-
age appointments and burying our
province in an enormous pile of red
tape. Judging from the media spin,
youd think Campbell just burned
down a nunnery.

As a student, I obviously have some
problems with the ending of the tuition
“freeze,” that under the NDP kept BC’s
post-secondary tuition rates unnatural-
ly lower than the rest of the country. Of
course, in the long run this idea was

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Opinions

The BC Liberals: Awkwardly
in the ri

lurchin

   

ay REDE Think how much better Canada could be!

pot and read Noam Chomsky pam-
phlets. If nothing else, higher tuition
fees well help ensure that only students
who are truly dedicated will attend. The
government has done the right thing by
trying to change the way we think
about “traditional” post-secondary edu-
cation, and encouraging students to
explore trade schools and other more
career-driven learning institutions.
Education Minister Christy Clark also
deserves praise for at least attempting to
break the iron’ stranglehold of union
politics on BC’s elementary and high
schools, and ushering in more public
transparency and parental involvement.

Of course, the Campbell government
has not been all good—far from it.
Despite all their pre-election rhetoric
the government has repeatedly back-
tracked on any talk of privatizing indus-
try. Even liquor stores, which most gov-
ernments have not run since the era of
prohibition, remained too controversial
for the Liberals to privatize. Though
Campbell repeatedly chastised the
NDP for not standing up to the big
union special interests—when the
going gets tough, the current Premier
seems just as chicken.

As well, when Campbell refused to
resign last summer over his thoroughly
embarrassing DUI arrest, the Premier
proved that his conservative principles
only apply to his wallet, and not his
morals. His government also made an
incredibly idiotic blunder earlier this

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ht direction

   

    
 

month, when they slapped an outra-
geous fine on the Georgia Straight,
charging that the weekly was’ “not a
newspaper” and thus owed the govern-
ment over a million dollars in “not-a-
newspaper” fees or some such idiotic
regulation. Though this was little more
than a blatant cash grab, the Liberals
clearly neglected to take into account
how the whacko conspiracy-theory left-
ist opposition would spin such an
action. Suddenly, the Liberals were cre-
ating a “fascist state,” trying to “silence”
freedom of the press. The fact that the
Georgia Straight was probably among
BC’s least political newspapers, was
quickly forgotten. Campbell was trying
to shut down a newspaper, and that’s all
that mattered. The whole thing just
highlighted how the petty bungling of
this Liberal government coupled with
the delusional paranoia of its leftist
opposition can create situations that
reaffirm our province's “national joke”
reputation.

Overall, the Liberals are on the right
track, and in the long run, Campbell’s
policies will have done a lot of good in
helping pull our province out the
socialist bog of the NDP ’90s and into
the 21st century. However, if the
Liberal’s recent blunders have proven
anything, it’s that this province still has
many loud and vocal voices of opposi-
tion. I plan to watch this NDP leader-
ship race closely. We could soon be in
for a very interesting election.

 

thoroughly impractical
from any sort of financial
point of view. Schools had
to make massive cuts to
services and education
quality to get by with this
lack of funds, but it all
played into the NDP’s
ideas of university as some
sort of intellectual social-
ist paradise that every sin-
gle kid in BC, no matter
how untalented — or
uncommitted, has a
“right” to attend. While
education is a right, uni-
versity is not. University is
supposed to be a place
where students with clear,
career goals can pursue
their field of interest. It is
not some glorified daycare
for lazy 20-somethings
who just want to smoke

 

http://www. filibustercartoons.com

 

http://www.otherpress.ca

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