Last week, the much anticipated British Columbia provincial election was called for May 12. The main parties are the Liberals and the NDP with the Green Party ever hopeful that they will make a breakthrough and have one or more candidates elected to the legislature.
British Columbia is sometimes called British California or its geographical location is referred to as the left coast. California is a state where Democrats are Democrats and Republicans; well they’re like Democrats too. This characteristic has ceased to be defining in the wake of what seems the entire collapse of the GOP. Nonetheless the B.C. political situation remains topsy turvey and markedly different than what passes for politics in the rest of Canada.
The Liberals in the reality that is British Columbia are the province’s “conservative party”, to the right of the official opposition New Democratic Party. In the budget that was brought down by the governing Libs in February 2008, it was announced that the province would be the first jurisdiction in North America to impose a carbon tax. That tax would apply to pretty well all fossil fuels; gasoline, home heating fuel, propane and diesel and would add 2.4 cents to the cost of a litre of gasoline. Naturally the tax would be “revenue neutral” with tax cuts and other goodies promised to offset this cost. The budget passed and came into effect on July 1, 2008 just as gas prices were reaching astronomical levels. If that wasn’t enough, the carbon tax was around during the last federal election when the hapless Stéphane Dion was telling Canadians that they too would have a carbon tax if only they would elect him to power. Had the federal Liberals won the last election, residents of B.C. would have been the only North Americans to pay not one, but two carbon taxes. Is that a great place or what?
There is at least one certainty in politics; the opposition can never defeat the government by praising the latter’s policies. So the environmentally conscious N Dippers started off the campaign by slamming the carbon tax that was implemented of course to save the planet. The NDP was left with no alternative but to plug the cap and trade system which is more or less just another tax. While the cap and trade program will see end costs passed on to the ultimate consumer, the carbon tax hits taxpayers directly. Any self respecting greenie would naturally prefer the direct tax. By fighting the carbon tax the NDP incurred the wrath of David Suzuki and other environmental wackos who much prefer the environmental policies of the “conservative” Liberals.
Now we get to the poor Green Party. With the carbon tax and cap and trade taken, what is the party of the environment to do? Well, Green Parties throughout the country are always so trying to prove that they are not one issue parties, so the B.C. Green Party announced a major non-environmental policy to begin the campaign. And they may have picked a good one.
Ontario and Quebec are the only provinces that have their own provincial police forces; the other provinces and territories are policed by the RCMP. The Green Party is proposing that B.C. scrap the Mounties in favour of the province’s own provincial police force. The RCMP is not looking too good these days, especially in British Columbia. First there was the October 2007 death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski who after creating a minor disturbance at the airport was tasered not once, not twice but five times. Dziekanski died shortly thereafter. The Mounties defended their actions on the grounds that Dziekanski wouldn’t go down and besides he was coming after them with a weapon. However a cell phone video taken by an onlooker showed that the weapon (a stapler) that the man had was never raised and he did in fact hit the ground after being struck by the first jolt. The RCMP officers were shown not only to have lied about what happened but to have been in morbid fear of being stapled to death.
If that wasn’t enough, last February the RCMP were advised that an SOS was written in the snow in the mountains. The Mounties did nothing after ascertaining from a nearby resort that no one was missing. They must have thought that the SOS had simply magically occurred, just like a crop circle. They did nothing and then the man who made the SOS was found, after his wife tragically died while the couple had gotten lost skiing.
So to the voters in British Columbia: forget all of this crazy environmental stuff; Vote Green!
