The Legislature Raids

Mary,
I don't know anymore. Is it just me but I don't remember ever getting the proper protocol of voting for Ms. Clark in an election or being given the choice of whether I felt she would be a competent person to be at the helm of this province or not did you? By that I am insulted!
She comes to us with no accomplishments or credential of any sort but yet expects respect.
She plays the stage like an actor but in a real life situation and obviously cares nothing about the less fortunate and debilitated amongst us. I for one do not respect nor will I acknowledge her as a leader nor do I believe she should expect my respect.
We are all certainly to blame, how else could this happen? We must now try to correct it and hope we have learned that the thieves will come while we sleep.
Don
 

$50 mil gift to the oil companies and I can pretty much guarantee there will be no reduction in unemployment in the north. While I'm at it. Why is Christy not doing something about the discrimination of Canadian workers over Yank workers it Kitimat? Preferential treatment is given to imported workers over resident Canadian workers and I'm sure the turnover is out of control.
 

Don F.,

It's not "just you", it's a lot of us feeling a kind of cold terror which goes beyond election campaigns.

That good-hearted blogger at "Powell River Persuader" sent me this URL from the Prince George online news (Opinion 250). It's about a (snark alert) a great new idea for combatting crime:

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/2152/1/citizens+patrol++volunteers++get+new++jackets?

And wasn't it only last month that the Harper Government's Jason Kenney wanted us to check our neighbours and report anybody we thought might be an illegal immigrant?

Who, b.t.w., is the new Top Cop in the R.C.M.P.? Or is that chair still empty?

Then I began seeing news reports (barely mentioned in passing) about the agreement in the works for U.S. and Canadian police forces to be fully integrated by 2112.

Next, with great military fanfare, the British Prime Minister is ushered into Canada's Parliament to scare us silly, and to endorse HIS "good friend", S. Harper.

I loved what you said, Don:

We must now try to correct it and hope we have learned that the thieves will come while we sleep.
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Gary E.,

Holy, holy smoke ... maybe the answer is in what I just was saying to Don F.

Only "integration" was, I thought, intended for the year 2112.

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Never fear Mary. The Harpercons and the Libcons in BC are pushing Americanization full tilt boogie.
And if we can't stop it now this country is in danger of being fully Americanized. So much for Canada having its' own special identity. You know the one. It's what our governments spout every time they want votes. It's time we took back our country. Nationalized our oil, Took back Our railway, renationalized the CNR, kicked out the IPP's from our rivers and lakes, cut our own lumber ( after all we were know as tillers of soil and hewers of wood for a couple of hundred years),and refined our own oil. (see Nikiforuk here http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/09/22/Refine-Oil-In-Canada/
 

Gary E.,

If you're recruiting, my friend, I'd gladly join your army. "Home Guard" they called it in Britain during WWII, didn't they?

You've certainly got the target clear in your mind and as Clauswitz says, nobody should go to war without knowing exactly who the enemy is.

I'm still trying to get my mind around Gordo skulking around Ottawa -- incognito? -- the ultimate Micro-Manager coming to ensure that things go his way. I e.mailed Rosemary Barton ... do you think she'll say anything?
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@Don F. Re miported labour. Prototype for that was the Canada Line contracts; note the federal tie-in on a job that, to get it done, required the importatoin of Mexican works on temporary visas woking at rates 1/3 of our own.

You know what, that's the same propotion of regular wages paid for outside labour brought in by contract, and like the Mexicans supposed to go back (though obviously many nefer did), as it took to get the CPR built. And THAT also was a federal deal, forced on BC "or else you won't get the railway". Same with the impetus of the infamous Anti-Oriental Riots of 1907, same reason. Unemployed people faced with cheap external labour. Those who say those were racist pay scaloes were right; they were higher for natives and often scandinavians for regular white men - because they worked harder and were hardier and kinda tireless - and Chinese pay scales were set by Chinese contractors.

The irony of a railway built to the main Chinese suburb in pay conditions that are all too similar to what we've been expected to apologize for is really quite....er, funny. Point is, here, not a diatribue but that the pay scales were being set racially and "nationally" and still are. And "new Canadians" get levels of "immigrant support" that are far above what regular Canadians can get in social assistance, and with much less fuss and actual advisors to help you get it.

I'm just the messenger, by the way, not the preacher....

Deconstructing the numbers, if "hundreds of jobs" are being created let's ballpark that high on the 500 side instead of 200. So we're getting jobs for $10,000 each, is that right? Does that include the execs and the lobbyists and consultants feeding on it?

And what KIND of local jobs? Spin-offs in take-out food joints? Or temporary if well-paid labour, which is part of the history of BC and why there's so many empty towns all over the place; including some once large ones which have totally disappeared. building no future, just infrastucture to offload resources and call it "jobs" and "development".

I"m from a place that was a project town, it's been a shell of itself for yeaers and in fact was just dismantled and replaced by townhouses being built to house workers at the newly-refurbished plant (Bridge River) which is to be given to one of the P3s or US companies now playing in the BC energy operations field.

Did we vote for this?

Point is any jobs up there, few as they are ("hundreds") are only very temporary. They are not building a future; the money made and kept will be in Calgary and Beijing and, I think the Flail & Strobe's article boasted, in Shanghai, nowhere else.

"Development" in BC has always meant "tear it up and let it get hauled away". Royalties, no they're bad for the business climate. Value-added product development/sales - nah, too much money to be made selling stuff raw, and wholesale....who cares about the future.

it's really fatalist attitude, that kind of thinking, when you think about it. They KNOW they've destroyed the future already, so whjy not the f**K make a huge load of cash in the meantime? They're just the monkeys doing the bidding of the Big Money, though......Big Money's scrambling for survival. Stopping its growth will collapse it.

All the more reason to stop the pipeline and do the laundry list as Don has suggested; which I see as the necessary conclusion into a public inquiry into the scandalous doings of the BC Liberal regime of the last 10 years....
 

Sorry I meant Gary's laundry list, not Don.....