A Time To Rage (Part Three) The B.C. Election, Gordon Campbell Double-Cross, An

When the ugly story first broke, allegations flew that money was used in a calculated program of gaining fake federal Liberal Party memberships. The accusations were so widespread (apparently also outside of B.C.) that the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada publicly declared the purchase of Party memberships for others was an unnamed election expense and therefore a criminal infraction. (When I and about twenty other British Columbians asked the Chief Electoral Officer – a Liberal appointee – and his retinue to investigate the situation in B.C., we were refused and told the office might act if WE could gather evidence of improper behaviour! The office of the Chief Electoral Officer stalled and delayed and fumbled before issuing that reply.) Press and political opposition should be asking for a full-scale public inquiry into the whole smelly mess connecting the sale of B.C Rail to crime, to fake Liberal Party membership gathering, to the victory of Gordon Campbell as B.C. Liberal Party leader, and to the strange and deeply disturbing smear campaign and “Show Trial” of the former premier of B.C., the completely innocent Glen Clark. The dots appear to connect in a continuous line. A full-scale public inquiry is absolutely necessary. The major sellout press and media are not asking questions about B.C.’s receipt of the first big (over $600-million) payment to oil- and gas-producing provinces very recently announced. It has all the appearance of federal Liberal manipulation and interference in a provincial election. Is it mere vote-buying? Or is it a pay-off for services received in stacking votes for Paul Martin-preferred candidates, and – who knows – for handing B.C. Rail to what is an essentially U.S.-owned corporation? Or is it something else? Gordon Campbell himself should be held to question on all those matters every day by opposition candidates and by the press and media of B.C. Instead there is silence. The major sellout press and media aren’t reminding British Columbians that Gordon Campbell promised to honour labour contracts and then broke them as quickly as he slashed the minimum wage and pulled the plug on the NDP years-long fee freeze at post-secondary institutions. They aren’t reminding people that Gordon Campbell refused the two opposition members in the B.C. legislature formal opposition status – because viable, meaningful democratic processes get in Gordon Campbell’s way and impede Corporate Totalitarianism. They aren’t reminding people – even a little – of the Gordon Campbell B.C. Liberal Government Privatization story or of that government’s disgraceful attack on the B.C. environment. Those two stories have the same negative identifying qualities. (1) Both environmental downgrading and privatization reduce the control British Columbians have over the fate of their province. (2) They reduce service to British Columbians. (3) They reduce revenue accruing to the B.C. government. (4) They deliver the power of government increasingly to private corporations. Both stories are, in short, about intended destructiveness by the Campbell Liberal government in support of a demented ideology championing the rule of civil society by greed-driven private corporations. The B.C. Ferries fiasco of a privatization is at least as stupid as the privatization of B.C. Rail. B.C. Ferries now has ugly labour relations, down-graded safety standards, diminishing quality and increased cost of service for passengers, and a growing debt loaded onto taxpayers – the latter at least in part the result of Gordon Campbell and his dubiously appointed Yankee CEO trying to shine up the “look” of B.C. Ferries to make it attractive to (foreign) private takeover candidates. In the process Gordon Campbell’s Liberals have stripped B.C. Ferries of democratic grievance processes. He has had written into the law governing the new Ferry Fiasco clauses denying the use of Access to Information legislation, to the B.C. Ombudsman, and to the Labour Relations Board of B.C. in relation to the operation of B.C. Ferries. That is only one of his attacks upon the people of B.C. in favour of private corporate greed. He has (causing publicly expressed concern from the U.N.) begun the practice of child labour in B.C. He has lowered the age of unchecked employment of children to the age of 12 at the same time as he has slashed the minimum wage. He has attacked employed working people, also, by (for what mad reason?) permitting employers the freedom NOT to post employment standards, NOT to display working hours on worksites, and cutting in half the time necessary to give workers for “call out” work. The Campbell corporate totalitarians have weakened union organization legislation, have stripped agricultural workers of protections, and have reduced the requirement to keep employee records from seven years to two years. What difference does that last move make? It protects fraudulent and “dirty” employers. Wage earning workers often take a long time to organize and to demand review of fraudulent practices in the workplace. The Campbell government has set up – with that one change – a protection structure for fraudulent employers, just as it has done so by removing the requirement to post employment standards and working hours on sites. Those moves can be read as completely cynical moves by the Gordon Campbell Liberal government to assist employers who wish to abuse and exploit working people. There can be no other explanation. What about privatizations in healthcare? The simple story is that the Campbell government has closed hospitals, slashed the number of hospital places, slashed the number of long-term residential beds, increased costs for drugs needed by seniors, and – overall – darkly eroded care for seniors and the sick by privatizations of healthcare support services. That last statement is supported by reports issued by both the B.C. Nurses union and by the B.C. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Healthcare privatization has been a part of the move to what I call “Corporate Totalitarianism,” which is takeover of the actual government of society by private corporations for their profit. Laundry, food services, and cleaning services in healthcare facilities of all kinds have been privatized to mostly foreign corporations. In the process the wages of B.C. workers have been slashed as much as 40%. Quality of service has been lowered dangerously and the private corporations are accused – both from inside and outside the institutions – of being responsible for increased hospital infections and inadequate treatment of the needy. The “government supervision” of the institutions is a joke. Very well-salaried health “authority” officers, who are paid their high return principally to slash wages and services, arrive at care facilities to hear and to deal with people who lodge complaints. That is rather like having Nazi concentration camp commanders hold sessions with starved and beaten prisoners to hear if they are dissatisfied with their treatment. In a less visible area, the Gordon Campbell vandals are pushing to privatize B.C. Hydro. Already they have privatized one-third of it to Accenture, an essentially American corporation registered offshore from the U.S.A. Accenture was close to the Enron/Anderson corporate scandal of the century (under a different name, of course). Using a takeover by Accenture to privatize B.C. Hydro shows that the Campbell cabinet has no interest in ethics or morality as it pushes to set up (foreign) corporate rule of British Columbia. In addition, thwarted by public fury from doing a B.C. Rail-style sellout at B.C. Hydro, the Campbell Liberal government has ruled that all new electricity that comes on stream in B.C. MUST come from private corporations – which is, in fact, a method of dirty, back-door privatization of B.C. Hydro. At the same time, the Campbell vandals are preparing to hand over power of transmission from the B.C. Transmission Corporation to a U.S.-run, so-called “authority.” The slashing of environmental regulation and supervision connects to all of the above. The Campbell Liberals have permitted huge increases in raw log exports, thereby preventing secondary and tertiary wood enterprises from being created and maintained in B.C. The Ministry of Forest has cut more than 800 jobs, denuding B.C. forests (still B.C.’s major industrial base) of patrol and supervision. Foreign ownership in B.C. forest enterprises is huge. Now only “high risk” undertakings need permits to release waste into the environment. Undertakings no longer need environmental assessments before beginning operations – unless especially targetted by government. Private corporations have been freed up in new ways to use pesticides, to operate in public parks, to move fast on what government chooses to call “special” projects, to operate dangerous fish farms, and to move into mining, oil, gas coal-bed methane, and offshore oil development. British Columbians need to know those things (and many, many more) in order to vote fairly in the May 17 B.C. election. They are being told virtually none of it by B.C’s monopoly press and media. British Columbians are being shut out from information they need to make meaningful democratic choices. The Asper CanWest press and media organization and the Gordon Campbell Liberal government think democracy gets in the way of private profit and corporate rule of society. They are happy to contribute to the destruction of democracy in British Columbia and Canada. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on May 4, 2005]