Canadian Surprises: Part One

Let’s look at the snake-oil side. Interviewed on CBC radio on July 9, he was eager to affirm that his government endorses the Canada Health Care system, that it wants to make the system work, that it is all virtue and eagerness to cooperate, to share, to improve the system. Except…. Except everyone in B.C. knows he is privatizing as fast as he can any connecting service that might be called health care but which he can squeeze out of the definition. He is doing that to the detriment of good service and decent pay for care workers. He pays the slashers and burners very high salaries so they can drown conscience in the best Scotch. There’s more – which I have referred to in this column before. To the new National Health Council, Campbell has not only appointed his brother-in-law, but a brother-in-law on published record as wanting a two-tier system. (Snake-oil meets the ideologue.) To add spice to ideology, Les Vertesi (in his 2003 book, Broken Promises) repeatedly drags in Lenin, the Communist system and other like, lunatic comparisons when discussing Canadian medicare. You might say the snake-oil is Campbell lifting up the stones. The Toxic Right ideologue then drops them on his own feet. (2) Corruption Under Wraps. In the theft from British Columbians of assets owned by them all, and the secret fire-sale of those assets – where possible – to U.S. interests – the Gordon Campbell Liberal government is tireless. When Joy MacPhail suggested on March 30 in the legislature that the leasetime of B.C. Rail’s lines by purchasing CN might be more than the 60 years the government had announced, Kevin Falcon, Minister of Transport, labelled MacPhail’s comments “false information”. The possibilities of lease extension we have learned since go as far as 990 years! Other such failures of reporting by government keep emerging. With strong allegations of likely criminal activity in the leaks to CN (not fully answered or investigated), the federal Competition Bureau okay has been given to proceed with the billion dollar sale. Gordon Campbell made an election promise not to sell B.C. Rail. B.C. Rail is one of the Provinces assets which, handled carefully over the next years, could be a major source of revenue, of development policy, and of employment for British Columbians. All that is lost. Moreover, police raids of the B.C. legislature last December were said to be connected to the possibly criminal leaks to the CN. None of those allegations, adding to the murk surrounding the sale, have been cleared. Final terms of the sale? Surprise! They are STILL being kept from the owners of B.C. Rail – the people of British Columbia. (3) Working the People. Deborah Lorimer, an officer with the B.C. Coastal Health Authority, visited the Kiwanis Seniors Home in Gibsons, B.C., in late June. She wanted the Seniors and their families to know how hard the Authority has worked to provide them with increasingly bad food services purveyed by the giant multi-national corporation, SODEXHO. Gordon Campbell’s Liberals regularly set-up and pay hefty sums to such as Ms. Lorimer to decimate B.C.’s “Care” employees, to assure them increasingly meager pay packets, and to deprive aged, defenseless seniors of good care. Asked why the Coastal Health Authority had permitted a valued 21-year cook at the Gibsons home to be demoted, to have her wages slashed, to be put on an awkward shift, and to have been otherwise humiliated until she resigned, Ms. Lorimer demurely answered that she had nothing to do with the case. The matter, she said, (surprise!) is between the cook of 21 years and SODEXHO. SODEXHO was carefully chosen by Campbell’s appointees to help destroy care standards in B.C. on behalf of private corporate profit. One senior at the Kiwanis Home went directly to the kitchen to ask some questions. She reports ‘the kitchen’ hates the food it is being provided with since the takeover by SODEXHO. The “kitchen” and the seniors are obviously of the same mind. The only person who is delighted with the new arrangement is Ms. Lorimer who eats elsewhere. (And, of course, SODEXHO which is making a profit from a formerly non-profit operation.) (4) Selling out Canada. Gordon Campbell is sounding the trumpets of destiny for B.C. Ferries. To head up the newly “privatized” mess called B.C. Ferry Services Inc., Campbell appointed a U.S. citizen on a special visa from a dubious, recently bankrupt, Enron-style corporation in the U.S.A. About David Hahn, the know-nothing CEO, wits around the operation say Hahn knew so little about the work he was asked to take up that on his first day he had to be told a ferry is not a gay male. The one thing that is understandable in the insane, opaque, Alice-in-Wonderland new Coastal Ferries Act rammed through by the Campbell government is that the ferry operation was removed from the oversight of both the Access to Information Commissioner and the Ombudsman. Management can now do what it wants (inefficient, dishonest, stupid) and the B.C. people have almost no way of getting information. In his short time at the helm (?), David Hahn has made relations between the now overpaid top officers and the long-term, excellent ferry workers worse than it has ever been. Hahn has joined in the “restructuring” that is decimating maintenance standards of the fleet. He is being paid $325,000.00 a year to work flat out to destroy the ferry union all on behalf of the Blind Ideologue premier. Is that all? No. He is swelling the ranks of U.S. bosses in B.C. Ferries. The latest is a new vice-president from the Alaska Ferry System. Common knowledge is that any U.S. Ferry operation has been inferior to B.C. Ferry standards. David Hahn with his new vice-president, George Capacci, will fix that. If the Gordon Campbell government is setting up B.C. Ferries for a B.C. Rail-style (secret, highly dubious, financially idiotic) sell-off, they are showing their hand. A transition to U.S. ownership of B.C. Ferries will be much smoother with U.S. personnel in top positions. They’ll be personnel, moreover, who understand the Gordon Campbell, yankee-style ideology: squeeze the general public, abuse them, violate service, violate workers and chop their pay. Make money for private, foreign corporations. Listing the new costs the “privatized” ferry operation said it wouldn’t introduce, a Victoria Times Colonist editorial (Thursday, July 8, A12) says of ferry travellers: “Rather than accommodate them, the corporation prefers to exploit them”. That policy fits in with “foreign bosses”. They are not an accident. They arrive in every colony in the world. The reason they arrive is no surprise. They are hired to rape the society into which they come. They have no ties to extended family, to the community, to the culture, no respect for traditions or customs in the country they come to. There is no one close to them to get in the way with questions about morality or behaviour. They can, to coin a phrase, concentrate on rape. Welcome David Hahn. Welcome George Capacci. To add a note of humour (?) to this otherwise gray story, we may look at one of David Hahn’s first blows for “efficiency” in ferry operation. In the old days of decent, caring, companionable ferry operation, travellers could go back for a second cup of coffee – free. Such a practice of course offends U.S. Capitalist Individualism. Very soon after the arrival of Hahn, the free cup of coffee was wiped. The few extra cups of free coffee collected cost the Corporation almost nothing in money and won them affection from travellers. It took a $325,000.00 a year yankee from a bankrupt U.S. corporation on a special visa to erase the tradition. Surprise.