BC Politics with Hubert Beyer

PUBLIC BREASTFEEDING IS NOT A HUMAN RIGHT

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VICTORIA – Ignoring the old saw of fools rushing in where wise men dare not tread, I would like to go on record that one of the silliest cases involving the B.C. Human Rights Council has got to be the six-year battle waged by a woman who wasn’t allowed to breastfeed her baby at a public government forum.

Let me also go on record in support of breastfeeding. It’s good for babies and should be accepted by society as a normal, healthy and wonderful thing. I have no problem with Michelle Poirier having wanted to breastfeed her baby at the aforementioned public forum. If it’s all right with her it’s all right with me.

But I do wonder about the priorities of a person who wages a six-year war over something as trivial as this, a war that cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, occupied the time of government lawyers and even a B.C. Supreme Court judge.

Ill-equipped as I am by nature to breastfeed, If I could, I would certainly not launch a prolonged as costly battle for the right to do so in a place where some people might have reservations about it.

It is government policy to accommodate breastfeeding mothers at the workplace. Nothing wrong with that. The municipal affairs ministry, where Poirier worked as an information officer, just drew the line at letting her breastfeed during a public forum.

I would not have taken that position. But sometimes people make the wrong call or are simply of a different opinion. The logical thing for Poirier would have been to just let it go.

What about principle, you might ask. I’m all in favor of fighting for important principles, but a law forcing government to accommodate public breastfeeding is, I submit, does not warrant a prolonged fight.

Years ago, when women first rose to fight discrimination based on gender, I wrote a story about a single woman with a considerable income who was denied a mortgage by the bank because she "might get pregnant" in the future. The bank went as far as to suggest that she would have no problem getting a mortgage if she had a hysterectomy.

Now that was an affront to human rights, an ugly manifestation of a male-dominated society.

There remain many human rights issues to be addressed, even in Canada. Fortunately, human rights violations in this country do not involve assassination of political opponents at the hands of death squads, state-sanctioned torture of prisoners, children working in sweat shops, or young girls pressed into prostitution by their families.

When I started out in the newspaper business, women reporters were routinely paid less than their male colleagues. In fact, the press gallery, where I hang my hat, wouldn’t allow women in its ranks until the early 70s.

That has changed, at least in my racket, but equal pay for equal work is not yet an accepted practice in every place of business, nor is giving women fair and equal access to jobs and promotions.

Women choosing to stay at home and raise families instead of following a career are still given the short stick by society. Single mothers are not given the resources they need to raise their children with the dignity our society can afford and owes them.

To rank someone’s complaint about not having been able to breastfeed her child at a ministry-sponsored public forum among the serious issues that need resolving is ludicrous at best.

The Human Rights Council is about to decide whether breastfeeding in public is a human right. I can hardly wait for the outcome.

As far as I am concerned, women should be able to breastfeed their babies wherever they want, but I have a big problem with wasting the time of the Human Rights Council and large amounts of public money on an issue such as this when other, far more important problems need to be dealt with.

ANDERSON ON THE LIBERAL PR TRAIL

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VICTORIA – It took a while to set up lunch with David Anderson. I broke the first date because I came down with nasty case of streptococcus, commonly known as strep throat. Then Anderson couldn’t make it because he was delayed in Calgary.

It turns out that his enthusiasm for Paul Martin’s recent budget hadn’t waned one bit when we finally connected.

The way Anderson, Transport Minister and Member of Parliament for Victoria, sees it, the budget will herald a renewed appetite among Liberal supporters for policies and programs that have been considered too costly during the years of fiscal restraint.

He expects a steadily growing demand for tax cuts, but agrees with the finance minister that it is still too early for such initiatives. And he believes that most Canadians agree with that stand.

Canadians, he says, can see light at the end of tunnel, but they want to make sure they don’t have to go through another period of belt-tightening and expenditure cuts, which, he says, might happen if the federal government embarks too soon on extravagant expenditures.

The scene of federal cabinet ministers and backbenchers sitting down with media types is being played out all across the nation. Prime Minister Jean Chretien is gearing up for an election, possibly as early as June, and he wants to get the public relations bang for his budget buck, as he heads into the pre-election campaign.

But Anderson admits that excessive talk about the federal budget tends to put people to sleep. I agree and steer the conversation to topics less suited to public relations. For openers, I tell him that he goofed when during his tenure as Revenue Minister, he froze my bank account because I was a little lax in paying my taxes.

"You didn’t get a penny, because my account was overdrawn," I tell him. But he just laughs and says, "bad timing."

What about the light houses, the automation of which comes under his jurisdiction? Does the widespread criticism in the west of the changeover to automated lighthouses worry him? Not in the least. It’s necessary, he says, and everybody is doing it.

"Look, the United States has 475 lighthouses, of which 474 are automated. The one that’s staffed is in Boston Harbor, and that’s for historic and tourism purposes. New Zealand has automated all its lighthouses, and so has Australia."

With few exceptions, staffing lighthouses in this day and age, he says, is no different than firemen riding on diesel trains in the 50s and 60s.

So far, eight of the 36 lighthouses on the west coast have been automated, and the rest will be looked at carefully, according to Anderson. And if a case can be made for keeping live bodies in certain lighthouses.

I turn the conversation to the CBC, the systematic disemboweling of which is one of my pet peeves, but it’s difficult to rattle the guy.

"I consider myself a supporter and admirer of the CBC, but hell, it’s no secret that there was a huge amount of fat to be cut," he says.

Coverage of the Olympics, he goes on, is a good case in point. It was excellent, but CTV probably would have come to within 96 per cent of the CBC’s coverage quality for half the money.

He says Victorians are probably among the most loyal CBC supporters and he gets an earful every time he comes to British Columbia’s capital city. "It’s amazing, but Peter Gzowsky is probably the best friend a lot of elderly Victorians have."

I give up trying to put him on the defensive. The guy has been in politics too long to be fazed by a newspaperman.

We finish our lunch, he pays, with the understanding that next time, I will pick up the bill. And just as I leave the restaurant parking lot and see Anderson driving off in the other direction, I remember a question I had forgotten to ask:

"When the Liberals going to abolish the GST?" I had planned on asking. Oh well, maybe next time.

POLITICIANS ON NOTICE: STOP LYING

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VICTORIA – If the pace of legal action against the NDP continues unabated, Premier Glen Clark and some of his cabinet ministers may spend more time in court than in the legislature.

The ink has hardly dried on the subpoenas dropped unceremoniously on the premier and four cabinet ministers by Cariboo ranchers Paulette Ernst and Bob Hart over a seven-year fight with the Forest Service, when the NDP finds itself confronted with a new legal battle – this one threatening the entire government.

To hear the premier tell it, he can hardly wait to fight Kelowna printing shop owner and anti-NDP crusader David Stockell in court. Well, there’s no accounting for how some people get their kicks. I wouldn’t bee too keen to see Stockell in court.

Stockell is the guy who felt that he was had by the NDP’s election promise of a balanced budget. He’s pretty sure the premier knew very well that he couldn’t deliver a balanced budget, so he lied to the public to get the NDP elected for a second term

But rather than just complain about it, Stockell took his beef to court, asking that the election be declared illegal because the NDP’s victory was based on fraudulent claims.

I must admit that when Stockell started his crusade, I was tempted to dismiss him as a crank, wasting the time of the court time and taxpayers’ money. Was I wrong.

Last week, Stockell won the opening round when B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bryan Williams turned down a government bid to throw his law suit out of court. Stockell can now continue to apply for a class-action suit aimed at the 39 elected NDP MLAs.

Lawyers representing NDP Speaker Dale Lovick and the other 38 NDP MLAs tried to get the case tossed out on grounds that Stockell’s claim was frivolous, but the judge didn’t see it that way.

"Courts generally are most reluctant to strike out a petition or statement of claim at an early stage unless it can be clearly demonstrated that there is no chance of success at all," Williams said in his decision.

I don’t want to put words in the judge’s mouth, but the way I read the decision, the judge is saying, in so many words, that Stockell has at least a chance to make his case in court.

But even if at the end of the day, Stockell doesn’t win, the case is "a wake-up call" for all politicians, according to Victoria University political science professor Norman Ruff. This case, Ruff says, has national implications. I couldn’t agree more.

There is a lot of anger among voters that politicians tend to make promises they have no intention of keeping, be that a promise by the premier of a balanced budget or by the Jean Chretien to get rid of the hated GST.

The public demands more honesty in politicians. They have had it with being hoodwinked every three or four years into electing a government that will break its campaign promises with impunity.

There’s no doubt that a lot of people voted for the NDP on the premise that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As long as the NDP could prove to voters that it was capable of not only implementing its agenda but looking after the public purse, they felt the party deserved another term.

When it turned out that a flood of reports and correspondence from staff of a number of ministries had warned the government that its predictions of a balanced budget was on the shakiest of grounds, people got understandably upset. And Stockell was one of them.

Stockell may not succeed in bringing down the government, but even so, he will have performed an admirable public service.

If nothing else, this case will have put politicians on notice that the public no longer tolerates double-speak and lies from its political leaders.