BC Politics with Hubert Beyer

TAYLOR NEEDS A CHAMPION

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VICTORIA – "The residents Taylor need a champion," said Brian Kieran, an old friend, former colleague and consultant in his new life.

I trust Brian’s political instincts. As a columnist for the Province, he had an unerring instinct for the location of a wayward politician’s or a sleazy businessman’s jugular. If Brian thinks I can serve as a champion for a worthwhile cause, I’m game.

The cause, it turns out, involves the residents of Taylor, a small community south of Fort St. John, and Novagas Clearinghouse Ltd., referred to by Brian as the "Darth Vador of Alberta’s natural gas industry."

Novagas wants to build an NGL (natural gas liquefaction) extraction plant in Taylor, and the plant would literally be in the backyard of some of Taylor’s residents.

So, what’s wrong with that? After all, this is Premier Glen Clark’s job-creation province. You would think a lot of new jobs would be worth having a little plant in your backyard. Think again.

First, the plant would create only half a dozen jobs, probably non-union. Let’s face it, this is an Alberta company. Second, the extracted natural gas liquids will be pipelined right back to Alberta for value-added processing. That little trick is euphemistically referred to as "fractionation."

The way Brian puts it, Nova’s plans represent a frontal assault on the premier’s job-creation plan.

"This is jobs-year for Premier Glen Clark, jobs that help stabilize resource dependent communities, jobs that have a high value-added component, preferably union jobs, jobs that are created in an environmentally sensitive context," says Brian.

I’m glad Brian mentioned the environment, because here’s the kicker: When completed, Nova’s plant, the one employing only six people, would pump 95,000 tonnes a year of noxious substances into the air.

Aside from that, a flaring stack would generate enough heat to melt snow within a 30-metre radius.

Where the hell is the B.C. government in all this? Nowhere. So far, the residents of Taylor are on their own. Environment Minister Cathy McGregor was not available for comment on the weekend.

And McGregor should involve herself in this issue. So should the premier. I know his time is taken up by waging the fish war, and that’s fine, but in the meantime he shouldn’t ignore a sleazy effort by some cheap Alberta outfit to create six lousy jobs at the expense of a whole B.C. community.

There’s another aspect to the issue: Solex Gas Liquids, which is also located in Taylor, powered by electricity, employing 18 union workers, making decent wages, is currently in the midst of a provincial government-sanctioned, $35 million expansion that will give it the capacity to process all the natural gas flowing on the ESTCOAST Transmission Line.

In other words, Solex is actively promoting the development of the petrochemical industry, while Nova would subtract from the economy of British Columbia.

If Nova is allowed to go ahead with its operation, the northeast region of British Columbia, not the economically most blessed part of the province, would suffer a net job loss.

So, here’s the deal: I will get in touch with the environment minister as soon as she shows her face in Victoria again. I will explain to her what the folks of Taylor are up against, and I’ll tell her that Taylor needs another champion besides me.

If McGregor performs, she’ll get my kudos and, undoubtedly, those of the people of Taylor. If she doesn’t, she’ll get brickbats from both of us.

WOMEN’S PRANK WENT TOO FAR

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VICTORIA -- I wasn’t going to touch this story with a ten-foot pole, but then it got so out of hand that I decided I could no longer ignore it. At the heart of it is the question: what behavior on the part of our elected representatives is acceptable and what isn’t.

You may already have seen, heard and read the news stories concerning the incidents in question; if not, I should warn you: if you’re easily offended, you should stop reading now. As for kids, I’m fairly certain, they aren’t too interested in reading political columns.

One incident occurred about a week ago. With the session droning on and providing little respite, women MLAs from both the NDP and Liberal caucuses decided to have an impromptu party. Also invited were female support staff and female members of the press gallery, of whom only one attended.

Sometime during the all-girls party, at which alcohol apparently flowed quite freely, former Women’s Equality Minister Penny Priddy came into the room carrying a tray with burning candles arranged around an object covered by a shroud. When she whipped off the cover, a toy penis was revealed, the kind you can buy in joke shops, with little feet attached that make the thing jump when wound up.

Had the joke stopped there, the story would never have found its way into the public domain. Unfortunately, the women decided to carry the joke further by taking the object into the legislative chamber, where Liberal MLA Ted Nebbeling was on his feet, holding a speech.

With great aplomb, two women of the Liberal caucus presented the offending evidence to Nebbeling, after which Linda Reid bowed ceremoniously to the cameras, which had recorded the entire incident for posterity.

The second incident happened a day later and involves Liberal MLA Mike de Jong. As a sign of his undying affection, de Jong presented Health Minister Joy MacPhail with a fake bomb, accompanying his presentation with some advice on where and when to open it.

De Jong’s stunt was outright stupid. Had he done something like that at an airport, he’d have been arrested, charged, convicted and probably sent to jail to cool his heels. Joking about bombs is particularly inappropriate for a man touted by McLean’s Magazine as one of 100 Canadians to watch.

The earlier prank could be dismissed as a joke that got out of and, but the very fact that it got out of hand, makes it unacceptable.

In all fairness, I admit that I laughed uncontrollably when I first heard about it. I’m not a prude, and I can understand how something like his can spin out of control. If I had been involved in a caper like this, I would apologize, take my lumps and hope that people wouldn’t hate me too much.

Not so with the "girls" who got caught. They believe everything would have been fine if only the media scum had kept quiet. Because female members of the press gallery had been invited, the women MLAs claim the incident should have been off the record. In other words, we broke confidence. Once again the messenger is lined up and shot.

The moment the women took their ill-advised prank into the legislature, it was a public display, duly recorded by the electronic Hansard. No confidence was broken.

Others, including Rosemary Brown, former NDP MLA and life-long women’s rights activist, have condemned the incident as sexist. I don’t agree. Even the argument that had it been men playing this prank on women, they would have been hung out to dry, doesn’t hold water.

In any human rights situation, the minority can do what the majority can’t. Jewish comedians can tell Jewish jokes, non-Jews can’t and shouldn’t. Blacks in the U.S. can have all-black universities, whites can’t have all-white institutions and shouldn’t.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE NDP?

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VICTORIA – In the hilariously funny movie "Where the Buffalo Roam," Bill Murray, playing the hard-drinking, anti-establishment journalist Hunter S. Thompson, asks Richard Nixon during an election campaign stop, " Sir, what about the doomed?"

"Screw the doomed," Nixon replies. Well, actually he uses a different verb, but this one will have to do in a family newspaper.

It’s an attitude found in many hard-ball-playing politicians. The doomed, or the poor, if you will, don’t count in politics. They are disenfranchised. More often than not, they are so disillusioned, they don’t even bother voting and can be written off without major risk.

Ontario’s Mike Harris has been branded with the label of not caring about society’s most helpless. So has Alberta’s Ralph Klein. As it turns out, they are less deserving of their reputation for ruthlessness than our own Premier Glen Clark.

Two recent examples: The Social Planning and Research Council of B.C. reports that welfare rates for single people are $20 a month higher in Ontario. And according End Legislated Poverty, a fairly high-profile lobby group, benefits for single people on welfare are 44 per cent lower today than they were under the last Socred government.

My, how parties change. This is the New Democratic Party that prided itself on being the undisputed champion of the poor and downtrodden. This is the party that once upon a time would rather have foregone a chance at power than abandon its principles.

Alas, power corrupts. It tends to coat the purity of heart and mind with thick layers of expediency and opportunism.

The other day, the premier asked me why my column was no longer in some of the Vancouver Island papers. I said I had been replaced by Rafe Mair, the mercurial open-line radio host.

Clark asked me why, and I said that I was probably a little too far to the left for the taste of a new publisher. The premier said that from the lambasting he had taken, time and again, in my columns, I could hardly be called a left-winger.

Well, maybe, maybe not. I call them as I see them. But I know enough about social democratic parties to know that Clark is not leading one.

Tony Blair, the new British prime minister, faced a similar conundrum. Either he moved to the right or he could forget about being elected. He moved to the right, even breaking all ties to trade unions in the process.

Now, Clark hasn’t done that, and he never will. He has a strong trade union background. As long as he’s in charge, unions need not fear being sold out. But in many other respects, the current NDP government is virtually indistinguishable from a right-wing government.

Clark is throwing on the scrap heap a lot of environmental policies pursued by his predecessor, Mike Harcourt.

Harcourt’s avowed aim was to bring peace to the woods, and he largely succeeded. Under Clark, war has broken out again. I’m not criticizing his stand on Greenpeace activities. I would do the same. I’m just saying those are not the policies or actions of a true NDP government.

What I wouldn’t do is hammer the poor. How a single person on welfare is to get by on $450 a month is beyond me. Now, if the unemployment rate stood at three per cent, I would say everybody who really wants to work can find a job. That’s just not the case with nine-per-cent unemployment.

The NDP has deep roots, some of which would be worth rediscovering. And if the premier continues to ignore those roots, he will do so at his own risk and that of his party.

Recent history has shown us that voters think nothing of wiping out a party in the process of voting in a different government. The federal Tories managed a comeback of sorts, but our home-grown, once mighty Social Credit Party is gone the way of the dodo bird.

The same could happen again.