CLARK AND CABINET MINISTERS TAKEN TO COURT
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VICTORIA – If you push people around long enough, they will fight back. Just ask Premier Glen Clark and four of his cabinet ministers, who got slapped with subpoenas last week.
After fighting with the B.C. Forest Service for nearly seven years, a Cariboo rancher couple have had it with bureaucratic and political chicanery. Paulette Ernst and Bob Hart of Quesnel want their day in court.
Ernst and Hart are suing the B.C. government for $3.36 million in damages they claim to have suffered at the hands of the Forest Service.
The story is a familiar one. I have documented a number of cases, similar to what happened to Ernst and Hart: Ranchers allegedly run afoul of forest service regulations, get fined, have their bank accounts seized, and eventually are left in financial ruin.
A recent piece I did on the problems a helicopter logger has getting permission to do salvage logging in an area destroyed by fire, raised the ire of the forest ministry.
A letter by Janna Kumi, assistant deputy minister, operations division, which points out some "significant flaws" in my column, will be appearing shortly in your friendly neighborhood newspaper. But back to Ernst and Hart.
Unlike some of the people whose brushes with the Forest Service I’ve written about before, Ernst and Hart aren’t quite in the poor house yet. They have enough resources left to fight back and are determined to do so with a vengeance.
To that end, the couple, in their opening shots, are going after the premier, the current and three past forest ministers. Subpoenas naming Glen Clark, David Zirnhelt, Andrew Petter, Dennis Streifel and Dan Miller, were filed in British Columbia Supreme Court February 13. The Defendants have until March 15 to respond.
Here’s a brief history of the case that led to the current legal battle: In March 1990, Ernst and Hart were awarded a "licence of occupation" by the Ministry of Lands. They intended to clear the property subject to the licence and put it into agricultural production.
According to the Management Plan, attached to an agricultural lease, clearing is defined as "cutting and removing all timber, brush, windfalls, stumps and rubbish, except for trees designated for preservation, on the land designated as arable as set out in the clearing plan."
Ernst and Hart proceeded with the clearing of the land in question, when the Forest Ministry got into the act, claiming jurisdiction over the land, extracting a $500,000 deposit from them, and refusing them a timber mark which allows shipment of logs.
Next, the Forest Ministry pressured Ernst and Hart into paying stumpage fee in the amount of $423,000, when under the Lands Ministry’s legislation, no such fee is called for.
The Forest Ministry repeatedly stopped clearing operations and otherwise interfered with the ranchers’ attempts to clear the land. The ministry also charged Ernst and Hart with trespassing, when the agricultural land lease legislation clearly exempts ranchers from trespassing.
Needless to say, the Forest Ministry claims to have acted in accordance with its mandate. Eventually, the parties agreed to put the case before the ombudsman, who eventually made certain recommendations to the government.
The ombudsman’s findings are confidential, but Ernst and Hart say Dulcie McCullam ruled in their favor and recommended that the government settle with them, which the Forest Ministry refused to do.
A few weeks ago, I met with Forest Minister David Zirnhelt, at his request. He wanted to give me the Forest Ministry’s side of the cases I had written about. If I learned one thing during the meeting it was that red tape and bureaucratic mazes all but preclude anyone from doing business with the Forest Ministry.
Mere mortals, including forest ministers, are no longer able to find a way out of the bureaucratic maze. Perhaps a judge can. Ernst and Hart are to be congratulated for taking the matter to court.
REPORTER GETS SKINNED TWICE
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VICTORIA – Contrary to their own image of themselves, reporters do, say and write some pretty dumb things occasionally. I’m living proof, an admission some readers and numerous politicians would be only too happy to agree with.
But some reporters do really dumb things. A friend and colleague, Kim Emerson, is living proof of that.
Emerson is bureau chief at the legislative press gallery for Vancouver radio station CKNW. He’s as diligent and hard-nosed a reporter as they come. His line of questioning politicians during scrums may often border on the insolent, but sometimes you get the best quotes or even the truth when your target is madder than a hatter.
Emerson’s folly goes back a couple of years, when then premier Mike Harcourt was in the eye of a political storm, involving $5 million in government contracts awarded to NOW Communications, whose head honcho was Harcourt’s former election strategist.
The Liberal opposition called for Harcourt’s head, charging patronage. The media cornered the premier at every turn. In other words, it was business as usual in British Columbia politics.
When the story didn’t seem to lead anywhere, Emerson took matters a tad further than he should have. He wrote a letter to Conflict of Interest Commissioner Ted Hughes, asking for a ruling on whether or not the premier had breached the laws governing conflict of interest.
Hughes replied that to look into the matter, someone would have to make an allegation, not just ask for a ruling. That proviso is to prevent anyone from going on spurious fishing expeditions.
And that’s when Emerson compounded the problem of his strange course of action. He accused the premier, in a letter to Hughes, of having breached the conflict of interest law.
At the time, Emerson got skinned alive, not only by Harcourt, who was furious, but by his own colleagues, who had a hard time believing what Emerson had done.
Last week, Emerson got skinned again, this time by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a self-regulating watchdog of the broadcast industry.
Acting on a complaint from the B.C. Federation of Labor, the council found that Emerson and CKNW had breached the code of ethics of the Radio and Television News Directors’ Association.
"The broadcast journalist’s role is to investigate a matter and report it to the public, not take a public stand on such an issue by bringing the matter to the conflict of interest commissioner," the council said in its ruling.
In the final analysis, the council, concluded, the station was guilty of "apparent conflict of interest regarding an event of public importance." Ironically, Harcourt was cleared by Hughes of any conflict of interest. Poetic justice?
What has me a little confused is that it took the council two years to come to the conclusion just about every colleague of Emerson’s came to at the time. I mean, the council didn’t exactly break new territory when it discovered that journalists should report the news, comment on it, analyze it, but never, never make it.
And as it turned out, B.C. Reform leader Jack Weisgerber launched an identical complaint a few days later, rendering Emerson’ course of action, ill-advised to start with, unnecessary to boot.
Emerson defends his action to this day, but I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that he would think twice about it, if he had to do it over again. Pride is a funny thing. It clouds judgment, even in retrospect.
And finally, CKNW, which was ordered to broadcast the ruling, did so but in a pretty shoddy and mealy-mouthed way. Well, that’s private radio for you. Give me the CBC any time.
IS CANADA THE BEST COUNTRY IN WHICH TO LIVE?
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VICTORIA – The great English lexicographer Samuel Johnson once said society is defined by the way it treats its poor and destitute. I that is so, being Canadian might be considered a bit of a liability.
I don’t wish to rain on the parade of Canadians who feel pride in knowing that this country has been repeatedly chosen by the United Nations as the best country in the world to live in, but the UN’s praise notwithstanding, there are some fairly obnoxious warts on the body Canada.
Her parliamentary democracy has served Canada well. Our country is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. We have a relatively good health care system. The average Canadian’s standard of living is good.
Canada may be the best country to live in, but considering some of the competition, there is more than enough room for improvement. Rather than being smug about how others see us, it might be a good idea to take a closer look in the mirror and recognize our shortcomings.
I have no doubt that Canada is unsurpassed as a place to live if you have a good job, earn a decent living and are healthy.
And even if you’re poor, if you don’t know where your next meal comes from, Canada is preferable to many other countries, but the benefits of calling Canada your home don’t look that good anymore.
The National Council of Welfare recently reported that Canadians on social assistance have fallen deeper into poverty in every province and territory, except New Brunswick. The slide is attributed to cuts and freezes in spending that has been fiercely embraced by every government in this country.
And even though British Columbia comes off looking slightly better than the majority of other Canadian jurisdictions, the picture is depressing.
Hardest hit by government cutbacks in spending were welfare recipients in Prince Edward Island, whose incomes sank by 23 per cent in 1995, followed by Ontario whose poor had to do with 21.6 per cent less.
By comparison, welfare recipients in British Columbia saw their incomes reduced by only 1.7 per cent, a figure shared by several other provinces.
The figures of what welfare recipients receive differs widely from province to province. A single employable person in British Columbia got $6,837 in 1995. That figure was $3,295 in New Brunswick and $11,600 in the Northwest Territories.
For a single parent with one child, the figures were $13,699 in British Columbia, $11,1151 in New Brunswick and $14,848 in the NWT respectively.
These figures include basic social assistance, additional benefits, child tax benefits, provincial child benefits, GST credits and provincial tax credits, not all of which are available in every province and territory.
The last time I wrote about the problems welfare recipients have making ends meet, I had a call from a reader who said he never has accepted government handouts and makes do with less than social assistance provides.
He told me he doesn’t spend money on furniture, he sleeps on a blanket, doesn’t need heat, occasionally eats dog or cat food, which he said is nutritious, and is all-round self sufficient. Welfare recipients, he said, could live as cheaply as he does.
Well, I don’t think I’m going to argue with him. If he wants to eat dog food, that’s his choice, but I don’t think any Canadian should be compelled by poverty to share the man’s peculiar lifestyle.
There is something very wrong when the country considered the best in the world to live in reports a rise in demand on food banks of 50 per cent last year.
We’ve got a ways to go before we measure up to Samuel Johnson’s assessment of what constitutes a self-respecting society.
WHAT’S ALL THE BANK-BASHING ABOUT?
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VICTORIA – Bank-bashing has become a national sport. Canadians, it seems, hate banks even more than politicians or, for that matter, journalists.
Well, this is one Canadian who doesn’t have a beef with the banks. I don’t care how much money the CEOs of Canada’s six major financial institutions made last year. I’m quite happy with the service I get.
Let’s deal with the salaries of the big shots. The Bank of Montreal’s Matthew Barrett led the pack last year with $3.88 million, followed by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce’s Al Flood who received $2.93 million.
Next was Peter Godsoe of the Bank of Nova Scotia, who earned $2.86 million. The Toronto Dominion bank’s Richard Thomson got $2,79 million, followed by John Cleghorn with $2.57 million, while the national Bank of Canada’s André Berard earned a mere $1.1 million.
Those are impressive salaries, but the chaps must have earned them. Big business doesn’t pay those kind of salaries, unless it gets good value in return. I just wonder how many folks who badmouth the bank CEOs would refuse those salaries, given a chance to earn them.
Canadians also seem to labor under the impression that banks have a special responsibility to society, one that sets them apart from other big businesses. For some reason, banks are supposed to have a social conscience, and their CEOs are expected to be embued with the characteristic of a Mother Theresa.
Nobody expects Bill Gates to have a social conscience. If he decides to sell Windows 95 for twice the price he now charges, the public would bitch but pay. Nobody would ask Parliament to intervene. Banks are expected place society’s interests before that of their shareholders.
Strange as it may seem, the only thing I expect from my bank, which happens to be the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, is good service for the money I pay. I don’t give a hoot what the CEO earns and what return the shareholders get on their investment.
And good service I get. For something like $9.95 a month, I can write all the cheques I want. I can deposit money and withdraw it. I can use the bank machine as often as I want to. I can even use my bank card to get cash in far-away places like London and Frankfurt – at an additional charge, usually $1.50 per withdrawal.
As of two weeks ago, I can even do my banking from my computer, a real attraction for a computer nut like me. For the first time, I pay my bills on time. Heck, I can’t wait to fire up the program and pay those bills. I expect letters of gratitude from all the utility and credit card companies.
Speaking of credit cards, thanks to the CIBC, I am the holder of an Aerogold card. Having learned the hard way some years back that credit cards a sure-fire way to get into debt over your head, I switched my tactics.
Every purchase possible goes on the card, which earns me air miles. At the end of the month, I pay the bill in full. The result: no balance and no interest charges. The trick: if you know you can’t pay for a purchase in full at the end of the month, don’t buy it.
The bank, of course, doesn’t like that one bit. They would much rather I rack up a huge balance and pay those usurious interest rates. Hey, tough break. They can always cut back the CEO’s salary to make up for the loss.
To sum it up, I have no complaints about my bank. I think old Al is doing a fine job and I don’t begrudge him his $2.93 million. I only wish I could charge that kind of money for my columns.
And for those who hate banks, there’s always the mattress.
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