Rafe Mair was a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. Since 1981 he has been a radio talk show host, and is recognized as one of B.C.'s pre-eminent journalists.
In a way I share an experience with the late Elijah Harper, who nixed the Meech Lake Accord. I have been airbrushed out of CKNW's history - Rafe Who? - while the late Mr. Harper is a national non-event thanks to the Central Canadian Establishment.
The background to Meech is pretty straightforward. Brian Mulroney needed political help in Quebec and persuaded all the premiers to support a set of constitutional reforms - labelled the Meech Lake Accord - whereby all the other premiers would postpone their constitutional ambitions until Quebec was settled nicely away with its "Distinct Society" designation AND a veto over all future constitutional proposals. If you've advanced past Politics 101 you will see that once satisfied, Quebec could and would veto other changes such as Senate reform. It was a colossal mistake and one can only assume it was contracted on the back of an envelope during the cocktail hour.
It was agreed that every province had to ratify it by June 1990.
With a few hours to go, Manitoba Premier Gary Filmon moved that the Meech Lake Accord be debated and asked special leave, which was needed, to bring it forward. One has to ask why Filmon waited til the bitter end. The special leave was refused by Elijah Harper, who passed away last week, and Meech Lake was dead.
The Newfoundland and Labrador agreement was given under Tory Brian Peckford but rescinded by the Liberal government of Clyde Wells who had scheduled its vote to follow that of Manitoba. When Manitoba failed to ratify, Premier Wells canceled the Newfoundland and Labrador vote.
Mulroney was livid. He didn't want to dump on fellow Tory Filmon and to criticize an Indian, as Harper was, was unthinkable. He therefore railed at Clyde Wells, whose decision to withdraw the motion was based on the very sensible view that he shouldn't divide his province after the deal had failed in Manitoba.
The Meech Lake Accord failed and to many like me it was time to thank God for his blessing.
Mulroney tried again with the Charlottetown Accord but by that time Quebec and BC stated that they would hold referenda.
It failed - spectacularly. I did my best, from behind my microphone at CKNW, to help it go down in BC.
Charlottetown quickly became a non-event.
Mulroney's press secretary, Bill Fox, wrote a book on the Mulroney years in which there was one sentence about Meech and not a peep about Charlottetown!
Thus, the way the people in charge deal with their losses!
This will end because the taxpayers/ratepayers will be tapped out.
Just what form the break-up takes, we'll have to wait and see, but as sure as God made little green apples, she's a goner.
Here is the crunch: Mike Harcourt will not be to blame and nor will Glen Clark, Dan Miller and Ujjal Dosanjh. Nor will it be because of some unforeseen world market.
This catastrophe belongs to Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark alone. They forced BC Hydro into making huge "sweetheart" deals with private producers to whom they now owe some $50-60 BILLION; the entire sordid affair happened on their watch with their blessing.
Christy Clark and the Liberals, on May 14, 2013, inherited their own tailor made dunghill, the only challenge being to clean it up without accepting responsibility. And with economists like our own Erik Andersen, the truth will emerge every inch of the way.
Christy Clark has pulled off the sort of miracle the Boston Bruins managed when coming back from a 4-1 deficit to the Leafs recently. One would be ungracious not to extend congratulations.
The story is more than a matter of manners, for the truth is that Adrian Dix blew the election – big time.
I warned the NDP over and over about how their campaign was letting the Liberals get back into the fight after the NDP had a 20 point advantage in the private polls.
With over two weeks to go in the election, I wrote in thetyee.ca and on this website:
It surprises me that Adrian Dix is playing softball with these issues. This is looking like '09 all over again.
Mr. Dix, your position on the Kinder Morgan tanker port proposal was nice but marred by the delay. I told you many months ago that if you were opposed to Enbridge that logic should make you opposed to Kinder Morgan as the issues are the same.
Your position favouring LNG plants is puzzling, if only because you seem to be following Clark's pied piper's seductive path to supporting a dream that is almost certain never to come true.
To you, Mr. Dix, there is no way this government can win on its merits - you have to give it to them and you seem to be trying your best to do just this. What is truly troublesome is your amiable Adrian approach, with an endless stream of small policy announcements - sort of a fart a day.
I realize that people tell you that they want a politer politics in B.C. That's what Bob Skelly tried in the '80s and you know what happened to him.
Politics is a blood sport and your nicely, nicely approach is letting Premier Clark get away with murder. Despite a fivefold increase in the provincial debt, she's painting you as wastrels and her government as careful money managers!
Your best issue, the appalling fiscal policy of the Campbell/Clark government, is being used as a positive thing for them and you are responding rather than attacking. We're seeing a tactic similar to when agents acting for George W. Bush, a draft dodger, denigrated the much-decorated John Kerry's war record so that he could lay claim to being strong on national defence. You're becoming the essence of John Kerry, reacting weakly on issues that should have you on the attack!
On environmental issues you seem to be passive and non-threatening! These issues, along with the dismal Liberal record on money matters, ought to have you leading firmly, not cowering behind a cloud of good manners.
Mr. Dix, it's yours to win and to quote the Baseball manager Lou Durocher: "Nice guys finish last."
About 30 % of BC voters could not ever vote NDP. Never! And about 30% of voters are hard core NDPers and won’t budge. Overall, the balance must be persuaded to be part of one side or the other in the election being fought. To achieve this, the appeal must be led by a tough, well-informed leader who hits hardest and captures enough of the “swing” votes to win. That job is not for Goody Two Shoes.
The NDP are lousy campaigners. They should know that they really have only won one election – 1996 when Glen Clark, carrying the Raiwind-BC Hydro scandal, fought hard, out-campaigned Gordon Campbell and won in the trenches. The Barrett and Harcourt victories were as a result of the Socreds crashing. In 1996, the NDP had in the person of Glen Clark a leader who found the core issues and hammered them home.
How come the huge Campbell/Clark debt - 5 times higher than that left by the NDP - was not an issue?
How come Clark was able to portray the message that the Liberals, for God’s sake, were more to be trusted with fiscal issues than the NDP?
Where was the BC Rail fiasco?
By 9:30 on election night, champagne corks were popping in the corporations' meeting rooms. The fish farmers won, big time! So did the pipeline/tanker gang.
If your eyes are young and steady you maybe able to see a faint, distant star. The Green Party elected a man who will bring a voice, if faint, for the environment. Vicki Huntington, a gallant fighter, will be there. So will be a man with good environmental genes and experience - George Heyman, who will likely be the next NDP leader. (You read it here first!)
I’m truly sad to say that the industrial/government coalition brings clearly into focus civil disobedience.
In the shorter term the environmentalists must gird up their loins, get back on their chargers and fight the bastards any way we can.
On the side of the Christy Clark bus are the words “Debt Free BC”.
This could mean one of two things – we are now debt free or we will be. Either way, this statement stands as the all-time whopper in BC history and that covers a hell of a lot of territory.
I do not rely on politically-oriented think tanks for my information, rather noted independent economist Erik Andersen. If you add the $70 Billion in direct debt projected in Clark's latest Budget to secret "taxpayer obligations" relating to private power contracts and public-private partnership (P3) infrastructure deals, you get - wait for it - over $170 BILLION, that’s with a “B”.
What is important to know about the debt is that in 2001, when the Liberals took over, every man, woman and child owed a shade over $8,000. Today we each owe $40,000 – five times what we owed before this so-called business-oriented, fiscally careful bunch of cheats and hypocrites took over.
No matter how you crunch the numbers, the NDP governments in their decade look like misers and skinflints next to this bunch.
Assuming that Premier Clark is referring to her "Prosperity Fund", this is pie in the sky and cow pie at that.
You may remember that the Premier first announced this as imminent. Now it is after the 2017 election! It might be added that by then, BC will be in even deeper financial trouble than today.
There is little, if any, certainty that the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) will ever come on stream. There must be markets for it offshore, since the domestic market is flooded in natural gas from "fracking". To give you a bit of a feel for this, only a few months ago, the industry and government flacks were talking about the huge Asian need for our gas in LNG form, then we recently learned that our biggest potential customer, China, was sitting on some of the world's biggest unconventional gas reserves. Russia has the largest supply of gas in the world.
The plain truth of the matter is that a large scale LNG industry in BC is speculative at best.
Let’s look at a couple of natal difficulties faced by companies.
A long-term market demand such as would justify LNG from BC just isn’t likely to be there in four years' time.
Secondly, the LNG industry faces huge environmental hurdles. Two major questions in that regard are:
Where will the masses of water needed come from? We simply don’t have “free water” available.
After this water is laced with highly toxic chemicals, where will if go? Into the water table?
These two matters only touch some of the environmental issues - which include the climate impacts of all the greenhouse gases associated with this industry.
The underpinning of the industry is hundreds of millions of dollars in pipelines and port facilities. Premier Clark wants voters to brush aside these and many collateral concerns, thus convince voters that in four or five years all these issues will be resolved, including air-tight contracts with Asian customers to take this LNG. (It should be added that if, say, China, signs such a contract, the minute they no longer need our product they will vanish into the atmosphere.).
It surprises me that Adrian Dix is playing softball with these issues. This is looking like ’09 all over again.
Mr. Dix, your position on the Kinder Morgan tanker port proposal was nice but marred by the delay. I told you many months ago that if you were opposed to Enbridge that logic should make you opposed to Kinder Morgan as the issues are the same.
Your position favouring LNG plants is puzzling, if only because you seem to be following Clark’s pied piper’s seductive path to supporting a dream that is almost certain never to come true.
To you, Mr. Dix, there is no way this government can win on its merits - you have to give it to them and you seem to be trying your best to do just this. What is truly troublesome is your amiable Adrian approach, with an endless stream of small policy announcements – sort of a fart a day.
I realize that people tell you that they want a politer politics in BC. That’s what Bob Skelly tried in the 80s and you know what happened to him.
Politics is a blood sport and your nicely, nicely approach is letting Premier Clark get away with murder. Despite a fivefold increase in the provincial debt, she’s painting you as wastrels and her government as careful money managers!
Your best issue, the appalling fiscal policy of the Campbell/Clark government, is being used as a positive thing for them and you are responding rather than attacking. We’re seeing a tactic similar to when agents acting for George W. Bush, a draft dodger, denigrated the much-decorated John Kerry's war record so they could lay claim to being strong on national defence. You're becoming the essence of John Kerry, reacting weakly on issues that should have you on the attack!
On environmental issues you seem to be passive and non-threatening! These issues, along with the dismal Liberal record on money matters, ought to have you leading firmly, not cowering behind a cloud of good manners.
Mr. Dix, it’s yours to win and to quote the Baseball manager Lou Durocher, “nice guys finish last”.
The news out of the Joint Review Panel looking into the Enbridge pipeline should have a profound effect on us all.
One of the conditions is a requirement that Enbridge carry close to $1 billion in insurance, plus $100 million on hand to cover losses from spills.
I find this interesting, since normally an assessment of future damages covered is accompanied by an assessment of the risk to be covered. What is the size of the risk and how big a part of that risk will be taken? This so in every kind of insurance - be it life, casualty, automobile, what have you. This means not only must there be an assessment of the risk - i.e. is there likely to be a loss - but how much is a loss going to cost? This is especially true of casualty insurance, as the Joint Review Panel is dealing with here.
The second critical point is whether or not the insurer will continue to cover Enbridge after a loss has occurred? Can they cancel, leaving Enbridge’s further damages up to us the people?
This story will be seen (Enbridge hopes) as an encouraging sign, because opponents will be shut up now that these big numbers are involved.
I am not impressed – indeed quite the opposite – for this indicates that the Joint Panel thinks that there’s a risk involved. There is in fact a certainty. Dealing with this as simply “a risk” and announcing the coverage required is asking us to accept that “risk” because the damages are prepaid. Moreover, the amount of insurance involved is nowhere near what the ultimate cost will be and ignores the question: what will the long range cost to our environment be and how do you comopute that loss?
If one uses, as an example, the Enbridge spill into the Kalamazoo River, two years later they had used up all of their insurance of $650 million. The cleanup continues and the cost is expected to be over a billion dollars and much of the damage is forever.
Enbridge will be required to demonstrate insurance coverage at $950 billion - roughly equivalent cost of the Kalamazoo spill. BUT, the Kalamazoo spill was easily accessed. There were no mountain ranges like the Rockies or the Coast Range; no Rocky Mountain Trench; no Great Bear Rainforest to contend with. Let us, for God’s sake, ask a key question: How does Enbridge have access to spills on land? How does it get labour and heavy equipment to the spill? Doesn't the Kalamazoo spill demonstrate that there can never be a total cleanup?
The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has cost, so far, about $36 billion and rising.
Another critical question is who insures oil tankers, especially when many of them will be owned by companies flying a flag of convenience like Panama, the Cayman Islands and the like?
How is a coastal spill to be cleaned up and at whose cost?
What the people of British Columbia are certainly to have are spills on land and sea for which they will pay much of the cleanup out of their taxes. What we are also certain to have is enormous environmental damage forever.
Finally, the pronouncement of the Joint Review Panel should be assessing the frequency and probability of damage and laying that before the public for a decision as to whether or not these pipelines should be built in the first place.
This won’t be done and the Harper government is on record giving its approval of these pipelines no matter what the National Energy Board recommends.
Given the Kalamazoo experience, how does Enbridge control and clean up a spill when the only access is by helicopter? Every way one looks at this case shows huge costs - much paid by the public - with permanent damage to our environment.
I was recently asked by a reader what it is I want, presumably in the way of government.
I'm not so naïve as to think I’ll ever be satisfied, but neither is anyone else. Unless we’re members of a party or one of its cheerleaders we understand that human institutions will contain the human frailties we all have.
First, I want an understanding of this simple proposition – the NDP in the 90s were hit by the failure of the Thai baht, which crippled our forestry industry, thus our provincial coffers. The NDP had no notice of this event nor did anyone else. During their time in office, the BC Debt increased two fold.
On the other hand, the Liberals suffered from the crash of the stock market and a fairly deep recession. They did or ought to have had notice of this. All the signs were there. The longest Bull Market in history. Bad mortgages being bundled as “securities”. An over-heated economy. If the BC Ministry of Finance didn’t report the obvious signs, they should have been cashiered to a person. Or, more likely, if the Finance Minister didn’t demand the key figures on a regular basis, or didn’t report the truth to the cabinet, he should have been cashiered. But I go further – it wasn’t just the Minister of Finance who had that obligation but Treasury Board. I’ve been there and know how the system is supposed to work.
During the Liberal years the provincial debt and other hidden "taxpayer obligations" - which are a debt, just by another name - have more than quadrupled!
Secondly, I want a government of people for people, not political hacks governing for the few.
During the Liberal era, we’ve seen the privatization of BC Ferries, the giveaway of BC Rail and the essential bankruptcy of BC Hydro.
Let’s deal with the latter. And I suggest that the main reason the Campbell/Clark Government hasn’t been more answerable for Hydro is that no one can believe that any government could be so goddamned stupid as to force BC Hydro to take private power, whether they need it or not, at more than double the market price and up to ten times more expensively than Hydro can make it itself. BC Hydro has gone from being the jewel in our crown to a faded rose that owes private companies about $60 BILLION, which will be paid off by the taxpayer.
That, sad to relate, is not the only bit of bad news from Hydro, which is fixing to build Site “C” as an $8 billion dollar support of the natural gas industry and its commitment to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). This will be done notwithstanding the distinct possibility that there will be no long term international need of our gas. Site “C” will destroy more than 4,000 hectares of some of the finest farmland in the country. This isn’t supposition – Premier Clark has dedicated Site “C” power to the making of LNG.
Thirdly, I want a government that cares about the environment. The Liberals are very good at saying they are for the environment but that sort of Orwellian bafflegab ought not to fool anyone.
Not only have the Liberals not stood against sending bitumen in pipelines across our province - they have, through the premier’s mouth, supported one for David Black’s proposed refinery in Kitimat. It follows from this that the Clark government supports oil tanker traffic in at least three ports in BC, including the port of Vancouver.
I want a government committed to the preservation of farmland - not one that gives it away in Delta and destroys it in Peace River country.
I want a government that is committed in fact to the concerns of First Nations.
I want a different attitude than expounding tenets of the Fraser Institute, where help for people is given grudgingly and then only because they must; I want a government that looks after people because it is the right thing to do.
Finally, I’m just tired of this bunch. Perhaps it's BC Rail and the private power bust-up of BC Hydro that has me most upset. These two acts were not a mistake…or perhaps just a deal that didn’t work out. The former wouldn’t pass the most elementary smell test and the latter is plainly a pay-off to pals. In both cases the damage to our economy has been enormous and in the latter case ongoing.
If nothing else, it’s time for this bunch to sit in the sin-bin and watch for awhile.
There is an elephant in the cabinet room and it can only be dealt with if the occupiers of that room don’t oppose any of the proposed pipelines to run through BC - this thanks to the Campbell/Clark HST mess.
In simple terms, we owe Ottawa $1.6 BILLION by backing out of the HST. It’s not brain surgery – any deal Prime Minister Harper makes to lessen this burden will require Premier Clark to not oppose the pipelines.
What other explanation can be made when you consider how quickly and enthusiastically she supported David Black’s proposed refinery in Kitimat? How is the bitumen to get to this refinery? By carrier pigeon?
Going back to the beginning of her premiership, Clark has shown sympathy for pipelines, albeit opaquely at first, until she moved to the position that if the money’s right, no problem. Of course she will demand that the pipelines be built very carefully and that any leaks are promptly taken care of by "world class" methods and, of course, Enbridge will - cross its heart and hope to die - promise that this will be done.
In reality, it’s down to money. There is now a price tag on her approval and that will, she supposes, make it all better for those nutty citizens who are so opposed to “progress”.
The Campbell/Clark government is utterly without a soul. Social costs are paid grudgingly. They love building things, no matter what the environmental cost will be. They are astonished that so many British Columbians regard the Pacific Salmon and the waters in which they reside as sacred. They think that all they must do is approve a project in principle then run it through a phony economic and "environmental assessment" process and they’ve been good little boys and girls.
This government assumes the corporations are telling the truth when they promise to practice according to the rules, so they never police and enforce rules. If a corporation does disobey the rules, they need have no fear, because even if the government does inspect, there won’t be any fines or other punishment – in fact with fish farms, when they were fined for breaches of the rules by an NDP government, they were instantly refunded when the Liberals took over. Indeed, the minister in charge used to warn the fish farms when the enforcers were going to visit!
The NDP policy re: pipelines is timid to say the least. We will see their actual policy when they lay out their platform in a couple of weeks.
What we know for sure is that Enbridge – indeed all corporations that wish to destroy our environment further – will jump for joy if the Liberals win.
And when that happens, the British Columbia we know and love will no longer be protected, for this surrender to large government and corporate interests will be the precedent by which further and more serious incursions will be approved by our political masters.
Postscript: The latest buzz word for those who support the despoliation of our land, which includes the Federal Conservatives and Provincial Liberals to a person, means that there must be a trial before the hanging. It denotes a cute little pas de deux, where the government says OK - but only after an environmental “process”. A little thought shows that we are deprived of saying we don’t want the damned thing in the first place.
There is no better example l know of this than the proposed McNab Creek gravel quarry. We are all invited to suggest environmental safeguards instead of being asked if we want it at all.
Here is one of three salmon spawning rivers in Howe Sound and we’ll throw that away for a gravel pit!
If you were to ask the local MP to help stop it he would say it must go through the “process”, which is a sham like the old Soviet Union “show trials” were.
I’ve got to say it, Premier: you don’t know a damned thing about pipelines and tankers.
Do you not understand that the rupture of a pipeline or "accident" with a tanker is mathematically inevitable? That we’re not talking risks but certainties? Your friends in the business community like to call these things “risks” in order to convince people that they’re not likely to happen. Think on this, Premier – if an accident is not going to happen, why make multimillion dollar facilities to clean them up?
The theorem is not that something can be an “acceptable risk” but that an “ongoing risk” is a certainty waiting to happen. You simply must understand this, Premier, or you are selling out the Province. As they say, shit happens.
You would have laughed, as we all would have on March 21, 2006, to think that a BC Ferry would sink, yet the following day that is just what happened.
Prior to June, 2012, we would all have scoffed at the thought that a luxury liner, on a fine day, would sink, causing several deaths and injuries.
Having agreed on that, we must assess what the damage will be. With an airplane we know that. When we get on a plane we’re betting on the odds being in our favour, but the fact that there will be crashes is a certainty. We are also prepared to concede that if our jet crashes, we’ll be dead.
If we’re to be honest, Premier, what we’re asking is not what are the odds of this happening, since we know that it will. As long as human beings are involved, there will be human error. It’s not a matter if airplanes will crash but what are the odds on it happening, say, in a month.
It is the same with pipelines and tankers – we know that these calamities are certainties but today nothing will likely happen. Even if we disagree on the odds, that doesn’t alter the fact that it will happen. We are only really calculating when or how often – the same thing an insurance company does, or we do when we bet on the odds at the race track.
Knowing the inevitable, we must now consider the consequences. It’s rather like calculating how long you can put to your head a revolver with 100 chambers and one bullet and keep pulling the chamber. You know you’ll kill yourself - the only mystery being when. If, however, you don’t put a bullet in the chamber, but marshmallow instead, you don’t care, for you won’t be hurt.
We're not talking marshmallow here.
With oil spills and tankers, we know that the result, whenever it happens, will be hideous, catastrophic. With diluted bitumen (dilbit), there is no such thing as a small accident and you and your government must begin to understand that.
Now, to cleanup. The fact is that there is little that can be done except to the stuff you can see and access and even then very little.
I hope you know about the Enbridge "accident" in Michigan at the Kalamazoo River in July 2010. This spill was described as "not serious" by the government but it hasn’t been cleaned up yet!
Where our pipelines spill, it will not be easy to access for men and machines. Look at the proposed routes. When a spill occurs in the Rockies, the Rocky Mountain Trench, the Coast Range or the Great Bear Rainforest, how the hell are you going to get there? So you are faced with the facts that spills of dilbit are catastrophic and with our proposed pipelines you can’t get to them.
Just what makes you think that David Black’s proposed refinery will make things better?
It will be bringing bitumen from the same tar sands over the same terrain as the proposed Enbridge pipeline. The only possible plus is that instead of dumping dilbit into the ocean it will be refined oil, just like the Exxon Valdez did.
It’s been said that the Kinder Morgan line has been safe. I put this to Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace and an authority on these matters and here’s what he says:
• There have been a number of incidents related to the Trans Mountain pipeline - including the spill in Burnaby in 2007. Trans Mountain Pipeline (Kinder Morgan) pleaded guilty pleas to a 21-count indictment in B.C. Provincial Court.
• In 2009, oil spilled from Kinder Morgan's oil Westridge terminal in Burnaby.
• Just a few months later, the same Abbotsford facility was home to yet another spill.
That’s 5 spills in this region in the last 6 years. There have been more - over 70 spills along the whole Trans Mountain Pipeline route since it began operation in the 1950s.
Below is an interesting video that discusses the 2007 spill, and the extreme problems with Bitumen.
Premier Clark, you owe it to your province to deal with the issues raised - not with industry slogans and bullshit, but with logic and facts. It’s getting late.
Old men cannot help feeling sad – not just at the physical ramifications, the illnesses you know will come all too soon or the fact that the fateful day is not far off. It’s not even the mistakes made, the people hurt by what you’ve said and done or the opportunities missed. These things are balanced off by the knowledge that your fate is that of every living thing in the world and your family. To have the love of my life, four children (one deceased), eight grandchildren, and one great grandchild balances the unbalanceable equation.
For me, the truly horrid part is to see that not only have humans learned no lessons, we continue to go backwards at an unsustainable rate.
We have freely elected governments in both Ottawa and Victoria that not only refuse to understand the consequences of their deliberate, greedy ways, but actually believe that their actions are helpful to mankind. They have all, I assume, been taught to tell the truth but they consistently lie, such that one cannot accept a word they say. Worse, they have created an atmosphere where everyone, especially big business, must also lie – although which came first I cannot say.
The past week has been especially hard for this old guy to handle. The premier of the province tells us that an oil refinery in Kitimat will blow our troubles away. We should now consider the proposed Enbridge Pipeline to be a blessing as if the diluted bitumen to pass through the pipeline is now not a worry. She tells us that the “Prosperity Fund”, from Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) revenues, will put, someday soon, $100 BILLION into our kitty for safe keeping. How unhelpful it is to point out that LNG is a glut on the market or alternatively will, at the best, offset the egregious fiscal harm done the province since the Liberals took power in 2001.
We have a federal government utterly bent on having this pipeline approved and have sent a lawyer off to convince First Nations that lots of Wampum will come their way if they just ignore their centuries old commitment to the environment.
The basic point is essentially this: when large corporate profits are at stake, the environment, our natural inheritance, means, dare I say it, fuck-all – a naughty phrase but it, better than any other, sums up this utterly uncaring attitude of those put in authority over us. It's not that they don't care - they do care about political funds and corporate profits while ignoring our inheritance and what should be our legacy for our descendants.
What really struck me this week was the resignation from the Sea Shepherd Society of Captain Paul Watson, who has been designated a “pirate” by the US District Court of Appeals, which made the point that the critical importance of your crusade cannot permit you to enforce your own penalties.
As I sit here by my computer this Thursday morning, I’m wearing a Sea Shepherd pullover – I put it on, eerily, before I heard the news of his departure from the organization's anti-whaling fleet. I have been on Sea Shepherd's Board of Advisors for over 20 years – I’ve known Paul for more than 30.
I’m not going to trouble you with Paul’s many activities but simply say that, yes, Paul did try to protect the oceans of the world, contrary to the wishes of corporations and their captive governments. For the vast majority of cases, he tried to enforce international law when no one else would. He looked at Japan killing hundreds of whales a year for scientific purposes with all the animals - surprise! surprise! - ending up as sushi in exclusive restaurants and tried to save these whales.
He tried to enforce laws against stripping shark fins away and throwing the poor creatures back in the water for a slow, painful death, so that Chinese gentlemen could get a hard on. He tried to enforce international laws against killing seals so that fancy women in Europe could wear mink coats. He went to the Faroe Islands to stop the annual “harvesting" of Pilot Whales for no better reason than they’ve always done it. (You might find it interesting to note that on the back of a Faroe bill is an engraving of a man clubbing a whale to death).
Let me try to put this in perspective. There have seldom been fundamental rights granted or enforced without the presence or threat of force. The barons at Runnymede, Martin Luther, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, the protection of minorities, and the list goes on. It’s interesting to note that in his 30-plus years, Watson caused no injuries, much less death.
I’m not making a case for Paul – he can and does speak for himself and what he believes in.
What distresses me is that governments, acting in our name, put fish farms, desecration of farmland, destruction of our rivers, pipelines and tankers, ahead of what really should count in life while so many of us vote for them.
As Pogo said in the famous cartoon of the 40s and 50s, “we’ve met the enemy and it is us.”
Of course Premier Christy Clark must resign. This unholy bloody business called "ethnicgate" started and stayed in her office. The cabinet minister, John Yap, who ran upon his own sword, lied while doing so, saying that none of this had crossed his desk.
Why did he lie?
Clearly because his knowledge as a member of cabinet would be imputed to the premier, his boss. His note, cheering on his hired fixits, could hardly be sent unless he had Clark’s approval.
The appointment of the premier’s deputy minister to investigate this matter was wrong from the beginning and his report bears that out – he did not interview any members of caucus; more importantly he didn’t interview any cabinet ministers; most importantly, he did not interview the premier.
Mr. Dyble himself should have refused the assignment. If he took it, it had to have no strings attached – which there obviously were.
The constitutional practice over the centuries requires that cabinet ministers, including first ministers, must resign if they are under a cloud. That Premier Clark is under a cloud can scarcely be denied by her most loyal of Liberal friends.
The premier must do the right thing and do it now. Not to do so is not only dishonourable but she places herself and her party ahead of her sworn obligation as a member of cabinet and the first minister.
And that will be her legacy – a dishonourable woman who put personal and political considerations ahead of her duty.
