A House Divided

I know I said at the outset that this blog would be about 'local' politics/politicians but the Federal government is showing that it is just as "loopy" as any of our Vancouver Island/British Columbia fare. When Danny Williams, Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, ordered the Canadian flag to be taken down from all provincial government buildings because he wasn't "getting his way" with Ottawa over the "sharing" of resource revenues, I knew exactly how this was going to end. The already absurd concept of equalization payments have become nothing more than a mechanism for the federal government to bribe voters with other people's money.
As flawed as it was, the original concept of equalization payments was to see to it that none of our 'poor' relatives would have to live in squalor while their 'richer' cousins lived in opulence - the Feds call this the "have not" and "have" provinces. The way it was supposed to work was that provinces that had their own 'means' would look after themselves plus send money to Ottawa to provide help to those provinces which were "down on their luck". Much like the welfare system, if a "have not" province later found itself with improving fortunes, then their need for assistance would decrease and the equalization payments would be reduced proportionately.
Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia have, in recent times, found themselves with substantial quantities of oil and natural gas off of their coastlines, resulting in a windfall of royalties to their treasuries and jobs for their citizens. However, they do not want to admit that, as a result, they are now in a better financial position, and therefore, do not need as much help from Ottawa. They want to be able to keep their resource revenue AND maintain the equalization payments at the same level as before ("have their cake and eat it too"). The Federal government, on behalf of all of the taxpayers of Canada, have recently accepted this preposterous notion and there must be dancing in the streets in St. John's and Halifax.
It used to be that the only province which regularly and routinely received special treatment from Ottawa was Quebec, which was galling enough, but this latest capitulation on the Federal government's part has added two more potential beneficiaries to that list. It must stick in the craw of many Canadians to have a 'father' in Ottawa who treats its 'children' so inequitably.

A Little Federal Diversion

As a couple with no children who already pay school taxes and whose income taxes help fund the Child Tax Benefit, the Child Care Expenses deduction, the EI parental leave program, the GST child sales tax credit and zero provincial sales taxes on children's clothing, its relevant to wonder what tangible benefit we will see from a national, taxpayer-subsidized, daycare program. We already have enough programs where the taxpayer pays and pays, supposedly to improve the lot of children, yet with few 'standards' and little/no enforcement, we often see so very little in return.
Is this yet one more chance for a bloated, federal program to run amok?!

Broken Promises All Over The Place

The British Columbia Liberal government made many promises before they were elected in May, 2001. Having spent the previous 9 years in Opposition, where they repeatedly called the then NDP government to task for their many broken promises and 'undemocratic' practices, they told us that, if we put our trust in them, they were going to do it differently. They then went on to create a record of broken promises for things they said they would do but didn't and things they said they wouldn't do but then went ahead and did anyway. Just this morning, the television news was telling us about a big, new casino which just opened in downtown Vancouver, a significant "expansion" of gambling in the Lower Mainland. All this after similar expansions in Richmond, Langley and Surrey and after this provincial government promised not to expand gambling in British Columbia! And all of this before we even begin to talk about the provincial lotteries.

So Much For Due Process

Information pertinent to the following can be found on the City Of Nanaimo website, http://www.city.nanaimo.bc.ca by searching the Council Agendas and Minutes for Jeffs, Jeff's, Jeff s or Watt.

Once again, I am astounded at the lengths which the City of Nanaimo, their staff and the project proponents would go through in order to "have their way" in this case. Paying $250 for a Special Public Hearing on Thursday, Dec. 18/03 on their rezoning of 6950 Island Highway North (the Jeffs property) seems like a very wise investment by Watt Ventures. Having already arranged to have the extension of the Urban Containment Boundary and the Regional Context Statement change dealt with by the Regional District of Nanaimo (RDN) on August 12/03, at the height of the summer vacation period, it doesn't surprise me at all that the rezoning Public Hearing would now be arranged to occur at the height of the Christmas shopping/party/vacation period, barely one week before Christmas. Councillor Loyd Sherry had suggested that I give up yet another evening of my time and travel all the way down to City Hall so that I may have the opportunity to express my thoughts on Watt Ventures' proposal to him and the rest of City Council. While I have learned from experience that it is not always 'helpful' for a citizen to inform the bureaucracy of their intentions in advance, I told him that I wouldn't be there.
When I take the time and trouble to prepare and make a presentation to Council and no further mention is made of that fact or any of the points I made in any of the subsequent staff reports on this issue, when a City Councillor implies that Area 'D' Regional Director Haime is lying and Mayor Korpan "calls the kettle black", when Councillor McNabb and Mayor Korpan both act contrary to published commitments not to seek to take any Lantzville land into the City without the Area Director's consent, when Council goes against its own policy of infill before expansion despite numerous vacancies in all of the existing malls and with similar, commercial properties already in the city, when previous conditions/requirements are suddenly dropped/ignored, when Lantzville is, contrary to the 'Municipal Boundary Extension Criteria', virtually ignored in the annexation process, when the City accepts an inducement for annexing and rezoning the Jeffs property, when the City passes a motion requiring their RDN Directors to support all motions having to do with the Jeffs property, when Mayor Korpan seeks to embarrass/ridicule our Mayor and Area Director in the local papers, while distorting the truth/playing loose with the facts, when City staff make a mockery out of the Urban Containment and Fringe Area Management Implementation Agreement by convincing the Intergovernmental Advisory Committee to change the definition of 'community needs', when the 'Needs assessment' done for the annexation of the Jeffs property doesn't even address the required criteria, when the spelling of 'Jeffs' (try Jeff's and Jeff s) is conveniently 'mishandled' so that someone searching for relevant documents on the City's website won't find them all, when one of the required Official Community Plan (OCP) Amendment notification signs disappears after a maximum of only 3 days on the property and when the OCP Amendment process does not follow the established procedures, I don't believe that anything I could say at the Public Hearing would make any difference in the destination of this "runaway train barrelling down the tracks" so I chose instead to spend the time with my family and friends - the "fix" was obviously already in.

And So It Begins

This blog was born out of my frustration with the mainstream media (big and small) and their indifference to the real news of the day - the issues that shape the quality of our lives and the way in which we form our opinions on those same issues. The main focus will be politicians and politics, especially as it pertains to life in a seaside community on the east Coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Yesterday, I was going through my old emails to politicians (and their responses, if any), 'Letters to the Editor' and 'Rants and Raves' and I was amazed by how much effort/time I had put into them and how little impact I seem to have made. If I do say so myself, many of them were quite good but, unfortunately, were edited so much as to change the meaning, not published at all or relegated to the back pages. An Ontario Superior Court judge has recently decided that "anyone who believes a campaign promise is naive about the democratic system" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050129/MCGUINTYGTA29/TPNational/ He went on to say that the place to make politicians pay for lying to us is at the ballot box but we all know how much damage they can do in the 3 to 5 years that they are elected for. To my idealistic way of thinking, politicians represent you and I, they are our 'servants' and to accept/allow them to lie to us (and have it sanctioned by the courts) is a perversion of democracy. Enough for now, let me know what you think.