Editor, The Record:If I hadn’t been turned hostile towards the provincial Liberals under Gordon Campbell, I might have shown more interested in the outcome of the recent leadership contest for the new premier. I would have favoured George Abbott. Kevin Falcon announcing himself as being in the Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher fan club made him an absolute pariah for what a liberal democracy should stand.Christy Clark at least has been out of government long enough not to have been tarred and feathered as all the Campbell loyalists have been in their blind support for his Harper-like vision for our province. BC Rail will, however, cast a long shadow in future elections so I hope she’ll take the initiative and repudiate the stone-walling that her now predecessor took.Clark also needs to pull the party back towards the centre of the spectrum as the coalition is Liberal in name only. Her confrontational style will be well-suited to not playing lap dog to Ottawa as her predecessor has done. She can start with saying no to the lifting of the ban for off-shore oil.And take that bloody welcome mat for the Fraser Institute away from the door of the premier’s office. That conservative un-thinking tank, plus that hideous plywood-looking desk Gordon was given, should be sent packing along with his other political baggage such as the ill-conceived native reconciliation process.Don’t just shift the deck chairs on the Titanic but actively “encourage” many current members of the legislature to pack their bags and not run for re-election. She could do far worse than to start with telling our own MLA to pack his gravel trucks and find another sand box in which to play.We need to return people to full-time employment. If your push for new jobs just means more of the kind that Campbell and the Fraser Institute wanted for our province, then you don’t get my vote. Think of Ireland that had the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe and see how it bankrupted that country.In a sense, my vision for the future is a partial return to the days of old Wacky Bennett when business paid its share and residents contributed through a far more progressive system than the one we have now of corporate welfare and undemocratic elitists. But that is for another letter.Robert T. RockMission
