“Today’s BC Liberals” may have taken some inspiration during last year’s election campaign from former prime minister Kim Campbell when she said that “an election is no time to discuss serious issues.”
It’s why British Columbians could be forgiven for thinking they missed something during the campaign after seeing some of the legislation introduced during the current session of the B.C. legislature.
In some cases, “Today’s BC Liberals” didn’t even communicate some of their plans through a Monty Python “Know what I mean? Nudge, nudge. Say no more” sketch.
And if they did stake out a position, many of their words run counter to what they’re doing now – firmly ensconced back in office.
Here’s what they said last year about the Agricultural Land Reserve: “In 2011, we reaffirmed our commitment to the ALR with amendments to the ALC Act and $1.6 million in additional one-time funding in order to strengthen compliance and enforcement and provide additional resources.”
Nothing there about creating a two-tier land reserve.
Trawling for votes in B.C.’s coastal communities, this is what they said about BC Ferries: “…we need to do more to ensure coastal communities have access to a high quality ferry service that affordably meets the needs of the travelling public.”
Not a hint about service cuts, scrapping free senior travel or putting a glorified tugboat on the Discovery Coast ferry route for the nine-hour trip to Bella Coola.
In the couple of months the B.C. legislature has sat in 2014, the government has tabled 26 pieces of legislation.
One bill would create that two-tiered Agricultural Land Reserve. Another allows research in B.C. parks, for what and by whom is still a mystery.
Another bill will freeze the status of 17 B.C. ridings ostensibly because of their rural nature, but in a bizarre twist the two ridings in Prince George and the two in Kamloops became vast, remote ridings and are thrown in as well.
All of these bills are being debated in a matter of hours. Eleven have passed third reading.
It’s not a stretch to imagine that there was more debate over Speaker Linda Reid’s $733 muffin and snack rack than there was over the Park Amendment Act.
So why the rush?
The ALR has existed for more than 40 years. If the government’s plans are as innocuous as their talking points make them out to be, a few months of consultation won’t upset the apple cart.
No one expects an election campaign can touch on every issue, but when it does and the party that wins completely reverses course, voters might feel like they were taken for fools.
But then maybe it is the fault of B.C. voters for not fully appreciating that the B.C. Liberals might have been quite literal when they used the term “Today’s BC Liberals” throughout the last campaign.
Dermod Travis is the executive director of IntegrityBC.
