Never mind the platform, forget about spewing out more press releases about all that is wrong in B.C.
What B.C. Conservative Leader John Cummins should be doing right now is arranging a long lunch date with Gordon Wilson. It was Wilson, after all, who perfected his timing during the 1991 provincial-election televised debate to establish the B.C. Liberal Party as the centre-right heir to Social Credit.
As NDP Leader Mike Harcourt and Social Credit Leader Rita Johnston bickered, Wilson, then leader of the nothing-to-lose B.C. Liberals, quipped: “This reminds me of the legislature and here’s a classic example of why nothing ever gets done in the province of British Columbia.”
That remark helped Wilson’s Liberals win 17 seats in the election, which were 17 more than the party held entering the campaign.
The B.C. Liberals were caught in a deceitful plan to use taxpayer-funded resources to court the ethnic vote via an extremely cynical agenda. As a result, the party has repaid government $70,000.
While the New Democrats were the ones who revealed this secret plan, Adrian Dix’s party is by no means as clean as the driven snow. The NDP has its own ethnic-voter scandal brewing with news the party had diverted more than $500,000 from constituency offices across B.C. to be used for what Auditor General John Doyle has determined to be partisan purposes.
The Liberals have accused the NDP of being the pot calling the kettle black, while the NDP has argued its ethnic-voting strategy was at least not secret as the money transfers were authorized by the former legislature accountant.
Sometimes — often, actually — B.C. politics makes one yearn to take a shower.
One would think Cummins’ Conservatives should be measuring curtains for the offices of the official Opposition. However, since policy documents and press conferences have not ignited voters, perhaps the Conservatives should simply ask voters to give them a chance to rip off the taxpayer, in the spirit of fairness.
-Kamloops This Week
