A Hammer To Call Our Own?

GerrymanderIsThyName
SpeakerVille

Before the fall, not-quite-former US House Leader Tom DeLay was known far and wide as 'The Hammer' for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which was his ability to move electoral boundaries to make sure that his team always won especially, but not exclusively, in his home state of Texas. None of which happened, of course, without a little help from his friends:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a Texas Republican who owes his position to the No. 1 Texas Republican, President Bush, sees nothing wrong with a congressional redistricting scheme concocted by the No. 2 Texas Republican, Rep. Tom DeLay.

A Justice Department team of career professionals did see something wrong with DeLay's plan in 2003. They agreed unanimously that DeLay's redrawn congressional map of Texas violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting minority (and Democratic) voting strength. Of course, that was exactly DeLay's goal.

The redistricting controversy in Texas has had many sequels. It led to DeLay's indictment for money laundering. A prosecutor in Texas alleges DeLay tried to hide the sources of cash he used to help the GOP win the state legislature and thus control redistricting.

The dispute also led to DeLay's being admonished by the House Ethics Committee for abusing his authority by seeking to exploit a government agency for partisan purposes.


Now, no one in their right mind would accuse British Columbia's Speaker of the House, Bill Barisoff, of being Neandercon North's equivalent of Mr. DeLay.

At least not yet.

But there is this small matter of Mr. Barisoff's latest appointment to the BC Electoral Boundaries Commission.

This Commision is the small group that will decide how and where electoral district boundaries will be redrawn both now and in the future (ie. after any implementation of STV, or facsimile thereof, if it were to occur)

All of which is pretty important stuff, right?

One of the commissioners is Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen and another is the Chief Electoral Officer Harry Neufeld.

There is only one more commissioner, an appointed lay member - the swing vote as it were.

Thus, it is critical (and mandated) that this third member be someone with a non-partisan background.

So, for this position Mr. Barisoff has chosen Louise Burgart a former school teacher, administrator and superintendent who is now a co-owner of the South Okanagan's Apex Mountain Ski Resort and a sometime resident of Fort St. James.

All of which is fine and good, as far as it goes, except that there is a little bit more to Ms. Burgart's background which has recently been brought to light by the ever diligent Sean Holman:

(R)esearch by Public Eye has revealed Ms. Burgart campaigned on behalf of Liberal MLA John Rustad and her company donated $2,900 to the party (apparently, without her knowledge). Apex Mountain Resort (1997) Ltd. also contributed $1,000 to Mr. Barisoff's 2001 election campaign. And Ms. Burgart penned a fawning letter praising the Campbell administration which was published in the Prince George Citizen on the eve of the last election.

Which, if not a bonafide ballpeen hammer, certainly sounds suspiciously partisan to us.

So we went a-googling ourselves and discovered that Ms. Burgart is also an appointed member of the BC Teacher's College until 2008.

Which is also fine and good now that the Campbellian Coup at the College, first engineered by then Education Minister Christy Clark back in 2003, has been put down.

But get this......when the coup was first staged and Ms. Clark fired all of the teachers so that she could replace the entire College Council with appointees of her own to do, as she said at the time, "a ton of heavy lifting to get the board in shape and do what it needs to do", guess who one of the chosen ones was?

If you guessed Ms. Burgart, you are right on the money. And what's more, she wasn't just a member at large. In fact she had a very strict and specific bit of heavy lifting of her own to do:

"Another retired superintendent was chosen chair of the Discipline Committee. Louise Burgart was a superintendent in Fort St. James and now is an owner of Apex Mountain Resort."

All of which just goes to show - there's more than one way to drive nails in the Heartland.

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