The Night They Drove Ol' Christy Down...

VirgilCaneIsTheName
AndIServedOnTheDanvilleTrainVille


You remember that old Robbie Robertson tune, right?

You know, the one that may, or may not, have been written with an assist from the recently departed Levon Helm.

Well, in the first verse there's a line about how 'Stoneman's calvary came' to Dixie in the last stages of the American Civil war and, by then, no walls the Southerners could construct could stop the Union general and his calvary from running amok everywhere.

And, appropo of absolutely everything, it appears that 'stonewalling' and our current premier, Ms. Christy Clark, are suddenly, finally, together in the news - where they belong.

In fact, Justine Hunter raised the matter in her Globe piece today when she quoted a marketing expert from SFU on the matter of the two week super-secret stonewall that was carefully constructed before the 'sudden' resignation of Ms. Clark's former right hand man Ken Boessenkool earlier this week:

For two weeks, Premier Christy Clark was aware of allegations of misconduct by her top political appointee involving a female subordinate. But Ms. Clark refused to explain Tuesday why her chief of staff Ken Boessenkool remained on the job until media inquiries about the incident led to his dismissal...

{snippety doodle}

...That secrecy only makes matters worse in the public’s eye, said marketing expert Lindsay Meredith, from Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. “From a damage-control standpoint, the one thing that will get you in a lot of trouble is stonewalling,” he said...


But here's the thing.

In my opinion, Ms. Clark's demonstrated ability to 'stonewall' is not a new thing.

Or, to put it more bluntly, I believe she has actually been stonewalling we, the people, of British Columbia for a full eight years.

By way of illustration and explanation, the following is from Sean Holman's invaluable 'Public Eye Online' archives from Sept 17, 2004:

Yesterday, Children and Family Development Minister Christy Clark resigned her cabinet position and announced she wouldn't be seeking re-election. In a scrum, which could have been - at times - entitled a sentimental journey, reporters asked her about the reasons for that decision. The following is a rush transcript of that scrum (which would have been available a lot sooner, were it not for Public Eye's more pressing Times Colonist column deadline)....

{snippety doodle-dandy}

Media: Was your decision in any way linked to the legislature raids - that issue that your hursband and your brother have been involved with? Was there an exasperation because of that that helped fuel your decision?

Minister Clark: No. If I had any sense that anyone in my family had been implicated in this, I would have resigned in January (2004). But there's no reason to think anyone was implicated. And I think recent news has probably clarified for us that this story was probably a lot more limited that certainly initial speculation indicated...


Hmmmm....

One can only wonder....

Was there ever a 'Danville' stop on that BC Rail Train?

Now, this is the place where we go back to that bolded stuff above, in red, from the eight-year-old scrum quote once again...

"...If I had any sense that anyone in my family had been implicated in this, I would have resigned in January (2004)...."

Why go back to it?

Well, because of the following, from the transcript of a RailGate-associated RCMP wiretap of a conversation between Mr. David Basi and Mr. Bruce Clark (Ms. Clark's brother) wherein they discuss a 'Request for Proposals' (RFP) for the BC Rail 'Spur Line' in the fall of 2003. The transcript was finally released to the public in early 2011:

David Basi: "So basically, um, what we have is the draft RFP."

Bruce Clark: "Okay."

Basi: "Um, that uh, we have t' make changes and y'know, uh, um, we can draft it anyway we want now, right: so..."

Clark: "Whose, wh', whose hands is it in?"

Basi: "It's, it's in our hands right now."

Clark: "Okay."

Basi: "Uh, and then it'll go back to transportation. And then they'll look at it and then they'll uh, um, issue the official RFP."

Clark: "Okay. What are the time lines like?"

Basi: "Uh, two weeks."

Basi: "So, I can sit on this thing for two weeks. So if you come back next week then you can take it and look at it, show it to them. They can, they can, y'know, change some of the words around, that's obviously, some buzz words they wanna see in there, right?"

Clark: "Yeah."

Basi: "And these, these companies know how to, how to, y'know, get the fluff out of this shit and how to tailor it to themselves, right?"

Clark: "Of course."

....{snippety doo-dah}....

Clark: "Wonder, wonder if it would be better if you got it couriered from here or not?"

Basi: "I don't care. Whatever you want. I don't care."

Clark: "Okay, well maybe I'll get you to courier it to Europe for me, or something."

Basi: "You want me to courier it to Europe?"

Clark: "Sure, you could do that."

.....{snippety doodle-dandy}....

Clark: "Or uh, or, or can it be faxed or something or?"

Basi: "Oh it can be faxed, yeah. Do you wanna give me a fax, secure fax number?"

Clark: "Yeah, I'll get you a secure fax number and we can do it that way."

Basi: "Yeah, you get me a fax number and I'll fax it to you.

Clark: "Sounds great my friend."

Now.

You may (or may not) remember that the proposed sale of this spur line was halted in the spring of 2004 because the RCMP informed the government that Ms. Christy Clark was still a part of at the time (as then 'Deputy' Premier) that the process was compromised because confidential material had fallen into the wrong hands.

So....

Time to crank-up the jackhammers and finally smash that wall of stone to rubble and see what is really behind it?

I say the answer is yes.


_____
This one's for my friend Mary.


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