The Only Thing You Need To Fight BC Liberal Claims Of The 'Bad Old Dipper Days'

The above image is from the front page of the now defunct 'Progress Board' of British Columbia.

The Progress Board was set up in 2001 by Gordon Campbell.

Here is how Paul Willcocks described it awhile back:

...(Gordon) Campbell asked a group of business leaders — David Emerson was the first chair, Jimmy Pattison was on board — to set measurable goals for the province, report on progress each year and offer advice on critical issues.

The boards out six important areas — economic growth, standard of living, jobs, the environment, health outcomes and social conditions. Then it identified key indicators that could be used to measure how well the province was doing each year, things like exports per capita and birth weights and educational achievement...

{snippety doo-dah}

...It’s been a useful exercise. Citizens, and government, can see what is and isn’t working. The spin by government and opposition can be replaced by facts...

In other words, the Progress Board once sifted all the data and gave a pretty unbiased, essentially spin-free account of where we were and where we were going.

Now....

The past tense used above was purposeful.

Why?

Because when Christy Clark came to power one of her first acts was to kill the spin-free Progress Board.

Surprised?


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And here's the real thing...We were actually in better shape at the end of the Dipper regime than we were at the end of the Campbell regime (and I would be 'now')...And those better ranking were achieved without the massive Greenspan put/free money hedgefundapalooza of the aughts....Or the big tax shift onto the backs of the citizenry...Or the massive sell-off of public assets to friends, cronies and multinats...OK?
David Bieber, in 24 Hrs, also used the ProgBoard rankings to explain how the Dipperian '90's weren't so bad earlier this week... 


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