We Are Shocked!.....Shocked, We Tell You...

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...To Learn That The Dippers And Labour Are Working Together.

And...

According to the latest from Mike Smyth and (especially) the screaming headlines on the front page of today's Province over gigantic skull shots of Jim Sinclair and Adrian Dix, it is something both leaders have been trying to keep supersonic, double-probation, cone-of-silence...

Secret.

After all a 'leaked' secret document from the BC Federation of Labour says so.

Except.

Well.

The document that Mr. Smyth used to write his piece that hit the streets this morning was not.

Secret, I mean.

In fact it is freely available as the result of a series of BC Fed workshops.

Regardless....

Here's what I figure maybe, just perhaps, really went down....

First....Last week Mr. Dix was on 'Voice of BC' with Vaughn Palmer. 

Second...Mr Palmer subsequently wrote a fair and balanced piece in the VSun on Tuesday where he pushed Mr. Dix pretty hard on a number of issues regarding the Dippers interactions with Labour. The biggest portion of the piece focussed on the longterm 'card certification' issue which Mr. Dix clearly stated he is in favour of. There was also some other interesting thoughtful (core Dipper-type) labourish stuff like, say, this:

...(Dix's) route to a skilled workforce is through enhanced, labour-backed apprenticeships.

“The Liberals changed the apprentice system. They put themselves in charge. We now have 37-per-cent completion rates in apprenticeship. That’s not very good. In union-backed apprenticeship programs, it’s over 90 per cent.

“The unions were essentially excluded by the Liberal Party — very much deliberately —from management of that system. This is where I think their ideology has got in the way of common sense. You need both business and labour involved in that.”

Details in the NDP election platform, due early next year. “That’s what I’m arguing for,” says Dix. “Making choices, telling people what those choices are before the election, and then — hopefully, if we’re elected; if people choose to elect the NDP — implement them.”

But no grounds for doubting that when he does lay out his choices on employment standards, apprenticeships and the labour code, they’ll be along the lines touted by the labour movement...


Third (and this part is conjecture on my part)....The Wizards behind the curtains in Snookland rubbed their hands with focus group-backed glee and figured the time had come to push the big labour bogeyman issue for all it was worth...

Fourth....The non-secret, super-secret document is 'leaked'...Mr Smyth then does his job (which is not that egregious actually, and I, personally, would like to see E-BC rule on the matter of BC Fed people helping with fundraising)....

Fifth....The Province trumpets blow really big and loud, on the 'secret cabal' aspect of the thing, and....

Sixth...The surrogates fire up the Wurlitzer.

****

Meanwhile, it has now been four full days since the False Railgate Affidavit Announcement by Richard Butler in BC Supreme Court and still there has not been one single, solitary pg A5,764 story buried deep within any proMedia outlet other than the original report by Mark Hume in The Globe on Monday.

OK?

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