Monday, May 23, 2016

This Victoria Day In Clarkland...Some Wins Are Quicker Than Others.

FourLong
YearsVille


Well, well, well, whaddy'a know....

Last week the Clarklandians subverted a Supreme Court of British Columbia ruling and, essentially, granted a bunch of Sparkle Pony purveyors environmental review-free building permits.

Charlie Smith of the Georgia Straight has the story. Here's his lede:

The B.C. Liberal goverment recently announced that some natural-gas projects won't have to undergo provincial environmental assessments.

This is despite the government losing a court decision to First Nations, who objected to the province's refusal to subject the Northern Gateway pipeline to an Environmental Assessment Office review.

The Spectra South Peace pipeline, Spectra's Dawson gas plant, Spectra's Fort Nelson North plant, Nova Gas Transmission's Groundbirch pipeline, and Nova Gas Transmission's Horn River mainline extension were exempted under an order-in-council last week...


Entirely coincidentally (of course!), the fine folks from Spectra, whose home office is in Texas (Oil and Gas Team Forever!!), have someone most interesting working for them on the ground here in Clarkland, as also noted by Mr. Smith:

...Premier Christy Clark's former deputy chief of staff, Kim Haakstad, is Spectra Energy's manager of technical workforce strategy...

****

Now.

Just in case you don't remember a specific, most fascinating aspect of Ms. Haakstad's tenure as Ms. Clark's deputy chief, how about we dig up a few wise words taken from one of the Dean's last good, pulled punches-free columns, like, ever:

The date was Jan. 10, 2012 and Premier Christy Clark’s inner circle was hard at work on a strategy to capture the ethnic vote.

“Anecdotal reports suggest that some ethnic communities, particularly Chinese, feel that they are ignored by government between elections,” wrote the premier’s hand-picked deputy chief of staff Kim Haakstad in a confidential memo to key staffers in the government...

{snippety doo-dah}

As for the means by which this might be accomplished, the premier’s office urged the pursuit of “quick wins,” for instance: “Identify and correct ‘historical wrongs,’ such as the Komagata Maru apology in the house.”

For some, the aforementioned apology, like the one the Liberals are planning to deliver for the Chinese head tax, represent long-overdue redress for genuinely wrong actions in the provincial past.

But for Haakstad and her little band of hacks — the distribution list included Clark staffers Pamela Martin, Barinder Bhullar and Lorne Mayencourt — the apologies were merely a vehicle for scoring a quick win with ethnic voters...

{snippety doodle-dandy}

.... (A) thorough reading underscored a more insidious element. The premier’s office proposed to combine the resources of the public service and the resources provided to MLAs to represent their constituents — both taxpayer funded — and bend them to the partisan purposes of the Liberal party...



So.

There you have it...

Four years and some months later, pretty much everybody wins.

Except, of course, for the designated fall guy.

But, in the end, we're pretty sure he, too, will be taken care of.

Right?

_______
And, yes, that link, above, back to the glory days of GordCo Inc's 'Oil and Gas Team' is a post from back in the dinosaur days of June 2004, the first month of this little F-Troop blog's existence...Boy, am I ever an old guy...In more ways than one....Weirdly, though, the BCL's crony-tricksterims are amazingly similar, then and now...


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7 comments:

North Van's Grumps said...

Kim Haakstad???? is the $50,000 stipend that Premier Christy Clark receives from the BC Liberal Party ..... did Kim kick some money into the intimate closed door meetings too?

Stephen said...

Say it isn't so!The Keef will find something positive in this crooked and insidious go around to benefit your donors. This is so cynical it is incredible and there will be consequences in regards to the continuing scepticism about government that is uniting left and right populists around the same maypole, the dereliction of government.Voila, there is Trump! Getting what we deserve because we stopped giving a hoot and left the pigs at the trough all by themselves.

e.a.f. said...

and some people think the only crooks in this province are the drug dealers and the H.A. the latter two groups could probably take lessons from some of those political types.

Nice to see Christy is helping out those poor companies and getting through all those tough rules. wonder if any of their representatives were at the "soirees" of $10K and $20K kind? Now if Christy gets a "cut" from the soirees and then makes decisions or rather her government, could one argue there might be a conflict of interest? Oh, right they already went through that.

Chuckstraight said...

I wonder how many donors are joining Christy on the Asia tour?

Lenin's Ghost said...

We'll find out later when she is getting more payola from these companies on their boards of directors after she gives up politics. Big fucking trough!

Anonymous said...

Gordon is being relieved of duty and being replaced with a professional.

Will Harper team up with our man in £ondon to form a new 'International Rescue' squad to save the 1% from the filthy ungrateful hordes?

G West said...

Hi Ross,
That OIC is available for anybody to look at - although the friendly folks in Clarkland have been making it harder and harder for ordinary people to get to look at the fruits of their labours - by following the steps laid out below:

Go to www.bclaws.ca
Open the link to: "BC Laws: Licensed by Queen's Printer" and find the live link in that list on the left hand side which says:
"Regulation Bulletins". (Click on it) and it will take you to another list of "BC Regulations Bulletins by date". Click on the top live link titled: "2016 BC Regulations Bulletins"
This will open a new page with a series of regulations bulletins. Click on the second item in that list entitled:
"BC Regulations Bulletin No. 17, May 24, 2016".
This will open to a new screen and the second item in that list will link to the OIC you're looking for:
OIC 331 of 2016...

I'm sorry this is such a chore - there used to be a facility called qplegaleze that made these searches really simple and straightforward but it's been disabled as of the end of April....sorry guys but that's what they call open and accountable government.