The Keef Report: Turns Out That...

...He Does Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows.

And it looks like that weather personage is neither Global's Mark Madryga nor the MoCo's Joanna Wagstaffe.

Instead, the wind whisperer of choice appears to be a new government.

Case in point...

The latest cannonading bit of column making from the good Mr. Baldrey in the Black Press, ostensibly about why the Dipper's toll removal strategy was a winning bit of retail politicking, starts like this:

There were two reminders on display last week of why the NDP is in power in this province and the B.C. Liberals are not.

First came the official confirmation by the auditor general that the last fiscal year ran up a huge $2.7 billion surplus. That’s right: “billion.”

Then came the NDP government making good on a key – perhaps “the” key – election promise by scrapping the tolls on two Metro Vancouver bridges by the end of this month...


And then later, deep in the middle of the piece before he returns to his toll kicker, Mr. Baldrey buries his real lede:

...The B.C. Liberals were more than happy to simply allow the $2.7 billion to be applied to the province’s direct debt, as if that was what voters were clamouring for more than anything else. Funny, I don’t remember anyone, anywhere, in that election campaign, demanding that the direct debt be paid down as the top priority facing the province.

Rather than provide help for those struggling to keep pace with the high costs associated with living in Metro Vancouver, the B.C. Liberals repeated their mantra that “if the economy grows all will be well” and that creating a job was the end-all and be-all of a government’s responsibilities.

But the economy is growing faster than anywhere in Canada and this province has the lowest unemployment rate in the country.

And yet the affordability situation remains profound: there is a rental crisis, a homeownership crisis, a mass of people living well below the poverty line, overcrowded transit, high tuition fees, an underfunded education system … the list goes on.

Yet none of that massive $2.7-billion surplus was spent on trying to solve some of those problems. Instead it was applied to paying down a particular and somewhat abstract portion of the province’s debt (which, overall, continues to climb).

In retrospect, I’m sure the B.C. Liberals are realizing what an obtuse, out-of-touch choice they made...


Gosh.

Don't know about you, but I, for one, don't recall Mr. Baldrey driving that last bit home with his audience anytime before the wind changed on May 9th.

Did I miss something?



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Previous Keef Reports can be found....Here (scroll down).
Tip O' the Toque to Jen Stewart on the twittmachine for the directional wind blowing concept...
Sub-header-induced Earworm raging?....This oughtta take care of it.


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