Mary Polak Protects Us From Ourselves.

TheProfiteeringOfThePrivateIsMuchMoreProfitable
ThanThePublicVille


The following is a tale that could only take place in a place that is still being ruled by the Clarklandians as they continue to ride the long tail of the Knotty Gordian...

****

The tale begins with a private resource extractor that uses a public resource to generate a product with a retail value is $300,000,000.

After that, the story turns into a neo-liberal tax-based procedural when it is finally revealed to the public just how much a private extractor should reasonably be expected to pay the public for one of its resources?

You know, so that the public can then use part of the profits from the private sale of said resource to do things that do the public good.

Like, say, to pay for some special education support in public classrooms or  expansions to public transit or new public mental healthcare initiatives or some such things.

Would $150,000,000 (i.e. 50%) be reasonable?

How about $30,000,000 (i.e. 10%)?

Or $3,000,000 (i.e. 1%)?

Or even $3,000 (i.e. 0.001%)?

Or, and this is the real number, $600.00 (i.e. 0.0002%)?

Well, actually, it was really $596, but whose going to quibble about a twoonie or two.

Anyway, that 0.0002% number means that that, no matter how you slice and/or sluice it, a private extractor, in this case a water bottler and seller, made a whole lot of profit from a public resource.

So.

Given all that, what is the explanation from the Clarklandian and former Knotty Gordian minister responsible?

Well, based on an excellent editorial in yesterday's Victoria Times Colonist at least, it is the following:

...According to Environment Minister Mary Polak, the reason for such a negligible price is that she refuses to engage in profiteering...

Gosh.

Is it any wonder that the public has so much difficulty paying for the things that are good for it around here?

****

Hey!

Here's a thought...

Perhaps the Ms. Clark should call for a 'Reasonable Resource Extraction Renumeration' plebiscite to see what kind of 'Yes' response she would get from that one?


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Of course, I'm just joking about that last one....'Cause it will never happen...After all, whatever would the decidedly private and extracty wizards and patrons say if Ms. Clark were to even begin to think of such a thing?


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This Day In Clarkland...The Exhumation (Of The Good Friday Tweet).

First, take a fistful of 'word salad'...

Next, mix in a healthy dollop of incoherent 'cortical sushi'...

Finally, add a dash of 'say anything'...

And....

Voila!

 Its the ultimate in...

 'Ass-Hattery Fusion Cuisine'!

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The Twitt-Tags to Ms. Clark's now infamous Tweet are pretty darned amazing to behold...


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Can You Make A Difference When You Preach To A (Very) Different Choir?

TheTheatreOfAllOurMinds
CivilSocietyVille


I have a new favourite podcast that is not new.

It's called Love + Radio and, in my opinion at least, it is a slightly more out there version of 'This American Life'.

I mean it's almost as if the guy behind it, Nick van der Kolk is Ira Glass' long-lost cousin who is also Vince Gilligan's step brother.

Or some such thing.

Anyway...

The other day I listened to L+R's piece on Daryl Davis, a black American musician who has made it his business to try and talk racist white people, including some who wear the whitest of white hoods, back from the edge of an abyss of their own making.

The specific podcast I'm referring to, which is both interesting and uplifting (i.e. the 'Ira' part) as well as a little unnerving and disturbing (i.e. the 'Vince' part), can be heard....Here.

And Conor Freidersdorf, who takes some liberties I don't agree with to push his own agenda, wrote about Mr. Davis in the Atlantic...Here.

I'd heard about Mr. Davis awhile back from news accounts and some cable newseysish-type stuff. I must confess that I didn't take him seriously at the time.

But the podcast brings the sincerity and the humanity of the guy into such sharp relief that I now have a new appreciation for him and considerable admiration for the things he has done.

Guess it really is a good idea to listen to different choirs once in awhile.


________
I've been thinking a lot about this 'preaching to the choir' thing lately...Interestingly, the Translink Referendum Shuffle Demons have managed to shake up the choirs 'round here a little recently...


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Fed-Election Rising...Will The Kids (Help Make Us) Be Alright?

TheOnlyWayOutIsToGetThemIn
TheGroundGameVille


There was a nice profile of that former parliamentary page with the infamous sign, Ms. Brigette DePape, by Carol Goar in the TorStar late last week.

And just in case you were wondering what Ms. de Pape is up to these days...

This:

...(Ms. DePape) wants a government that reflects the values of her generation and future generations. She wants an agenda that includes an equitable, compassionate society; treats the environment as a priceless public asset; addresses youth unemployment and student debt; respects the views of women, workers, indigenous peoples and racial minorities; and brings the nation together.

DePape was in Toronto last week as part of a five-city tour by the Council of Canadians to get out the youth vote. “I understand why most (young people) see voting as futile,” she told her first audience in Winnipeg. “In the 2011 election when I was a University of Ottawa student, someone asked me to go door-knocking. But I really didn’t see the point.

“Since then, I’ve had a change of heart. After four years under the current government (nine counting Harper’s two previous terms), I want to do everything in my power to see a government that reflects our values.”

It is not a pipe dream, she insists. All it would take to defeat the Conservatives is a wave of young people coming out to vote...

{snip}

...DePape’s goal over the spring and summer is to build a team of youth leaders and collect 2,000 vote pledges in strategic ridings. In the fall, she and her associates will pull out the stops to collect on those pledges...

So.

Can this kind of thing, wherein you get real kids to work the swing ridings so that they can get other kids to pledge to actually (i.e. really) vote, actually work?

Well.

Maybe some of the doubters amongst us should talk to Mr. David Eby.

OK?


_______
And for those conflationists who stop by here occasionally...Identifying a demographic so that you can cajole them into voting is NOT the same thing as identifying a demographic so that you can bamboozle them into not voting...Or to just outright try and prevent them from voting....
And just in case you were wondering...The latter type of behaviour, directed against the young, is not just for famous ex-FedCons operatives anymore...In fact, Ms. Christy Clark's ops folks themselves engaged in it last time out....Just in case you all (and/or any young activist-type kids out there) have forgotten...


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A Question For The Fine Folks That Run The Globe And (NoLongerEmpire) Mail.

AllThatIsEstablishedAndFittingly
CredibleVille


Hey, Globe folks.

We couldn't help but notice the following passage from Gary Mason's recent column about John Furlong that your headline writers titled, in part, 'In The Clear':

...The impact of the allegations that he (Mr. Furlong) faced undoubtedly cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars in earning potential. His appearances on the speaking circuit virtually dried up. He’ll never recover that money. His legal bills must be mountainous, and they’re not over. While Mr. Furlong has dropped his libel suit against the journalist who wrote a story containing allegations of physical abuse at a Catholic school near Burns Lake, Laura Robinson is not abandoning her countersuit against him.

The claims in the article, that he strapped some students and verbally bullied and insulted others, never resulted in any charges. He has steadfastly denied the contentions, although many will always wonder why he left this earlier brief period out of his memoir...


Now, leaving aside, at least for the moment, Mr. Mason's drive-by conflation of the cases that collapsed in court last week and the issues (and sworn affidavits) brought to light by Ms. Laura Robinson in her original story in the GStraight...

What we would really like to know is why you fine folks at the Globe did not feel that it was a conflict of interest for Mr. Mason to write a column in which he clearly has a stake in the conclusion touted given that it was he who 'wrote' the memoir that did not account for the five years between 1969, when Mr. Furlong said he first arrived in our fair country,  and 1974, when he actually did arrive?

And why does that five years matter?

Because it contains that 'brief period' Mr. Mason mentioned when Mr. Furlong worked at that school in Burns Lake.

That's why.


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Neither Heaven Nor Iowa (And For Sure Not Indiana).

LifeIsNotAWPKinsellaNovel
ButMaybeItShouldBeALittleMoreLikeOneVille


With spring training done, the non-players who work for baseball teams all over North America are getting their promotional packages ready for special event nights that will roll on all summer long.

One of those will be LGBT night at Oakland Alameda County 'And-Whatever-Else-The-Heck-They-Call-It-Now' Coliseum in June.

Which is no big deal, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, right?

Except that, surprise!, a whole bunch of season ticket holders, presumably those that sit in the steak and sushi seats, started making a fuss about how they were going to boycott the game.

Not governor of Indiana Mike Pence-like stuff to be sure, but still crappy.

And then the life partner of one of the A's relievers Eireann Dolan stepped in and wrote this on her blog:

...Many people don’t know this about me, but I have two moms. My biological mom Kathy and her partner Elise (who grew up in the Bay Area) are both die-hard A’s fans as well as super gay. Like, they’re so gay for each other that they’ve fostered a long-term loving relationship likely no different from any heterosexual loving relationships you’ve seen or been a part of.

My moms are transplant San Diegans living amongst all of the San Diego Padres fans. The team the Athletics will play (and beat) on Pride Night? The San Diego Padres. This night was made for them. In fact I’m starting to suspect that the Athletics focus-grouped this event idea with just my two moms and nobody else.

It couldn’t be any more perfectly tailored to my moms than if the team announced that NPR’s Terry Gross will also be throwing out the first pitch and there will be a free notepad giveaway on which my moms can write down all of the reasons I should have majored in something more practical in college...


In the ensuing few days Ms. Dolan and friends have raised more than $30,000 to buy the tickets from the curmudgeonly so that they can give then them to kids who hang out at LGBT youth centers, of which there are many in the Bay Area.

Which is really and truly great, and I'm sure that a good time will be had by all.

And heckfire, maybe some of those kids will get to go down on the field for a game of catch with their Dad.

Or maybe even their 2 Dads or 3 Moms and Grandad if that's what they want to do.


________
And, for the record, I'm still mad as hell at Al Davis for what he did to the outfield bleachers at the Coliseum, which is the place Bigger (but then tiny) E. went to her second ball game, ever, in a pack on my back....The first game she got to sit in the left field bleachers just behind the old hurricane fence in Candlestick.
Looking for the best ever baseball movie you've never seen if you, like me, don't really give a hoot-in-heckfire about March Madness?...Try the life and times of Minnie Minoso, it won't let you down.


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Treaty Process Going Down...What Does Ms. Clark Really Want?

AcademicTourismDoesNotAReal
StraussianMakeVille


As we noted yesterday, Mr. Harper's man on treaties is running around telling anyone who will listen that they should light their hair on fire because of how bad things are.

But what about those First Nations that are actually working through the process, and making progress, in good faith?

How do they feel about the recent plug-pulling of the Iron Snowbird,  Ms. Christy Clark?

Well, Kathryn Teneese of the Ktunaxa First Nation explains her group's situation in today's Tyee:

...With the Premier's recent decision to pull support for the new Chief Commissioner of the BC Treaty Commission, no one is smiling now. There are more things that are broken than the treaty process in B.C. The province has broken trust and broken our relationship. Premier Clark is dangerously close to cutting the last thread of goodwill with First Nations, squandering a generation of effort to settle old partisan scores -- or was it a "principled policy decision?" As far as we're concerned, neither is helpful.

What we are left with is a reality that the Ktunaxa Nation, currently in stage four of the six-stage treaty process, could be minus one partner at the negotiation table.

Yet there has never been a clearer impetus to negotiate than with the recent Tsilhqot'in decision, which acknowledged aboriginal title for the first time in Canadian history. B.C. treaty negotiators should be receiving new mandates to negotiate that reflect the conditions of aboriginal title as fact.

The Ktunaxa Nation is firmly committed to engaging with governments to address the longstanding, fundamental land question related to issues of title and jurisdiction. We have always been willing to do so. But without a forum for negotiations, one founded in honour and respect, the Ktunaxa Nation will be forced to look at other options for resolving these outstanding matters...


Interestingly, in her piece Ms. Teneese also tells us that our fine Premier was all smiles and photo-op giggles when she visited the Ktunaxa, post Tsilhqot'in,  last summer.

And then the PAB-Bots and the Wizards went to work and released the following on our government's website for their fall roll-out:

B.C. Cabinet and First Nations leaders from throughout the province convened today for a historic day-long dialogue on transforming Crown-First Nations relations in British Columbia.

The Government of British Columbia and First Nations leaders acknowledged that the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Tsilhqot’in Nation is a historic opportunity to work together to build a new path for recognition and reconciliation in the province.

The decision also establishes a new reality and legal landscape for our transformed relationship, and that implementation of the decision must be a joint endeavour to achieve success and will require hard work...


Which leads us to the billion (or ten) dollar question that has little or nothing whatsoever to do with 'joint endeavours'....

What, exactly, do the Wizards and the Patrons who are giving Ms. Clark her marching orders really want now that they've done their best to stop 'working together' with First Nations in the treaty process?

Well, around here, with an early assist from Charlie Smith of the GStraight, we've been talking a lot about a one-off corporate bonanza buy-out strate(r)gy.

Which, as you might expect, is starting to become conventional wisdom dressed-up in 'essential for the economy' clothing type thingy in the local proMedia.

Think I'm off base on that account?

Maybe.

But get a load of the following, from Peter O'Neil and Rob Shaw's latest in the VSun:

...(Doug Eyford, Mr. Harper's man) said the Musqueam First Nation in Vancouver is keen to strike a fisheries deal that could lead to a future self-government arrangement. “There are options outside the treaty process that enable aboriginal groups to influence land and resource decisions and benefit from developments,” he wrote.

Those types of one-off economic deals appear to be the focus of Premier Christy Clark’s government, which recently announced an abrupt change of direction for the B.C. Treaty Commission and withdrew its support for incoming treaty commissioner George Abbott. Clark said last week the treaty commission’s “status quo is not working” and opened the door to shutting it down...


Expediency, thy name is Clark.

Speaking of which (but not pipeline deals and/or condo-grabbing land jacks from parks or anything).

What is that fine fellow the Railgate boys liked to call the Mexican up to these days anyway?


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Treaty Commission Shuffle..Look Whose Water The Premier Has Been Carrying.

SomeFriday'sAreBetterThanOthers
Document-Dump-O-Rama-Llama-Ding-DongVille


Well, well, well...

Look what we have at the front-end of the longest long weekend of the year, brought to us first by the ever reliable stenography of the CP's Mr. Meissner:

VICTORIA - A strong federal commitment to treaty-making in Canada is needed to speed up land-claims deals that move at a glacial pace and cost too much money, especially in British Columbia, said a report released Friday.

The 92-page report by Doug Eyford, who is Prime Minister Stephen Harper's aboriginal envoy, said First Nations across Canada agree the federal government is only willing to meet its minimum legal obligations on the issue, even though an attitude adjustment and major shift in direction is required.

The New Direction report urges the government to get fully engaged in the treaty process and determine what talks should move forward or be abandoned...

{snip}

...The report paid close attention to B.C. where a modern treaty-negotiation process was introduced in 1993 but has only produced four treaties among more than 200 First Nations.

Most B.C. First Nations, with the exception of less than two dozen aboriginal groups, have not signed land-claims treaties. The majority of the treaties date back to the mid-1800s, when B.C. was a colony and Vancouver Island First Nations signed agreements with governor James Douglas.

Eyford said B.C. believed it would have settled most of its treaties by now.

"After more than 20 years of negotiations, it is clear those expectations were overly ambitious if not unrealistic," he said in the report. "Substantial changes are required if treaty-making is to become more effective."

B.C. Premier Christy Clark signalled a change recently when her cabinet refused to approve former Liberal cabinet minister George Abbott as the commissioner who oversees the treaty process...

Gosh.

Is it possible that the good Mr. Flanagan (and/or his super-secret back-channel card carrying Straussian envoy) has a direct line to CC's inner sanctum?

And as for Ron and all his Obviousness?

Do you think that even he has clued in by now?


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And we can only wonder...Are any of the local Puffed-Up Punditry even working this weekend?...I guess we'll soon find out.


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The Holy Grail Of The Beat Generation Has Been Found!

SpontaneousProseDidNotComeFrom
NowhereVille


For decades it has been assumed that the infamous 'Joan Anderson Letter' drowned when it was thrown over the side of a houseboat parked off Sausalito.

But it turns out it was hiding out in a cardboard box amongst the floatsam and jetsam of a long defunct publisher that hardly anybody remembers (i.e. not the one that Ferlinghetti started).

What the heckfire am I babbling on about this time?

Well.

This:

...Neal Cassady’s 1950 letter to Jack Kerouac, which changed the fate of On the Roadand held the origin of the Beat narrative, was recently unearthed and is set to go up for auction. Kerouac was so taken by the 18-page letter’s free-for-all narration that he scrapped his draft of On the Road and started anew. He called the letter “the greatest piece of writing I ever saw, better’n anybody in America, or at least enough to make Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Wolfe, I dunno who, spin in their graves.”...



How important, really, was this letter to Kerouac's chucking of his earlier, much more conventional 'Town and the City' -like versions of 'On The Road' so that he could go full typewriter roll?

Jerry Cimino, the Beat Museum guy, explains.

...The initial idea for Jack’s decision to write in a confessional style may have come from Goethe or Dostoyevsky, but the true inspiration for Jack’s new spontaneous style of confessional writing came from none other than his good buddy Neal Cassady.

See, Neal and Jack & Allen were constantly writing letters to each other (and many others) in the 1940s and 1950s, but there is one particular letter Neal wrote Jack on December 17, 1950 that finally caused everything to gel in Jack’s mind. Jack & Neal & Allen called it “The Joan Anderson Letter” for short and they would often refer to it in subsequent letters and in conversation. Jack would gush over it and Neal would say, “aw, shucks” and it also influenced Ginsberg in a big way, so much so that Allen tried to get it published a few years later.

And this is where all the Myth and Legend and Lore comes in, but there is truth in mythmaking and the legend and the lore expand the story to Greek Tragi-Comedy proportions. In an attempt to have the letter published, Allen Ginsberg related how he had given the letter to a publishing agent by the name of Gerd Stern and that Gerd lost the letter on his houseboat in Sausalito (on the other side of The Golden Gate Bridge north of San Francisco). Fortunately someone had retyped a portion of this letter and that excerpt can be found in The First Third where it starts, “To have seen a specter isn’t everything…” The person who retyped that portion of the letter was most likely Kerouac himself according to Beat scholar & author Dave Moore, editor of Neal Cassady: Collected Letters and by whom most of this information has been gathered...


Now.

Where the heck is my copy of the 'First Third' anyway?


________
Now more than ever, I, for one, sure am glad that Kerouac never became a sportswriter.
And, ya, I have dragged my family through both that other guy's bookstore and Jerry's place around the corner on gentrifying Broadway in North Beach more than once...And perhaps even more obsessively, whenever we go to the Baghdad by the Bay for science geek stuff I pretty much always force my guys to spend at least one night at Vesuvio...They usually stop complaining when I tell them I'm buying. 


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The Antidote To The Obviousness Of The Ron...Real Analysis From A Real Reader.

AllTheExcellentCommentsThatFit
EstablishedAndCredibleVille



Yesterday I wrote about how the Globe's man of all things Obvious was totally mesmerized by the Premier's shiny 'treaty reform' bauble.

A little later longtime reader 'scotty from denman' weighed in.

Brilliantly:

Christy's got one thing right: the William (Tsilhqot'in) SCoC decision changed everything; she neglected to mention it's in terms of what the BC Liberals can get away with. Otherwise the William decision basically confirmed BC's obligation to fulfil the Royal Proclamation 1763 when it signed on to the Terms of Confederation in 1871. The official provincial notion that Aboriginal sovereignty had been "extinguished" when BC confederated has already been rejected by earlier decisions, but until Aboriginal Title was defined by the court's decision in this case, especially as it pertains to "infringement" of Aboriginal Right interim to treaties (which almost all BC FNs have yet to get), government could always hold those Rights to ransom with both intransigence and impunity. It's policy has been to reward its cronies resources it never had authority to licence while putting FN claims over a barrel: accept only a share of resource benefits to which they are entitled, and likely compromise any future treaty claim, or have their assets seized until they do. The government could unfairly wait-it-out in prosperity while the FNs did in penury.

The BC Liberals have tried to keep wounds from heeling toward long-overdue treaties by monkey-wrenching the process: first it was Gordo who personally challenged Aboriginal Right by way of judicial injunction against the historic Nisga'a Treaty; then as Premier he inflicted that odious Referendum which saw half the ballots destroyed in protest; then a sudden turn-around with Gordo feted with tribal honours at every big-house in the province; and eventually the spate of coercive resource deals that dodge real treaties and replace then with crony-tickling conditions on FNs accessing their own resources. The BC Liberals never wanted treaties to work.

Now, despite that fancy, Hare-like BC Liberal footwork, it looks like the Tortoise-like courtroom route has gotten BC FNs to the finish-line first. It's like a dance where the BC Liberals picked their own partners up until the William decision, and have smashed the victrola now they can't. But now it's BC FNs got them over the barrel, a complete Hare-and-Tortoise reversal: make a deal or forget about pipelines, tankers, mines and LNG, while FNs proceed to develop their newly defined Aboriginal title without further ado. The waiting games are over.

Personally, I think the prancing majorette's move is reactionary and rash, and shows real division within her caucus---or between her office and the rest of caucus, more like it. Whatever it means politically is probably irrelevant in terms of treaty settlement post-William decision. The BC Liberals appear not to know what to do next. Bargaining at the treaty table in good faith seems never to dawn on them even when the jig's up.



I mean, honestly, tell me where you have read a detailed, fact-backed/work-shown analysis like that anywhere, in either the Lotuslandian and/or the National public prints, on this matter and I'll eat my coonskin cap.

****

Man.

That scotty guy who lives on the island (i.e. not the west end street) should get his own blog.

Alternatively, maybe I should just post his and other insightful readers' comments more often.


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This Day In Clarkland...There Are Infectious Germs Buried In Bill 11...Who Knew?

TheBusinessYourSchools
IsBusinessVille


Yuppers.

Crawford Killian, who really knows his stuff has the full details in his latest Tyee piece.

Here is just a couple of snippets (but go read it all):

...This language (in Bill 11) reflects the BC Liberals' continuing infatuation with what educators call GERM: the Global Education Reform Movement, which emphasizes high-stakes testing, accountability, standardized learning, and cut-throat competition between schools and between students...

{snippety doo-dah}

...But Bill 11 does appear to be a local expression of a widespread desire to de-professionalize teaching and to centralize power at the top. That's basic to the Global Education Reform Movement. Its premise is that education should be run "like a business," as if students were widgets hooked to an assembly line, teachers were workers, and trustees were managers on the shop floor...


Now.

Don't know about you, but....

...Even going all the way back to her disastrous stint as Minster of Education during the reign of the Knotty Gordian, I can't quite figure out how Ms. Clark, the academic tourist, could possibly have come up with any of this stuff on her own.

And that brings us back to those wizards and patrons again, I reckon.

Which isn't such a big deal for some, I suppose.

Unless you, like me, would like to know who is actually running this province.


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The Thing I Learned Today...

AllTheCountryThatFits
CosmicAndOtherwiseVille

"Doesn't He Know It's Supposed To Be Three Chords And The Truth...Not Three Chords And Some Bullsh*t?"

Ms. Shevaughn

Questioning Steve Miller's Jungle Love lyric 
re: everything, including socks, being ' better when wet'

And, because I haven't worked out any Harlan Howard tunes yet (but I will), I bring you one from somebody named Williams.

Holly Williams to be precise.

Because it looks like, maybe, the truth might have skipped a generation (at least a little bit)...

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Stop The Presses....Because You Have Not Heard This One Before.

Which is that someone on the Twittmachine has actually posted something that actually matters.

At least to me and mine....

Click on through if you are interested in reading a little bit about my lab, as part of a big team, has been working on for awhile.

Translation to follow...



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Please note: This is most definitely NOT poli-blog related.


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Our Favourite Lotuslandian April Fools's Prank So Far...

IfYouCan'tTakeAJokeGetOutOfThe
TurnstileVille


...Is the story from Andy Priest of the North Shore News about revenue-generating 'safety' turnstiles to be installed along wilderness trails on provincial lands.

We especially liked this part:

...All trail users — including mountain bikers, hikers, climbers and runners — would need to register for a “NatureCard” that they would then swipe any time they wished to pass through a gate. The user-friendly system would deduct a small fee right out of the user’s bank account for every swipe.

“We’re blazing a trail to a greener future,” said a ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the preliminary nature of the plan. The move follows other wildly popular user-fee initiatives in the province such as the Port Mann Bridge toll and TransLink’s Compass Card.

“It’s time to face facts — those mountains aren’t paying for themselves,” the official said, adding that money collected would go towards improvements such as wider trails, plentiful cellphone towers and better-looking trees...


And no, in case you were wondering, the man of many hats did not make an appearance.

Our only concern, of course, is that this particular story may actually give he and his ideas.

Seriously.



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This Day In Clarkland...In Which Ron Obvious Takes The Treaty Process Bait Hook, Line & Sinker.

AllTheChichesterCathedralsThatFit
OnTheHeadOfPinVille


First, Mr. Mason of the Globe takes the bait:

The B.C. government’s stunning move to put the 22-year-old treaty process on ice was sure to invite controversy and criticism no matter how it was rolled out. But the spectacularly ham-fisted way in which the governing Liberals managed the issue ensured that what may be a sound policy move was initially blanketed in scorn and ridicule.

The decision to offer former Liberal cabinet minister George Abbott the job of treaty commissioner, string him along for six months, and then tell him the position wasn’t his after all is inexcusable. As was Premier Christy Clark’s preference to have her Aboriginal Relations Minister make the uncomfortable call to Mr. Abbott rather than handling the matter herself...


Next, hook planted firmly in mouth, he immediately dives to the bottom and attempts to swallow the Titanic whole:

...The manner in which this significant program review (of the Treaty process) was revealed remains bewildering. It was effectively blurted out by the Premier in the course of answering questions in the legislature regarding the government’s treatment of Mr. Abbott. Remarkably, that is how we learned the government was re-evaluating the treaty commission’s mandate.

It caught everyone off guard, including the other parties involved in the treaty process – First Nations and the federal government.

Unfortunately, the plan’s rocky debut has helped obscure its legitimate underpinnings. In defence of the repositioning, Premier Clark said the present situation is not an option. On that she is absolutely right. The treaty process in B.C., as it’s currently designed, has been a colossal failure and anyone with any knowledge or understanding of the system would have to concur. That includes the Opposition New Democratic Party...


But here's the thing, Mr. Mason...


Sure, we do have Ms. Clark's non-apology apology for her ham-fisted communications state(r)gy on the actual record.

But.

Do we (and, more specifically, do you) have any evidence whatsoever that Ms. Clark was and/or is actively working to come up with a new process that will make it possible to settle matters collectively and equitably in a more timely fashion?

Or.

In the absence of any such evidence (and we do mean 'any', any evidence at all) is there another slightly more conflicty possibility that you and yours might wish to consider?

Oh.

And one last question...

Do you by any chance happen to have a dead parrot, stuffed or otherwise, on top of your telly?


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Ron Obvious?....Chichester Cathedral?....This.
As for parrots 'n televisions and things?...Well, that's what the Youtube search bar is for.



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