The BC Liberal Government: An Unmitigated Disaster & Disgrace

"I just can't understand why the opposition would want to maintain government positions at the expense of services to kids. What is it you don't like about providing front-line services to kids?"

Mary Polak - Minister of Children & Family Development, speaking about criticism of cuts of positions that supported parents in in accessing Infant Development services and Special Needs daycare for children with disabilities.

“It will be very straightforward,” said Falcon, noting that people will pay 80 percent of their after tax income for their care. “Will they be happy about it? They certainly probably will not be.”

Kevin Falcon - Minister of Health, speaking about increases for seniors living in residential care facilities.

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Sitting back sometimes and taking a breather, taking in what's happening around one's watering hole often pays off. You begin to see things at a broader level, spot the themes and the patterns swirling around said watering hole.

Beautiful BC is the metaphorical watering hole in this story. The destruction and cuts being carried out by the BC Liberal government toward the vulnerable, the marginal and the insecure are the most prevalent themes and patterns occurring these days. The corruption, the greed and the diminishing status of the BC public service are themes and patterns all too obvious to many of us.

Since 2005 BC Liberals Sucks has been blogging and creating a log, a library chronicling the mismanagement, the corruption and the actions of a morally bankrupt government. In 2009, we can see that when we think they cannot reach new lows of depravity, they take our collective breath away with their cruelty toward our most vulnerable and precious citizens, with their excuses for those who have abused the public trust placed in them, by their greed and incompetence.

The quotes above are perfect examples of the mean-spirited, cold-hearted manipulative and self-serving excuses made by this government to those who attempt to speak and advocate on behalf of those who will experience harm at the expense of their own government. There is nothing like straight from the mouth comments like this to cut to the core of this government.

Being such a media fiend, reading mainstream, non-mainstream, blogs and comments of citizens of our fair province, talking to people from all walks of life, I think I have a good handle on the "pulse" of many. What I see in BC is that many of us are being wounded. We are being kicked when we are down and when we need the support of our government most. We are being handed B.S., lies and sophistry to cover up the misdeeds of those who lined their pockets at our expense, those who cause harm in how they conduct government, OUR government.

Our young people don't vote - for good reason. Governments have become lethally corrupt. They cause the harm they should be working 24/7 to mitigate. And it isn't just short-term pain, for long-term gain. The actions carried out by government will have long-lasting impacts. The harm done today, will reach into our next generations. One need only look to the legacy of colonization and the attempted genocide of Aboriginal peoples of Canada to see the damage done by amoral and greedy governments. I guarantee that when many of us look back in a decade or two and ask where things went so wrong for BC - the blame will be fixed firmly on the shoulders of those who smugly sit in Victoria over this last decade - the decade of the destruction of BC's public services and social safety net.

Let's review the damage directly caused by the BC Liberal government to it's citizens:

• BC has the highest child poverty rate for 6 years in a row. Their government robbed them of a decent childhood and robbed them of a better future.
• Cuts to sexual abuse counseling for children, cuts to proven Early Intensive autism Intervention services, inadequately funding for child & youth mental health services, systemic failure of the child protection system to meet it's mandate and protect children.
  
• BC now has the LOWEST minimum wage in Canada (highest standard of living in many communities) while our Premier and MLA's voted themselves raises and gave senior bureaucrats & Liberal appointees raises again.
  
• Cuts to school district funding for repairs, improving infrastructure, earthquake proofing of buildings. Imagine the scenes we've seen from China, from all over the world of the damage done from earthquakes.
  
• Cutting program advisers who assisted families in accessing Infant Development intervention and Special Needs daycare. See here.
• Plans to increase daily fees for long-term residetial care for our Elders fortunate enough to even make it into residential care. See here.
  
• Cuts to services for those seniors who try to live in the community as long as they can, sometimes to their own detriment.
• Creating and driving an epidemic of homelessness across BC and then expecting local communities to deal with a government-constructed nightmare, that only senior levels of governments can fix.
• Perverting, manipulating, corrupting and diminishing the justice and legal system of BC.
• Raid of the BC Legislature. Destroyed and missing e-mails. Manipulation of the legal process so the truth of what has been done to the people of BC can be kept behind closed doors. Perversion of the common-law system to evade giving testimony of government involvement.
• Cuts to Legal Aid.
• Disenfranchising the poor and homeless from voting.
• Destruction and reckless disregard of the environment, wild salmon as we know it, expansion of Run of River projects.
• Corporatization of BC and the billions that used to stay in BC communities and flow into our government coffers now leak like a sieve into the hands of private corporations.
• Massive breach of our privacy rights to our personal information through the privatization of government held information systems (Ie. provincial revenue) to American-owned corporations. The biggest slashing of BC's public services in our history to fund a 10 day party that will bankrupt us and future generations.

What to do?

I have the sense people feel completely uncertain about what to do to deal with the recklessness and harm being imposed by this government on it's citizens. At no point in the last decade are more people aware of the mismanagement, corruption and mess we're in because of these clowns.

BC has long been viewed with skepticism, as a joke etc. But our reputation has been so diminished that I don't think we can fully comprehend the harm of that, whether that is across Canada, or amongst the international community. We have been cited again and again by the international Human Rights community for the poor conditions created by our government. We should all feel disgraced and ashamed of our poor standing nationally and internationally. The BC Liberal government did that to us.

As many of us know, the recall legislation is flawed, and the standards are very difficult to meet. The way I see it, although we only marginally still live in a democratic province, admittedly it feels much more like an oligarchy, or some awful fascist dictatorship these days, one of the things we must do is let our elected representatives, our MLAs AND MP's know how unhappy we are with the decisions of this government. This goes double for BC Liberal MLA's. They quite frankly need to be told by constituents that they will be wiped from the map in the next election. They need to know that they can't simply walk away from their record in their ridings once they return to private life. The stench and shame of standing by and doing nothing while more and more citizens of BC will follow them wherever they go. When faced by amoral, corrupt and incompetent government, citizens must now mete out the consequences to those who prosper and succeed on the backs of the rest of us.

There is more than enough blame to go around. Those who carry out the cuts and diminish public services through their "leadership" and those who were elected to represent the people, who are silent bystanders to atrocities. We cannot tolerate either group anymore. Our BC is at stake, we all need to realize that and do whatever we can to ensure our government, our nation and others know what is being done to the people of BC by the moral and fiscal failure of the BC Liberal government.