Here we go with another look back at this week’s political news in BC.
You can read about BC Ferries …
BC Hydro … government belt-tightening … carbon taxes. There was the big news as well, about John Martin, who will be seeking the nomination to run for the BC Conservative
Party in the still-to-be-called by-election for Chilliwack Hope.
All that stuff is there; but for me, the most interesting
news came out this morning in two stories.
One is from the North Shore News … and it is about John Cummins, who the
writer has dubbed as Gentleman John … the other is from the Vancouver Sun … a
story of how George Abbott has been given the unenviable task of trying to find
ways to pull the BC Liberals out of the ditch.
Read on …
... Clark has now asked him to help extract the party from
the ditch of its own making and to develop those new linkages with the
electorate. Joining Abbott in this hopeful exercise is a backroom appointee,
acting as adviser to the platform committee. He's Ken Boessenkool, a
Calgary-based political consultant and some-time lobbyist ...
… making hospitals and schools transfer tight dollars to corporations
is no easy climate policy to sell … caused
plenty of criticism, especially from public sector bodies. School boards have
been angrily vocal about having to send tax dollars to a Crown corporation
called the Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT), which uses the money to pay profitable
corporations like Encana to cut their greenhouse gas emissions …
… British Columbians, if they're like his former federal constituents
in Delta-Richmond East, who sent him to Ottawa six times over 18 years, could
discover that a non-charismatic, indifferent-speaking, average looking
politician has a lot more to offer than the bangles in the standard
politician's bag of tricks … supporter says Cummins has a natural gift for
driving into the "remote" (from the paved-over corner of the
province) and meeting "ordinary" (another uncomfortable word) British
Columbians as one of them, not a politician carrying an invisible platform from
which he can talk down to the unwashed…
