It's kind of long but highlights some good points...i'm posting it here not to tell you who to vote for...just vote...plus rafe (popular radio talk show host) makes a pretty direct argument vs. the current gov't in BC:
RAFE MAIR EDITORIAL
May 11, 2005
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It seems that Premier Gordon Campbell will not be
coming on this show prior to the election, as
promised. The reason, no doubt, is that he might
actually have to answer some tough questions backed
up with cross-examination. I frankly couldn't care
less. Contrary to what politicians would have you
believe, they are not good for ratings and, at any
rate, we're not in ratings.
Let me this morning simply speak as a voter, and if
the Premier were here, I would make the following
comments.
I voted for you in 2001, Premier but there are a
hell of a lot of things you have done and left
undone that make it impossible to vote for you
again.
I didn't expect you to ignore the Auditor-General's
report and the report of the public servants in the
Finance department, made available to you
immediately after the election, demonstrating that
the NDP left a surplus of $1.57 billion ...and since
you knew that, I must point out to you that when you
said "it was worse than we thought" and the province
is in "a serious deficit" that you would tell such a
clear falsehood. Moreover, when you gave the
well-off, a $2 billion tax break on your first day
in office, you gave the NDP surplus to the likes of
me, not the homeless, the sick, the elderly in need
of a long term bed or to those who badly need a
helping hand.
I didn't expect that you would hire a kissing cousin
of yours, Doug Walls, who was an undischarged
bankrupt under investigation for stealing $1
million, to look after $600 million of our money in
the Children and Families Ministry ... I didn't
expect you to deny you knew the man, even saying
that your wife doesn't know all her cousins when in
fact Walls was a prominent Liberal, a man you had
stayed with and that you had gone all the way to
Prince George so you could lease a car from him.
I didn't think you would be so mean-spirited to
instruct your Speaker to refuse party status to the
NDP.
When I voted for you I didn't expect that you would
renege, twice, on a deal with Crown prosecutors
where both sides would accept the arbitrators'
decision.
I did not expect the Campbell government to increase
the public debt of this province by 4.3 billion
dollars so that they could arrange a surplus in the
last year to bribe the voters with.
I took you at your word when you promised you
wouldn't sell BC Rail ... now are we to accept your
word that you won't sell ICBC or BC Hydro?
I didn't expect the homeless to increase by 75%
under Gordon Campbell.
I didn't ever expect to see my province as a place
where a poor person, often mentally ill, could go to
jail for begging.
I didn't elect the Campbell Liberals to see food
banks increasing the number of children it serviced
last year by over 41% and the adults by 16%.
I expected the Campbell government to keep its
promise to build 5000 new Long Term Care beds. As
listeners will know, this is likely the single most
important Health problem because as the baby boomers
get older, the shortage of long term beds becomes
more important - the presence of long term patients
in acute car beds is the main reason surgical lines
are so long ... so we have this curious result -
because older people who need long term care are in
acute care beds, their seniors colleagues, perhaps
family or friends, can't get the elective surgery
required because there are not enough acute care
beds.
I can't believe that the Premier, his health
minister and his minister in charge of long term
beds would make a promise to build 5000 long term
beds and to make that promise on my show several
times then renege. I cannot believe that suddenly,
out of the blue, comes an excuse that there were too
many LTC beds in bad shape so they had to look after
them before building new beds ... an excuse that we
didn't hear until Shirley Bond was made minister and
she had to scramble for an excuse to get out of the
credibility mess the government was in.
I didn't believe that Gordon Campbell would lift the
moratorium on fish farming and then, after two Pink
Salmon runs in the Broughton Archipelago were all
but wiped out, would refuse to save this year's run
by fallowing the fish cages which produced the sea
lice that have been destroying the smolts as they
migrate to sea. I honestly didn't believe my ears
when you told my audience on March 1st this year
that not only would he not help the wild salmon but
that he would take no responsibility when the run
fails next Fall!
I cannot believe that I heard the you in the
leaders' debate boast that you had reduced
unemployment in an aboriginal Village from 85% to 30
% ... that instead of being ashamed of yourself, you
would boast about coming to the aid of native
villagers by bringing in a filthy business like fish
farming, thus insulting them, and further damaging
wild salmon stocks the absence of which is what
caused the villagers the problem in the first place.
And this leads me to the future - I cannot support a
man and a party that is going to hand out fish farm
licenses all up and down the coast as soon as he is
elected and will open up the British Columbia
wilderness to his pals, both here and abroad, so
that tourists can shoot our Grizzly bears and
Mountain Sheep.
Moreover, I don't believe that the present
prosperity has much if anything to do with the
Liberals and everything to do with the increase of
commodity prices over which the provincial
government has no control whatever.
This premier and this government, with a couple of
exceptions, have been mean-spirited, philosophically
opposed to helping those who need it, destructive in
the extreme of the environment and come to the
people with no vision except to say elect us, we're
better than the NDP.
Make the environment an issue - it's yours to lose.
Author
Topic: Provincial Election On Tuesday. (Read 17019 times)