I've Been Expecting You...

The throne speech delivered at the Legislature on Tuesday was quite a sleeper. I should know; I was there! I admit, I wasn't expecting it to be anything like Question Period, but a monotone voice (as it should be), with a lack of revolutionary ideas, was dare I say, dull. Nevertheless, there were a few noteworthy points from the speech.

For me this is one of the most interesting points: the Liberals are going to shut down B.C. Rail. After so many years of political controversy, after massive debts from years over yonder, the Liberals claiming they would privatize it during the 1996 election, causing the NDP to win, and most recently Mr. Campbell leasing it for 999 years to CN Rail, B.C. Rail is going to be shut down. For good reason to, considering the government won't get their mittens on the company until 3003, with the CEO of the company earning over one million dollars, it's about time the company was dissolved. Let's face it: a CEO of a crown corporation is really a senior civil servant, and as such, they should only receive the salary of a Deputy Minister in government, ideally about $120,000. We've been wasting money for six years with this "lease", in the words of my MLA John Horgan, "the train has long left the station."

The Liberals are also going to look into the Ferry, Translink, and Utilities to commission to allow for more transparency and accountability. Hooray, perhaps then the CEO of BC Ferries won't get about $1,250,000 per year. Yes I know, that was my argument with the last point. As you can most likely tell, I don't like it when the government privatizes (or attempt) to privatize crown corporations causing exuberant amounts of money to be drained from our wallets. The government also wishes to create a new Clean Energy Act to encourage independent power production. How shocking this is! They've hinted for years that they would LOVE to privatize BC Hydro, but they can't. So to counter this, they are going to raise the rates by 29% (and that's excluding the HST), and eliminate the monopoly. In cooperation with aforementioned initiative, we are going to encourage green transportation to be a concurrent theme on the roads of British Columbia. Montana will also assist us in preserving the natural beauty in the Flathead River Basin. Both of those previous policies aren't bad, they're just really unlikely to be put into action beyond the walls of the Legislative Assembly. Finally, a joint committee on municipal taxation reformation will be established to review the current said system of revenue. Review is the key word to take out of the plan, which could mean increase for all we know...

Overall, the throne speech wasn't terrible; it just lacked vision beyond the spring sitting. Let's face it, nothing in here is epic, nor is anything worthy of being included in this annual speech. All of these policies could have easily been introduced as bills in the Assembly without publicity, and they would have all passed. The real question is though: how does this help British Columbia? While I admit the environment is an important issue of our world, simply increasing funding for public transportation and green fuel doesn't solve the problem. We need long term vision for our province to solve the problems of not only today, but tomorrow. We need Carole James as our Premier of this great province of British Columbia.