The Written Word - December 16th
By Rafe Mair
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 03:44 AM
One of the astonishing things of recent years is what has become known as Bill 30. Here’s what happened.
The Ashlu River, near Squamish, is a kayakers and fisherman’s dream. There had been a proposal by Ledcor, a large construction company, to put a power project on the river but the protests were so great that the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District held public hearings and then decided, 8-1, against the project. Premier Campbell and his band didn’t like this so passed, surreptitiously in a Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, what became known as Bill 30. In a nutshell, took away all the zoning rights of local governments when it comes to power related projects. No matter you live, no matter what the proposed energy proposal is you have no say through your members of council or regional district!
There’s been surprisingly little reaction to this although Shame Simpson, Opposition Critic for Environment raised hell.
This is all part of a pattern that has seen Campbell, an autocrat in every sense of the word, take decisions unto himself whether it’s to do with the Gateway program, transmission lines in Tsawwassen, the raping of rivers or, in my case, the Sea-to-Sky highway. The people are a troubling nuisance as Campbell’s Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon demonstrated when he praised the Chinese system of “to hell with the people, do as you wish”.
If nothing else, May 12, 2009, the next election gives the people a chance to decide whether or not they like autocracies.
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Posted by: downnotout on December 16 2008 8:49 AM
That said I think autocracy is the wrong word to be using for our government in that a partyocracy would be a more appropriate word IMO (even though I just made the word up), because a partyocracy is when parties have absolute control over our government with little accountability through our democracy. Our government is a partyocracy IMO. Autocracy would be tecnically wrong as a term, because even if one party has a autocracy over government we can always vote them out and a new autocratic party into power in the next election.
The real problem is the partyocracy in our government. Political parties themselves and all the natural corruption they facilitate. Party insiders always need power and influence to peddle.. otherwise they have no recognized purpose for being... so they increase their power of control in order to extend their compromised influence.