None of these revelations surprise me anymore.Gordo is a firm believer in the 'Big Lie' and will say and do anything to stay in power. The allure of the public trough is too great for him and his minions to pass up!

Good luck!

i read this news yesterday on bc mary's site and i feel somewhat astounded at the govt statement that everything was erased or deleted, mmm thieves, criminals, con artists come to mind... what utter garbage! when are charges going to to be laid against government officials?

This Premier(Campbell) and his government will go down in history as the most corrupt government BC has ever seen. With the collusion of Canwest Global and total absence of any investigative reporting, Campbell has been able to do whatever he likes. Unfortunately before it all comes out Campbell will have given away the province. The RCMP have done a lot of stalling in this Basi-Virk case also. It seems that the government thought if everyone stalled long enough the case would be thrown out. Then the very convenient promotion of judge Bennettwas made to the Appeals court. When this did not work then there was nothing to be done than destroy the E-mails.

Well said.

For the life of me I don't see how he got back in? Had any other party done 1/2 of what they've done, would have been crucified! He obviously has some very important higher-ups than himself that are telling him what to do. What do you think?

The major reason Campbell was re-elected is probably to do with the economy. Most people believe that right wing, free enterprise, parties are better in that area than left wing parties. Whether it is true or not doesn't matter, it is people's perceptions that matter.

in fact, the so-called "lost decade" had a higher average improvement in the economy slightly better than the last 8 years under Campbell, i.e. the NDP was more effective than the Liberals as far as the economy has gone, but still poeple stick with their usual assumptions assisted by campaign rhetoric.

Had the NDP concentrated on its *better* economic record of the "lost decade" (as the die-hard supporters claim) instead of making the whole election campaign an attack campaign on the person of Gordon Campbell the outcome may have been different.

Perhaps we were not quite ready yet for this kind of negativity, sly innuendo and libel which makes American style attack ads so effective south of the border.

I personally find them disgusting and unbefitting of our Canadian society's values and greater tolerance in general.

A positive election platform addressing what is most important to people can do wonders. Even on the carbon tax the NDP was on the wrong track and flip-flopped after the election.

However, it is just as easy to blame *ignorance of the voters* for not winning.

Campaign rhetoric. Sometimes it backfires.

That's my opinion. Over and out.

make the politicans accountable and not just in reelection. Where evidence of wrong doing exists than at the very least they should lose all the perks [pension.healthcare ect.] And if possible crimnal charges should be laid.

It didn't help that the NDP had a leader that many people had absolutely no faith in when it came to running the Province.

I don't think the Liberal party needs to be taught anything about negativity, lies and libellous campaigns. They are masters of it, having destroyed the reputationbs of two NDP Premiers without a shred of evidence.

Perhaps you forgot the malicious campaign against Harcourt, a very decent man targeted by the expert dungmeisters of the Liberal party. And who can forget the attacks on Glen Clark, initiated by an employee in Gordon Campbell's constituency office resulting in a court case costing taxpayers massive amounts of money, and for what? To have the judge make it abundantly clear that he was completely innocent of the charges made against him.

The fact is that the Liberal party has benefited time again from lies they have told during campaigns:

I will not sell BC Rail - flip flop.
The First Nations referendum - flip flop.
Health care when and where you need it - flip flop.

Even in this campaign the smear tactics were out in full force - Doug Routley for instance, and suppressing unwelcome statistics, as has just been found out.

Obviously the smear campaign of the NDP became again a victim of the smear campaign of the Liberals, as perceived by you! You did not smear enough!

BTW:

The unwillingness and inability to identify and admit one's own mistakes and shortcomings is one of the biggest obstacles to success.

Never admit any blunders and mistakes and the Liberals will win every future election campaign.

Question:- Would the NDP, if it were elected government again, reverse the BC Rail deal? Give CN its money back, and resume Crown ownership of the operating assets?

In my opinion this would be about as likely as the BC Government resuming the government's maintenance of highways after Bill Vander Zalm's government privatised it. The NDP had ten years in which to reverse that situation, yet it didn't. Now why do you suppose that was? Why did a group that's never concealed its beliefs in the supposed benefits of 'public' ownership not de-privatise the MoH maintenace when it had the chance?

I, too, believe that it will eventually be revealed that Gordon Campbell's government is the most self-serving, corrupt, and sell-out BC regime that we've ever had the misfortune to elect. But what, pray tell, if it's not to be a falling back into the tried-and-failed policies of "socialism" does the NDP offer as an alternative?

You know as well as I do that they're not going to re-nationalise the operating assets of BC Rail. Nor likely to change any of the other Campbell moves to bring a semblence of 'private enterprise' operating practices to other ventures in which the Crown Provincial is involved, i.e., BC Ferries, BC Hydro, etc.

Could it just possibly have a little something to do with "money"? Like their hand has been forced by a lack of it? That they've finally realized that public ownership without 'profit' DOESN'T generate the funds necessary to pay for public ownership?

And public ownership with 'profit' means that, in socialist ideology, the State is stealing from its own citizens to satisfy the demands of FINANCE. This begs the other question. Why doesn't the NDP ever clue in to where the REAL problem lies?

socredible:"Question:- Would the NDP, if it were elected government again, reverse the BC Rail deal? Give CN its money back, and resume Crown ownership of the operating assets?"

No, the NDP wouldn't as stated by Carole James.

socredible:"But what, pray tell, if it's not to be a falling back into the tried-and-failed policies of "socialism" does the NDP offer as an alternative?"

Nobody knows. I have never been able to figure that out even after endless discussions with some dedicated NDP followers. They fervently maintained a certain line of argument even when confronted with iron-clad practical evidence to the contrary.

The one all pervading mantra appears to be that corporations are totally evil and if a person has more money than another person then that more wealthy person MUST have somehow gotten his/her additional wealth by illegal methods, like stealing from others what did not belong to them.

The janitor should get the same pay as the CEO of the corporation he/she works for.

Quite a few years ago the FT had a story about the chief policy advisor of the federal NDP who wrote a book or article advocating that the party, once in power, should confiscate all the RRSP funds of Canadians and distribute the money to eliminate poverty.

After all, he claimed, the only way they could have saved up any money (in contrast to those who never contributed into an RRSP) was if they had excess money which in one way or another came into their possession at the expense of others who did not have as much.

Since then I treat anything that comes from the left with greater suspicion than the stuff that comes from the right.

Nothing is perfect but there are some things that are much less perfect than others, obviously.

I've wondered the same things myself, Diplomat.

From what I've been able to discern so far, "socialism" is based on the idea there is a constantly on-going "class-struggle". That the 'rich' are oppressing the 'poor'; or, to put it another way, "...the 'poor' are poor because the 'rich' are rich."

And the "socialist" solution seems to be to try to make the 'poor' a LITTLE less poor by making the 'rich' a LOT less rich. Through punitive, and supposedly re-distributive, taxation.

I say "supposedly" because it doesn't seem to favour giving the 'money' removed from the 'rich' directly to the 'poor', lest they, in their sublime ignorance, (demonstrated by the fact that they are poor), spend it foolishly.

But rather in having an 'elite' bureaucracy at the top of the 'socialist' world spend it wisely on their behalf to put in place for them all the wonderous things this all-knowing bureaucracy with its great wisdom at 'planning' a perfect world somehow is able to determine perfectly. It, and only it, can KNOW what they all need and want to make and keep them all perfectly "equal" as individuals.

And if whatever that is proves to be wrong, well, no matter, that's what they're going to have anyways. "Big brother", or "sister", considering the NDP's emphasis on gender equality, too, always knows best.

Leaving aside the philosophical argument of whether any one person can ever really know what any other person 'really' needs or wants better than that individual themselves, the "socialist" theory contains many flaws in its approach to actual, modern reality.

The first is its equation of "wealth" with how we measure "wealth", i.e., "money". The "socialist" seems to assume that they are always one and the same.

And that "wealth" itself is "scarce".

And the quantity of money is fixed and invariable. Like in a closed, gold-coin money system of old, where's there's only a limited number of gold coins.

Then, indeed, if one person manages somehow to accumulate most of the gold coins, and gold coins are the only effective demand for goods and services, those without any gold coins, the 'poor', could be said to be poor because the one who has most of them, the 'rich', has become so rich.

But, contrary to "socialist" ideology, such a condition does NOT exist for that reason in any modern, industrial society with a nearly now totally 'creditary' money system.

Where "wealth", the actual 'things' we need and want that are useful to us all, are not physically "scarce" at all, but are rather continually being increased through the application of science and technology.

This is provable fact. A little over a hundred years ago a full half of our population worked in agriculture just to feed themselves and the other half who worked elsewhere.

That's down to something like three per cent now, and we produce more food than we could ever consume, while many areas that were once farmed no longer are. Similar situations exist across the whole industrial spectrum. But I digress.

The quantity of 'money' is NOT fixed. It varies every time a Bank makes a new loan, or someone re-pays an old one. And the ONLY 'ECONOMIC' reason nowadays that the 'poor' are still poor, is definitely NOT that the 'rich' are rich, but that there is a disconnect between the overall 'quantity' of MONEY needed to improve the lot of the 'poor' and the "wealth" that exists or could be made to do just that if only that 'money' were available.

The 'rich', contrary to what many 'socialists' seem to believe, do NOT keep most of their "wealth" in the form of 'money'. And when a punitive, re-distributive tax is applied to them, they have to convert their "wealth" into "money" to pay it. Now ask yourselves, just HOW do they do that? Does the word "borrow", like from a "Bank", come to mind?

For even if they sell it, how does anyone else acquire it? And maybe you'll see the truth in what was once said about "socialism". That it's really, "...monopoly State Capitalism with control by FINANCE."

Some time ago the federal leader of the NDP stated (during an election debate in which Preston Manning participated) that any Canadian who earned over 60,000 a year was considered by the NDP to fall into the class of rich people.

Aren't we striving for a Canadian society that refrains from relegating people into classes (castes?) depending on how much money they make or have, where they were born, gender, ethnicity, creed, etc?

If I go camping in a tent with my old rusty beater and sleep in a sleeping bag, why should I be hated and persecuted by others who went camping in a (bought on payments) diesel pusher luxury motorhome just because they had no money left over for an RRSP and I did?

How about allowing me the freedom to plan my own life as to where I want to live, work and so forth instead of trying to drag me into endless political controversies of class struggles?

I don't see the leader of the federal NDP and his wife (who is a MP herself) turning down a combined annual income of several hundreds of thousands of dollars!

Neither do I expect them to do so, but then I am not the one that is promoting less for some people (who are earning their income legitimately) so that others may get more for not doing anything in return.