This Hoary Old House
by C. L. Cook
It's an old argument, uttered by too long-serving majority governments far from the next poll, confident their opposition can't touch them, and complacent in comfortable illusions of the constituents' short memory; trotted out specifically to justify hefty pay hikes to themselves (and by default to their opposite numbers across the floor), it goes: "We must pay more to attract 'quality' candidates to public service..."

 

And so it is again, as British Columbia's ruling Liberal Party, after a controversial cancellation of the Fall sitting of Legislature, opens the Spring session with a bald-faced cash grab, quaintly called the, 'Legislative Assembly (Members' Remuneration and Pension) Statutes Amendment Act, 2007.'

One has to admire the bottle displayed by this precocious six year old government, exemplified by the ever-irascible House leader, Mike de Jong who elegantly described to the press last Autumn the failure of the government to sit thus:

"We're not sitting just for the sake of sitting or passing laws just for the sake of passing laws;" adding for the dim and incredulous: "that's not how I measure a successful government."

Clearly, Premier Gordon Campbell needs an upgrade, but it doesn't mean we (the people) will be getting someone better attuned to the responsibilities and duties of  (the people's) mandate. Sadly, the extra moolah, and dream pension plan will not buy a hotshot, mid-season replacement player to take us all the way; it's just more tax money going into the pockets of the same people Campbell's logic instructs aren't worth the money they're getting now.

These feeble assembled, so lame Coach Campbell benched the whole team for the first half of the season, we're now told are deserving an average 29% pay hike, and a 42 million dollar, 1 dollar gets you 5, retroactive pension top-up. Imagine: Your pension getting a juicy plumping, backdated a decade!

Keep imagining. Unless your name ends with mla, you're getting squat.

You who have watched wages stagnate as prices rise for the last two decades; you who have suffered ever longer work hours for less, while your rent rose, leaving you with never quite the security to jump into the housing, or other capital market "booms" will never get a sweetheart deal like the one cooked up on Belleville Street. Homemade, and hot out of the oven, it's a red letter day for the province's "law-makers," regardless their quality or cut.

Cunningly, the Liberals employed tactics seen in the far east (Ontario), where another liberal pay rise for legislators used "opt out" clauses to cow opposition criticism; and like-wise, the NDP here, as there, chose today to accept the meaty pension, but say they will donate the mean $22,000 salary bump to riding priorities each MLA would see addressed. This the opposition hopes will salvage an indignant high-ground on the issue to better lambast the Liberals; while their foil in government will counter those howls as hypocrisy.   

 

The parties will fence over Bill 37, while a quiet complicity profits both to let it slide; or so a cynic would conclude. But, perhaps in the vacuum the Liberals' absence in the Legislature created for the New Democrats, (as seen with their Chair position on the future of fish farms and aquaculture in British Columbia), perhaps this "charity at home" angle can work to highlight, in every riding fortunate enough to have a sitting NDP member in the Legislature, and point out just how much work still left to do there is in this province; even if the Liberal government doesn't deem the challenges we face worthy of an active government, holding open debate in a functioning, accountable House of Government: For any price.



Chris Cook is a contributing editor to Pacific Free Press, and host Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broadcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.