Rotting Liberals need cleansing

Editor: In the upcoming B.C. election, Christy Clark is asking voters to hand the BC Liberals what will amount to 20 straight years of uninterrupted majority power. The crux of her justification for this prolonged reign is that her party is eminently and obviously superior to the alternatives, a proposition that does not withstand the slightest scrutiny.

Consider for example the “balanced budgets” the Liberals tout as cast-iron proof of their ability to wisely manage the province’s finances.

These so-called balanced budgets have relied in part on the fact that the Liberals annually rob millions from BC Hydro. The tactic, in effect, transfers debt from the government’s balance sheet to BC Hydro’s balance sheet, and that debt then has to be repaid through rate increases that the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) is forced to impose under the Utilities Commission Act.

This cynical and dishonest manoeuvre allows the Liberals to wash their hands of some of their financial mismanagement, and at the same time allows them to then blame the BCUC for rate increases.

Such “debt laundering” should alone be enough to disqualify the Liberals from holding power, but there is more.

Realizing that high electricity rates would be problematic in the upcoming election, the Liberals ordered the BCUC to impose a two-tier rate structure on all residential electricity customers. (How this order came about is a damning story in of itself that would require more space to cover).

The rate structure in effect provides a substantial subsidy to the majority of electricity customers, while nearly bankrupting a large but nonetheless minority group of customers who are forced to cover that subsidy ñ mostly those without access to natural gas.

For example, my electricity rate this winter was over 15 cents/kWh, and my winter bill for two months exceeded $2,500.

These are some of the highest rates in Canada, and the only reason I am saddled with them is because the Liberals are intentionally stealing from my pocket to bolster their re-election chances.

A party that employs such duplicitous and self-serving tactics should be immediately expelled, but there is still more.

To try and uphold the pretense of fairness, the BCUC then also applied the twotier rate structure to businesses, and quickly the Liberals’ wealthy donors complained. It did not take long before BC Hydro announced out of the blue in January that they would be scrapping the two-tier rate for businesses.

Hydro’s CEO, a Liberal appointee with long ties to the party, justified the policy change with the laughable claim that the rate was “far too complicated” for businesses to take into account.

Again and again, the core Liberal policy of “wealthy donors first, the people second” informs their every waking moment.

It is a mathematical fact that the only party that could realistically send the Liberals to the penalty box is the NDP. Some argue that even though the Liberals are a rotten apple, the NDP would be far worse. I am wholly unconvinced.

The current Liberal party as we know it is a spent force that is now operating purely on a toxic mixture of self-preservation and wealthy donor demands, masked by a cheap, paper-thin veneer of purported concern for the average voter.

If they eke out a win this time, it will be their last. When political parties are encouraged to overstay their welcome, they tend to eventually self-implode, sometimes spectacularly.

If I were a Liberal supporter, I would vote to put the party out of its misery so that it can set about installing a new and far more principled leader, to chart a better and more honest course.

History has shown that parties that are left to rot in power to the bitter end often face long bouts afterward in the wilderness, and dragging the Liberals to an undeserved 20-year majority will almost certainly ensure just that.

Nicholas Swart, Kelowna