MLA tells why he’s drawn to cartooning

CARTOON TO CAPTIONS — Liberal MLA Simon Gibson revealed one of his life goals this past week, one that sadly hasn’t been realized.

The politicians spent some time during a free-range portion of the agenda on the non-partisan topic of “artistic expression as a quality of leadership.”

Gibson said he’s always been inspired by his mother’s painting and he has dabbled in cartooning. “I have submitted 24 cartoons to New

Yorker magazine. They’ve all been rejected.”

The magazine is known for its quirky cartoons — and its sky-high rejection rate. It publishes a fraction of what it gets offered every week. “So I’ve decided now to switch to the

New Yorker cartoon contest. Every week I submit, and one day I’m going to make it. You’ll hear about that in the legislature. I’ll be making that announcement.”

AWAITING THE GREAT ONE — Superstar Wayne Gretzky made his name playing hockey in Alberta — for the Oilers! — but for the past several years he’s lent his name to a firm making wine in the Okanagan, under a namesake label.

So what team will he play for in the B.C.-Alberta oil and wine war?

Liberal MLA Doug Clovechok read one of the Great One’s tweets into the record during debate on the showdown, but it wasn’t very definitive.

“Canadians play for ‘we,’ not me,” Gretzky said on social media. “It’s what makes me proud to be part of this country.”

It was in reference to the Olympics, not the trade war, but Clovechok recommended it to the NDP government. “Given the answer that I just heard from this minister, I would suggest strongly that she and her leader take to heart Mr. Gretzky’s words.”

OIL SAVES WHALES — If you think oil tankers threaten whales, Liberal MLA John Rustad has a history lesson for you. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said, chiding people who forget Canadian history. Whales were being hunted to extinction in the 1800s and Victoria used to promote itself to the whaling industry as the place to come, he said.

“Yet it was a Canadian invention through oil and gas that, overnight, saved the whales. The oil and gas industry — get that — saved the whales because kerosene, overnight, was substituted for the oil that was extracted from whales. Overnight, the whaling industry was obsolete.

“Oil and gas. Celebrate that if you celebrate wanting to save the whales.”

PRICE PREDICTION — Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver morphed into a real-estate guru last week, with some bold predictions about how the market will respond to the budget. The foreign-buyers tax is being widened to include the south Island and Nanaimo, and Weaver criticized the spotty application as a great example of “whack-a-mole.”

“I can tell you, as a matter of certainty, what’s going to happen here on Vancouver Island. It’s going to have zero effect — zero effect — on the input of foreign capital. But I will say that Cowichan Valley … is going to see a massive spike in property. Parksville, Qualicum, Comox, Courtenay, Campbell River — just watch what’s going to happen up there … ”

STOP THE CLOCK — Premier John Horgan has been musing about abolishing daylight time, but Liberal MLA Linda Larson beat him to the punch, introducing a private member’s bill that would do just that.

If it’s passed in time this spring, it would eliminate the time change on the 100th anniversary of when it was introduced.

“B.C. has the opportunity to show leadership in what has become an international discussion by ending time shifting,” she said.