BC is a world unto itself. Technically part of Canada and North America and all that, but different. The local politics are at least as weird as those of Québec or East Los Angeles, without the clear excuses those places have. We call the place LotusLand, it's a paradise in terms of climate and natural beauty, nobody packs a gun and we don't murder each other much, we pay outrageous taxes so we always have something to complain about, and we don't need to make a call at the mortgage broker's on the way to the doctor's office. But the politics - they are absurd.
We've been ruled for seven or eight years by a party called the 'New Democratic Party', they used to be the CCF, 'Cooperative Commonwealth Federation' ... sort of the John Cleese On Downers faction of the Bolshevik Socialite Proletariat. Lots of PoliSci majors, real light on people who ever ran so much as a lemonade stand. So of course the inevitable problems have come forth and multiplied, and the NDP is now launched on that time-honoured method of recapturing the support of the peasantry, starting up a war.
Now we all of us here, Normal People and NDPers alike, loath and detest;
1. Ottawa [the Chief lives in or near Ottawa, btw. We like the Chief. We don't like Ottawa The Machine, it's too far away, too expensive, too ineffective, too deaf. For instance, for many years they have done sweet nothing about Casus Belli #2.]
2. The Alaskans who catch our salmon as they swing close to the Panhandle en route to our rivers. Fisheries are under federal jurisdiction, and BC has no navy. When we're independent, that's what we'll buy to break in our credit card, imho.
3. Nuclear weapons in our proximity. This is hard to avoid since the great majority of us live within the 97% kill radius of Bangor, Washington, but still, we do feel we have a right to object when they park them on our doorstep and light the fuse. And they do park them on our doorstep - there's a US submarine base at Nanoose, with a large adjacent testing range named Whiskey Golf in the Gulf of Georgia, the US has a deal on it left over, I believe, from the '39-'45 war with which they briefly aided us. If those boys get liquored up some Friday night and decide they need fireworks, me and my neighbours will be doing fluorescent pork rind impressions. There's at least one poster to the SI Resource Ghetto within two miles or so of the base. My position and that of the great majority of people here is - No Nukes. Period.
Anyway, here's an article from the Vancouver Sun on the current developments -
B.C. spurns Ottawa's $125 million offer
The Vancouver Sun
Peter O'Neil, Sun Ottawa Bureau and Craig McInnes, Sun Legislature Bureau Vancouver Sun
The federal government offered B.C. $125 million over 30 years in a bid to
avoid expropriating the Nanoose Bay torpedo testing range on Vancouver
Island, sources said Thursday.
Federal Fisheries Minister David Anderson accused Premier Glen Clark of
turning down the offer for his own political purposes. And he said he hopes
"saner heads" in the provincial government will persuade Clark to change
course and accept the federal offer.
But Clark shot back that principles, not politics, were behind this week's
breakdown of negotiations on the renewal of the lease for the range, which is
used primarily by the U.S. Navy.
The failure of the talks prompted the federal threat to begin what is believed to
be the first "hostile" expropriation of provincial property in Canadian history.
The latest federal offer was $4 million a year for 30 years, plus $5 million up
front for an area of seabed that has an assessed value of $1.8 million.
"There's no question they were trying to give us money to solve it -- that's
never been the issue for us," Clark said.
"We couldn't quite get the federal government to understand that this is about
fishing communities and families and livelihoods and about conservation and
about some values, like nuclear weapons."
Federal officials said B.C. negotiated for months on the understanding that
Ottawa would not offer federal funding for forestry, fisheries or capital projects
in exchange for an extension of the current $1-a-year lease, which expires
Sept. 4.
But last Thursday, they said, after agreement-in-principle was reached on the
$125-million offer, B.C. announced it wanted control of $70 million of the
federal government's $400-million program designed to help the B.C. fishing
industry adjust to a downturn in the salmon fishery. B.C. planned to use the
money to assist coastal communities.
B.C. also announced on the weekend that it wanted a promise that no U.S.
warships armed with nuclear warheads would enter Nanoose Bay, the
sources said.
"They were shooting from the hip," a federal official said. "People were not
sure what they were asking for," he said, adding that there were few specifics
on the B.C. fisheries proposal.
The "no-nuke" proposal only appeared on Saturday, the official said and was
clearly a political "red herring" because B.C. knew no deal was going to be
reached.
"It's a political thing," Anderson said Thursday, alluding to the fact that the
Clark government has been beset recently by a series of political storms.
"Sometimes when you're having trouble at home you pick an enemy
somewhere else."
In an interview, Clark accusing Anderson of having "contempt for British
Columbians." but he denied he has any personal antagonism toward the
federal minister.
He added: "This is not about me, this is not about politics. This is about
families in fishing communities that have been devastated . . . because of
federal policies and they're doing nothing to help them."
Anderson said Clark's intervention forced Ottawa's hand.
"We have to protect our legal position very soon, but we hope that this thing is
settled amicably on the basis of one of the most generous renewals of a lease
the world has ever seen," he said.
B.C. Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Andrew Petter alleged Thursday it was
Ottawa that shifted ground and caused the failure of the lease-renewal talks.
He said there was an understanding among officials that the federal
government could make the no-nuke assurance, but that agreement was
vetoed at higher levels.
"The federal government seems to care more about the ability of the U.S. to
bring nuclear weapons to Nanoose than they do about providing a form of
support for coastal communities and conserving salmon," Petter said.
But Anderson said Ottawa has never been in a position to try to exclude
nuclear weapons because of the U.S. policy of refusing to divulge whether a
ship or submarine carries nuclear arms.
Ottawa's threat to expropriate the range triggered criticism by the Reform
party in the House of Commons and in Victoria by B.C. Liberal leader Gordon
Campbell.
"The threat of expropriation by the federal government is unprecedented and
completely unacceptable," said Campbell, who also scolded the B.C.
government for using Nanoose as a pawn in Canada-U.S. salmon treaty talks.
"The feds would never dream of using such power with any other province."
Reform MP Gary Lunn (Saanich-Gulf Islands) said an unprecedented
expropriation of provincial property will exacerbate western alienation.
"Instead of threatening B.C., will the [prime] minister sit down face-to-face
with the premier of British Columbia and move to resolve this dispute through
negotiation, not expropriation?"
vancouversun.com |
