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Anderson from our tax dollars: 'What is wrong with those people in Ontario? Out West, we ask that every day. Answer's easy. Each Ontarian has his or her own personal mammalian bureaucrat. Why change, if you already know how to wriggle yourself over to a lovely fat teat? Taxpayer money shoots around Ontario and Quebec like some sort of wacko Las Vegas. Whoever can come up with the most plausible idea to improve Canada without actual Canadians buying and selling goods and services that people actually want, well there ye be boy, another $10-million, and that was some kind of persuasive grant application. Right on! The revolution is coming! Kyoto is the West's time to shine. Why, out here we have a hundred thousand green bureaucrats-in-waiting and we have our own personal mammalian bureaucrat in the form of Environment Minister David Anderson. Billions of lovely taxpayer dollars for as many years as the eye can see, so we can remake society with wind farms and tide power, and lots and lots of busybody regulatory activity. Of course, David Anderson has to win his seat in Victoria, which may be difficult since there are few in his district that can remember anything he's done for the district in, oh, 10 years. And if the Alliance and Conservative votes had been combined in the last election, he would have lost his seat, so he has to be sweating it a bit. So I hauled my creaky old self over to Victoria to meet the kid who is facing down the Anderson dragon. He did make me feel old, Logan Wenham, 32, with his bright, fierce blue eyes, his mop of black curls, his pale poet's skin, his tiny hexagonal black-rimmed eyeglasses. This kid is a looker -- lounging around the clubs of Queen West he'd be having the time of his life, but no. He's married and working. Hard. For free. And says things like, "I keep trying to get out of politics, but I get so angry, I come right back in." It is true, he's been writing furious well-founded letters to the local papers for eight years, and is long-time constituency assistant to MP Gary Lunn. Logan is a from blue-collar background, raised by a single mum who worked as a secretary in a pulp and paper mill. A single mum who, he says, taught him right from wrong. "I have been living in the house that Trudeau built for my entire life. No, life isn't fair, I've eaten my share of macaroni and ketchup, but that's no excuse to lie, cheat and steal. The trouble with the Liberals is that they give us what we ask for when we ask for it. They never ask us what we need, but what we want. The sponsorship scandal was inevitable. They have no moral compass at all." Logan describes how the Liberals will attempt to tar Conservatives as anti-gay/ abortion/immigration/ Quebec/whatever. "False dichotomies. I am a social moderate and a fiscal conservative, like most of my constituents. I believe that we have to get the nation on a solid economic footing and trust Canadians to sort out their own personal lives. We have to build rapport with voters. I live in my riding, I play soccer on Saturday mornings. I volunteer. My constituents want personal responsibility, fiscal accountability, democratic reform and equality before the law. I know this because I know my constituents. I talk to them. Anderson is an Ottawa apologist. Anderson finds talking to real people, weird." That's because Anderson is such a very special fellow who has had power in British Columbia since 1968. "Conservatives believe in environmental responsibility. The infrastructure to deliver water is breaking down, but do the Liberals discuss it? To the Liberals, the environment is just about PR, " says Logan. PR and some kind of strange need to keep Canadians on a short leash, with very little disposable income. In February, the Royal Society of Canada published a report that stated exactly what the last report commissioned about B.C.'s offshore oil and gas industry stated. Which is that a cluster of oil wells off the Queen Charlotte Islands could safely produce $110-billion of revenue, enough money to pay for the plush welfare state British Columbians seem to love, and the medical care and retirement of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who will move here in the next two decades. "Two different groups of scientists have drawn many of the same conclusions - - with the proper regulatory control you can fill the scientific gaps as you move forward," said B.C. Energy and Mines Minister Richard Neufeld. David Anderson's 35-year moratorium stops this cold, "inhibiting the generation of relevant new knowledge," said the Royal Society. The perfect metaphor for the entire federal Liberal government.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.