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The death of Lotus Land SALTSPRING ISLAND - Every strategic street corner of British Columbia is littered these days with clutches of well-fed, thoroughly middle-class people waving, half-heartedly, their carefully lettered pickets. It's been seven whole months since the Liberals took office and things aren't better yet, so the entitled are in full-throated class-war rhetoric, and they are (mostly) women, hear them whine. Kids mill around the adults, if you can call them adults, skiving off school, in solidarity, o' course. On Tuesday, the day of the B.C. Throne Speech -- given by the improbably elegant Iona Campagnolo -- impassioned pleas rushed across the Internet. More blankets, contributions, people at ground zero (B.C. version), Camp Campbell, were needed. Ever since salmon leapt out of the sea into native fishers' laps, life on the coast has been fat city, little work required. And we want to keep it that way, 'kay? Plus, it's infectious. Hardworking people come here from New Brunswick, and presto, they're on unemployment and welfare, going to school on the government, with car allowance and a half-dozen other benefits, grants and gifts. Contrariwise, there is little more efficient, in British Columbia, than the culture of protest. In fact, it could be argued that were all the energy put into protest and local politics harnessed to something like a real job, all those entitlements would not have had to be cut, because the B.C. tax base would not approximate Romania's. However, a-protesting we will go. Last weekend, 1,000 black balloons were floated in the bucolic Cowichan valley to symbolize the death of Lotus Land. Mourning keens wherever you cock an ear and the press -- with the exception of Posties and the admirable Vaughn Palmer - - having skipped basic economics in favour of poetry writing, fans the blaze. Activists have put us on their travelling map. The NDP are back in their offices, on unemployment no doubt, "volunteering." Rotating strikes will damage schools until the Marxists at the B.C. Teachers' Federation have enough piled up in their pension account to retire. When the Forest Practices Code is revised and forestry starts up again, the War of the Woods will rekindle and the Kennedy boy will come up and lecture us about our rivers. Clayoquot summers past will look like a church picnic. Witches will take off their clothes in the woods, and the cone of power will be raised. This ungainly agglomeration of thieves have made us a promise: no justice, no peace. What more justice could be done British Columbia's working class -- short of an all-expense paid tour of the wreckage of the Soviet Union -- is unimaginable. Nevertheless, the former 19th member of the NDP Cabinet, Ken Georgetti, now (lucky us) president of the Canadian Labour Congress, promises no stability, until the cuts are reversed. Ignore them all. It will have virtually nothing to do with what is really going on here. The hard-working, suburban, three kids, a dog and a carport families, without, for some reason, a voice in the local press, have put down their collective foot. They have to save for dentistry, obstetrics and business school, and they need a thriving economy. Like anyone who saves, they know that positive change takes time. More than seven months. More like three years. At least three years. The facts bear repeating. Twenty years behind the rest of the English-speaking world, British Columbia is heading for smaller, more efficient government. There's a lot of catching up to do. For half a generation, it has been run by East German Stalinists in a bad mood, who, knowing they were going to be kicked out, left a few steaming piles of poop for their successors to clean up. Once the refiguring was done on the budget, it turned out that the so-called surplus was a fantasy and we're broke. Really broke. Despite the highest rate, pre- Campbell, of personal income tax in the world. The attitude of labour? Our money is their money. I pointed out to Jim Sinclair, head of the B.C. Federation of Labour, that the tax cut only returned peoples' money to them. I paraphrase: "That was our money!" he cried. "No, it wasn't," I said. "Yes, it was," he said, before breaking down in confusion. If you remember one thing about British Columbia, pre-Campbell, remember this exchange. Grid creep, equalization payments, and re-assignment of scale turned the promised three-year 0-0-2% increase in public-sector wages into an 11% pay rise that will erupt into an estimated one- billion dollar overage. Empires within empires of oversight organizations were built by the NDP, feeding on every part of the private sector, throttling growth. The forests were virtually shut down. Every public sector initiative made in the past 10 years exploded in red ink and union featherbedding. Abrogation of property rights all over the province, but particularly in the Gulf Islands, which should be drawing millions of eco- tourists from all over the world, have sharply diminished both the value of land, and the asset base of citizens. Anyone smart, and able to, left. Retirees nurse investments situated anywhere else but here, because until seven months ago, you were taxed even if you lost money. Our best new doctors are all South African, because guess what, there is a place more boneheaded. This part of the country -- by resources, climate, and proximity to Seattle, headquarters of the new clean economy -- is capable, were the business climate healthy, of attracting the best-educated, hardest-working families anywhere. British Columbia should be a magnificent engine of prosperity for not only Canada but the whole continent. And it will be. If Campbell and his admirable team keep their nerve, in three or four years the B.C. miracle will astound us all. There is so much under-capacity and underemployment, so many broken dreams that, once freed, the province will be untouchable. I comfort myself as seeing it as a dry run for the ROC. And the members of the B.C. press? I recommend the first five chapters of Samuelson's basic text, Economics. This will require actual thinking. If they finish the book, they can apply to me for further reading.

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