Following the crumbs

Back here I told the story of a frustrating bit of research where I ended up finding a small bouquet of strange connections between the Harper Conservatives and the BC Liberal party of Christy Clark. The problem was, I felt there had to be something more or, at the very least, something substantive. 


The other problem is that connections like this don't exist in a vacuum. There had to be some form of political courtship and there had to be an event when it all came together.


I was pretty much knackered at that point but thought that rather than just leave it dangling I should offer up the connections I had and see if the finest people in the world, our readers, could see something significant. Cookies were offered. 


Now, rather than give the entire synopsis, I'll link to the connections that were found in the order they were gathered. You go to each one because they each have extensive research for you to gather in.

First to jump into the swamp was RossK, our inimitable Gazetteer. Assisted by one of the only people who can dig a cockroach out of a database full of rats, North Van Grumps, he came up with a new name: Nina Chiarelli.

Next to wade into the illustrious pond of castor canadensis was the most excellent Alison, who, being something of a beach watcher in her own right, gave us a newer arrival: Dimitri Pantazopoulos. She also makes the point that Ken Boessenkool was a lobbyist for Enbridge ... our Northern Gateway crowd.

Once again NVG pulls some files from his wicked archive and RossK  finds another angle that cannot be ignored.  


Beijing York, in the comments section waved an idea around. Were the Harperites infiltrating beyond their precincts? 


It turns out our intrepid BY had something. We found Harperite connections in the Ontario PCs, the Alberta Wild Rose party and, (it should go without saying), spilling over a chair in the Toronto mayor's office. 


So ... what else?


Well, there is just what we've got. Alison's connection is significant. Pantazopoulos appeared to be on the public payroll on 4 April 2011, after working on Christy Clark's leadership bid. And, as RossK points out there was public knowledge of Pantazopoulos' hiring on 17 March 2011, just 3 days after Christy Clark was sworn in as Gordon Campbell's replacement. 


Now.


Add this. Harper's operatives were here during the BC Liberal leadership campaign, as we have already seen. 


Were they here by request? Were they here to secure an HST friendly premier, no matter what he or she looked like? 


Gordon Campbell was squeezed out by his own caucus over the plummeting fortunes of the BC Liberals over the HST. To this day, you would have to root deep into a badger hole to find anybody who doesn't believe that Campbell and his cabal didn't have the whole idea planned before the 2009 provincial election. And an FOI request proved it. 


Campbell was in the Harper boat.


Did Gordon Campbell drop a Harper bomb on BC?

"An important Message from Elections BC".

Laila

Colin Hansen finally figures out that he screwed the people of British Columbia

And now he's apologizing.

Finance Minister Colin Hansen has offered up an apology for the way his government sprung the harmonized sales tax on unsuspecting British Columbians. But the way the tax was imposed, he said, should not influence the referendum that is to come on whether or not the HST should stay.

So now Colin wants to be best buddies with all of us? I hope not. He will remember that some of us have stories from George P. Vanier Secondary School which might still embarrass the minister.

Apology not accepted.

Colin Hansen either lied to the people of British Columbia or has demonstrated a level of incompetence which supports his removal from office. He is not fit to govern.

The way the tax was imposed is entirely the reason we should be influenced in a future referendum. Whatever reason he had for slapping a tax on the citizens of BC, it was not divulged during an election campaign, it was not subject to public hearings and it was not debated in the legislature. The people of BC wore this by Campbell fiat. If Hansen thinks it's such a good idea, repeal it and then reintroduce it properly.

It's about bloody time these guys were hacked off at the knees.

I expect that if Hansen had committed the same level of heinous act with his wife she would be demanding a divorce.

That works for me. Write on the board, Mr. Hansen, 1000 times, RECALL.

Or resign and avoid it.

HST, BC and the horsehit that falls out of Campbell's yap

Mygod, this is amazing.

If British Columbians vote against the HST in a referendum, the province will dump the controversial tax, says B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell.

Because he says so?! Jesus Christ! It's not within his authority to make such a pronouncement. He has no law to support that and we already know that Campbell is a seasoned liar. This is the same guy who ripped up signed union agreements.

Worse though, is that he wants British Columbians to pay additional taxes until the Fall of next year and then decide.

I have a better idea.

Lets toast this bunch of Chicago School Harperites right now. Fuck 'em. Starting with Campbell let's exercise a franchise exclusive to BC and take them down. Rip away at their guts and leave a bloody mess. Even if Campbell can withstand the ridiculously one-sided requirements of a recall campaign, it will destroy him.

And nothing would give British Columbians a greater pleasure than to see Campbell destroyed. Nobody really liked him in the first place. Aside from his big business buddies, anyone who ever voted for them seems to have done so with their fingers on their noses.

Make them squirm. Make them defend themselves.

We are owed that for the lies they tried to feed us.

Gordo appointee cans Elections BC officer who axed Gordo's HST mailout

The popularity of Lotusland's estimable premier is currently running at a crushing 12%.

.

There are a lot of very good reasons for this but let's just go with what 83% of the people polled told Angus Reid : they don't trust the bastard.

Here's another reason, not that you'd know anything about it from reading our local press.

When Gordon Campbell was planning to mail out a plushy $780,000 pamphlet hawking the benefits of his new Harper Scam Tax to the same BC residents who were successfully gathering sufficient signatures to have that sucker repealed, Elections B.C. Deputy CEO Linda Johnson told him he couldn't do that. No advertising during the repeal drive, she wrote in her decision, because Elections BC is an independent office which covers referenda as well as elections.

Finangling Minister Colin "HST wasn't on my radar" Hansen was some pissed about that.

Meanwhile the chief electoral officer ended his term in June and Gordo appointed a temporary replacement, Craig James, formerly the clerk of committees, who immediately enraged everyone by not sending the HST repeal petition to committee until business groups could do a court challenge to it. Nice.

Now that same Gordo appointee Craig James has fired Linda Johnson, 19 years the deputy chief electoral officer, four months after she nixed Gordo's HST ad campaign.

Ah, but it's not a firing, said some flack, they're just restructuring Elections BC without a deputy now.

Sure they are. Because what better time to fire the #2 person than just three months after the #1 guy has left, and just as a major confrontation on the HST is in the offing.

And what the hell is a temporary Campbell-appointed CEO doing "restructuring" Elections BC anyway?

It would be good to hear something from Acting Chief Electoral Officer Craig James about this but unfortunately he is apparently away doing volunteer work somewhere for the moment.
Well, there'll be volunteer work aplenty after the recalls start.
.
thanx to RossK for the horrible pic. Yup, Gordo endorsed Steve's re-election .

BC's finance minister doesn't read tax briefings

At least, that's what he's trying to tell us.

Hansen insists he never read most of those documents, revealing though they were. "This is not something that was particularly important at the time. If it had been part of our plan -- when we get through the election we're going to harmonize the sales tax -- I would have read every bloody word and studied it."

Didn't study his own briefing notes. Didn't pay attention to the game-changing developments in Ontario. Didn't have a clue really.

Not much of a defence for his own qualifications to serve as minister of finance. But considering that the alternative explanation would be systematic lies and coverup, I guess it was the best he could do.

Palmer is being rather generous there. Rafe Mair is a little less guarded and calls out both Hansen and Campbell for what they are: lying cowards.

Folks, the plain truth is this: Colin Hansen asked for the briefing note more than two months before the election and the issue was not only "on the radar screen", it was well on its way to becoming government policy - a policy that Campbell and Hansen hid from the people during the election.

And why would Campbell and Hansen try to hang on to that increasingly slippery rung on the ladder to the bottom? Well, it would appear that Campbell isn't done shafting British Columbians quite yet. Before he uproots and moves his lying carcass to Maui he has one final move guaranteed to leave a bad taste in the mouths of BC ratepayers.

Shot........... Splash. Out.

Gee, Gordo. Looks like the little back room shenanigans you organized with your big business buddies didn't quite pan out.

I'm pretty sure that in 90 days you'll be telling us all to get stuffed anyway.

No problem. I smell a recall campaign with your name on it.

The HST will create thousands of elephants in BC

That's right. Elephants. Or, if you've been listening to Gordon Campbell's homeboy, Colin Hansen, it will be jobs.

Same thing.

You see, Hansen is ready at a moment's notice to don his body armour and jump out in front of a microphone to tell you that introducing a 12 percent HST in British Columbia will create thousands of .... (oh hell, just fill in the blank with anything you like)... jobs.

That, however, is his end game. What he never tells you is how he expects all that fresh new employment to be created or even if, after his closed door meetings with the movers and shakers in the anti-PST business world, if he has even the slightest hint of a guarantee that such a thing will happen.

Reason? He doesn't have a clue. He's hoping that the economic crash, (brought about by the very people who are telling him that HST is a job creation formula), will ease and that a slow recovery in the US house construction market will see forestry and mill jobs start to increase in BC. He'll then point to the nexus of unemployment in BC and tell you how his wizardry created jobs. (Never mind that they were the very same jobs which were lost because conservatives of his ilk refused to acknowledge that the financial world had gone south with everyone's life savings.)

So, I take pleasure in pointing out a few things which lead out of Bob's posting.

After protest sprung up around the province Hansen once again took his position in front of the microphone. (Emphasis mine)

Finance Minister Colin Hansen was quick to respond, holding a news conference with business leaders to talk about why B.C. should implement the HST.

"There's no question that the HST is the most effective form of … consumer tax that a country or a jurisdiction can implement," he said, adding the tax will create jobs.

Bully!! Aside from the standard "it will create jobs" bullshit, it raises another small question: The Campbell corporate government has been in power since 2001. How is it that every overture from the feds to implement HST was dismissed by this mob until now? If it's the most effective form of consumer taxation, as Hansen describes it, why did it take eight full years to buy into the idea? Were they just too stupid to realize how cool a system it was?

So, they're either very dumb or they're lying. Either way, they shouldn't be allowed to represent anybody.

The kicker however is the continuing line that Hansen and Campbell had not formulated a plan to implement the HST before the last provincial election (May 2009). By their account, the idea was latched onto after they retook government. (Which would make it a hastily adopted plan without public consultation.)

So, along comes the Victoria Times-Colonist asking for information. They wanted to see the government correspondence related to the HST from January to September 2009. Surprise!

The Times Colonist, like dozens of other media outlets, is requesting the documents to see whether the Liberal government is telling the truth when it says it never considered implementing the HST before the May election. It introduced the tax less than two months after winning a new majority government.

Diligent little devils down there on Douglas Street and what did they get?

A Freedom of Information Request by the Times Colonist for government records about the HST came back with a hefty fee estimate this week: $3,500.

$3,500 for photocopying and vetting?! Yet Hansen says they weren't even considering it before the middle of this summer.

That's a lot of correspondence that piled up in a few weeks.

I wouldn't even bother asking any further. The estimate for the FOI request alone tells the story. There is a ton of documents. And the bill the Time-Colonist would have to pay is either an intentional intervention by a minister to make them go away or the pile is so huge that it stretches back to 2008.

It doesn't matter. It just means the Campbell government is moulded around the things it has always found attractive: corruption, liars and drunks.