Telling the truth can be a hard habit to acquire
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Updated: November 05, 2009 5:16 PM
Politics in the majority of Western democracies has become a perpetual con game in which politicians are coached and managed by professional political staff to duck and weave their way through difficult issues and to avoid, at all costs, confronting the realities of today and the dramatic consequences of their inaction on future generations.
People know when they are being lied to or when they are not being told the whole truth and, as a result, we’ve lost confidence in a political process premised on perpetual spin.
As this current session of the BC Legislature shows, telling the truth is
a hard habit to acquire.
According to Liberal Cabinet Ministers, program cuts are actually budget “increases,” cuts to gaming grants for not-for-profit groups are “necessary” to feed hungry children, increased costs for senior’s assisted living are “beneficial” for most seniors, and HST and MSP increases are “good” for British Columbians.
The most recent spin doctoring came this week with the Ambulance Services Collective Agreement Act.
In his introduction of this Bill the Minister of Health said the government was going to legislate a collective agreement on the paramedics
for three reasons: H1N1, the upcoming holiday season, and his desire to protect patients.
However, in the same introduction the Minister admitted “there have been no adverse patient outcomes directly attributable to the dispute.”
Why: because paramedics operate under essential services legislation and have been working every day of the strike, including mandatory overtime.
The real reason the Liberals are forcing an agreement on the paramedics while they are still voting on the most recent offer from their employer (an unprecedented undermining of a democratic right!) is that Vanoc threatened to cancel the Olympics if
the government
didn’t settle the dispute.
So, the forced collective agreement will only “settle”
the dispute until March 31, 2010; a mere few weeks
pafter the Olympics.
Then, we’ll potentially be back to strike action; so nothing will have been “settled.”
The government had another option: they could have appointed an arbitrator this spring when the paramedics asked for one and initiated an industrial inquiry to examine long standing inadequacies in how the Ambulance Service is structured and resourced, especially in rural BC.
The Minister of Health should also have had the moral fortitude to tell the paramedics and the people of BC the truth about why the Liberals are using their legislative hammer now.
Bob Simpson is NDP MLA for Cariboo North.
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