What is going on in British Columbia?
There are a couple of shocking stories unravelling in our province that deserve a high level of public attention.
Yesterday, I wrote about the Speaker’s investigation of expenses and the management of the peoples’ house.
The culture of entitlement uncovered by the Speaker, and outlined in his report, is disturbing.
The Legislative Assembly is the Speaker’s responsibility. The allegations in his report strike to the heart of transparency, accountability and public confidence in our government institutions.
In addition, there is another example of rot needing sanitization by exposure to the light.
It’s the on-going money-laundering scandal.
So, if the Speaker’s work has not sickened you. Then, consider the notion that somehow billions of dollars was cleaned through BC casinos, and little has been done to curb it.
It appears that officials knew about the growing problem and stood back and let it unfold. There is so much dysfunction and lack of communication, apparently Attorney General David Eby learned some of the information through the media.
Enough already!
We shrug off scandals in British Columbia.
“That’s just BC politics!” We say.
Well it is not okay!
BC politics is this way, because we enable it. All of us, politicians, political parties, the media, and the public. Until we stand up, speak up, and route it out, until we stop allowing it to be okay to laugh it off and accept it, we are all enablers.
Perhaps, some are afraid it will look like a partisan witch hunt. Too bad.
As one member of the BC Legislature, I am sick and tired of being embarrassed about how we do business in our province. I am tired of the excuses. There is no excuse for this behaviour.
Thankfully, the Legislative Assembly Management Committee (LAMC) is doing an audit of the spending and have ordered a work place review in the BC Legislative Assembly. Good start.
But, we must go further.
We need a full investigation of the money-laundering issue in British Columbia.
Obviously, the tinkering away at the edges has not cleaned up this mess. It is time to stop dancing around the issues. No matter how uncomfortable it is, we have a responsibility to clean it up!
Frankly, what good are we, if we are not going to do our job and protect the public interest with every tool at our disposal.
It’s weird that we found a dumpster fire at ICBC, but that BC Hydro and BC Ferries carry on as though nothing untoward could have been twisted over the last decades. I think there was a cursory look at Powerex at the 2001 changeover, but nothing since, and one might suspect that Libs didn’t want to draw too much attention to Hydro, given what they had in store. IPP contracts need to have some light shined on them along with all the details of Site C. Let’s turn over all the rocks and see what crawls out…
here! here!