THE RECORD
January 23, 2002

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

A lot of nasty words have been said and written in the past few days about the cost cutting schemes of our esteemed Premier Gordon Campbell. Yet, the only thing he might be accused of is that he's working in an extremely stressful office with the intelligence level of a ten year old fourth grader.

When big business bought the BC Liberal Party for our Gordon they weren't looking for somebody with brains, but a puppet they can jerk around by remote control. The chain of command is well established all over the world: The corporations own the so called economic think tanks, the economics and many science departments of virtually all universities. They give the orders to their employees in these allegedly academic institutions, who in turn pass them on to governments as "sound economic advice." Basically the same chain of command it was in the good old days when the gods told the priests to order the invasion, sacking and enslavement of other nations.

It used to be called the "Will of the gods" now it is the will of the markets. Nothing has changed. Not even the gullibility of the public who have throughout history supported the most hideous crimes in the faith of obtaining earthly riches and everlasting life.

It is quite obvious that Mr. Campbell doesn't have the faintest clue about what he is doing or what the consequences of his actions will be. Contrary to his and the claims of his inner circle that their actions will somehow revitalize the private sector, instead they will create a depression, violence and crime waves, family breakdowns, more substance abuse and suicides. This is a statistical certainty, as it happened everywhere. During the reign of Mike Harris in Ontario, child poverty rates increased by 94 percent, while in BC only by 2.

Some years ago, when Gordon's brother Mike was still a daily feature on BCTV he remarked that 90 percent of the jobs are created by businesses employing less than 100 people. These small companies and their employees will be among the worst hurt by the present policies. I could never understand how and why small business people would support political parties operating under the control of big business. Don't they realize that small, market driven businesses are the laughing stock of corporate boardrooms? In my years I have seen very few small businesses ruined by government rules and regulations, but thousands by laws favouring big capital and their machinations and criminal activities to take control of economies.

When the Socreds won the 1975 elections, their own one man political disaster area, in the person of former BC Liberal leader Pat McGeer, was put in charge of the then still new ICBC. He found that the insurance rates were too low, so he doubled them. In those days all licences, and with them the insurance policies, had to be renewed in February, which meant that the costs of all were doubled at the same time right across the province.

The sums involved weren't impossible even for those days, but the sudden shock caused a mini depression. I had just moved my shop to larger premises in Richmond and was financially strapped anyway, but when my business dropped 30 percent for 6 months it almost wiped me out. Virtually all my competition went broke. Hundreds of small businesses closed down with the resulting unemployment. The only way we survived was by heavily mortgaging our almost paid for house.

The businesses of BC were still mostly owned by residents then and a group of important business people wrote an open letter to Premier Bill Bennett, reminding him that while they welcomed the balancing of the books, it could have been done in easy stages to lessen the blow. One of the signatories was the late C.N. Woodward, who was the head of the now defunct Woodward's department store chain.
Mr. Woodward was very good, long term customer of mine and I was doing some work in his Point Grey house just then. We were having a cup of tea, discussing the job, when I expressed my thanks to him for his involvement and told him what was happening to us small business people and that I was just about at the end of my rope. He became very angry and called Bennett and his gang some names I wouldn't want to repeat here. That was the first time that Woodward's reported a loss and the rest is history.

A year later my accountant told me that Dr.McGeer's escapade cost my family $65,000, something like a quarter of a million in today's terms. When we sold our home in Vancouver prior to moving here in 1979, we received $65,000 for it, losing the result of many years of seven day working weeks. A Socred canvasser came to our place at one time and I told him that when I see Bill Bennett coming to the house with a cheque for $65,000 in his hand I will consider voting for them.

Then, according to the rules, a corporation paid it's bills if and when it felt like it. We never got paid for our business we sold in Richmond and lived in 3 tiny cabins, totaling 300 square feet, without electricity, phone or running water, for eight and a half years, building our fine custom furniture with a small generator.

Expo 86 allegedly put Vancouver on the map, but hundreds of small businesses all over BC went belly-up on account of it. We lost approximately $5000. of income and couldn't move into the house we were building for another year. I haven't known of a single business around here that hadn't suffered decline in sales. Even the large supermarkets suffered. All the money ended up in Vancouver.

Then came the privatization madness of Vander Zalm. He sold Beautiful BC magazine to Jim Pattison for $500,000, which was the yearly profit of the business. It takes brains to make such a deal. I was in Maple Ridge, delivering a unit to a customer, when the Zalm announced the privatizations to a cheering Socred convention. By the time I came home I had two orders cancelled by people who had nothing to do with government, but expected a downturn of the economy on account of the privatizations. That was the last time the Socreds cheered. Now the same gang of morons is doing the same tricks under the Liberal name, but their cheering days are also about to end.

Tonight I watched on TV as the Truck Loggers applauded Campbell for his cuts to the civil service and programs. Many of those who were clapping their hands will be broke within a year, as small businesses all around BC start folding up and the multinationals take over, squeezing the last drop of blood from our bodies.

Mr. Campbell and his two useless local drones can be certain of one thing. When the time for recall comes there'll be long lines of people waiting to sign the papers.

Copyright (c) 2002, West's International