Kootenay Crust

Let me begin by saying I voted to keep the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). Braved a wayward sprinkler dousing a snailmailbox to do so, too.

I also voted to chickenbleep out and take horseshit out of the headline.

Those who read the headline, and graced me with their reading time, likely thought I was going to rant about the HST. And I was going to, about three or four months ago. But I am entering the scary and demented world of self-employment, after a career spent in the rowers’ dock of unlimited ant/sheep complexes.

So I’ve put lots of thought into this thing. And the first thing that springs to mind is: Seriously — Bill Vander Zalm!

(I’m cutting to the chase because the drink is beckoning…)

The infamous pursuer of welfare deadbeats, the thin-skinned, cartoonist hating, conflict-of-interesting Bill Vander Zalm is leading the charge! Hooray, hooray, I am leaping for… another beer.

Yawn and chuckle. Gordon Campbell was merely another Bill Vander Zalm, with a touch more naughty and nasty to him.

And who is the guy who is largely responsible for the HST? Gordon Campbell and it behooves me like a savage Mark Messier elbow to the chin to admit, I see the sense in the HST.

It behooves me because Gordon Campell was a twisted puppy made of a fabulously oleaginous substance that kept him immune from the classic B.C. Premier image-fryer.

Apparently he was a bully. Even Bill Bennett called him that. Bill Bennett! Cripes, he eats nails and rides six point wapiti downhill, standing up and singing Blue Canadian Rockies. If he was apt to be bullied by Campbell, think about how the rest of that fancy pack of twits, clutching lattes and the latest copies of fringe newspapers that lost their relevancy a dozen years ago, were able to handle ‘the rages of Gordon.’

It makes sense now, thinking about it. That farging bastage rammed a tax scheme down our throats, via the shivering, quaking, mostly marginal auspices of the minions cowering at the foot of Mount Gordon.

It was the act of a leader who’d listened to too many of his pals and handlers; a man who could no longer outrun the collective demands of the power elite by faffing things off to another year; it was a man who needed to get the hell out of the way but he just liked the power too much. The Winter Olympics buzz probably got the best of him, I think.

Gordon Campbell is what he is and from four or five personal encounters with him I found him both charming and prepared. He also improved enormously on the politic stage. His handlers deserve great credit.

The first time I media swarmed him was when he was a bit wobbly City of Vancouver Mayor angling for Liberal leader Gordon Wilson’s job. It was 1993 and he was just becoming a major B.C. political figure.

The interview was quite funny as he appeared somewhat bent, having just disembarked a fishing boat at Pender Harbour, from participating in a charity fish-murdering extravaganza. Still, I left the encounter feeling like I’d been exposed to something fishy and I hadn’t been guzzling brewskies and casting for salmon.

When he became leader of the Liberal Party, despite the fact I tend to lean, or fall, over to the right side of the political Twister Party, I howled like a baboon with a cheetah attached to it. Gordon Wilson had more brains in his toe-nail clippings, I huffed.

However, Campbell’s tenure as premier can be argued as effective and productive, as B.C. caught itself sliding down the scree-slope of financial disinterest, at a time when neighbouring Alberta was a Saudi Arabia wannabe, and he and his party can take a lot of credit for that. Recognition of the Asian market is also something the Liberals of Gordon Campbell tapped into, and wisely so.

But despite all that, I still found Gordon Campbell’s Liberals a dishonest pack of skulking thin-skins, the like that embarrass good uptight small C conservatives like me. That I watched it all unfold as a newspaper editor made me all the more open to fall prone to fits of anti-Gordon Campbell ranting and the genius tight gitchers supporting him branded me a filthy socialist.

Each time I met Campbell after that first encounter was in the East Kootenay and after he had become Premier. His level of ‘slickness’ grew with each appearance he made in the valley.

He became a polished podium pontificator and with the aid of his staff, I’m sure, he utilized a truly uncanny gift, perhaps his greatest as a politician — the ability to remember names. I swear, I witnessed Campbell greet people entering the great hall at Panorama Mountain Village a number of years back and he was batting something like .600.  No one was whispering in his ear, either.

That was the better side of him apparently.

His legacy, whether one considers it good or bad, will end with him placing his party in the unenviable position of backpedaling and trying to do the right thing regarding one of his last crazed, oligarchical flinches.

Mixed messages and ‘umming’ and ‘erghing’ aplenty are being tossed out in pale blue volumes in the HST and both sides really do have incredible positions that make sense.

As a Western Canadian, I despise being told by government… well, anything. Government is my well-paid fetch-it hound and it damned well better do as I say or there ain’t gonna be no more table scraps. As we Canadians know, we talk that talk but we don’t walk the walk. Capital cities, like Victoria, are generally too far away from much of a province’s population and we calm down enough before we get there that the intended dynamite purchase is cast aside in favour of a harbour tour.

So we grumble and harrumph and occasionally, politely ask an elected official for an explanation that makes sense and doesn’t smell like horsepoop.

Such an explanation was what we were fed on the HST.

Caesar Gordon decreed it was for our own good and that was that. “Shut up you lot. Do as you are told or I’ll extinguish the Olympic Flame and go on a Hawaiian bender.’

And here we are, debating a tax that really doesn’t change anything, except make bookkeeping a bit easier for small businesses!

We could be paying GST and PST, at a higher rate than the HST. If we opt to go back to the old system, the province has to pay back to Ottawa $1.6 billion of its ‘love us or we love Quebec more’ money, and an independent panel found that going back to the old way would cost B.C. $1.2 billion, never mind the fact it would take 18 to 24 months to make it so.

In other words, that bastard Campbell has taken us too far down the road.

Part of me, the ranting Western Canadian, believes the HST buzz is some evil federal government concoction designed to siphon more bucks from we over-taxed slaves, but my social conscience says we need to do something(s) to ensure we can pay for our rapidly aging society, beyond-aged infrastructures and the incremental nature of costs to do anything.

The problem with the HST is that it is a symbol of the assholic way things were done in B.C. before Christy Clark became premier. It’s one of the reasons why the NDP have glommed onto the issue with such vehemence. The NDP have dealt with out-of-control arrogance and deceit since they were the darned party in power!

There is also lots of merit to some of the things the NDP is saying about the HST. I am especially concerned about potential impacts to tourism, which ‘restored-to-the-Liberal-nest’ MLA Bennett says is not true. Who do we believe? We shall see. That’s the beauty of the passage of history.

There is no doubt the HST is the ‘horse shit tax’ but at the end of the day, it is no worse, or better, than what we coughed up before. The majority of the taxes we’ve had rammed down our pie holes remain in place because opposition parties realized once the leadership shoe was slipped onto their feet, they liked the feel of that assurance. Right Chretien Liberals?

It is still bend over and cough, folks. Nothing has changed. Vote yes or no to that. Whatever ya see fit.

The HST debate is a classic Canadian and B.C. moment, isn’t it?

Here’s hoping voters take advantage of their privilege and vote.

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

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