What is happening to our province during this storm is heartbreaking and my prayers go out to all who are affected.
I watched career politician [and Deputy Premier] Mike Farnworth’s press conference on Monday (Nov. 22) and witnessed him wiggle out of questions like a worm on a fishing hook. Reporter Richard Zussman and at least five others pressed him on if the government could have been more prepared and done more to warn people.
Six times, Farnworth pointed responsibility to others. “Travel advisories had been issued by the appropriate ministries, he commented.”
Asked why Washington state had issued warnings and started sandbagging properties well before communities in B.C., he said: “At the local level, they’re observing the conditions in the local area ... Every community is required to have a local emergency plan and deal with local emergency events.”
Asked why the province didn’t use the B.C. Alert system, he answered: “It is one tool. It is not a silver bullet.”
Whatever. What can you expect from a government whose leader commented after the hundreds of deaths during the heat wave this summer, “fatalities are a part of life.”
Whatever. The same government leader who rejected repeated calls from the public, local mayors, and the BC Liberals to call a provincial state of emergency connected to this summer’s wildfires by saying, “There is not one advantage” to calling a state of emergency except to bring more people together.
We need proactive leadership, not the systemic, reactive, wait-and-see attitudes we are witnessing in government.
