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Medalling in political hubris

With all media clogged like cholesterol-filled arteries with all things Olympic, with the world’s attention riveted to the holy trinity of gold, silver and bronze, and with Canada’s showing still limited to wood, it’s probably time to focus on some o
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With all media clogged like cholesterol-filled arteries with all things Olympic, with the world’s attention riveted to the holy trinity of gold, silver and bronze, and with Canada’s showing still limited to wood, it’s probably time to focus on some of the things we do so well. Really, when you come right down to it, being a top-notch swimmer or gymnast or beach volleyball player will only get you so far in life when the time finally comes to leave the pursuits of childhood behind… assuming it ever does.

It’s also important, psychologists tell us, to celebrate those things in which we excel. In that spirit of salving the collective psyche, it seems entirely appropriate to award coveted gold, silver and bronze medals — virtual, naturally; so much more sustainable when you eliminate the need to actually mine and refine the medals themselves — for achievements in a field in which Canadians seem to shine: goofball political hubris.

Without ever actually starting a war for no legitimate reason whatsoever or test firing missiles to prove we can still get it up or declaring a sect of pacifist monks to be closet terrorists, Canada is admittedly still playing in the bush league when it comes to political hubris. Hence the goofball qualifier.

Still, it doesn’t take a threat to world peace to raise the ire of Canadians. Changing the bus schedule will do just fine. This is not to say we’re incapable of being outraged by the shenanigans perpetrated by those we have elected or appointed to lead us down blind alleys, we just tend to show that outrage in more genteel ways, like promising to ourselves we’ll re-elect the scoundrels with a smaller majority/minority next time around.

And so, with the repetitive chords of O Canada warbling out of a tinny public address system, let us hang our honours around the necks of the truly deserving.

It was a gold-medal performance last Friday when, lost in the hype of the over-hyped and digitally-enhanced Opening Ceremonies, our own Olympian, Rear-Entry Campbell, assuming perhaps no one would notice and fewer would care, announced a most-deserved, most generous, most over the top pay raise for the province’s hard working bureaucrats. Okay, so it was actually Murray Coell, Minister of Labour Market Development(?) who announced it. But in case you haven’t noticed, Murray never speaks while Gordo is drinking. Draw your own conclusions.

The pay increases came into effect Aug. 1 st . The announcement was made Aug. 8 th . Wonder why the delay? In any event, assistant deputy ministers — the fry-cooks of senior bureaucrats — garnered a mere 22 per cent pay raise, increasing their top-dollar earning power to a hard-to-scrape-by-on $195,000. Full-fledged deputies won a more respectable 35 per cent increase to $299,215.

But they don’t call it a pecking order for nothing. Gordo’s deputy minister will take home an extra hundred grand next year. That’s extra. Logging in at a golden 43 per cent, his new salary cap is a very respectable $348,600.

Invoking the highly favoured argument used by compensation consultants to bid up CEO’s ability to raid corporate coffers, Minister Coell rationalized, “We have to be competitive salary-wise.” Competitive with whom, I hear you ask. Alberta and Ontario who pay their top bureaudogs even more.

Personally, Alberta and Ontario would have to pay me a lot more to compensate for the penance of living in either of those provinces but that’s beside the point.

There’s no real need to worry this uncharacteristic display of generosity might get out of hand. Awash in dollars stolen from provincial taxpayers, our elected officials have now given themselves a 30 per cent raise and rewarded their most valued henchmen. That’s where the buck stops. The province’s front-line workers were held to a 2 per cent pay increase this year. After all, those are jobs well-trained paramecium can manage to perform.

If Canadians weren’t so darned nice, generosity like this would likely have them taking to the streets in protest on the rapidly-approaching Labour Day, the day most of us celebrate a 0 per cent pay raise. Alas, this is likely the last you’ll hear about it.

Silver in the goofball political hubris event was won by B.C. Transit for its enlightened, screw-you attitude in deciding to charge ahead and build their new, green hydrogen bus terminal on formerly red-listed Whistler wetlands, soon to be black-asphalted buslands. Reasoning, I’m sure, that since Whistler itself has destroyed upwards of three-quarters of its own wetlands to build a sustainable resort, we wouldn’t care that they nuked a little more of it before we got the chance to.

Though we’ve come late to the party to preserve our remaining wetlands, we’ve nevertheless come. Too bad, Whistler. Turns out we are not, in fact, masters of our own domain. B.C. Transit’s decided to come on our Facebook and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s because they’re going to drain and fill land owned by B.C. Hydro. Turns out Crown corps are exempt from muni regs. And even though nary a volt of electricity will be generated by the rape of this bit of paradise, they can still bend us over and have their way with us. And they are.

Of course this begs the question of whether the silver shouldn’t be awarded jointly to the busboys and muni hall. We are left mostly to wonder whether quicker action on the part of council and staff in dealing with the Mons proposal might have untwitched B.C. Transit’s trigger finger. But then, decisions in Tiny Town are made s-l-o-w-l-y… if at all. Think Larco rezoning, a decision rivaling Homer’s Odyssey in historic scope. D’oh.

The bronze medal is awarded to Little Stevie Hapless who, having breathed new life into the concept of government inaction, has managed to call into question the value of that which we hold so dear: Canadian citizenship.

The good news is, for any of us who can trace our lineage back to the Anglo-Saxon branch of the family tree, who are light-skinned, whose name isn’t too difficult to pronounce and who don’t run afoul of the War On Terror, our basic citizenship rights are probably more or less intact… less if we commit murder in a supposedly enlightened democratic country that still believes in murdering people to punish them.

But for the lesser classes, the darker ones who dress funny, speak funny, have funny sounding names and worship a false god, be scared. Be very, very scared. Your government will no longer leap to your defense. It will no longer attempt to protect you from torture, unlawful detention, or the very barbaric death sentence. Your passport isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. This is the face of compassionate conservatism. Don’t look into its eyes; you’ll just enrage it further.

On with the games.