Thursday, July 16, 2009

Come on. This can't be happening in an advanced democracy in 2009.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Patiently awaiting some "non-partisan" anonymous poster to come on here, tell you this is old news and the railway has been sold and that only partisan hacks such as yourself care. Or is no one in PAB working this evening?

RossK said...

Anon-Above....

Did you mean to say 'partisan hacks such as yourself and/or cult members'?

And no, in my experience at least, the fine folks from the PAB, with rare exception, do not work nights.



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Why did I ask about the cult thing you may be wondering.....?

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DPL said...

It appears that this can and is happening in 2009. It happens, figuring the majority of citizens either can't get their heads around it, or possiby worse, don't care. One wonders which clerk two will get balmed for ordering the emails destroyed? Hopefully the Judge will take a very dim view of the goings on

Anonymous said...

One would think at this point it now becomes a case of follow the smoking gun. Clearly someone had to order those tapes to be destroyed and one needs only go up the food chain to figure out who gave the final order.

I do find it funny that roughly 5 or 6 years ago there was some government asset surplus sale and somehow private data tapes did not got erased and ended up in public hands and yet in this case no such mistakes were made.

I expect the Basi/Virk trial will have some new witnesses being called shortly. The suspense never ends.

G West said...

This is an 'advanced democracy'?

Geez Paul, I'm not so sure THAT label applies in BC any more.

Only about half the folks eligible to vote do so and the current government couldn't care less as long as they keep the keys to the lock box.

What, exactly, could one say is 'advanced' about the way we practice government in this province?

Dawn Steele said...

Good point, G West - what we have here is increasingly resembling a non-participatory autocracy. Apart from voter apathy, we have a system in which the Premier and Opposition leader enforce brutal discipine to keep members timidly toeing the party line, where the Premier has virtually shut down the representative's chamber to stiffle any meaningful public policy debate, where all of government is run like an empire from the Premier's office, and where checks and balances - auditor general, independent representatives, FOI - have been increasingly undermined, sidelined and/or simply ignored.

BC's Legislature is now almost permanently closed, its members permanently shackled and gagged, and with carefully orchestrated performances for the few limited sessions allowed each year. Compare that to the US, where powerful Congressional and Senate committees can call anyone to account at televised public hearings, where Senate and Congressional representatives publicly challenge each other and their party leaders, where powerful governmental and non-governmental watchdogs probe deep into the dark cracks of government to expose rot, and where even the president must answer to unabashed public criticism from members within his own party.