“Politics is the art of the possible. This doesn’t mean politicians are artists, just artful and artificial.”      --   C. Jeanes This column will be all about politics, not about spiritual consciousness, religion, scientific materialism, nor any other of the abstract topics I have been troubling my readers about in more...

 It can hardly come as a surprise to anyone that governments – like corporations – employ spin to portray their actions in the best possible light (and to cast their opponents in the worst possible light). Nor is it news that many corporations – and the PR companies they employ – operate a revolving door for helpful politicians....

Once every four years citizens are offered a brief reprieve from the responsibility of endless decisions about matters concerning their kids, their homes, and their work; of just getting along and making ends meet. Once every four years we are inundated with propaganda telling us that all the problems associated with the...

It's a bit rich for the B.C. Liberal party to be giving lessons to the BC NDP on political fundraising, as they tried to do over the weekend after the NDP sent a fundraising appeal to corporate Liberal party donors. The Liberals might have been well-advised to leave well enough alone, if for no other reason than it might...

The Official Community Plan (OCP) is a bylaw like no other. The Municipal Act not only requires councils to adopt an OCP; it establishes a time limit for its adoption. The procedure for developing and adopting an OCP is also without equal. The Act requires councils to hold public hearings and it prescribes the form, content,...

People in the least well‐off areas of British Columbia are dying sooner than those in better‐off areas, according to new figures from the Health Officers Council of BC. Overall life expectancy in BC has improved, but in less affluent areas of the province life expectancy has remained much the same or even declined. In an...

For a while, I was wondering whether Christy Clark and her supporters realized THEY were in government, not opposition! They all spent much of the Liberals’ half-hour paid advertisement on Global TV Sunday night warning against the evils of deficits and debt: BC NEEDS a balanced budget “for our kids”; BC should NOT leave those...

The purpose of local government, as defined in the Municipal Act, sec. 3(a), is to provide “good government for its community.” The Act does not define what a community is, and there are many ways to define a community. For the purpose of local government, a community can be defined as “a body of people living in the same...

The day I picked up a copy of Stéphane Hessel’s Time for Outrage! at my local bookstore was the day the Royal Bank of Canada’s hiring practices made headlines. There was confusion about what RBC was being accused of. Was it outsourcing? Was it off-shoring? Was it an abuse of the temporary foreign workers’ program? Whatever ...

So how much is too much? It's a question worth asking after B.C.'s political parties reported their 2012 fundraising hauls last week. And quite the haul it was. Between them, the B.C. Liberals and NDP brought in more than $17 million. The Liberals alone raised $10.15 million, nearly $4 million dollars more than their Ontario...