Well...

May 12 is coming. Another provincial election. You know I've got to say something.

First of all, I've got to say that I have never got the appeal of Gordon Campbell. Maybe because I was working in the human resources field when he was first elected and saw first hand what happened when he cut funding to social programs. I saw how it effected some of the most vulnerable in our society. Maybe that is why; but to me he has always seemed a slick, smarmy politician in bed with big business. Someone who believes we have to choose between the environment and the economy. (Show me where there is an economy without an environment?!)

I was flabbergasted when he was re-elected. I mean, I thought surely that people were on to him, I mean it was so obvious. Apparently not. Sometimes I feel like I am from another planet... BC politics have long frustrated me as we swing from one extreme to the other.

I am really concerned about what Campbell is doing. How he is dismantling our public companies like BC Hydro and BC Gas. In fact, look at what has happened to BC Gas. Our public natural gas company is now owned by Texas based Kinder Morgan. Originally it was part of BC Hydro. Now owned by Americans. BC Hydro is now well on its way. Take a look at this video. Maybe you think our utilities should be privately owned. I don't know, I think there is a lot of value in having publicly owned and controlled utilities where profit at all costs is not the driving force. Where the goal is to provide British Columbians with affordable power while taking into consideration the environment.

When I think about these things too deeply, I get all panicky inside. It might have something to do with the fact that I live in the middle of the conservative heartland of BC (too close to Alberta, I tell you!). I remember what this province was like when I was a child - when half of the highways were gravel roads. And I see how it is now - where it is dangerous to eat fish caught in Okanagan lake. Where wilderness is developed to provide massive mansions for people living in Japan, Germany and Alberta who don't even live in them but stay at the most a few weeks of the year and don't even rent them out when they aren't there. And I think of my children and even the rest of my life and I wonder when it will end - this fanatical expansion for the sake of expansion, greed, corporate lust and the apathy of people who don't bother or are too overwhelmed to get informed or don't want to get involved - who don't even bother to vote.

Anyways, this scares me. What can happen to our rivers, scares me. What kind of a world do we want to live in? This isn't going to happen in someone else's back yard. This is our backyard. This is such an important election. Gordon Campbell has been quietly and not so quietly undoing or undermining public institutions for the sake of foreign investors. Its coming to a head. What kind of BC do you want to live in? Get informed. Vote.

I'm tired. Is this post coherent? I'm going to bed...