It was suggested to me the other day that I should write about my feelings on Campbell being awarded the Order of BC, and one person even suggested he should put my name forward because although I am not well known in BC generally, I have done some work locally to benefit the province and have been a voice for improvement of the environment and treatment of the people by the various levels of government.

Whilst that is true in a limited way, I do not feel that I merit the award.

Yet in thinking about it I find myself in two minds .

One mind says:
a) I do not have a criminal record,
b) I have not cheated on my wife, (I don’t have one right now and I didn’t when I did), and I didn’t have a child out of wedlock by my mistress of many years (is that real rumour or real fact?)
c) I did not destroy the economy of a province,
d) I haven’t attempted to break the unions of the province,
e) I haven’t attempted to destroy BC Hydro by selling it or dismantling their financial position, and the intense promotion of IPPs to supply unneeded electricity to BC Hydro at over inflated prices,
f) I haven’t allowed the destruction of our natural salmon stocks by encouraging toxic fish farms, owned by foreigners who don’t give a damn, in our local ocean inlets on wild salmon migration routes,
g) I didn’t come up with a “green plan” which specifically wants to drill for oil and gas between the mainland and Vancouver Island as well as off shore, right on the San Andreas fault line yet!
h) I didn’t effectively raise the taxes of the poor and lower the taxes of the rich and corporations under false pretenses,
j) I haven’t taken BC so far into deficit that it will be years before we can recover,
k) I didn’t increase homelessness and child poverty in BC to where we are the worst in Canada and maybe North America,
l) I haven’t lied to the First Nations people in BC over and over again,
and
m) I have not confused my position with that of a god, dictator or maybe king of BC.

I am sure there are many more I have missed like TILMA, BC Rail, HST, photo ops at the Olympics (sooo far above budget) BC Place and the convention center, but in short I have not spent 10 years leaving a legacy of deliberate destruction behind me.

So obviously I haven’t earned the right to the Order of BC.

But then in that other mind, I ask the question:
why not the Order of BC?
why not for every person who works an honest 8-12 or 16  hour day trying to survive and raise a family;
why not for every mother, grandmother or aunt for that matter who spends her life raising children 24 hours a day, in the hopes that they will do better than she.
why not all the volunteers who make up for the shortcomings of an over stretched government due to indifference to the people’s needs;
why not for those who sleep outside every night because they have nowhere to go and are just surviving;
why not to the police and emergency men and women who are always on call.

All these people deserve the order of BC, and yet almost every one of them, myself included, would now say “no thank you” because the Order of BC has been totally tainted by a man who deserves only to be remembered as the most destructive, arrogant, hypocritical and criminal premier of BC in all time, and who is awarded the Order even though he is not eligible from the time factor and he flat out does not deserve it.
 

Now I have to correct myself here, as he was nominated on the 10th March before he quit being an MLA and nominations closed which is legal, and he is to be awarded the order after he left office so that makes it OK! It is the awarding not the nomination that count; and I am sure that his new job of selling out Canada in the UK is by appointment of King Stephen, definetly not by election, so he “legally” can be awarded the thing, which makes it even more damning that there was so much skullduggery involved even in this. 

The Honourable Lance S. G. Finch, Chief Justice of British Columbia and chair of the independent Order of B.C. Advisory Council had to issue a statement stating everything was according to the law, such was the outrage at this award.

 Is it possible for anything to do with Gordon Campbell to be open, transparent  and above board?

So to those who asked what I thought, there you are.

Jeremy Arney