A saunter up just five blocks of Commercial Drive last week revealed twelve “help wanted” signs in store and restaurant windows. Then I arrived at the Britannia Preschool press conference to hear parents explain to media how they can’t take jobs they’re offered because there is no space at the community pre-school and day-care facility. An administrator at Britannia explained that the waiting list is growing and wait times are stretched to over a year. It is in this context—neighbourhood stores crying out for workers, workers crying out for day-care relief so they can go get those jobs—that the BC Liberals, sitting atop an expected $2 billion budget surplus, decided to cut $40 million from funding for community pre-schools and day-cares, including Britannia’s.

It reminds me of the Conservative government’s response to conditions in the early 1930s, when there were plenty of small businesses that wanted help and plenty of workers wanting their jobs. The misguided Conservatives chose to reduce the amount of money floating in the economy rather than to expand it, thereby frustrating more small businesses and more workers and lengthening and deepening a recession into a full-blown depression. The roll of fiscal policy in the economy is paramount. As an experiment, try playing Monopoly, but with only 10% of the money that the rules say to dole out to players at the start of the game. You’ll soon see what happens to the buying, selling and renting part of the game: nothing!

This is what the so-called business-friendly regime in Victoria is doing to neighbourhood economies throughout the cities and towns of the province. The new-parent sector is where most useful surplus labour is found today, and by chance, new parents’ conditions best suit the requirements of small business, which is where most new jobs are created: they need part-time, shortened-day, low-skill, low stress, flexible-hour and near-to-home jobs they can leave easily in a middle-of-the-day emergency, which neatly describes almost to a “T” the kind of jobs small business retailers are trying to fill with all their “help wanted” signs up and down the sidewalks. The only missing piece of the puzzle is adequate day-care, pre-school, and after-school programs where these parents can park their kids for a few hours a week when they go to work.

Day-care already exists and is amply facilitated by government policy for those higher-paid workers at big companies, but it’s privatized and expensive, using foreign workers imported to Canada to work as “nannies.” But the benefit is to big business only, and does nothing for small business, a typical feature of the policies, if not the rhetoric, of the BC Liberals.

Canadians may indeed want change . . .

Prime Minister Stephen Harper made an interesting remark when he unveiled a new tax-back policy last week. “Canadians will see that Canada’s new government represents a fundamental break with the kind of government they’ve known for most of the last half-century,” he said.

The Conservatives governed just over 30% of the time in the last 50 years, the Liberals just under 70%, so while it is technically true the opposition party ruled “most of the last half-century,” it’s not as though the Conservatives have been completely absent. In fact, 5 of the last 10 Prime Ministers have been Conservatives.

It also isn’t clear that Canadians want such a break from the norm of the last half-century. Canadian voters have generally been happy with their governments, voting to re-elect the governing party in 7 out of 13 times in the last half-century.

But they have shown themselves to be far more content with governing Liberal regimes than governing Conservative regimes. In four attempts to win re-election, the Conservatives were successful at retaining power just once, for a 25% success rate at earning voter content with the status quo. In nine attempts by the Liberals, they were successful at retaining power six times, for a 67% success rate at earning voter content.

Put another way, voters have run from governing Conservatives 75% of the time, but have run from governing Liberals only 33% of the time. Proposing to make a “fundamental break” from the kind of government Canadians have generally been happy with may cause Harper to run the Conservative numbers on lack of success with re-election bids up to 80% by the time the dust settles on this spring’s anticipated general election.

Protest works

Once again, housing protesters in Vancouver have scored big time.

Even though commentators like Michael Smyth on CKNW and others elsewhere decried housing protesters who disrupted City Hall’s and the Province’s unveiling of the “Olympic Countdown Clock” on the lawn of the Vancouver Art Gallery on Robson Street, by saying the ceremony was no place for such a protest, the action displaced coverage of the clock’s unveiling in every media outlet in the city. The carefully scripted message the City, the Province, and the Vancouver Organizing Committee wanted to deliver at the clock’s unveiling, one that conveyed an on-time, on-budget preparation process, was almost completely invisible in media coverage of the event. Instead, the message protesters had scripted, that promises by the City, the Province, and VANOC regarding the protection of housing during preparations for the Olympics, had not been kept, filled headlines and stories.

The most poignant quote of all, one that totally obliterated all the sound-bites prepared by all the communications specialists all the officials could hire, was delivered by 2010 Watch critic Chris Shaw: “If the International Olympic Committee doesn’t want to see a growing level of this, they’d better make [Vancouver 2010 organizers] and the City and Province keep their promises.”

That indeed will be the lesson as John Furlong, president of VANOC, surveys the Humpty Dumpty wreckage in the days to follow. Protest works. You can tell by how vehemently authorities like him and buddy Gordon Campbell insist it does not.

Is Gateway a goner?

Where was the usual flourish about BC’s Gateway Project in the government’s throne speech on February 13? The infamous (and insane) plan to twin the Port Mann Bridge and double the capacity of Highway One into Vancouver received one perfunctory sentence in the Go-Go-Green speech from the throne. “The Gateway Project,” Premier Gordon Campbell said, “will reduce congestion, improve traffic flow, and reduce emissions from vehicle idling.”

That’s it? Nothing about how it will move goods and people to increase trade and expand the economy, nothing about how it will improve prospects in the tourism industry, nothing about how it creates jobs, reduces down-time, or increases productivity? In a speech that began and ended with a tight focus of all government activity on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to help combat global warming, all the government could say about its by-far greatest (slated) investment of public funds in the Green Speech, the $3 billion for Highway One expansion, was that it would reduce some emissions from vehicles idling in traffic. In fact, the words “Highway,” “One,” and “expansion” were never uttered in the speech, nor was “Port Mann Bridge.”

Kevin Falcon, Minister of Highways and point-man on the Gateway file, would be well advised to be looking over his shoulder for the butcher’s block beginning today. That is a very thin endorsement of the biggest single expenditure in either of the government’s two terms. And no one can go from this speech out into the maelstrom of public forums with such a meek explanation of $3 billion in spending being that it combats a bit of vehicle idling time—for quite a few more vehicles using a doubled highway!

The decision to shelve Highway One expansion may not have been made just yet, but the lack of vigorous endorsement of it in the throne speech leaves the way clear for the government to find an exit with honour. All it’s waiting for is Gordon Campbell’s political office to find the positive spin to put on such a big about-face and cancellation, and for the nepotists to find jobs in the private or public sector for that bag of cats who must be drowned along with the plan, starting with Falcon.