Premier Christy Clark dropped into Burnaby last week. She was here to speak to the Burnaby Board of Trade as part of International Women’s Day events.
Our reporter went to the event expecting to be able to ask our premier a couple of simple local questions. Questions, we think, residents of Burnaby and readers might like to know. For example, we were wondering about the future of Burnaby Hospital. But Clark didn’t deign to speak with any of the media covering the event. In fact, her handlers kept her away from the media.
We suspect it’s because the day before the media was all abuzz about the “triple-delete” scandal. You know, the one a whistleblower revealed. The one where government officials were, as a matter of practice, deleting Freedom of Information emails and destroying any evidence of receiving them.
An investigation was held and one person has been charged – but not with the destroying of emails. No, he’s being charged with perjury as he allegedly lied during the investigation.
We’re not sure about the rationale for this action, but it does seem to raise even more questions.
Clark probably didn’t want to answer any questions on that story – and who can blame her? It doesn’t look good at all.
Or, perhaps she didn’t want to be questioned about the cushy sheepskinning deal her government gave former Liberal MLA Judi Tyabji-Wilson.
That’s the deal that was also in the media last week. The one where the government gave Tyabji-Wilson a 2014 grant for a sheepskinning initiative that went over budget by $53,000.
Tyabji-Wilson was the president of the non-profit applying for the grant and also the supervisor on the project. The grant was for $127,000, and on top of that Tyabji-Wilson received a salary of $67,000 to manage that grant.
Can someone in the government spell “conflict of interest”?
The project failed miserably. Apparently it was only able to sell 27 sheepskins. Those are very expensive skins.
Clark, in our humble opinion, appears to be making sure that the Stephen Harper legacy lives on in B.C.
Deals with friends, conflicts of interest and hiding from the media being three of his top leadership lessons.
Now, this could be partly due to the fact that she has hired former Harper employees.
Or it could simply be that the old expression, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” has found another role model.
