Two for BC

Sometimes in politics, we get the idea that there is no use resisting changes we don’t like, even if they are odious, undemocratically imposed against the will of the people and bad for our health. “You can’t fight City Hall”, goes the old mantra. Maybe it’s time to revise our thinking. Two major decisions made by the BC government in recent years have been reversed, one by a Citizens’ Initiative and one by private citizens refusing to knuckle under to bluster and threats against private property. In fact, both cases involved the concept of private property.

The first case was the reversal of BC’s HST in 2011. The hated tax was imposed by the Campbell government following the 2009 provincial election and the worst part of it was that Mr. Campbell had promised—before the election—not to implement the tax. Its uneven application, the new categories of goods and services included in the tax AND the fear that this was just one more tax grab for a government which had allowed spending to get out of control were enough reason for British Columbians to mobilize (peacefully but vocally) to have the tax eliminated and return to the PST / GST combination. Under the leadership of former Socred Premier Bill VanderZalm, ordinary citizens rose up in a fine display of grass-roots activism and achieved the daunting numbers of petition-signers and then voters in every constituency to defeat the tax. They said it couldn’t be done but it was—and by a unique combination of people from all across the political spectrum.

Now today it was announced that the BC government, through its crown corporation, BC Hydro, has relented on the “smart meter” program they were insisting last year would be mandatory equipment for all BC residences. Although most BC residents had allowed smart meters to be installed at their service port (or were bullied into accepting them), approximately 60,000 holdouts were saying, “No! We don’t want one!” Their reasons varied from health concerns with the high-voltage wireless signals to invasion of privacy, potential risk of fire, installation work being performed by unqualified persons and even concerns that hydro bills would be higher after installation. Whatever the reasons, thousands of citizens mounted warning signs by their hydro service instructing Hydro employees not to replace the meter without written permission of the owner. The threats from Hydro continued for a while…but today they caved and agreed that customers could keep their old meters but may have to pay a small fee for the manual meter-reading. Again, a minority of the citizens acting in concert, peacefully but firmly refusing to be bullied, has challenged the groupthink of the bureaucracy and has won.

This is enough to warrant a small cheer. BC will face many difficult decisions in the future, as will residents of all Canadian provinces. Do we just accept every poor decision of government as inevitable or do we mount a campaign to hold our elected representatives accountable? These two victories for the little guy have revived in me a hope that courage, courtesy and common sense are still virtues worth cultivating and—at least sometimes—can prevail against arrogance, bullying and intimidation.