Prediction. Glen Clark will gut the province's recall law this spring. And he'll do it with the help of an unlikely ally.

When charges of a covert operation to defeat last winter's recall campaigns surfaced in the Vancouver Sun this past September, Chief Electoral Officer Bob Patterson hired Ron Parks to investigate whether all contributions and expenses were properly reported. Three years earlier, Parks' investigation of the Nanaimo Bingogate scandal led to Mike Harcourt's resignation. Don't expect history to repeat itself.

The Parks report -- reportedly already in Bob Patterson's hands -- will aim its barbs at the legislation rather than the participants. To be sure, there may be some fines and even a critical comment or two directed at the man who commissioned the report, but nothing that will come close to the ultimate penalty of NDP seats being vacated.

The four month investigation has largely been an affair of lawyers from both sides of the recall campaigns lobbying Parks on their interpretation of who can spend what, when and where. And herein lies Premier Clark's proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The thrust of the Parks' report is that the recall law is deeply "flawed": vague, confusing and even contradictory.

Of course the backdrop to the timing of Parks' report is TOTAL RECALL: the attempt by a Surrey-based group to organize recall petitions in all 40 NDP ridings. Two years ago the thought would have been dismissed, but the closeness of the campaigns in northern BC coupled with the successful petition against former Parksville-Qualicum MLA Paul Reitsma makes the threat real - especially if organizers get some technical issues surrounding voters' lists resolved in the courts.

Well the government has an easy way out. So much as one recommendation in the Parks report to 'improve' the recall

law will give Glen Clark a free hand to introduce broad legislative changes (read: gutting) under the guise of implementing "independent recommendations". Recent comments by Public Service Minister Moe Sihota that the law needs "tightening" is paving the way for just such a move.

Don't buy it. British Columbians may be just weeks away from losing - despite its flaws - one of our country's most significant gains in democratic accountability in the last half of the twentieth century.



Apparently the History Channel has been running a series on Josef Stalin's reign in the former Soviet Union. One part of the documentary shows footage of Stalin proudly displaying the first production of tractors as they roll off an assembly line in Moscow. One problem: the event was staged for public relations. The documentary revealed how Stalin actually had people inside the tractors pushing them! Remind you of anyone breaking a bottle of champagne over the hull of boat 60 years later



On a recent trip to Ottawa this writer decided to take in an Ottawa Senators game at the stunning Corel Centre. Anyone from British Columbia can appreciate wanting to witness a professional sports game where the home team actually has a chance of winning - which they did. But perhaps more remarkable than that was the number of government ads that lined the arena. From my vantagepoint I saw sizeable ads from VIA Rail, Canada Post and the Government of Canada! Worse, the federal government actually flies a motorized remote control Canadian Flag around the arena between periods - as though people in the nation's capital don't know what country they live. Another in your face waste of money courtesy Sheila Copps and the culture vultures over at Heritage Canada.



A new report by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation shows that despite modest one-time tax relief in Paul Martin's February budget, Canadians will still pay an extra $10.1-billion to the federal government and another $2.5-billion to the provinces in automatic personal income tax hikes known as bracket creep. The total federal and provincial impact of bracket creep in 1999 on a wage earner of $40,000 is $1,324.76.

Bracket creep is a federal tax policy that allows tax brackets, exemptions and credits to lag behind inflation. It works by over-exposing your inflation-driven income to an income tax system that is only partially indexed to inflation. The result is a steady increase in the amount of income taxes netted by Ottawa and the provinces. For the CTF's report "ABCs of Bracket Creep" please refer to our web site www.taxpayer.com



Remarkable stats released by StatsCan show new private sector investment in BC in 1999 is expected to be $65-million below the 1992 level - a 0.5% decline in investment since the NDP came to power. By contrast, Alberta's private sector investment is forecast to be $11.5-billion higher than in 1992, an increase of 88%. B.C. is reportedly the only province in Canada to experience a decline in private sector investment between 1992 and 1999.