So much fur has been flying lately that it is hard to avoid writing about the provincial election here in B.C.

Gordon Campbell’s Liberals don’t like the NDP getting help from organized labour and are turning over every rock in order to find some violation of the Election Act. Of course, they sorely need something of substance to mask the stink of their own slimy conduct of scamming money from municipalities and various organizations using their position as government. You can bet if the situations were reversed and it was the NDP in government with this scandal the public outcry orchestrated by the Liberals’ buddies in the media would be deafening.

The biggest laugh I get out of political campaigns is all of the claims and accusations that are made around the economy. Everyone is concerned about the economy, so when it is moving in the favour of one party or another it is a natural hot button issue to exploit. In reality, governments have little to do with the economy either way. It is a creature of a much bigger universe. International market forces have far more to do with it despite what any government may do or not do.

The only wrinkle to this is that investors can blackmail voters by withholding investments when there is a government that they do not like. Whenever one hears the term investment climate, what is really being referred to is a government’s or society’s degree of willingness to roll over and do the bidding of investment capital, regardless of the cost to society.

A legitimate role of government in the economy is to manage the revenues that it produces. A prudent government will raise taxes during boom periods and build up a contingency fund for when the inevitable slumps occur. During the slump time, respectable governments would use that fund to create more jobs in the public sector and keep the workforce employed. This is only common sense if one believes that the purpose of government is to protect the well-being of society. If a society does not believe that, then their government is merely reduced to something little more than a gang of crooks with a mandate to steal.

What is interesting where I am, on the North Island, is that we have a government that tells us how good the economy is, yet many people are out of work and the presence of decent government assistance to help the region weather through is most notable by its absence. Rather than do its duty and provide for the public welfare, the current government has tossed the hapless onto the bonfire of so called free enterprise where the marketplace will sort it all out.

Of course, the marketplace is amoral with no conscience except for maximizing profits. In the world of Gordon Campbell and others like him, people without wealth to contribute are a drag on the system, and eventually road kill.

This is not something that you will hear from them in the campaign speeches; instead you will hear about jobs and opportunity and how well people are doing now. You will not hear about how employment in the forest industry has been steadily dropping with no solid plan to make a transition to a new economy for the affected workers.

Since 2001 when this government came to power, over 11,000 jobs in the forest industry have been lost. Regardless of what the economic indicators might say or be spun to indicate, the question remains: what happened to those jobs and the people who held them? And what has the government done to help them?

You will also not hear about how they cleverly handed out a tax break that poured thousands into the pockets of the wealthiest citizens, and a pittance to the rest. Nor will you hear about how they managed to get that pittance back, plus more, with increased fees on everything.

You may hear them tell you that they have frozen tuition fees. They probably won’t remind you that they raised them way up first. And, they will probably tread lightly on the topic of selling off more public assets, but you know that ICBC, Hydro and more are on their list to unload once they don’t have to answer to the voters for awhile. In fact, you may not hear much of substance from them at all, as their campaign strategy seems to be to stay under cover and minimize their exposure by saying as little as possible.

Over the next couple of weeks until election day on May 17, I suspect that the fur will continue to fly as distractions continue, and who knows what dirt will be dug up on any of the parties. Dirt and distraction, it seems, these days are more of a staple of political campaigning than substantive ideas.

Some days it is difficult to decide where the soap operas end and real life begins, which is a sad commentary on a society that has some serious issues it should be dealing with.