BROADWAY MIKE — Finance Minister Mike de Jong used this week’s budget defence to shake the dust off his vocal cords.
When NDP leader Adrian Dix accused the government of creating a hard-knock life for vulnerable people, de Jong burst into song to lampoon the NDP’s budgetary approach.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow, we’ll balance tomorrow,” he warbled. “It’s Little Orphan Annie fiscal policy from the Opposition.” On point, but off key.
GILLIGAN’S GLACIER — The NDP’s Michelle Mungall played Mary Ann to Liberal Bill Bennett’s Thurston Howell III this week in a new episode of Jumbo Glacier. Mungall blasted government for creating a “fantasy” resort in the face of local opposition.
“There is no electricity, no buildings, no garbage pickup, no phones, no chairs,” she said. “There is no ‘there’ there. There are more people living on Gilligan’s Island than there are in Jumbo.”
Bennett, the minister of community, sport and cultural development, shrugged off the criticism from Mungall and Norm (The Professor) Macdonald, noting the resort will mean jobs and money — lots of money — for the Columbia Valley.
“I do have an obsession,” he said. “My obsession for the last 12 years has been to work my tail off to make sure that the people in my region of East Kootenay have a better life,” he said.
Tune in next week when Rich (The Skipper) Coleman blows a gasket at Adrian (Gilligan) Dix for sinking the salvaged S.S. Minnow.
A PROGRESSIVE POLITICIAN — Dix was sporting some shiny new spectacles at the legislature this week, and he didn’t hesitate to point them out.
“I have to announce today that I got progressive lenses,” he told reporters. “It’s the only thing about me that wasn’t progressive before.”
But the new lenses almost cut short Dix’s drive to be premier. At a recent speech to the B.C. Construction Association, he said he came precariously close to falling off the stage because of the bifocals.
Taking a header into the crowd probably would have been the highlight of the NDP leader’s visit to the Liberal-friendly association, where, Dix noted wryly, his speech was “almost totally uninterrupted by applause.”
FINISH THE THOUGHT — NDP MLA Joe Trasolini referred to a gravel pit that was operating on a tree farm licence, apparently unbeknownst to Forests Ministry officials, which revealed poor control of forest assets.
“To get the most out of your assets, you need to know what your assets are,” he said. “They have lost track of our land base.”
The point he seemed to be striving for, but didn’t quite arrive at, to the disappointment of some laugh-starved observers, was that the government doesn’t know its assets from a hole in the ground.
— With files from Les Leyne, Lindsay Kines and Rob Shaw
