It was Happy Hour that set the tone for B.C. politics in 2013. The tone was absurdity, and lots of it.
As commonly understood everywhere else, happy hour is that magical time in late afternoon when bars are allowed to slash their prices. Thirsty wage-slaves can drop by for a little pick-me-up after a long day of toil and catch a bit of a break. B.C. has never adopted the practice, but the government got so giddy doing its liquor-policy review that it synced B.C. with the rest of the world and declared happy hour.
Liquor laws were still so complicated that it backfired. The minimum happy-hour price turned out to be higher than regular prices in some cases. That led to headlines such as “B.C. happy hour forces some pubs to raise prices.”
That led in turn to — you guessed it — some unhappiness. There was a quick recalculation to make everyone happy again, but the tone was set, as seen in other examples:
• Gather everyone in the capital together and set them to brainstorming about what Greater Victoria, now firmly estranged from the B.C. Liberals, needs from the provincial government.
The list would run for pages and cover things like leadership on the sewage mess, a re-opened Youth Custody Centre, a McKenzie interchange, transit improvements and hundreds of other things. The absolute last thing on the priority list would be: Another liquor store.
So what did the capital get in 2014?
A new liquor store. A “signature” store at Hillside Mall. The 65th liquor store in the region.
• That Youth Custody Centre stands as another example all its own. The decision to close it down was dictated by the need to save a few million dollars a year operating a facility that was underused because of the welcome drop in the incarceration rate.
Looked good by the numbers, but no one asked local police what they thought of the idea. And local police were the ones who were going to be locking up young offenders in jail cells meant for adults while they await transfer elsewhere. Which they emphatically declared is not going to happen.
So as of last month, the youth custody centre was open for business with about 10 staff covering shifts around the clock — while it is devoid of clients for 70 per cent of the time. It was supposed to be shuttered back in April, but it looks as if it will be running on empty for some time to come.
• Amrik Virk, a senior Mountie at the time, sat on the board of Kwantlen Polytechnic University when it started fiddling ways around salary limits for executive staff. The Opposition delved into the issue and prompted a review that concluded the university was out of bounds in its secret pay deals. Then the NDP took another run at it and established that Virk was more involved than he initially let on.
The cosmic irony in all this is that Virk was named minister of advanced education before all this. And the government’s response was to order remedial disclosure courses for boards at all universities, despite the fact Kwantlen is the only one caught flouting the rules.
No word on whether Virk will be featured speaker at the courses.
• The NDP made a solid contribution to match the tone. The 2014 leadership “race” goes down as one of the weirdest ever staged. The most erroneous headline of the year was: “NDP leadership race heating up.”
It ran five months with no contestants. More people quit the contest than entered it. And that includes the man who eventually won it. John Horgan bowed out and then back in, saying on his return: “The people I was hoping would step up are approaching me.”
Also of note was NDP MLA Bill Routley’s sudden launch on the chamber of commerce in his riding. With the NDP out once again trying to build bridges to workers and businesses, Routley got wound up in the house and called chamber members a bunch of snobs and clowns, later apologizing.
My lone prediction? Based on early samples, Greater Victoria civic leaders next year will set a new standard that will leave these examples far behind.
