What Premier Christy Clark said about the "sick culture" of the provincial capital could hardly be called news when it made headlines last week, since she said it in May.
Why it didn't make headlines back then probably says something about the news media, but I'm not sure what. If she'd had the courage to say it in Victoria, rather than toss it off at the end of an interview with a National Post reporter in Vancouver, she might have caught our attention at the time.
When that newspaper repeated it last week as germane to her decision to cancel a scheduled session of the legislature, the Times Colonist's Rob Shaw, quite rightly, brought it forcefully to our attention.
When I read that when the legislature doesn't sit, she's never to be found in Victoria "because it's sick," I took no offence, though some others around here did. I considered that she was using "Victoria" the way we refer, often with a snarl, to "Ottawa" when we mean the federal government.
Later in the week, Clark tried to make clear that she didn't mean to insult Victorians. She didn't mean to disparage her own government, either. She meant, she said, "the grounds of the legislature" where politicians "sit." She made it sound as if MLAs squat under that huge sequoia tree like baboons.
She lamented that politicians talk to politicians instead of, presumably, of talking to tourists who wander onto the legislative precinct and demonstrators who occupy it. And she complained that they talk to "pundits" too much. I presume she means columnists, academics or other know-it-alls, some of whom have been disrespectful at times.
Funny, though, that she didn't mention lobbyists or ministerial assistants looking for fast tracks, or those in charge of covering them.
The reporter who interviewed her back in May has claimed that Clark made her remarks in "a profoundly unguarded moment." Some may question whether she's ever had a guarded moment. Some may find her candour refreshing. But I think she was saying something that she wanted people to pay attention to.
She wanted to let us know that elected politicians are out of touch with the "real people" they represent and feed off one another and the pundits, fakirs, soothsayers and snake-oil salesmen who shuffle through the corridors of the legislature.
Hers is not simply the frustration of a government leader having to face the constitutional formalities of parliaments or legislatures.
If one knows where one's going, debate in these places just gets in the way. If one doesn't know where one's going, debate can be plain embarrassing.
Clark has never been elected our premier. She was chosen for the office by federal Conservatives, federal Liberals and a Social Credit rump.
But she sits in the legislature because she was elected to the place like the rest of those sick members.
She represents the real people of Vancouver-Point Grey, just as other MLAs represent their constituents, whether they voted for them or not.
Of course, the elected ones should keep in touch with their electors, listen to their concerns and wants.
But there comes a time when MLAs must be guided by their consciences, instincts or dictates of party to do what they were sent to Victoria to do.
That time is a session of the legislature where laws are made, public spending approved and a government held to account.
Clark, like all government leaders, would like to speed up the first two processes. She doesn't like the last process one bit - if it makes her feel sick, it must be "unhealthy."
I suspect that some of her queasiness may be because the seat of her government is on the Island. She's from the Lower Mainland. Naturally she's more at ease with real people who wear golf shoes and see the world through Prada sunglasses.
Maybe she's fed up with float planes - has anyone seen her on a ferry? - and wants to run things from Shaughnessy.
I can't imagine that if the capital were in our largest city she'd talk about the sick culture of Vancouver and its lack of real people - even in a profoundly unguarded moment.
