Salaries

The changes to the makeup at the council chambers and at school board are slight yet significant. It will be especially interesting to see how a couple of individuals perform in their fulcrum roles at both school board and council.

On the Provincial front the fulcrum collapsed and a deal went south. The recent salary thing with Bill 17 is a beauty. The conversation on this is not over, not by a long shot. I can hardly wait to watch it come up again when the BCGEU contracts come up for renewal in 2006. Do you think that the Carol James flip flop is going to do any good for the average health care worker or liquor store employee when its their time to bargain for a raise let alone a contract? I don't think so.

And, I don't think it fair to whine about 15% pay increases if it brings our community representatives up to a wage that they may benefit from in the private sector. Our MLA's don't have normal jobs. Anybody that tries to make a comparison to life in the real world is deluding themselves.

Here's an idea for a career; Leave your family for four days a week to live in Victoria. Put a suit on and go in to a big ornate hall and try to pay attention while a bunch of colleagues take turns belly-aching and blah...blah...blahing for hours at a time. Before May of this year, Could you imagine if you were a Liberal MLA and had to listen to just Jenny Quan and Joy Mc Phail yap incessently at everything you said? That alone deserves a six figure pay cheque!

Ok, when your session time is over you go to some comitteee meeting and debate other stuff for a couple of hours. Then you take the toothpicks out of your eyelids, crawl in to your eloquently appointed apartment to check your e-mail and phone calls and grab some nightmare infested sleep before waking up and doing it all over again.

Then, on Thursday night or Friday, if you have the guts, you go back to your constituency. You get home, say hello to your loved ones. Why are they still there anyway? Could they possibly respect you that much that they would allow you to carry on like this?

For Friday morning chow you go to the seniors centre to work over 6% of your audience. You eat some prunes, some scrambled sunshine type stuff, say a few words then bolt to the hockey rink. There you drop a puck, sign a few things, smile for some photos. Nobody except the guy that organized the deal says thanks. If you're lucky that is. You’re building up a hunger again. Thank goodness you get to treat yourself to yet another 14 dish buffet at some hall to mingle with two percent of your constituency.

It goes on like this every weekend througout the year. Yes, you knew this coming in, but you also realize that being a politician is a noble pursuit taken on by people who generally mean the very best for everyone. It’s time we realized this as well.