There’s a stench coming out of Gibsons and it’s not the pulp mill or the foreshore down by Hyak Marine, which could be the future home of a hotel named George.
No, the stink is politics and it’s nasty.
Wrapping themselves in the cloak of community, using the gullible folks in whom they’ve injected fear of the George and no faith in the council, some shrewd political operators are doing their damnedest to steamroll the municipal process and make Mayor Wayne Rowe in particular look as bad as possible.
I suspect there’s a mayoral ambition behind much of the George terror.
Why do I believe this? Because no group can be both as clueless and as organized as the indignation artists who flock like Canada geese to every council meeting to berate a council that, to this point, has done nothing to deserve such treatment.
Just look at the posturing that’s going on.
Knowing full well that council has ordered independent aquifer studies, the opposition is “demanding” council not place the aquifer at risk. As if they would.
Knowing full well that staff is preparing an economic analysis of the project’s cost-benefits for the Town, the opposition is “demanding” that council protect Gibsons residents from “any and all tax burden.” As if they wouldn’t.
Knowing, as they do now and could have found out earlier if they had asked, that the Ministry of Environment is reviewing the Hyak Marine site for contamination, the opposition is “demanding” the harbour be safeguarded from toxic contamination. As if it won’t be.
These people are demanding more information, but when it is provided in a news story, they question why it was released to the media. One of them even suggested in an online comment that the director of planning should be fired for talking to me. Isn’t that what the evil Harper regime does when it gags scientists and other unelected officials?
This is a control mob. Call them redneck hippies. I saw some of this stuff during my three years in Alberta before I came back to the Coast. These are the tactics:
• Spreading skewed information about council decisions and municipal process, creating fear and confusion on the street and then demanding council “do something” about it.
• Loading up staff with obtuse questions so the machinery of local government can grind as slowly and inefficiently as possible.
• Putting council on the spot for not prejudging an application, when the fact is, if council did not consider the application, the Town could be sued by the developer.
• Most of all, assuming the bogus authority of representing “the people,” while the duly elected council members — the true representatives of the people who came out to vote — are looked down on as self-interested and potentially corrupt individuals.
Not all the concerns raised over the George project have been without merit. The third-party sign issue is interesting and the opponents do have a point. The general concerns about height, aquifer and economics are all valid.
But what’s not valid is trying to hijack the process and destroy the credibility of this council. That’s intimidation — and it’s political, hoping for the enemy to falter and fail, setting it up so.
The election is in November.
