Kootenay East MLA Bill Bennett has many political faces, and it was a less than attractive one that he showed us in his letter to last week's The Free Press (responding to BCTF's Negotiations).
He’s no longer the affable good ol' boy. He revealed himself as someone who can not abide opposition, who manipulates prejudice because he cannot handle rational argument and someone who uses language to confront and divide.
After 13 years of letters to the editor, he should be called to account for his toxic verbiage.
“...hoping [the BCTF] could find a way to bargain in good faith,” he wrote last week, insinuating that the BCTF was not bargaining in good faith, this coming from a member of the B.C. government, that was itself found guilty of bargaining in bad faith in February of this year when it deliberately tried to force the teachers into strike action as part of its negotiating strategy.
“[The BCTF's] ridiculous wage demands,” and “obscenely high cost increases.” This is spluttering, extremist language, and this is coming from a man who has rarely produced a fact or statistic to support baseless accusations such as these in the past, and hasn't done so now.
“The same old tiresome class warfare,” is a totally irrelevant statement, exhibiting an ignorance of what class warfare really is, from someone who has supported every reactionary measure that the BC Liberal government has used to wage class warfare on less-than-wealthy British Columbians, cutting essential services and shifting health, education and infrastructure costs from those who already have more than enough to those who don't.
By tweetin’ and talkin' like Sarah Palin, Premier Clark has drastically reduced the level of political discourse in B.C., and writing such a self-indulgent and intemperate letter, Mr. Bennett has reduced political discourse in Kootenay East to an all-time low.
JC Vallance,
Fernie, B.C.