… Your first reaction to a report from your own handpicked advisers is to make excuses rather than consider and address the issues they highlight as needing action. Exactly what happened with the report released December 13, 2007.

The BC Progress Board – 18 business executives and academic leaders handpicked by Gordon Campbell – named BC the second-worst province in the country on a number of social indicators.

“The most troubling social indicator is the proportion of British Columbians living below the low-income threshold,” says the report, which calls the social condition category “one of the most compelling considerations” for judging a society.

The report says the proportion of people living on low incomes in B.C. has been greater than other provinces through much of the past decade.

The government’s response came in the form of Minister of Employment and Income Assistance Claude Richmond making excuses and offering explanations of why the board was wrong. Together with the old political standby, vague promises that the government will take the report seriously and see where improvements can be made.

It is this type of “what problem, I don’t see a problem, sorry not in my ideological world view”, non-responses that explain why this is the second year in a row for BC’s unacceptable rating and position on the list. As long as the man at the wheel sees only what his ideology allows him to perceive, excuses and denial will be the response to issues lying in the blind spots imposed by ideology.

Mr. Campbell needs to ponder the words of Robert Frost, or if preferred, George Bernard Shaw.

Mr. Frost warned that donning the blinders of purpose will, like the blinders on a horse, inevitably lead to narrowness of point of view. Mr. Shaw cautioned that the moment we WANT to believe something, one becomes blind to arguments against it.

If Mr. Campbell fails to shed his ideological blinders, stop making excuses, listen to his own hand-picked experts and address the social issues existing in our cities and province …… his hand-picked Progress Board will continue, year after year, to find increasing social problems and inequities.

If you are going to hand-pick experts to report, it would be prudent to listen to them and address the issues they bring forward as requiring attention.

Rather than blindly saying “Neigh”.

Having a firmly held world view based on one’s Ideology is like travelling through life and the world around you wearing a set of blinders. It narrows your vision down to tunnel vision, denying one a full and true view of the real world existing around you.

It is this narrowness of vision that can result in the ideologue being taken by surprise by things such as homeless and addiction issues, a mistake-prone child protection system, the B.C. Lotteries scandal. It can lead to a management style where the Ideologue keeps the reins firmly in his hands because he is the keeper of THE VISION. At some point you begin to lose valuable people because of this interferrence. You also lose some of your best people because your Ideology blinds you to issues they see as important.

Labour Minister Olga Ilich’s unhappiness manifested itself in her confirmation that she wouldn’t be seeking re-election. Finance Minister Carole Taylor is also leaving, with reports saying she’s grown tired of Campbell’s managing style and his refusal to see and deal with social issues of concern to her.

I read with interest a piece by Keith Baldrey about Campbell and recent events which included his evaluation that Campbell is “… incredibly well-versed in all sorts of issues, and can talk knowledgeably about everything from forestry to health care and climate change.” Undoubtably Mr. Campbell would agree with this statement – as would many others.

Therein lies a major problem, perhaps the major problem, with and for Campbell and his Liberals. An Ideologue is well-versed and knowledgable within the framework of his Ideology. If the reality of the causes and solutions of issues lies outside his ideology, an ideologue will find causes/explainations that fit within his world view. The problem is that solutions based on addressing the wrong causatity factors cannot suceed in bringing about the outcomes needed to address the issues. This is particularily true in many of the social issues because at their root lies people, giving rise to very chaotic cause/effect/solutions conditions.

I see the results of this clash between BC Liberal Ideology and reality daily – increasing numbers of homeless that include seniors and families; increasingly unaffordable housing; wage levels that even at full time, people cannot live on; increases in those sufferring mental illness and addiction ending up homeless and on our streets; poverty etc. Social problems that do not lend themselves, or the methods for addressing them, to ANY ideology. These types of issues have to be addressed based on the way they are, their reality, not upon how we want them to be.

Mr. Baldrey may be correct that their ” …continual lead in popularity has allowed the Liberals to retain a lofty air of arrogance…” I am not totally agreement with his conclusion that this lead ” ….has prevented them from realizing a pattern of problems may be developing.”

Undoubtably popularitity, success and arrogance can/will cause one to miss developing problems. However it seems to me that many of the developing and growing problems that face the BC government are growing in the blind spots caused by Campbell’s and the Liberal Party’s Ideological blinders.

One can only hope that if Campbell and the Liberals begin to worry about re-election, it may give those in the party with a wider, non-ridgid worldview an opportunity to cause Campbell and collegues to remove their Ideological blinders.