Years ago amid great fanfare Gordon Campbell made a promise to make B.C. the best educated and most literate jurisdiction in the world.

His grade? Whether one assigns an "F" for fail, or "Did Not Complete", the result is the same.

The recently minted education minister gets to wear the problem but won't have the clout to do anything about it.

B.C. schools face cuts to libraries, lunch programs (Globe and Mail, Wednesday Sept. 9, 2009) Maintenance, extracurriculars had to be cut to protect core funding, Education Minister says -- Ms. MacDiarmid said this is an "unusual year" and suggested money will be found if emergency repairs are needed. "The ministry is not suggesting that maintenance never be done again," she said. "If student safety could be in jeopardy, clearly we will work with the school districts."

I wonder if Ms. MacDiarmid, a medical doctor, believes that seismically unsafe schools - more than 300 in the province, almost 100 in Vancouver alone, some at high risk of collapse in a major earthquake - puts "student safety" in "jeopardy"?

Heard this morning: Harper/CPC spin that we "can't be having an election every year just because the Liberals want one".

Uh, no, it was Harper who called the last one, because he wanted to get one last election in before the economic poop hit the fan.

Of course some of us more alert types had already warned that Canada was rapidly sinking deeper in debt with Harper and Flaherty at the helm, even if the Finance Ministry games with words were still hiding it during campaign 08, only to own up to the badness a few short weeks after the polls closed.

Incidentally the BC "conservatives", Premier Gordon Campbell's mis-named "BC Liberals", pulled the same fast one this year too. You can see the movie playing in your head - finance officials chasing Campbell and Finance minister Colin Hansen down the halls of the BC Legislature, with Campbell and Hansen running away with their hands covering their ears "we can't hear you! Talk to us after the election!"

Like Harper and Flaherty in fall '08, Campbell and Hansen lied in spring '09. BC revenue was tanking long before spring 08 and oil and gas revenues could easily be forecast, before the spring election, to continue to remain low for many months if not a year or two. Both should be recalled for gross incompetence / wilful negligence in the discharge of their duties, or for outright lying to the public.

Maybe the average Jill and Joe don't pay attention to the minutia of BC and Federal finance reports like political junkies like me, but I'm sure most Canadians have the good sense to sense they've been lied to.

Why not change the game and promise, and actually deliver on the promise, to do government better?

I'm tired of being lied to (in the quest for seat count) and I'm tired of politicians and political ops banking on being able to spin and slide things past the everyday attention span of Canadians.

There is very little "democratic" (in the purest sense of the word, by, of, and for the people) in our current political tapestry and public discourse. A huge injection of openness and transparency and an elevated level of public discussion is needed.