A Rant

One of my favourite shows happens to also be Canadian - The Rick Mercer Report. In this show, Rick has a weekly Rant - I will now have my rant about the some local Abbotsford stuff. I can't vote, since I'm not a Canadian citizen - so this is my only way to say what I'm thinking. (That, and I promised my wife I wouldn't write any more letters to the editor...)

It's amazing how far a lie can get you in this town. I refuse to call it a city any more. New York is a city. Vancouver is a city. Philadelphia is a city. Abbotsford, with a population of 130,000 - that's a SUBURB!! Canadians don't seem to have suburbs, though. They go right to calling this a city.

"So what?" you may be asking, "What's the harm?"

Well...I'll tell you:

This idea of Abbotsford as a city has led to a lie called
Plan A. Using the idea of Abbotsford as a 'city', the city council has decided that we need $85 million dollars of improvements. The real problem comes down to the $55 million dollar sports arena. The lies started fast and furious when selling this plan to the voting public. There were actually ads in the local paper that had pictures of ticketmaster-type tickets printed up. They were tickets to shows like: Disney on Ice and, believe it or not, MADONNA!!! You're telling me that Madonna is going to show up to perform in a 7,000 seat arena in SUBURBIA???? Madonna's namesake is more likely to show up as an image in a donut at a local Tim Horton's!

Now referendum day comes and: no one shows up. It's snowing - a huge snowfall begins that day that closes schools the following Monday AND Tuesday! The turnout was pitiful. It was approved by less than 20% of voters here. Most people were panicking about the snow - this is not being made up. When it snows in Abbotsford people panic like Stephen Harper at a Greenpeace rally. They weren't thinking about voting - they were thinking: "OH MY GOD!!! Do I have enough bottled water!??!"

Now the lies come fast and furious. The cost isn't $85 million - It's over $100 million now and growing! The councillor in charge of this public robbery states that this increase represents 'soft costs' or some other double-speak phrase and they always knew about the extra costs. Well...then, why didn't they say anything about it in advance? One councillor has finally spoken up (Moe Gill) and said, "Maybe we should rethink this..."

That doesn't seem like much, but for an Abbotsford councillor to say that at a council meeting is like George Bush saying: "Maybe we need to rethink this whole Iraq business..."

Now we're facing a 16% tax increase.

I love how they explain it as: "Well, you voted for it..."

Who exactly is 'you'? Oh, yeah...the business owners who had a shovel and plow that voted in November.