Liberal Party of British Columbia

Failing Grade

Summary

The Liberal Party of British Columbia has failed to advance and protect human rights in the province and has, in fact, fostered a culture that denigrates human rights and anti-racism and is responsible for the elimination of many worthwhile organizations and groups.

See alsoWally Oppal states that there is an "intense amount of dislike for [the provincial Liberal] government."

Background

The Liberal Party of British Columbia is really a collection of old Social Credit and Conservative party members. The Party is by no means "liberal" but follows the free market ideology of Milton Freidman that markets themselves are somehow self-regulating and that everything should be sacrificed to the market. The Party has closed schools, increased class size, privatized public ferries, privatized some parts of energy production, privatized some health care jobs and has generally attacked unions and unionized workers.

One of the first things the Party did when it came to power was to eliminate the B.C. Human Rights Commission, "replacing" it with more a more circumspect non-profit society. In line with free market ideology, the Party changed funding for anti-racism programs to favour large organizations that have little to do with multiculturalism and even less to dow with actual anti-racism. In the Party's view, it was more cost effective to fund programs carried out by large organizations, thus killing most of the anti-racist organizations in the province. A survey of funded programs showed that the organizations were not carrying out anti-racism and were, in fact, embarrassed to call their programs "anti-racist". Furthermore, funding criteria ensured irrelevance by insisting that funding go to "new" projects on a yearly basis. This ensured that programs that were successful not receive continuing funding from year to year.

One of the disasters of human rights history of the province is the so-called Safe Harbour Project which supposedly involves private businesses, non-profits and government agencies in providing a safe haven for victims of racism. Unfortunately, none of the businesses, non-profits or government agencies received training in supporting victims, training on how to assist the victim in reporting incidents, no training in recording incidents and no training in sharing any information that might help other groups fight racism and assist victims. Finally, the project can not be evaluated to test its effectiveness since no data on incidents are collected by any of the groups involved in providing the service or collecting fees for service.

Anti-racist and human rights groups outside the sphere of the Liberal Party denounce the Liberal Party record on human rights and anti-racism.