It’s official: Colin Hansen, B.C.’s finance minister, now has the longest nose in the province.
It started growing when he claimed — before the election — that the annual deficit would be less than $500 million. The latest forecast is three and a half times that.
It underwent a breathtaking growth spurt when, a month after the election, he announced the HST and had the nerve to tell us there were no plans to do so before the election.
Now, with a straight face, he says his government never claimed the Olympics would cost $600 million when for years that was indeed the claim.
His nose is longer than Pinocchio’s, and if he keeps it up, it will span the Strait of Georgia from Vancouver Island to the mainland.
Of course, once you start, it’s hard to stop, and Hansen also claims the cost of the Olympics was $925 million.
It is no more $925 million than it is $600 million. Hansen left out obvious Olympic costs such as the, um, Olympic Secretariat and even the Olympic rings the government stuck out in Burrard Inlet (at a half a million dollars a ring).
And, of course, $925 million does not include the cost of the Vancouver Convention Centre, the expansion of the Sea to Sky Highway and the Canada Line, all promises made to secure the Olympic Games in the first place.
Just how stupid do they think we are? The Games cost at least $6 billion, although it could go as high as $8 billion once all the costs are in. Yes, that’s a lot of money, but we elected the people who spent it. And egged them on.
I don’t understand why the Campbell government is addicted to lying. It’s flat-lined in the polls, so what has it got to lose by telling the truth? Long Nose Hansen should try something completely different.
He can and should point to all the wonderful things these Games have brought.
Do you think the Canada Line would ever have been built without the Olympics? The Sea to Sky Highway, which is no longer the most dangerous stretch of road on the planet? The billion-dollar convention centre with the grass roof that may even pay for itself in our lifetime? The well-earned sense of pride and joy that we all continue to bask in?
Come on Colin. Come clean. Give your beak a break.
