Columns: Simon Shouldn’t Run On His Record (If He Wants To Get Elected)

By Mike Archer. Abbotsford City Councillor Simon Gibson has been cashing a taxpayer-endorsed pay cheque as a councillor in Abbotsford for three decades. Now he wants one that comes with a nice retirement package and a bigger expense account in Victoria.

In Pros And Cons Of Simon Gibson Becoming An MLA Abnor looked at it in a satirical fashion a couple of weeks ago but he made a good point. Surely, if he wants the job, he expects voters to look at what he’s managed to accomplish so far as a politician.

That might not be such a good idea.

Darryl Plecas. Photo from SaltSpringIsland.org

Some of the people Plecas demonizes have the same basic approach to the law. The irony would be delicious if it weren’t so disturbing for a criminologist to have such contempt for the law.

The fact he thinks he’ll be welcomed in a house where laws are actually made is confusing if not disturbing.

Plecas turned a mid-level community college job into local fame by publishing pseudo academic tripe that was used by Lower Mainland communities to bypass both the criminal code and the Charter of Rights and send police into people’s homes without warrants on the premise that high electrical bills allowed police to bypass judges in fighting the drug war.

The fact his views aren’t shared by anybody with real academic credentials is overlooked by local politicians and the media.

Some apparently believe that laws are negotiable.

That embarrassing bit of intellectually vacant ideology was successfully challenged by The BC Civil Liberties Association and the District of Mission ended up facing a class action suit from residents who had their privacy invaded without warrants and were charged $5,200 for the insult even when no grow-op was discovered.

Gibson is best known for not having much of any consequence to say at Council meetings except when it comes to treading on the civil liberties and constitutionally guaranteed right to health care of addicts in Abbotsford.

Abbotsford is the only City in BC to deny these basic rights to its citizens and Simon argues that if we were to eliminate the bylaw we might face a flood of drug addicts. He has never been able to explain the thought process that lead him to that conclusion.

Councillor Simon Gibson

Since Simon’s supporters in the religious community would prefer to have sole responsibility for helping drug addicts without medical professionals being involved, he has defended, and continues to do so, an ultra vires bylaw which denies those services to Abbotsford drug addicts by preventing the use of any building in Abbotsford to provide clean needles or safe injection.

He is apparently prepared to let his fellow human beings die rather than abandon his peculiar interpretation of god’s will.

It isn’t his lack of care for his fellow human beings I’m questioning it is his understanding of just what he is and isn’t allowed to do under the law.

Both of these gentlemen have a long and solid track record of ignoring the law, indeed of thumbing their nose at it, when it doesn’t suit their particular views.

When you add the fact that Gibson is part of the council which has decimated the City of Abbotsford’s DCC fund, negotiated a questionable deal (some say illegal) with the rich owners of a hockey team and has overseen a 50 percent increase in taxes (2006 – 2010) and a doubling of water rates (2010 – 2012) while helping to defer almost all of the infrastructure needs of the City thereby destroying our ability to attract developers, it begins to look like he’s trying to leave a sinking ship before his role in sinking it can be discovered.

If that is the case it is all the more reason politicians should be forced to resign their current job at the public trough before running for a different job at the public trough.

It also speaks volumes as to the lengths to which the BC Liberals will go in their desperate search for candidates to join their own sinking ship.