The opening salvos to the provincial election are now clearly underway with finance minister Colin Hansen’s budget announcement. Last week’s newspaper headlines read, “Budget benefits needy the most,” and “Liberals release small ‘l’ budget.”

True to liberal opportunism the world over, this budget contained the usual end of term tax cuts for the poor and stop-gap funding for education and health. All done with a golden twinkle in their eyes, B.C.’s Liberals expect British Columbians to simply forget the last four years.

We have, said Iona Campognola at the Liberals recent Throne Speech, entered B.C’s “Golden Age,” the boom years of our time; it’s going to be a roaring decade, they feel, leading up to the 2010 Olympics. Only thing is, the last time there was a “roaring” decade, the next one came down with a crash – and that was no bullion.

We could see Liberal triumphalism coming in the weeks preceding the budget, as they tried patching the wounds of a four year BC Rail provincial train wreck that literally (and figuratively) saw the most downtrodden of this province driven even further into hardship. Premier Campbell derided the NHL and its players for the suffering the never-say-never cancelled season has caused fans, stadium workers, and small businesses that rely on hockey revenues while he rung in the mid-point of the “golden” decade by announcing the candidacy of Nigerian-born wrestler and gold-medalist, Daniel Igali. At the same time, Labour Minister Graham Bruce soft-pedaled labour disputes with workers at B.C. Place Stadium holding out during the Boat Show and BCGEU employees on community college campuses conducting rotating strikes for salary increases on par with administration.

Of course, these are the same cats who, over the last four years, tore up collective agreements with ferry workers, public sector health employees and teachers, closed women’s centers, raised tuition fees, threw record numbers of people off of welfare, and continually sought ends to moratoriums on off-shore oil and gas drilling near Haida G’wai – and this is only to name a few of the many nuggets of “success” that have defined the first half of this “golden” Liberal decade.

While basking in Howe Street’s successful Olympic bid and taking in Canucks games from a luxury box at GM Place after another successful public/private initiative quieted protesters at Britannia Community Centre, Premier Campbell even saw fit to strut his golden success on the beaches of Maui, where he was arrested for the excessive consumption of a golden beverage also consumed nightly by debt-ridden, depressed students at the Cambie Hotel downtown. We might also ask B.C. seniors who are actually living through their “golden years” how they enjoy fighting over the new 170 (of a promised 5000 by 2006) long-term care beds in the province’s crumbling hospitals, and how they plan on sucking-it-up (drinking only herbal tea and rye bread) to wait a few more years for that liver transplant.

Nonetheless, political pundits are soon to forget the subversive and significant opposition that has arisen in the face of the Liberals ideological regime. Right from the announcement of the first cuts in 2002, a not-so-glam-and-glitz opposition has remained consistent. In 2002, 30 000 people marched in record numbers on the provincial legislature to oppose cuts to public service and social programs; thousands were mobilized to support the Woodward’s building squat to demand social housing in Vancouver’s impoverished downtown eastside; in 2004, the Hospital Employees Union nearly mobilized a province-wide general strike, Native activists brought national attention to their struggle with Sun Peaks resort, and Vancouver continued to be a focal point for anti-war organizing in Canada, behind only Montreal.

Yes, it would appear we are living in Gordon Campbell’s golden decade, a decade that will only engender more nuggets of resistance. So let’s also not forget that just because it doesn’t always glitter, doesn’t mean it couldn’t still be gold.

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