This conversation is over. Already.

Gordon Campbell wants to have a "Conversation on Health Care" with the people of British Columbia. Just when this page thought the BC Lieberals were going into hiding after shutting down the Legislature for the rest of the year, Campbell's twisted, perverted version of democracy rears its ugly head.

The highlight of the $10 million "Conversation" is a series of regional forums, where interested participants are required to register on-line with the government, and from those registrations, invitations are sent out at "random". In today's Globe & Mail, a BC Health Coalition spokesperson describes the process as "suspicious". This page describes it as "obvious".

Remember another of the drunk driver's pet projects, The Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Forum? It had people chosen "at random" from all 79 ridings to pick a new system of electing MLAs. This page lives in Vancouver Mount Pleasant, a riding that has one of the lowest per capita incomes in BC, and about 70% of residents are visible minorities according to the 2001 census. We were "represented" by a WASP who spends most of his time in Whistler selling high-end furniture. That kind of recruiting (mixed with a manipulative parade of 'experts' and the worst groupthink this side of Reality TV) led to the Assembly rejecting what was easily the most popular electoral model, Mixed Member Proportional Representation and recommending the convoluted "BC-STV" system which serves to do the little than give the right wing a permanent lock on power. More like rigged than random.

You read it here first. If you register to participate in the "Conversation", you will be excluded if you are a member of HEU, BCNU, HSA, CUPE BC, or the NDP. Even if you are not a member of those groups, you will be excluded if you do not match the demographic profile that votes Lieberal. Most importantly, don't even think of being invited if you have studied anything about the benefits of Canada's public health care system - Campbell wants as clean (read: dumb) a slate as possible to fawn over the lackeys from American corporate health providers and the Fraser Institute.

The rest of us will be left to sit back and watch $2.5 million worth of TV commercials about how health care spending is out of control, complete with syncophantic squealing without context from Canwest Global's lie pushers. For those of you scoring at home, context here means that the Lieberals spend less on everything else and forego revenue by dishing out corporate tax cuts: Of course health care's piece of the pie is going to look the biggest when the rest of the pieces are being cut smaller and smaller!

Hopefully, like the Citizen's Assembly and the disastrous "consultation" on treaty negotiations with BC First Nations, there will be enough British Columbians to call the Drunk Driver's bluff and tell him there's a time and a place to discuss these kind of things, like in the Legislature. Now.