B.C. throne speech all about doom and gloom

I don’t think I’ve ever read a Throne Speech so packed with such dramatic prose, so many cliches as the one delivered today in Victoria.

To read this document, you would think that, rather than going through a down cycle in the economy, our universe has changed forever. We must change, and our provincial government is going to lead us into that change.

You know, the same provincial government that, along with our federal government, was treating the recession only a few weeks ago as a mild annoyance.

Listen now to today’s speech:

“We live in a radically changed world.

“A world rocked to its core by a global crisis of confidence.

“It is a tumultuous time of uncertainty and shaken assumptions that has left families and businesses wondering what hit them.

“This new world requires a new mindset that finds hope in the transformation that now drives us to change.

“It’s an entrepreneurial mindset that sees opportunity in the dire reality of global warming and its clarion call for innovation, clean energy and the green economy.

“The new economy must focus on smarter government, leveraged investment and constructive change founded on new partnerships.”

Wow, and there are “seismic shifts” and “global challenges that “require integration not isolation, partnership not partisanship, and focus not fragmentation.”

We need “greater collaboration.” We must do away with “parochialism.” We must view progress “through a new prism” (I knew the prism word would be there somewhere).

Eegad, the Liberals have been awakened, it would seem, to the fact something is amiss. “The things we took for granted keep changing. These are challenges that call this legislature to action. Government must deal with the realities of the moment, while pursuing the opportunities of the future.”

And where have the Liberals been all this time? I dunno. “Few, if any, saw the sheer force and speed of the decline’s progression.”

Well, few, apparently, in government. Now, if only someone would remind them that this downturn is not going to be forever, and that deficits better not be either.