The global recession is the excuse Gordon Campbell has always wanted.

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I didn’t want to write about the BC Liberals’ latest cuts. But for a commentator on community issues, they’re difficult to avoid. Arts funding is being cut 90% over two years. Most gaming funding will be yanked from non-profit agencies.­ (After previous cuts made them dependent on gaming money.)

It’s difficult to fathom how ugly this could become. Do you care about the environment, disability rights, the Fringe Festival, the elderly, aboriginal issues, the film industry, victims of domestic abuse, preventing fetal alcohol syndrome, the Symphony, mental health, amateur sporting events, independent watchdogs? The work of non-governmental organizations in all these areas is at serious risk.

The excuse du jour is budget shortages due to the recession.

I’m not buying it.

The recession doesn’t explain the deep tax cuts that remain in force.

Nor does the recession explain the lack of planning, consultation and, well, logic involved in these cuts. Just watch the bumbling, mumbling and stumbling by Liberal ministers like Ida Chong, Rich Coleman, Kevin Krueger and Kash Heed to see that. These high-profile stooges have alternately claimed they have no lists of what or how much they’re cutting, pronounced that all cuts are affecting only non-essential “administration”, blamed underlings for not informing them of what’s truly being cut, and quickly reversed “necessary” decisions whenever media attacks have become too prolonged.

Meanwhile, hypocrisies proliferate. While provincial arts funding apparently collapses from $50 million to $2 million by 2012, the Liberals found $39 million to increase Olympics advertising, $151 million to launch full-day kindergarten hardly anyone prioritizes, and millions more to maintain energy industry tax breaks.

And the fundamental question remains: Why?

Some have pointed to the government’s own study showing funding art generates profit for government. That’s hardly the only example. Many non-profits save us all money over the long term. They leverage government funding into private donations and volunteer time. They provide essential services for people who might otherwise require hospitals, long term care facilities, prisons, or round-the-clock family support. They help keep businesses honest, landlord-tenant relations civil, and people with disabilities working.

So then, why bluntly hack away at all non-profits at once?

The Liberals aren’t explaining publicly. And I feel devious quoting people when they’re drunk at a party, if they had no idea I was a sober journalist.

­Nevertheless, there can be legitimate exceptions. For example, I once listened to a reporters’ recording of Anastasio Somoza drunkenly insulting poor people, and it seemed an important insight into that brutal Nicaraguan dictator. My own party-buddy was no Somoza, but his ramblings certainly gave prophetic forewarning of the repressive­ “shock doctrine” now hitting BC.

Therefore, I’m compromising by protecting the individual’s anonymity. After all, it’s not about who he is, but the party he has come to represent ten years after our conversation.

Following several beer, “Bill” made a derogatory comment about people on welfare. Since I knew Bill had recently graduated, I favourably compared welfare to student grants and loans.

“I put myself through university while working a full-time job,” Bill countered. He described himself as a “self-made man”, and suggested others should learn to “stand on their own two feet”.

I pointed to the help Bill himself got from subsidized universities, transportation infrastructure and water systems. How many businesses would survive without public education providing skilled workers? Don’t governments help corporations constantly through tax breaks, subsidies, and trade agreements?

Bill kept arguing everyone should survive independently in the marketplace. If he had his way and public sentiment allowed it, he said, he’d cut taxes to near zero, and turn every public operation and resource over to the private sector – energ­y, forests, water, education, parks, everything.

Was this man in front of me really to the extremist right of, well, Somoza? I continued questioning. Eventually he clarified that, deep down, he didn’t really want to see only the powerful and ruthless surviving while children perished in the streets. He simply felt that “nanny” government and socialized ownership were corrupting us, and that we would all become more personally responsible and compassionate again without those influences. For example, he said, if forestry companies actually owned provincial crown lands, they would care for them better than they currently do.

It was porous logic. There’s no evidence individuals or companies are less likely to destroy things they own than things they don’t. Recent history is littered with bankrupt companies whose owners ranked short-term profit over long-term survival.  Conversely, there’s no evidence social safety nets have negative impacts on people’s personal compassion.

But I began to see the real point. Bill was revealing an over-arching distaste for government which was ultimately rooted in a moral belief about human nature. No one would ever be able to rationally change Bill’s mind without tackling that underlying notion; however, that belief wouldn’t even surface into discussion unless you got him drunk and really persistently questioned.

Bill later became a researcher for a right-wing organization. He then became a very senior, politically-appointed official in the BC Liberals’ Finance Ministry, and a prominent player in several other key ministries from 2001 until today.

So for people like Bill, this recession is the opportunity of a lifetime, in the way 9/11 gave the Bush administration the excuse to invade countries and pass innumerable right-leaning laws long dreamed of. The recession hands the Liberals broad public acceptance to make deep cuts, so now they’re acting quickly to critically undermine everything that requires any government help.

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Originally published in Focus, November 2009.