Sunday, December 15, 2013

1982 Province Reports BC Government Video Series

It is interesting to watch these government made videos in the fall of 1982. I do not have all of them, but this is most of them.

A couple of things you will hear over and over again is North East Coal (the LNG of 30 years ago), how BC is bucking the global recession (which it was not), and all this money the government is spending on infrastructure. It was a sham at the time, BC had high unemployment, people were losing their homes through mortgage foreclosures, and the budget of BC was not balanced. Still, the videos likely had the desired impact of helping Social Credit win the 1983 election.

As someone who was in grade 12 at the time of these videos, one of the things the early 80s Social Credit government did not do was invest money in education. The early to mid 80s saw the government cut all grants for people going to school, we saw the fastest rise in tuition fees in BC history, and the closure of a university. In the early 80s my friends and I did not have after school jobs because no one was hiring.

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