Reid's folly adds crack to armour
Richmond News
October 30, 2007
Opinion By: Keith Baldrey

It has been a rough opening at the legislature this fall for the B.C. Liberals -- yet another sign they are not immune to scandal…

…. There's also that shabby little scandal created by Richmond MLA Linda Reid, the minister of state for child care, who distributed 2,000 booster seats to children from low-income families.

Distributing the seats was a good idea, except Reid or someone in her ministry dreamed up the offensive idea of distributing them through Liberal MLA constituency offices only. That resulted in Liberal MLAs generating positive "photo-ops" in their local community newspapers, showing them smiling for the cameras as they help poor children.

The NDP was completely cut out of the scheme, and when they cried foul, Reid's response again demonstrated why she's never risen higher in the political ranks of the government. She never admitted that she might have been wrong, and then she said the NDP were hypocrites because they voted against the plan to make booster seats mandatory for small children.

That accusation was ridiculous (the NDP voted in favour of the legislation, but voted against the provincial budget, which in Reid's mind meant they were voting against the booster seats; stunning logic) and simply made the minister look even smaller.

The booster seat "scandal" probably won't have a lot of staying power with most people, but there was one more issue that continues to linger and may yet jump up and bite the Liberals….

Clearly more than a few cracks are starting to appear in the Liberals' armour.