Bob Mackin
Dermod Travis was the most-vital voice in British Columbia in the post-Olympic era.
Dermod Travis (Voice of B.C./Shaw)
When the International Olympic Committee and the BC Liberal Party brought the Games of the Great Recession to town in 2010, B.C. changed for the worse. It became a province where the government put casino construction ahead of hospital construction. Politicians were for sale. Money laundering ran rampant. Homelessness increased. Transparency and accountability came under attack.
Dermod was the face and voice of the 2011-founded IntegrityBC, laser-focused on ending corruption in B.C. and putting citizens first. His legacy is the 2017 ban on corporate and union political donations, but he was not resting on any laurels. He still had more to do and he lived and breathed the credo “Take Back B.C.”
British Columbia lost Dermod on June 1 due to liver and heart problems.
I will have more to say on the next edition of theBreaker.news Podcast.
Until then, read Tom Hawthorn’s obituary in The Tyee. Download Dermod’s 2017 book, May I Take Your Order Please?
And enjoy some of the wit and wisdom of Dermod Travis. Such as…
“I’m a little puzzled by this sense in the report that [Paul Fraser has] been a stellar conflict of interest commissioner. He’s been a very well-paid commissioner.”
“Severance is intended to tide you over, it’s not intended to act as a super-inflated bonus package, which seems to have been the practice with the change in government in 2017. When you have a situation where the severance policies for staffers are more generous than the severance policies for MLAs, the transition allowance, you have a serious problem.”
Dermod Travis’s 2017 book
“Government business squeezed in-between party business, not party business squeezed in-between government business.”
— Trudeau and co. spent $54,000 to fly west for a Liberal campaign ad shoot last August, theBreaker.news, Feb. 19, 2020
“The message that it’s sending is that of expressway tickets to six-figure salaries in private industries. To work in a minister’s office and do good service to a minister for a couple of weeks, months or years and then hit the jackpot.”
“Christy Clark is coming to be an expensive proposition for the people of B.C.”
— Taxpayers Dinged $1.25 Million for Post-Election Severance Pay, The Tyee, Aug. 24, 2013
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