It's been said that one of the greatest failings of our justice system is that only the stupidest criminals get caught and pay the price.
I've come to believe that that's also one of the greatest failings of our political system.
Take Minister of State for Multiculturalism Harry Bloy, for instance - oops! - he's not Minister of State for Multiculturalism anymore, is he? He's just Burnaby-Lougheed MLA Harry Bloy now - and hanging on by the skin of his teeth.
Not long ago, he used to be a real cabinet minister - the Minister of Social Development - not just a junior wannabe minister of state for - whatever.
He proved he wasn't socially developed enough for the Social Development Ministry when he suggested that the developmentally challenged people who had been handling recycling duties in Maple Ridge for the past umpteen decades needed to go out and find real jobs instead.
To help them in their pursuit of real employment, he cut their Community Living B.C. funding out from under them.
Thus proving that Harry is not the clearest pop bottle in the recycling bin.
And proving that he really doesn't know what a real job is.
The resulting furor - not just in Maple Ridge, where the outrage was deafening, but throughout the province - left Premier Christy Clark in a quandary.
On the one hand, she had a cabinet minister who would have served her better as a boat anchor - politically speaking, of course! (Although, I'll bet there were some wistful discussions in the alcoves along the halls of power.)
On the other hand, Harry was the only MLA in the Gordon Campbell-led B.C. Liberal caucus to throw his support behind Clark's bid for the post-Campbell party leadership and, consequently, the premiership.
As a premier, Clark has the power to hire and fire cabinet ministers.
As a premier with only one supporter - operating under the kind of political structure that suggests at least a second similarity between the inmates of prisons and houses of parliament - she can barely afford not to reward the kind of unique support that Harry Bloy afforded her.
So at first, she did. In any institution other than a prison or a chamber of parliament, Bloy would have been tossed out on his ear for his supreme Community Living B.C. misjudgment.
In fact, lucky for him, the worst an inmate in the parliamentary system usually suffers is just political death.
But instead of sending him to the showers, Clark favoured her supporter by just sending him to another, less favourable cell block - this one occupied by the minions of multiculturalism.
But did I say that Harry is not the clearest pop bottle in the recycling bin?
He found out that a newspaper reporter was investigating the activities of a significant donor to the B.C. Liberal campaign coffers - and forwarded a strategic email.
The irony that the favoured B.C. Liberal insider was involved in provision of private education services during the ongoing public education phoopherah is probably purely coincidental - but a delicious coincidence, nonetheless.
Especially since this provider of superior education proved that he is in Harry's intellectual league by bragging about the email - and his connection - to the reporter.
Harry is now not even a pretend minister.
But did I say only the stupidest get caught and pay the price? Premier Christy Clark is still premier.
Bob Groeneveld is editor at the NOW's sister paper, the Langley Advance.
