You're a Liar, Mr. Dix
Parody of "You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch" from How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Official Audio from How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Background
Adrian Dix is a politician in British Columbia. As Chief of Staff to then-Premier Glen Clark from 1996-1999, he was fired for fabricating a memo designed to protect Clark from accusations of conflict of interest. Clark himself ended up resigning later that year. In the 2001 election, the BC NDP won only two seats due to all the scandals.
In 2005, Dix himself was elected as an MLA. In 2011, he somehow became the leader of the BC NDP, defeating future Premier John Horgan (3rd place) and current Deputy Premier (2nd place) Mike Farnworth in the party's leadership race. The BC NDP entered the 2013 election polling comfortably ahead of the BC Liberals, but actually lost a seat, and the Liberals ended up forming a majority government. As a result, Dix resigned as leader later that year.
The subsequent 2014 BC NDP leadership "race" set BC on the path it's on today: rising star David Eby decided not to run, leaving John Horgan to be acclaimed. The BC NDP would go on to form a minority government in 2017 with the support of the BC Greens, and Dix was appointed Minister of Health. The pandemic hit in early 2020, and the NDP opportunistically held a snap election later that year, in order to take advantage of favourable "war-time" polling and a weakened BC Green Party, which had just held its own leadership contest. The NDP won a strong majority, and has used that stability to maintain the status quo in the face of multiple overlapping crises. Horgan resigned as leader in late June 2022, and heir-apparent Eby was the front-runner in a scandalous leadership race that saw his only competition disqualified (I wrote a song about it).
All the while, Adrian Dix has remained Health Minister. Despite multiple failures – botched pandemic responses, overwhelmed hospitals, healthcare backlogs, poor vaccine rollouts, increasing numbers of people without family doctors, closing walk-in clinics, and staffing issues causing frequent emergency room closures and poor ambulance response times – Dix remained the Health Minister when Premier-acclaim Eby announced his inaugural cabinet appointments.
In honour of Dix's performance and in recognition of the holiday season, I present this song I wrote in early 2022!
Lyrics
You're a liar, Mr. Dix We all know that memo Your manner is somniferous, and your time was long ago, Mr. Dix Your idea of equity is 'give them gateau'! You're a yes man, Mr. Dix You toe the party line You like to recite numbers, you're more boring than Ben Stein, Mr. Dix You can't provide healthcare and it seems like it's by design! You're a has-been, Mr. Dix You are harming public health You've welcomed giant companies into our healthcare via stealth, Mr. Dix Not content with simply killing us, you're also growing corporate wealth! You're bilingual, Mr. Dix And you really enjoy French But when you get up to articulate, it makes my sphincters clench, Mr. Dix The three words that best describe your work are as follows, and I quote: "What. A. Stench!" You're a failure, Mr. Dix We're all missing family Docs All our COVID measures change based on an unknowable black box, Mr. Dix You and your government have happily handed the reins over to someone who is anti-mask, cares about the economy more than public health, and is duller than rocks! You irritate me, Mr. Dix You're completely lacking charm! Your stupid party's policies continue to harm, Mr. Dix How many deaths from drugs, COVID, and climate disasters will it take you to sound the alarm!