Will the Summer Sun Set on Adrian Dix? #bcpoli #canpoli

Adrian Dix and I Clowning Around before Coast Guard Speeches.
Adrian Dix and I Clowning Around before Coast Guard Speeches.

So as the summer of 2013 races by and fall encroaches on our good times,what will become of Adrian Dix?

Will he stay,will he go or will he be pushed out?

Who Knows? For one thing the BCNDP has a habit of cannibalizing their own, just ask Carol James.

Already there are sounds he will be pushed out.

I spent a bit of time with Adrian when the BC Conservatives were working on the Coast Guard file back last spring.

I left with the impression he was too nice a guy for the role that was before him.

The election itself bore that out.

They should have attacked the BC Liberals rotten record of government and scandals.

They didn’t and it cost them an election they should have won.

My take: If they want to get anywhere four years hence they need to move swiftly to change their leadership without a public head-chopping.

Dix should do the right thing and go of his own free will.. This will keep the party united and allow them to change leaders quickly.

Another head chopping ala James will be nasty and I think mortally wound the party.

Why the short time frame for a change?

1) Four years goes by fast and they need to rebuild more than just the political leadership. Their executive must go as well.

2) The Greens will not sit idly by while the NDP drags their feet and will pick up support on the left.

3) The federal riding changes will be announced in a few short months and if you believe as I do that the BCNDP are merely the West-coast wing of the Federal NDP than you have to know that the next two years will preoccupy them with federal nomination battles. This will eat into their provincial rebuilding in a big way.

4) The provincial party could lose potential leadership candidates to those aforementioned nomination battles.

Failure to act now means they will limp into the 2017 BC Provincial election with nothing new to offer.

They would open their flank to the Greens and the BC Conservatives, with the possibility that not only would they lose the 2017 election but might not even form the opposition.

This would be a disaster they would probably not recover from.

Anti-Pipeline Gang Should Rethink Their Priorities ! #bcpoli #canpoli #pipline

Where are They Now?

In the last month we have had at least four terrible accidents involving either rail or trucks that transport oil in this country.

We have has rail oil spills in Saskatchewan and in Quebec.

We have had a jet fuel spill in the Slocan Valley and most recently a life ending collision in Lloydminster Saskatchewan that resulted in a number of deaths.

You would expect that by now the environmentalists and the anti-pipeline gang would be either chaining themselves to railroad tracks or lying across roads in an effort to stop this .

But no, they are lining up against Enbridge trying to kill the pipeline.

Seems to me their priorities are a little out of whack, don’t you think?

BC Liberals Miss Their Budget Target; Let the BS Begin! #bcpoli #canpoli

Mary Polak : Do you ever know how to BS Mike you even had me going for a moment!

Back in the day (2009) Gordon Campbell misrepresented ( goofed,screwed up,lied your choice) about the deficit during the 2009 election.

That was the election that brought us the HST and cost Carol James her job as NDP leader.

Eventually that error, lie or goof-up cost Campbell his job as well.

Move ahead now 4 years to today when the New (lol) Christy Clark government presented a financial update and reported they missed their target by more than $175 million.

It could have been worse they said but for the new spending controls introduced halfway through the year.

This speaks volumes for the likelihood that their budget that they sailed on during the election will actually balance.

In the business world the executive and CEO who reported that would have been sent on their merry way but in the government world this crew was rewarded with a new 4 year term. ( likely 4.5 year term in the election is moved to the fall to allow for budget debate.

The most hilarious statement out of all of this comes from NDPer Mike Farnworth who went on the record and said he was concerned about rising debt.

Where were you during the election Mike? Why didn’t you and Adrian bring that little tidbit up then?

Once again this gaffe will cause an NDP leader to lose his job simply because it illustrates that glaring hole in their election campaign, namely they didn’t hammer the Christy Clark Today’s BC Liberals over their record.

Only in B.C can one party lie,err, mislead, or goof up ( your choice) and the leader of the other party get fired over it.

Senate Reform- A Referendum? #bcpoli #canpoli #senate

Abolish it and Turn it into a Museum?

There has been a lot of talk lately about reforming or abolishing the Senate in Canada. ( Where lately can be described as for the last 100 years or so) but the dumbest idea of them all comes from senator himself. Senator Hugh Segal.

Senator Segal suggests the whole idea of Senate abolition be put to the Canadian people in the form of a referendum.

This very idea shows why the senate should be abolished as Segal himself shows through his suggestion he has joined the long list of Senators who have lost their minds once they have entered the chamber.

In the early nineties I was an activist helping promote the document known as the Charlottetown Accord. I had the good fortune of getting my education on the document from Constitutional law expert and now Saskatchewan Chief Justice Robert G. Richards. Justice Richards ( A Liberal representative I might add) reviewed the document and gave it is seal of approval.

I was the tri party camapign manager entrusted with getting the team together from all supporting parties in the riding of Regina Wascana. Our riding was one of only two that voted in favor of the accord.

The problem with the result wasn’t that the accord was defeated but rather why it was defeated in the referendum.

If you recall during the period it was then Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney who led the charge.

I has serious and educational discussions with several of the major players in this exercise and one I throughly enjoy red the most was an interesting discussion I has on the way to the airport with former Prime Minister Joe Clark.

Clark had been through Regina and had just given one of his better speeches and I asked him the question of what he thought the outcome of the referendum would be. ( This was before the process had gotten very far along ). He told me in confidence that he thought we were going to lose.

I asked him why and told him that I thought the accord was great. He agreed and said the people won’t vote for or against the idea of the accord. They will vote to give Mulroney and the government a serious ‘poke in the eye”.

The night Mulroney gave the speech where he ripped the papers above his head to signify Canada being ripped apart,I gave thought to what Clark had told me.

When the results came in it was obvious why the accord lost,the people had ganged up on Mulroney and poked him square in the eye as Clark said they would.

This leads me back to Segal’s dumb idea.

With all the current goings on in the senate having a referendum will result not only in the current government getting poked in the eye but I would hazard a guess that that poke would be followed by a swift kick where it hurts the most.

The country would miss another golden opportunity to clean up the mess.

We can ill afford that!

Updated:John Cummins Calls It A Day! #bcpoli

Could hHe be Stepping Down?

According to reports on News1130 John Cummins is calling it a day.

Who can blame him.

He has put in a lot of hours and taken a lot of crap over the last couple of years.

With the result of the recent provincial election and the fact that the party needs to renew and fund raise, if true Cummins resigning will allow that process to get started sooner than later.

I know from participating in the growth of the party since 2009, that 4 years has away of zipping on by.

Should the report be true ( It says the party will have an official announcement tonight) than I for one wish John all the best.

I have already heard rumblings that there are a number of people are interested in running for the leadership should the rumor be true.

But that’s a post for another day.

Today, should the announcement come is John’s day.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: It’s Official

Stick Up At the Gas Pump! #gasprices #bcpoli

As I got out of the car I swore….

As I got out of the car this morning I swore I heard a voice coming from the gas pump asking me to raise my hands and keep them where I could see them.

They finally snuck the price over $1.50 per litre. ( Langley BC if you are curious)

The next target will be $1.60 .

As I pumped ( it was either that or push ) I looked around the station .

The looks on peoples faces said it all.

I looked at the guy across from me and both of us said the 7 words you used to not be able to say on TV.

In fact I found myself hankering for the good old days, you know,last week, when they were giving the stuff away for $1.28.

I shouldn’t have been shocked,after all I have read Jeff Rubin’s excellent series of books wherein he says it won’t be long before gas is up over $2.00. ( perhaps a little longer than even Mr. Rubin thought but still inevitable).

What got me even more choked was that an hour later I passed that same station selling the stuff for $1.38.

Don’t tell me earthly tragedies caused the gas price to rise for an hour, that’s a load of crap.

Plain , pure and simple consumer gouging is what it is.

It’s enough to make even a guy like me who wraps himself in the Canadian flag start carrying his passport for the 15 minute trip to the US to save some money.

How about you?

Ontario Voters Getting Ready to Run Wynne and Company Out of Town? #ontpoli #canpoli

Time to clean up this once proud province I used to call home!

After the dust settled in the BC By-election, out comes a poll showing the Ontario Progressive Conservatives creeping up on the scandal prone Liberals in their soon to be held by-elections.

It looks like voters have had enough and they are ready to send a message to Kathleen Wynne and company and so they should.

I know you can make a case that these are McGuinty scandals but most of the people involved are those same people that sit on the bench today with Kathleen and her cabinet.

Heck even McGuinty himself, while being confused over his own email rules,went on record and said they failed as a government.

If they failed as their former leader claims they should be shown the door.

The voters in Ontario have a chance to start that process in August.

Let’s hope they do!

Political Insider Calls By-Election in Favor of Christy Clark! #bcpoli #canpoli

The BC Hydro File will quickly wipe the smile of of Clark’s face!

With 35% of the polls reporting and Christy Clark getting 61% of the vote, I think we can safely say that the by-election is over and now the province can get down to the business of watching Clark govern.

She’s got some fancy dancing to do given the hefty increases that are purported to be in the works on the BC Hydro file.

It should not be a tough task for her and Minister Bennet.

As has been reported over and over ad nauseum during the waste of taxpayers money known as the by-election: It only takes Clark 5 minutes to get familiar with a file.

She’ll need every second of that 5 minutes because that’s the file that will cause the government and by extension the taxpayers the big headaches over the next few years,

Get ready because the increases are coming courtesy of the just voted in Clark and the BC Liberal-Bc Hydro deferral accounts.

Stay tuned!

Federal Politics: Boundary Changes Coming; So are Nomination Battles! #bcpoli #canpoli #election2015

All is calm on the federal election front :NOT!

Federal politics is about to get very interesting.

Shortly there will be what is purported to be a major cabinet shuffle in Ottawa.This will result in the usual amount of retirements and those who say they will not run in the 2015 federal election.

Evidence of this is the quick retirement of Cabinet Minister Vic Toews.

Soon after the shuffle , the new federal boundaries will be announced. This will result in the number of ridings increasing in Canada from 308 to 338.

I would expect this announcement sometime in the fall.

The Prime Minister has already gone on record saying there will be open nominations in all ridings. This did not happen in 2011 because of the minority government situation.

Already the chirping has started with the folks in Alberta up in arms over who runs where.

I think that what goes on in the rest of Canada will be pale in comparison to what will go on in BC, specifically Surrey.

Take the riding I live in, the potentially named West Langley-Cloverdale.

Already former MP Gurmant Grewal has announced his intention to seek the seat.

That was followed by the announcement of “never been more than a back bench MLA ” Dave Hayer retiring from provincial politics ( likely because he thought the BC Liberals were going to lose the last election) and declaring he will also run.

On top of that we now hear rumors that former Federal Liberal supporter and Sukh Dhaliwal backer ( you remember Sukh, he was a former MP turned MLA wanna be who the BC Liberals tossed for forgetting to file his taxes) Paul Brar is telling local folk that he too will contest the seat.

I have also heard rumors of other potential entrants into the fray. Current Langley E.D.A. President Tako J.van Popta‘s name has been bandied about.

That’s 4 potential contestants already and it’s only 2013. ( I haven’t even mentioned that this is the EDA that current Surrey-White Rock MP Russ Hiebert calls home)

This by the way won’t restrict itself to my beloved Conservative Party.

Election Mania will run rampant as soon as the new ridings are announced.

Hear a rumor? Let me know, confidentially of course, and I’ll check it out and share it with everybody via the blog!