Today comes word that the Adrian Dix led BCNDP will bring in Brian Topp to manage their 2013 election campaign.
What will this mean to BC Voters and a greater extent to the Mainstream Media?
Back in the 1990’s Brian Topp worked Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow as his Deputy Chief of Staff.
What is remarkable about this and why it is a great move for the BCNDP is this : There are three amazing parallels to the Romanow win and our own upcoming BC Election.
1) Grant Devine and his Conservatives found themselves as far behind and as reviled as The Christy Clark BC Liberals are now.
2) There were 3 main parties who had candidates in that election, The NDP,Conservatives and the Liberals
3) The NDP ran a great campaign and won easily.
What the NDP did in Saskatchewan I suspect the BCNDP will do here. They ran a campaign dubbed in the media as the Roy in the Bubble Campaign.
This meant that Roy Romanow was so far ahead when the election started, he kept his mouth shut,held on to his big lead and won.
I suspect Brian Topp will bring some of that knowledge to this campaign and encourage Adrian Dix and the BCNDP team to do the same.
Whether you like it or not,the people are trying to tell you something!
I used to work for a small polling company back in 2000-2005.
When I was there this is how polling worked.
The company would get hired to poll customers or voters relevant to a specific question,product service or idea.
A script would be written,approved by stakeholders and loaded into a computer so that those trained in a call center environment would phone and ask a question.
They did not browbeat people into answering but rather were instructed to be overly nice as the competition for the consumers time was unbelievable.( It’s worse now even with do not call lists)
The caller would enter the data into the computer and from there a report was generated and sent out for statistical analysis.
The person doing the analysis was an experienced statistician who had analyzed data for a number of years for a number of different polls.
From there reports were present to clients and released to the news.
Lately we have seen polling done on the BC political climate with the pollsters telling us what people think today. The most obvious question they would have asked would have been” If an election were held today,who would you vote for?”
The most recent result on a poll done by Angus Reid showed us that 50% of the people would vote BCNDP if an election were held now.
The current BC Liberal government polled at 23%.
This means that as of today, Christy Clark and the BC Liberal Government are not connecting with 77% of the electorate.
You may recall he said Canadian Jobs were flowing south like the Niagara River. When it was pointed out to him that the river actually flowed north,he lashed out and said he would get the person who wrote the speech with the wrong facts.
As you know by now he went on to lose the election because of this and other gaffes. Had he taken leadership of that,the result might have been different.
My point is that through lashing out, politicians like Day and most likely Clark lose because they don’t know how to lead.
In Clark’s case she has 12 month’s to learn.
Do you think she will? ( A clue might be that Stockwell Day is one of her mentors)
So there we sit, our GDP low enough to keep us out of trouble but close enough ( 90% or higher) would get us going down a lane we don’t want to go.
This gives cause for thought in that we ( The country) are facing 3 major provincial elections in the next year and a bit.They would occur in British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario.
I have lumped Ontario in the group because although they have just come through a provincial election, it resulted in a minority of tenuous proportions.
With pollsters releasing numbers here at home in BC and 48% of people saying they would vote NDP, the chart above gives me cause to wonder why anybody would even answer that question at this point in time.
With all the problems in the world’s economic situation, why would anybody say they would vote one way or another without reviewing a parties economic platform and seeing how it would affect them?
Why would almost half of the polled people say they would vote BCNDP when history speaks of all the economic mismanagement and mayhem they caused as recently as the 1990’s?
( I know you are thinking the BC Liberals have made such a mess of things we need to give them the boot! We do, but there are other options than the BCNDP) )
In these coming elections, voters need to be better educated than ever. They should review the policies and platforms each of the 3 main parties lists on their web sites.
As the signs flew out the door and Premier Christy Clark said the BC Conservatives were here to play the spoiler role, I couldn’t help but laugh!
In 2009 when I was on the campaign team of Mary Polak in the role of Fundraising chair, I had occasion to go to the nomination meeting of Gordon Campbell.
Mr.Campbell came out on the stage and in the beginning of his speech waxed eloquent about wanting to be Premier because he owed it to British Columbia to get the province economically sound enough so that his grandchildren could live here, graduate here and get a good job here.
The problem with that speech was that he gave nearly the same one in the late ’90s in Vernon British Columbia. The only difference in the two speeches was that night in Vernon he said he wanted to be Premier so that his Children could live here, graduate here and get a good job here.
As you can see,the only thing that changed in the whole time that Campbell was Premier was that his kids grew up , had kids and the place still wasn’t good enough for them.
Ship ahead to 2011 and say Hello to Christy Clark and her families first agenda. Still the same old,I want to do good for families speech without anything ever happening.
Premier Clark has undertaken to review almost everything, a roll and task that should have been done when she first was a minister back in the early 2000’s.
The B.C Liberals have worn out their welcome with me and a lot of people. Like me those folks went through the motions in the last election because they did not want the NDP to form government.
We have suffered the nineties ( Known as the decade of destruction) under the NDP and continued the suffering in the 2000’S ( known as the decade of deceit) under the BC Liberals.
With the calling of the By-election today we begin ( for some of us continue) the process of restoring our illustrious province to one of respect and dignity. We want to return British Columbia to all those families who have been taxed and gauged over the last 20 years.
It’s time for real change in British Columbia, it’s time to correct the problems that the true spoilers of the wealth in BC Have caused, it’s time for the BC Conservatives !
The uniform of choice for anybody that runs on the Premier's record!
Potentially as the CBC is reporting, Premier Christy Clark will finally get around to it and call the by-elections tomorrow..
At the same time Robert Matas writes an excellent piece in the Globe and Mail relating to the mess that Christy Clark caused over the building of the Evergreen Line.
Without rehashing all the furor the Premier caused over her incompetence on this file, it is astounding that the B.C.Liberal Party and in particular our stunned Premier would turn around and publish a flyer listing her goof up as an accomplishment.
Even more incredible is the fact that The B.C. Liberal candidate is proud to run on her record.
While I go out for a barf bag,could somebody run out and grab a couple of straight jackets for the Premier and her prospective underling.
Anybody that runs on her record should be locked away and committed.
Should the by-elections be called tomorrow, this will be the first opportunity for British Columbians in any riding to show the Premier that she is not the right person for the job.
Do the right thing, vote, tell the Premier we get it , and start the process of giving her the boot.
The BC Conservatives have climbed into a dead heat with the BC Liberals while the approval rating of Premier Christy Clark has dropped to an unheard of low of 26%. ( How do you say Gordon Campbell anyone?)
This writer,along with the residents of Port Moody and Chilliwack would rather we catch a glimpse of a poll that matters.. That would one would occur if the Premier would take time out of her busy agenda filming videos for Hockeyville, and call the by-elections that folks have been waiting for.
It’s time Premier Clark,put families first and call the by-elections.There are enough families in these two ridings that want to have representation in the legislature.
Please get on with the job that you were unelected to,Call the By-elections now!
What has Christy Clark accomplished? More or less nothing.
Almost a year later, 1 guy is doing hard time. What about the rest ?
Over in London Ontario where they had a riot this past weekend ( Not a football game,just St.Paddy’s day) 13 knuckleheads have been arrested and countless others have been suspended from school.
So rather than refer to our Premier Christy Clark as the Iron Lady , you should ask yourself what the real Iron Lady would have done.
More than likely she would have rounded them up and sent them to some quaint outpost like the Falkland Islands.
Question to either of you: What is more substantial $20 million or $40 million?
Think back to 2008 when the economy started to deteriorate and governments around the world started to put plans in place to survive economic recessions.
Think a little further ahead to May of 2009 when the provincial election was on and then Premier Gordon Campbell tried to make you believe in light of the turmoil his party was the only one to lead you through tough economic times.
He told you that his government managed to hold the deficit to 495 million and that alone should be enough to garner your support.
Remember the feeling you had as you thought through all of this and wondered to yourself ” I am not an economic manager, I am just a regular person sitting at home who knew they economy was worse than they said, why didn’t the B.C.Liberals know this and be more on top of it than they were?”
I mean after all,they are the ones with the Finance department who is paid to research these kind of things,not you or me.
Remember you also asked yourself ” Why on earth did I vote for these people?”
I throw this out there because as I read Vaughn Palmer’s excellent column in the Vancouver Sun today, I was reminded of the Liberals economic mismanagement.
In particular a couple of quotes stood out: in 2011 Minister Pat Bell said that 20 million dollars was a substantial sum of money for the naming rights to BC Place.Then one year later the same Minister said 40 million was not good value for the taxpayers for the same rights.
Without discussing all the cost overruns and deficits in the BC Place project,one thing is abundantly clear: if a Minister in the BC Liberal Government thinks $20 million is substantial and $40 million is not, how can they lay claim to being good economic managers for the province?
Premier Christy Clark: I swear I didn't create this whole mess to recover in the polls!
Coming on the heels of their original list of stupid demands, teachers have voted 87% in favor of striking on Monday.
If you have a small business or any business for that matter, expect a call from a parent asking to reschedule or for time off. Have your kids in day care? Expect them to be more overcrowded than usual.
Can’t find anywhere to put your children? The teachers union doesn’t care,they are off for 3 days beginning Monday.
Are you a pot dealer? Stock up it’s going to be a busy week!
This action is in response to bill 22 introduced yesterday by Education Minister Abbott.
If the Education Minister believes strongly in this bill,then he should order the legislature in session over the weekend so that proceedings can be hurried along and the strike prevented.( Before anybody argues cost,consider what it will cost in late August to recall the legislature to prevent a full on strike)
Working over the weekend would be counter to the governments plan to use this as a stepping stone to recover in the polls.
What will happen?
Well it’s only 10am on Thursday,plenty of time for Premier Christy Clark to come out, contradict and throw the Education Minister under the bus.
The result? The government will come out looking just as stupid as the original demands made by the teachers and nothing will be solved.
Their standing on the polls? Worse than it is now!
I am the Premier and I can fool all of the people all of the time!
The Premier Lied! She went on Twitter in the Morning and said there would be no new tax hikes in the budget and then increases your MSP Premiums. A Premium is another word for tax.
Finance Minister Falcon Shrugged it off by saying it’s only $5 per month ( $60 per year).
In the BC Liberal world it’s only $60,in ours it’s a LIE.
This is just another in a long line of gaffes By the B.C.Liberal Premier.
She promised to do politics different and she starts her budget day with a lie.What could be worse?
Kinda makes you think the Premier is in over her head,doesn’t it?
Kinda makes you wonder if you can believe this whole budget thing too ?
