BC Election 2013: The Aftermath #bcpoli

Which BC Conservative would you throw under the bus? My answer my surprise you!

What a night!

The people have spoken loud and clear ( evidently not loud enough for the pollsters to hear) and unbelievably the BC Liberals are returned to power.

The shocking result of the night?

For me it was Jag Brar losing his seat. Never saw that coming. Politics aside he is as nice a guy as you will meet.

So what happened? Christy Clark and Mike McDonald ran a great campaign ( I give credit where its due)

Adrian Dix and the NDP spent far too much time keeping quiet and yes trying to prop up the BC Conservatives rather than concentrating on winning their campaign.

They played not to lose and as happens so often in sports when you play that way you usually do lose.

I would expect at some point soon he will leave and some of his handlers will get canned too. ( Marcella Munro might be free lancing )

They should have come out swinging and hammered the Liberals on their record. They didn’t and showed weak leadership.

I had heard later in the campaign that some of their supporters were so upset at Dix that they were going to stay home or vote Liberal to do him in.

Given the result and the low voter turnout maybe thats what happened.

What else happened? The Greens won a seat and that means Jane will leave ( she said she would ) and I would expect Andrew Weaver will become leader. He won his seat and by all accounts he is great so why shouldn’t he.

I haven’t done the math yet but by all quick accounts the green split in the vote cost the NDP seats. ( you might want to check the Conservative vote, I noticed we split with the NDP in a few areas costing them seats too!).

The Green win is more interesting in that if they can build on it, the NDP may have blown their only chance to win in the foreseeable future.

It’s not all roses for Clark as she lost her seat and must now look for somebody to step down to run in another expansive by-election.

Where? Already talk of Richmond or North Vancouver.

She likely deserves a chance to run again but her party is fickle and believe me the 801 club is no figment of any reporters imagination.

Chief Soap Box orator Stockwell Day will likely be the saddest of the BC Liberal crew today. Despite his blustery rhetoric during the election about vote splitting, I think he actually wants to lead the Tomorrow’s BC Liberals and last nights result ( barring a late appearance by team 801) might have ended that.

If it has I say good riddance. If you are that scared of a vote split you should move any ways.

What about the BC Conservatives?

Who knows but one thing for sure is that this result is more of a reflection of people wanting to drive the vote out than anything we did.

What stands out in my mind? Our line from the debate: yiu are thinking that premier Clark and The BC Liberals are going to lose the election and you tuned in tonight to see what kind of Premier Adrian Dix would make.

Kinda backfired eh! They didn’t like what they saw and it hit them that the Libs were going to lose.

So if you are looking for a BC Conservative to throw under the bus than look no further than here.

After all I ran the campaign.

Moe Sihota and Christy Clark: Two Bollywood Actors Who Deserve Each Other! #bcpoli #bcndp #election2013

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One One hand you have a premier who undoubtedly thinks that in her heart she is a Bollywood actress and on the other hand you have a simpleton NDPer who after his party slams the BC Liberals for the sham that is known as the “faux” Bollywood awards, cozys up right next to her proving once and for all he ( Moe Sihota) is politically inept .

Of course Sihota is no garden variety NDPer, he is the President and he should know better.

This is also no climb up the IQ scale for Clark as she once again demonstrates that she is clueless as she hitches herself up to Sihota and his checkered past.

Lets be clear, this is not a case of two parties working together, this picture is an example of the kind of rank opportunism that both Clark and Sihota are famous for.

If Adrian Dix and his team had been thinking election 2013 would be a cake walk, Sihota linking himself up with the Faux Premier at the Faux Bollywood awards will remind the public how similar and sleazy these two parties are.

It’s just another reason why it’s time for a change as the two so called main parties continue to show a mirror image of themselves.

Kinda makes the BC Conservatives and the Green Party look appealing doesn’t it?

The election is a little over a week away and already the fun has begun. Stay tuned.

George Heyman is your new Dipper Candidate for Vancouver- Fairview.

I am keeping my eye on you Adrian!

George Heyman was won the nomination as the BCNDP Candidate for Vancouver Fairview leaving city councilor Geoff Meggs either on city council or searching for a new seat.

This is good news for Vancouver taxpayers who just saved $1 million on the cost of a by-election assuming he does what he says and stays on council.

Most pundits had predicted this nomination would go the other way.

Both are excellent candidates and I am sure that George will represent the BCNDP well.

In fact George will probably keep Adrian Dix on his toes in that he would make an excellent leader himself.

Congratulations George!

Adrian Dix: When He talks YOU should be Listening!

Dix: There’s a sucker born every minute!

Adrian Dix has been doing a lot of talking in public lately and if the latest polls are to be believed at this point not many of the voting public are paying much attention.

It may be that it is not close enough to an election and nobody cares but it is time to listen because this is platform stuff that the electorate will be voting on.

One week ago Mr.Dix spoke to the Vancouver Board of Trade and advised them that if elected premier he would raise corporate taxes back to 2008 levels.

This should be of concern to the average voter because an increase in corporate taxes will either result in a loss of jobs or at the very least result in frozen or decreased wages in the private sector.

It has to, there will be less money for companies to allocate for raises or benefits.

On the heels of that we see reports today that Dix told reporters after a speech to the Union of British Columbia Municipalities that he would repeal balanced budget law if elected premier .

Dix claimed the law as is was a joke.

While I agree that the Liberals have made a mockery of the law, the nice thing about forcing a government to go before the house with hat in hand to ask to run a deficit is at-least it goes on Hansard .

This forces both a record ,a vote and yes the house to be in session.

To allow any government in this day and age to run a deficit and tell you later is heresy.

With Dix ( he has a history of forging memos and fare-beating) and the BCNDP’s propensity to raise taxes without warning why would you want to give them this license.

There can be no more open blank cheque book style of government; we have seen how the Liberals have handled that. ( Look at the bad press this week with government begging for money for senate elections that have not yet been put to the house yet).

Remember the 1990″s and the BCNDP fudget budgets and recall Dix played a leading roll with that group too?

If anything the law should be tougher,not repealed.The voting public should demand it!

What about being open and accountable before spending our money?

What do you think?

Adrian in the Bubble!

Brian Topp: SSH Adrian, Not one word!

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.

It worked then and it will probably work now.

What do you think?

Christy Clark: Leadership or Lack of it? You decide.

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.

It was reported that when asked about this, Premier Clark blasted the polling company.

I can tell you from experience that it is hardly the polling company’s fault that Ms Clark and her government is not connecting with the electorate.

Had she come out and accepted the blame ( or at least some of it) she would have taken leadership of the situation.

She didn’t and once again missed a glorious opportunity to connect with the people she needs.

I recall years ago another politician missed a chance to do the same thing.

His name was Stockwell Day. He made a grave error in a speech in Niagara Falls.

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)

What are your thoughts?

Voting: For Politics or Economics?

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.

Go to BC Consertvatives, BC Liberals, BCNDP, or BC Green Party and see for yourself.

Can’t find any policy? Then you should wonder what those parties are trying to hide.

Before you cast your vote or answer pollsters, you as a voter need to decide whether you are voting for politics or economics.

In this day and age the answer should be economics.

What do you think?

Watch this space between now and May 2013 for policy and platform as each party releases it.

BC Conservatives: Not Spoilers; Here for BC!

Here for BC!

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 !

Potentially on the eve before the by-elections are called the Globe and Mail reminds us how stupid Premier Clark is!

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.

Your family will be glad you did!

BC Conservatives Climb in polls,Catch BC Liberals!

 

 

Forum research today unveiled their latest poll and it is full of bad news for the BC Liberals and their hapless unelected Premier Christy Clark.

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!