Heard this past week in Surrey is talk of a new slate to be put together in time for the November Municipal elections.
As the story goes the new slate would be headed by mayoralty candidate Barinder Rasode.
Her slate would take on the invincible Surrey mayor Dianne Watts.
Apparently the Mayor is not so incincible with the lack of police and the recent Surrey hockey Mom Murder.
Watts has done a great job in her tenure as Mayor but so has Rasode in her role as a councilor.
I met her last week at the Surrey Women’s Center.She was excellent and would be a good mayor too!
It would also be good for the city to have some strong competition for Watts come the election as the last election was a cakewalk for her and her slate and a lot of people didn’t even bother to vote.
It also adds fuel to the fire of the other rumor drifting around Surrey.
That would be Watts leaving to run federally for the Conservative party.
Heard any rumors? Drop me a confidential line through the contact page and I’ll dig around and report what I find.
Only in BC Politics you say? Not anymore with all the goings on on Toronto lately.
Tomorrow, disingenuous Mayor wanna be Denzil Minnan-Wong will finish off his own political career when he brings a motion before Toronto City Council to ask the that the whole matter concerning the Ford affair be turned over to the provincial government so that they will step in and throw Ford out.
Minnan-Wong is disingenuous because he says he is bringing the motion to have Ford removed to clear the air around city hall and not as a prelude to the launch of his mayoralty campaign. This, as anybody that follows politics knows, is a load of opportunistic crap.
Of course he is trying to get a head start on the mayoralty campaign, but he does not have the balls to admit it. He’s just another gutless opportunistic politician who will find out shortly after he proceeds with his motion that he will be lucky if his family will vote for him , let alone find any volunteers Conservative or otherwise to help with his campaign.
Minnan-Wong would be a poster boy for what is wrong with today’s opportunistic excuses for politicians except that after the motion there will probably be enough poster boys and girls from the Ontario Liberal Party trying to present themselves front and center to help rule against Ford and create and even bigger scandal in Ontario.
Can you imagine a bunch of Liberals ( ones who are at the root of enough scandals of their own doing; think gas plants ) being put in the position of making that kind of a ruling over a Conservative Mayor.
This time the mayors are trying to introduce to lower mainlanders yet another tax.
They seem to feel it’s OK because they haven’t brought in a sales tax on Trans Link before, just a gas tax!
They also want to bring a vehicle registration levy.
So. it started in Vancouver with the war on the car ( tolls,gas taxes) and now they will attempt to extend it to the beaten down taxpayer with the war on the bus.
Martyn Brown has a point and I will help him make it!
In the last provincial election according to both statistics and the mainstream media, 50% of the people did not vote.
I have said for a long time that is not true. I believe most people are voting when they don’t show up at the polls. I think they are voting in a way most people are not accustomed to. They are voting with their feet!
That means by not showing up at the polls and voting with a pencil they are voting in a different way saying that politics doesn’t matter because the way politicians and people in the backrooms conduct business and themselves is not relevant and is a waste of their time.
Martyn Browns new book reaffirms what I have felt for a while.
Brown’s excellent book, Towards a New Government in British Columbia, could just as easily be entitled Towards a New Government in any Province. To wit: just look at the gong show that is known as an election in Quebec.
There are no platforms revealed and it is basically 3 parties at war with each other while 1 of those parties is also taking on the country.
I am surprised the polls show anybody will vote.
In our province,BC, the Conservatives and the Liberals are at war with each other while the BC NDP hasn’t said much of anything other than they will have something to say when the election is on relative to their platform.
I am also surprised the polls show anybody will vote.
I have been involved in backroom discussion at municipal, provincial, federal and the board level. I can tell you the discussion revolves around 3 questions. They are: How do we get young people involved, how do we get women involved and how do we reach the 50% of the people who don’t vote.
I can also tell you from discussions with friends in all parties they are the same questions they all ask.
The answer, as Brown clearly says and he is right is this: If you keep going the way you are you can’t and won’t.
Why would they?
Elections and governments always go the same way. One side wins,hangs on for a few terms and gets booted out either by scandal or for not doing the few things they pledged to do during the election.
What about the favorite expression coined in the media around North America. That would be ” It’s the first year of their mandate, they are doing the hard things now so they don’t have to do them near election time” or some similar coined phrase.
What about politicians who run on this’ we are here to do politics differently’ and then they don’t.
We elect politicians and governments for 4 year terms and expect them to carry out the work for the whole four years not one and buy my vote for the other three.
I have argued for term limits on these pages and that would be a start but even with a limited term there would still be time for shenanigans.
We, the voting public, need to hold governments and wanna be governments to account.
It is no longer good enough to wait until the election to reveal a platform.
It is no longer good enough to vote for faux change.
We need term limits and tough recall laws.
What we need most, however, are politicians who are not afraid to lay it on the line. People who will talk out loud about what they will do,why they will do it and then stick to the course and not break our hearts.
We need the backrooms and the parties to stop going to war.
It’s no longer good enough to go to the polls and vote for more of the same.
Something drastic has to happen.
For until it does, this former backroom guy, will join the 50 % and vote with my feet.
What would BC look like if Gordon Campbell had been limited to two terms?
Elections are always a time of renewal.
The electorate whether its National, International,Provincial,Municipal or just at the riding or board level get a chance to review and evaluate the people carrying out the jobs they were elected to do.
This fall there are by-elections in Ontario ( which could lead to a provincial election depending upon the results) a provincial election in Quebec, several Annual General meetings and of course the U.S. Presidential election.
When I hear parties that get hammered at the ballot box say it’s time to take a deep look at ourselves and commit to a renewal program I just shake my head.
If there were term limits right down to the volunteer level, renewal would be a constant process.
As a rule there isn’t and as a consequence the same people tend to get elected to the positions over an over again.
Not only does this lead to what I call empire building and other assorted sleazy BS, but it stifles growth because people who would like to get involved don’t because they think their chances of getting elected are slim.
This is one of the things I like about U.S. politics who have term limits right up to the President.
From a voters point of view if you don’t get what you were promised short of recall, it provides at least a window of relief.
I have been an EDA president Federally with the Conservative Party of Canada and I left after two years because I think, although they have 3 year terms, two years was plenty.
Provincially same thing,although there are no term limits, I announced to the board in June I was not standing for a directors position and that I would serve out my term and get involved in other areas.
People going to an Annual General Meeting have the best chance to start the renewal process. instead of simply voting for the same people over and over listen to what the new folks have to say. Ask those that run year after year what exactly they have done to make the process better. This is your chance to hold those you voted for previously accountable. It is you chance to renew and revitalize your party from the ground up!
Think about Municipal elections, the same people run over and over again. How many new ideas get stifled because there aren’t enough new faces to inject something different into the discussion.How many good people don’t bother to run? How many newspapers tell you at election time that one spot opened up.( it’s an election; all spots should be open)
As far as MLA’s and MP’s go, two terms is sufficient for the reasons mentioned above plus the associated saving with the so-called gold-plated pensions. ( remember too some of these people have been MLA s a lot longer than 3 years because they started in opposition)
Imagine if you will that Gordon Campbell had been limited to two terms. How different might the last election have been under a new BC Liberal leader.Imagine again in 2009, new people in both the NDP and the BC Liberals running to be MLAs instead of the same old.
What would the political landscape in BC look-like today if that had taken place?
What do you think, would term limits be worth looking at in Canada?
In one corner you have Geoff ( I declare war on the car and lean-to the far left ) Meggs versus George ( I am in the center and would have made a good leader) Heyman.
This nomination will be worth watching for a lot of reasons:
Will Adrian come out and support buddy Geoff sending a message he like his friends and that the party is veering left?
Will he support George and send a centrist message to the voting public?
Will Meggs if he wins immediately resign his municipal Councillors seat?
Will Mayor Moonbeam get involved and demonstrate a win for Meggs means bicycle lanes across the province? ( Maybe they will put one up one the Pat Bay Highway from the ferry terminal to the legislature for Meggs to peddle his way to work?)
Will George learn the hard way that even though he thinks he is going to win there will be a busload of last-minute membership sign ups for Meggs enabling him to defeat from the jaws of certain victory?
Will Adrian sit squarely on the fence,support neither of them and still profess to be a leader?
What do you think,will this race define the BCNDP?
This time, thankfully it was over in a month and only cost $15,000.
Of course I am referring to socialist dipshit Patti Bacchus and her shutting off of the school yard mosquito anti vandalism devices in lower mainland school yards.
In less than month after Bacchus opened her big mouth a school yard was vandalized and yes knuckleheads started loitering again.
In the time between shutting them down and today, neighbors had to resume combing school yards for spent needles and the like.
To people like Bacchus and the BC Civil Liberties association this was preferable rather than leaving them on until their “study” reached its obvious conclusion.
Of course Vancouverites will remember Bacchus from another act of stupidity.That would be blaming boys and men for watching hockey and UFC which, lead to them causing hockey riots.
