Political Insider: Insightful Canadian Political Information

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

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

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 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!

BC Liberals Shutdown negotiations with Teachers! #bcpoli #bctf #canpoli

Pretty soon BCTFer Susan Lambert will wish this man was Education Minister!

Rich Coleman’s water boy Peter Fassbender put a hold on the bargaining process with teachers today in hopes of imposing I mean negotiating Christy Clark’s nauseating 10 year deal with the teachers.

The proposed deal is nauseating because a) it will probably never happen b) if it ever did it would be broken or torn up long before the 10 years would be up.

In fact if they somehow imposed ( reached) a deal before the next election,it would no doubt become an election issue to cover up the eventual failure of Clark’s LNG pipe dream.

By the time all the hysteria over the 10 year deal dies down, Susan Lambert will no doubt wish she was still dealing with George Abbott rather than Premier Coleman ( should Clark somehow blow the by election) and flunky Fassbender.

Stay tuned I think this issue will get a whole lot more interesting between now and September when the kids are scheduled to return to school.

Fassbender:Madam Lambert You will take the 10 year deal or else!

Adrian Dix Blames Election Loss on those who moved on because they lost their jobs! #bcpoli #canpoli #bcndp

As crazy as it sounds,today,at the weekend conference of blame the BCNDP is holding to determine what went wrong during the May election,Adrian Dix blamed a large part of the loss on those folks who are blue collar workers and NDP supporters who lost their jobs and moved on .

This is a totally illogical statement coming from the man who, without warning, changed his position on the Kinder Morgan project which surely cost them the election. In fact it still has not occurred to Adrian that by opposing this project it would result in the loss of more of those blue collar jobs he has accused the BC Liberals of scaring off.

In fact if the BCNDP wants some hindsight into why they lost they should simply read Gary Mason’s excellent column in the Globe. It details for the most part why the Liberals won and how they came back from the dead.

From my work in the field during the election,Mason only left out one part of the NDP defeat and it was it important and it was this : After the Kinder Morgan fiasco which led to Dix’s lousy performance at the debate, my field operatives started reporting to me that Dix’s people has told them that Dix was such a wimpster they were staying home and were not prepared to vote for him.

The NDP,instead of putting the election on cruise control,should have been hammering the Liberals on their record and their litany of scandals.

As for the debate, BC Conservative leader John Cummin’s first line had a prophetic vision attached to it, just not in the way we thought. If you recall he said: You are tuned in tonight because you know Christy Clark and the BC Liberals are going to lose the election and you want to see what kind of premier Adrian Dix will make.

The people saw alright and what resulted was a BC Liberal majority!

Pigs at the Trough! #bcpoli #canpoli

In a continuation of the theme from yesterday’s blog post ( and every newspaper I have seen) people are very upset at the pay hikes given out by the Christy Clark government before they were even sworn in.

Phone lines were jammed on the talk shows this morning with people calling in to show their disgust. Kind of reminded me of those same calls that came in over the HST. You recall that episode was not to pretty for the BC Liberals.

People said after the election that Clark was a good campaigner but a lousy governor and she would revert to the later quickly. I don’t think anybody realized how quickly it would start.

You would have thought that in the name of screwing the people over they would have at least waited until after that election was done.

Except that Clark and her team are extremely smug and arrogant and could care less about what the people think.

Patronage and payback are at the top of her list. ( More on that in a later post)

This event in itself shows that she really doesn’t get it.

The voters in Westside-Kelowna ought to do her and her government a favor a teach her a harsh lesson now.

They should show their angst for both losing the MLA they voted for a few weeks back and for this terrible act of managing the taxpayers money.

They should take advantage of this golden opportunity and vote against her.

A loss here will no doubt cause the party to give her the boot and just maybe they will get their act together and get a good leader that believes in honesty and transparency.

But then this is BC and these are the BC Liberals so who knows what they would do.

The Christy Clark Team: Let the Spending Begin! #bcpoli #canpoli

New BC Liberal Cabinet, same old Sneaky BS!

Even before they were sworn in, the new Christy Clark Government signed an order in cabinet giving raises to some of their highest ranking insider bureaucrats!

This sneaky act comes at at time when not only did they promise transparency but as Clark was publicly telling then to watch spending.

She obviously speaks out of both sides of her mouth.

I can only imagine the reaction of the teachers when they are told to shut up , sign the 10 year contract and that there is no money for salary increases or the seniors who have to cough up the new user fee for the wheelchairs to pay for these raises.

Where on earth is the BCNDP while all this is going on? Are they not the opposition?

Given their disastrous results in the election ( they were supposed to win the polls said), you would think they would be all over this.

Unless of course they are busy licking their wounds!