May 2013: Sweeping Changes ahead in British Columbia.
Honest open accountable government is the mantra that the BC Liberals were swept into power with back in 2001
When they are swept out of office in May 2013 their epitaph will read ” Honest Open Accountable Government; Not!”
To wit:
BC Rail
Basi/Virk
HST
Shutting down the BC utilities commission
Sneaky RFPs like the current liquor privatization scheme.
These are just a few of the things that are not open or honest but if I read the people correctly, the Christy Clark led Liberal team will surely be held accountable for.
What about the liquor RFP. If it comes to fruition the way it has been portrayed ( haven’t seen a compelling reason from the Liberals why it won’t) how rotten and underhanded will that be ?
Getting back to 2001, the big joke of the day was that nobody could find anybody who ever admitted voting NDP. Fast forward to 2012/2013 is there anybody out their who will admit to having voted BC Liberal?
Specifically politicians not listening and taxing without representation.
That was the cause of riots like the Boston Tea Party through to rioting in Canada today.
Anything else? Yes Through high taxes the theme that middle class and lower class are being phased out leaving them nowhere to go and nothing to belong to, except maybe a riot or two !
Ask yourself this: What does a person or class of people think when a government decides to invest their money in flowers for a road meridian or bike lanes?
This might be a partial explanation for the hockey riots and is certainly an explanation for why over half of eligible voters don’t vote.
Has there ever been a riot or revolt without all this violence in any country including Canada?
I think yes and it would be our recent revolt against the HST. In fact there is no telling how that particular issue could have gotten out of hand if it wasn’t so well-organized.
Have our politicians got the message?
No they haven’t. An example of this would be in British Columbia right now and the big hurry to rush a whole lot of bills through the house without debate. ( Just wait for liquor prices to rise after the fast pedaling of the liquor distribution bill)
But it’s not just governments that don’t get it.
The recent labor mayhem with the teachers is a good example too! If extra curricular activities are taken away from students and from adults who enjoy putting them on. it will be one less place for those people to belong.
This is the fault of both, government and the union because neither are listening.
So am I condoning violent riots to strike out at the government?
Heavens no, the people who incite the violence need to be dealt with quickly and harshly.
What I am saying , the politicians who don’t listen also need to be dealt with quickly and severely in the same fashion as the HST.
They need to be voted out of office and replaced with a government who listens to all of their constituents.
British Columbians are lucky. They will get the chance to rise up and revolt and send the current BC Liberal Government packing in 2013.
In 2013 vote carefully, vote for the party that will represent your concerns ( links to parties websites can be found at the bottom of the highlighted blog post)
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.
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.
Thomas Mulcair has won the leadership of the Federal NDP and is the new leader of the opposition , Now what?
He will more than likely move the party to the center and most likely very quickly.
What will this mean to Canadian politics?
First and foremost it will almost certainly force the Liberal party of Canada to advance their own leadership convention.
Why?
Because Mulcair and the NDP will devour the Liberals if they get control of the center and Marijuana Bob wouldn’t like that.
Also the interim leader of the Liberal Party, under it’s constitution, cannot negotiate a merger with the NDP. They need a permanent leader, it’s as simple as that.
What else?
It will probably force a lot of the extreme leftists that are currently have a home in the NDP to go somewhere else. ( Hello Elizabeth May and the Green Party you belong together )
Anything else?
Yes the right side of the Liberal Party will likely bolt to the Conservatives rather than join the NDP.
That it?
No the Bloc had hopes and aspirations going into today. Thomas Mulcair probably killed them off.
Anything good come of all this?
Yes likely the Liberal Party as you know it is done, so is the Bloc?
Any last thoughts?
Yes given all the mayhem and delays in the voting today , Rebecca Blaikie handle herself well. She is a good President of the NDP and has a lot to be proud of.
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.
Jack Layton must be looking down proud tonight as dipper comrade Craig Scott soundly trounced fellow socialist in the Brawl for it all in Toronto Danforth.
It was an exciting day what with Olivia Chow getting booted out of a voting station and Bob Rae aka Marijuana Bob finally admitting what the rest of us know:” All I am is the leader of a third party!
I suspect the real big winner tonight will be Thomas Mulcair as he prepares to become Dipper in charge this weekend.
First on his agenda: Devour the Liberal Party of Canada.
Big Loser: Marijuana Bob; he just made a bad day worse and conceded on behalf of his candidate.
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?
Laurie Throness: I learned everything I know about how to run elections from Premier Christy Clark!
As hard as it it to believe B.C. Liberal Laurie Throness said in an interview in the Chilliwack Times that having election signs up before the by-election is called is no big deal.
Of course that is against the rules and is therefore cheating.
So to Mr. Throness cheating is no big deal.
In another act of ,well stupidity,members of his campaign team went to city hall today to pay the $500 permit to place signs during an election. They were of course refused because there is no election on.
A good politician knows the rules and also surrounds himself with people that know them as well.
These cheaters sound like rank amateurs? Do they not take the potential by-election seriously enough to at least read the rules?
Can you imagine them as handlers of the public trust?
Are you as dumbfounded as I am that Mr.Throness thinks cheating is no big deal?
Are you as blown away as I am that he openly states that on the public record?
BC's Economic D-Day should be now,not after Election 2013
This week in Ontario Don Drummond,chair of commission on public service reform , released a 688 page report that should serve as a cautionary tale to voters here at home in B.C.
We have a little over a year until we have our own provincial election and we have plenty of time to ask those who are running what they are planning and what will it cost.
We should not have to wait for the writ to drop do know exactly where we stand fiscally and where the parties will take us.
All during the last election we heard that the deficit was in the area of 495 million only to be told right after that it was in the billions. The B.C. Liberals told us no HST and then brought it in right after the election.
Today,Adrian Dix and the NDP have a number of promises and plans so how much? What is your plan to get us to where you want the province to go.
Adrian says he doesn’t want to be in the limelight. Guess what Adrian ? You are applying for the top job in the province and a formal interview is in order!
Every politician should now and always be in the limelight.They want to spend your money!
An independent economist should be appointed and have to release a no B.S state of affairs. Both the opposition and government should have to read it and tell us well in advance of any election what they want to do and how much it will cost.( Not just now but before every election)
This report is not to be confused with the upcoming smoke and mirrors budget. This week the government will say and do anything to try and boost their standing in the polls.
