BC Pre May 14, 2013 Election Call

Yikes!

Christy Clark should not read the comments unless she wants to continue having another bad day.

E-Street Question: Should Premier Christy Clark resign?

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Street+Question+Should+Premier+Christy+C...

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No records no longer a surprise

I hate to tell you a "dog bites man" story, but this one is too important to ignore.

On Nov. 18, 2012, The Province's Cassidy Olivier revealed how workers in the Office of Premier Christy Clark and the BC Liberal caucus worked on government time, for the public dime to devise attack advertising against NDP leader Adrian Dix. Specifically, the CantAffordDix.ca website (which redirects to RiskyDix.ca, which doesn't appear to be online anymore).

The government's own Standards of Conduct are clear: "employees must not engage in political activities during working hours or use government facilities, equipment or resources in support of these activities." 

I asked the Public Service Agency, via Freedom of Information, if the misconduct described in Olivier's story had been investigated. No surprise -- the PSA claims no records exist. See the letter below.

I say no surprise, because this non-response was delivered to me a week after Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham released a report on the disturbing trend toward an "oral government," in which important government information is not recorded. The government, particularly the Office of the Premier, is escaping public scrutiny.

Denham's report was in response to a complaint from the Freedom of Information and Privacy Association of B.C., but focusses on the "no records" claims surrounding the departure of Clark's chief of staff Ken Boessenkool.

Some of the characters in Olivier's story are involved in the Multicultural Outreach Strategy saga, such as Liberal caucus executive director Primrose "You Can't Be Doing Party Work Here. For Sure, I Would Agree With That" Carson.

John Dyble, Clark's deputy minister and chief of the public service, is working on an internal review of the Quick Wins ethnic vote-wooing conspiracy, despite calls from the NDP and Conservatives for an independent investigation. Dyble was hired to his $310,000-a-year gig by Clark and serves at her pleasure.

Here is some essential reading at this link for Mr. Dyble: copies of Pamela Martin and Kim Haakstad's agendas, showing that they discussed the Multicultural Outreach plan during government working hours.

http://2010goldrush.blogspot.ca/2013/03/no-records-no-longer-surprise.html

The Legislature Raids

Dismembering Canada

http://bctrialofbasi-virk.blogspot.ca/

And screw the federal government, and let's stop making excuses - how about working on a systematic process to drastically reduce the number of First Nations peoples in our jails in BC?

Good article.

Lines blurring between party and state for BC Liberals

 I call it election creep; defined as less governing, more politicking, on your dime. Finance Minister Mike de Jong became the latest Liberal on Monday...

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Craig+McInnes+Lines+blurring+between+pa...

A treatise on the politics of inclusion

http://www.vancouverdesi.com/bccanada/bc/a-treatise-on-the-politics-of-i...

Why shunning the nurses earns Adrian Dix kudos from the labour movement

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/2035/Vaughn+Palmer+shunning+nurses+...

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Premier Christy Clark must be having a hard time getting credible candidates to run for the BC Liberals

Former city councillor Suzanne Anton to run for BC Liberals

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Former+city+councillor+Suzanne+Anton+Li...

Ethnic outreach scandal is ‘quite unique’

Re: B.C.’s shame-filled past sets high standard for scandal, Column, March 7

Craig McInnes neatly defuses the notion that by B.C. standards we have a scandal-plagued BC Liberal government.

The issues raised by the multiculturalism outreach memo are, nevertheless, uncomfortably closer to the definitions of an organized conspiracy i.e. “a secret combination for unlawful purpose,” than our more generic scandals.

As a government plot it is quite unique in any scandology of B.C. politics.

NORMAN RUFF, Victoria

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/letters/Move+Surrey+solve+Broadway+corridor+congestion/8071511/story.html#ixzz2NLqbOOJ1

PavCo’s activities are trademarks of the B.C. Liberal style of politics

Let’s start with the obvious: any outreach to British Columbians is clearly being considered through the lens of whether it will benefit the B.C. Liberals at the polls. Full stop. In this case, the B.C. Liberals considered multicultural communities to be an important base of potential support, so proposing the use of public funds to woo these communities was a no-brainer.

Secondly, issues of importance to the public apparently need to be “quick wins” if they are to be addressed by the B.C. Liberal government. In other words, apologies for the Chinese head tax or the Komagata Maru incident are only considered when they are viewed as politically advantageous. Otherwise, they are non-starters.

Finally—and most amazingly—the apparatus of government seems to be seen as a means to offer political operatives and allies personal benefit. In the now-infamous memo written by Premier Clark’s deputy chief of staff, a plan was outlined to identify community leaders and spokespeople that could be hired on for outreach and to sway opinion.

This story is, by now, well trodden ground—but if you look carefully, glimpses of this mentality can be seen shining through when it comes to the B.C. Pavilion Corporation (PavCo), a provincial Crown corporation that is responsible for two of B.C.’s top public assembly facilities: B.C. Place and the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Both sit in downtown Vancouver and both have become lightning rods for community unrest.

The Coal Harbour Residents Association has for years sought to have their concerns adequately heard by PavCo over the “temporary” re-location of the Coal Harbour float plane terminal. Due to the new convention centre, PavCo constructed the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre directly in front of a public park in a high-density residential neighbourhood, without doing an environmental impact assessment regarding the human environment. This decision was taken in spite of the fact that PavCo has admitted that the terminal “may cause property damage and personal injury” in a response to a claim filed against it in the Supreme Court of B.C.

What’s more, I was informed that at a recent meeting of the Coal Harbour Residents Association, a high-ranking health authority medical officer encouraged parents to have their children tested for increased levels of lead in their blood. Ordinarily I would hope that this revelation would prompt PavCo to address the community’s concerns—but I am for some reason not optimistic.

The same tone-deaf approach has been noticed by residents living near the reconstructed B.C. Place. Their problem isn’t aviation fuel and seaplane noise: it’s the huge billboards that shine engulfing light into thousands of homes every night.

If you are anywhere near downtown Vancouver at night, you’ve seen these screens. Now imagine them just outside your bedroom window.

They were installed without community consultation in September 2011. A Vancouver city council motion requesting that the billboards be brought into compliance with city bylaws regarding size was ignored. And with the exception of minor adjustments made to one screen, PavCo has continued to be unresponsive to concerned families in the area.

But I guess taking action on these issues isn’t a “quick win” for the Crown corporation or the government and, therefore, perhaps not considered important enough to warrant immediate action.

Looking at the composition of the PavCo board of directors, this kind of non-response is not a surprise—in fact, it fits perfectly with what now seems to be the B.C. Liberals’ playbook.

The recently appointed chair, Peter Fassbender, is a star candidate for the B.C. Liberals. Board director Suzanne Anton recently lost the nomination for Vancouver-Quilchena but will now stand as the B.C. Liberal candidate in Vancouver-Fraserview. And board director Don Zurowski was very carefully considering running for the B.C. Liberal nomination in the riding of Prince George-Mackenzie before pulling out just before the deadline.

According to the PavCo website, the board “consists of the number of directors deemed appropriate by the Minister”. It claims that the appointees have a “diversity of experience”, though the political affiliations of several call into question exactly what is meant by “diversity”.

I think the people of British Columbia are getting tired of being commoditized. If their only moments of interaction with their government are based upon their perceived political value, that isn’t much of a relationship. Each and every citizen has the right to a responsive government—and that government certainly includes those individuals tasked with guiding a Crown corporation mandated to operate in the public’s best interest.

http://www.straight.com/news/360981/matt-toner-pavcos-activities-are-tra...

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Read the comment section as this is more nonsense from the BC Liberals and their lackeys in the mainstream press.

B.C. NDP used taxpayer funds for party activities, leaked document says

Here are some of the comments:

Sort:

9:05 AM on March 12, 2013

Let's talk about a slush fund Bill Bennett, this one operated by the BC Liberal/Crony party " G&M: A public-money trust issued a multimillion-dollar loan to a Prince George businessman and B.C. Liberal Party insider without project approval from the provincial government's Treasury Board, which was a key condition of the transaction, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.
The Northern Development Initiative Trust (NDIT) approved the $8.9-million loan to Commonwealth Campus Corporation, a company controlled by Dan McLaren, in 2009."

Millions in a Liberal/Crony slush fund that all Liberals deny. As opposed to the NDP that admit to it's small fund that was approved " Simpson said the caucus made the legislative comptroller's office aware of the fund."

Move along folks... nothing here aside from the BC Liberal/Crony slush funds to Liberal insiders.

Report Abuse   Score: 8 GuyF

10:13 AM on March 12, 2013

This is old news and was covered extensively by Alex Tsakumis:

" "An early version of Doyle's report appeared to suggest that those moves could amount to outright fraud. New Democrats John Horgan and Shane Simpson protested directly to Doyle that there was nothing criminal about an admittedly debatable practice.
Doyle then moved the critique to another part of his report, eliminating any implication that the New Democrats were guilty of fraud.
And true to form, the BC Liberals have tried to make something of the NDP's alleged financial "mismanagement" of NDP accounts, but to no avail."

" Accordingly, they dispatched a committee to the Legislative Controller to ask for advice on setting up an account they could fund, with understandably small amounts, for that precise outreach. The Controller at the time (since departed from this government–and under dubious circumstances) was one Dan Arbic. He was the one who set it all up for the NDP; he was the one that dispensed advice to them on how to operate the fund–advice which they never veered from, and it all went something like this: Every constituency would kick up $200.00 per month to this fund (approximately $2400.00 per year per constituency association) for the purpose of targeted ethnic outreach. This included a formula for the money to go half in wages and half into advertising. After all, the same amount or more is spent on outreach from public funds that are provided to EVERY MLA in the legislature."

As opposed to the BC Liberals " The government, with massive expense accounts hid all sorts of overruns into every account available (we are, after all, talking about a government that played a shell game to explain a convention center, the Olympics and a stadium roof, among other scandals). But that wasn't an option available to the NDP, who were determined to do things by the book."

Report Abuse   Score: 7 Curiosity2

12:10 PM on March 12, 2013

For the complete story, see Alex Tsakumis's account. Note that Tskaumis was a former aide to Bill Vander Zalm and is a strong supporter of the Federal Conservatives. In short, he is no NDP apologist. Unlike the Globe, Tsakumis has reported ALL of the relevant facts:

www.alexgtsakumis.com/2013/02/26/exclusive-breaking-news-the-bc-ndp-runn...

2 replies Report Abuse   Score: 7 Curiosity2

12:24 PM on March 12, 2013

"This is just careless reporting. They [the NDP] explicitly asked the Comptroller-General whether/how they could distribute funds among constituency offices."

Not just careless. Look at the headline. The Globe is accepting at face value the Liberals' accusation of wrongdoing on the basis of a draft report--and without bothering to get clarification from the Auditor General himself. This non-story has been in the public domain for two weeks. Plenty of time for the Globe to have done due diligence. Inistead they essentially issued Bill Bennett's press release for him.

Report Abuse   Score: 6 deeby

11:57 AM on March 12, 2013

This is just careless reporting. They explicitly asked the Comptroller-General whether/how they could distribute funds amoung constituency offices. They followed his recommendation, and both the CG and the Opposition were rapped on the knuckles by the Auditor General. One officer of the legislature was overruled by another.

If the reporter had researched a little more closely, he might've found Tsakumis's article on this from a few weeks back and realized that it wasn't analogous to 'ethnogate' at all.

Report Abuse   Score: 6 Archer101

10:36 AM on March 12, 2013

This is an old story that has been discounted when the full story was told.

As per the rules, the NDP consulted the Comptroller General who approved the fund. It involved no party activities, only work that served the caucus - like translation and communications in Chinese.

Bennett knows this, knows that his party's appointees approved the plan and there were no activities that weren't approved by the comptroller general.

Bennet has leaked a draft that was withdrawn when the auditor general became aware of the comptroller's role in advising the NDP that this was the best way to proceed.

1 reply Report Abuse   Score: 5 MacKenna

12:04 PM on March 12, 2013

'EXCLUSIVE' BREAKING NEWS: The BC NDP Running an 'In and Out' Scheme Funnelling Monies from Constituencies to PR Hacks? Not a Chance…Just the BC Liberals Telling Lies Again

//alexgtsakumis.com/2013/02/26/exclusive-breaking-news-the-bc-ndp-running-an-in-and-out-scheme-funnelling-monies-from-constituencies-to-pr-hacks-not-a-chance-just-the-bc-liberals-telling-lies-again/

Report Abuse   Score: 5 PhilG

2:24 PM on March 12, 2013

The BC Liberals this week in the legislature are trying to distract the BC public and the NDP opposition MLAs from asking more questions about the growing number of Liberal scandals and the growing evidence of misconduct by BC Liberal Cabinet Ministers and by senior staff in Christy Clark's own office.
The BC Liberals are trying to goad the NDP opposition into releasing their election platform, in order to make the public forget about these Liberal scandals and focus on starting the election, 5 weeks before the election begins...
As Vancouver Sun chief political columnist Vaughn Palmer correctly pointed out Monday, "That's nonsense !" No party has ever released its platform 5 weeks ahead of the start to an election.
What's getting lost is the fact that the election is NOT in fact underway for another 5 weeks. Once the BC election starts, the normal activities of the legislature will be shut down but this week the legislature is still sitting for 5 more days.
And Legislation brought in by government is being debated with the NDP Opposition, as is the proper parliamentary process, and some of it will become law.

We the citizens and voters of BC have a right to expect that this BC Liberal government separates its activities that are supported by the Liberal political party and govern in the name of all of the citizens of BC this week.
But the BC Liberals don't seem to see the problem with using our tax dollars to promote the interests of their own political party at a time when they are insisting that the NDP Opposition begin to behave as though we were in an election already.
As BC citizens and taxpayers, we need to let the BC Liberals know that if their government wants to hear from the NDP Opposition about the NDP's election plans, then the Liberals should shut down the legislature, stop using our tax dollars to pay for their expensive TV ads, and get on with the BC election campaign

... and the BC Liberals need to start to PAY FOR THEIR OWN ELECTION CAMPAIGN with their own Liberal Party funds, NOT with OUR TAX DOLLARS !

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-ndp-used-taxpaye...

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B.C. Liberal government about to be toppled like a House of Cards

http://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/derrick/2013/02/house-cards-need-top...

'Vote ploy' uproar stalls BC premier's plan to apologise for Chinese head tax

British Columbia premier puts hold on plans to express regret over tax on Chinese immigrants after paper surfaces detailing ethnic vote push

http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1189325/vote-ploy-uproar-stalls-b...

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There just has to be an independent investigation into the BC Rail scandal

How did a 6-million dollar loan to 2 ex-government aides magically vanish?

Van Dongen: “The funds advanced were in the form of a loan. Now, when someone gets a loan from a credit union or bank, that sets up a debt. That sets up a liability. That establishes a legal obligation from the borrower to the financial institution.

“So starting in 2005 this government advanced public funds by way of two loans to two political staff, and by October 2010 Basi and Virk had accumulated a debt to the province of $6 million — a $6-million loan.”

His point being that the money advanced to Basi and Virk for their legal bills was recognized in writing as a debt or obligation to the government from the outset, not just once they pleaded guilty.

Could the government explain how “two loans, two debts totalling $6 million” were “magically wiped out” without the necessary cabinet order?

Replying, Attorney General Bond was no more forthcoming than last year. “The member continues to bring this issue to the legislature, and I continue to provide exactly the same answers to him every single time he asks the question.”

Yes she does. Even when new documentation challenges last year’s version of events. But maybe her ministry will follow up as it did last year, and put out a statement clarifying how the government managed to forgive the $6-million “loan” to Basi and Virk without activating the apparent legal requirement for a cabinet order.

Perhaps, as van Dongen joked Tuesday, the Liberals took a leaf from a certain notorious memo to file, rewrote the 2005 agreement to strike out the word “loan,” then backdated the whole thing as if the debt or obligation had never existed in the first place.

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/Vaughn+Palmer+million+loa...

How much will the BC Cons have risen in the polls since the latest Premier Christy Clark fiasco?

Inequality hurts BC's economy and democracy

But oddly, one critical problem you hear very little about is inequality. Commentators often talk about increasing inequality and some of its social problems. But they seldom link these to the vast economic problems that B.C., Canada, and all advanced industrial countries face. Even less frequently -- despite months of protest by the Occupy movement around the world -- do you hear about how inequality may also be our chief political problem as well.

Yet the facts are as plain as day. As in the United States, so too in Canada we have become a divided society. Today, the richest 10 per cent of Canadians and British Columbians now account for 40 per cent of all market income and own over half of the entire wealth. Over the past 30-plus years, the wealthiest one-tenth of one per cent has seen their average incomes rise by more than 300 per cent to roughly $1.4 million.

By contrast, middle-class incomes have stagnated. In B.C., the median income of working families (adjusted for inflation) actually fell by $1,569 to $52,278. As for B.C.'s working poor? The situation is even worse. The poorest of working families realized a mere $9,300 after taxes in 1990. Twenty years later, their after-tax incomes have dropped to $7,800. But they were hardly alone in trying to make ends meet.

By 2010, 1.2 million workers in B.C. earned less than $30,000 a year. A figure that, if looked at comparatively in terms of the proportion of the labour force in low-wage work, puts B.C. along with Canada among the worst in the rich industrialized world.

Unsurprisingly such inequality brings huge economic problems. Once so much income goes to the top, and the majority of British Columbia families do not have enough money to keep economic demand going, more and more have to go into debt.

And once an economy becomes reliant on the spending of the wealthy few, it is more susceptible to great booms and busts. Multinational corporations and banks invest and speculate when exports and housing prices are going up. But when profits fall -- even a little -- they pull back and blame environmentalists, the public debt racked up to bail out banks, or jittery market "sentiment."

In reality, neither B.C. nor Canada's economy can recover until the surge in inequality is reversed. Even if by some miracle the United States and China do return to reasonable levels of growth, and Canada's provincial exports and investment expand again, neither will do the trick without the majority of working families able to earn a decent living.

But the really big question is why so little has been done in the last 20 years to deal with income inequality. The American political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue that in the United States the reason why their country has become so tarnished is the role of big business.

Money has given banks and multinational corporations a disproportionate amount of influence in everything from lobbying and campaign contributions to consultants writing policy and bankers running government departments. This, Hacker and Pierson claim, has led to the public policies that have allowed the economy to grow in ways that benefit those at the top, and resulted in a "winner-take-all" political system more comparable to "one dollar equals one vote" instead of "one person, one vote" that their country was founded on.

http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2013/03/13/BC-Inequality/

BC Rail stink continues a decade after the sale

BC Liberals continue to evade questions, responsibility over BC Rail scandal, Basi and Virk

The sale of BC Rail by the Liberal government will likely be an issue in the upcoming provincial election.

Eric Foster, the BC Liberal MLA who was Chair of the Committee that basically fired the BC Auditor-General, should resign over his own personal disgraceful expenditute situation. This sleazeball definitely should never be re-elected by the voters of of Vernon-Monashee 

B.C. Auditor-General knocks legislature’s ‘culture of entitlement’

The report, which follows up on a previous critical examination of the financial records of the Legislative Assembly, highlighted two main areas of concern.

Mr. Doyle was critical of a $67,000 payment for renovations to a leased office for Liberal MLA Eric Foster, who chaired the committee that rejected his reappointment.

Mr. Foster is repaying the funds out of his $119,000-per-year budget to run his constituency office, but Mr. Doyle said the case raised significant concerns about spending of public funds without scrutiny.

The audit found that Mr. Foster’s landlord – who is related to his constituency assistant – charged taxpayers for a new furnace and wiring system and other major building upgrades. “These invoices indicate that the Legislative Assembly has reimbursed the landlord for a complete renovation of this building and not just the mere customization of a pre-existing space.”

Mr. Foster, the MLA for Vernon-Monashee, told reporters Wednesday he has nothing to apologize for. He said he wasn’t involved in the financial details. “A third of the [MLAs] here pay more rent than I do, so why I was singled out, I don’t know. I was fresh into this, I had no idea how this worked. And this was the way it was worked out.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-auditor-general-...

B.C. election nears as legislature wraps after intense 5 weeks

http://www.globaltvbc.com/bc+election+nears+as+legislature+wraps+after+i...

Obviously the fix was in.

Basi-Virk legal bill forgiveness did not require Cabinet approval, says Bond

http://www.globaltvbc.com/basi-virk+legal+bill+forgiveness+did+not+requi...

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