BC Election May 9 '17

Here is just another story about how mean and nasty the government that NR wants elected can get with anyone who tries to speak truth to power. 

The claim alleges that the government’s refusal to honour the pension agreement is “motivated by malice and bad faith” and that the province has a “history of animosity and hostility” toward Turpel-Lafond, who finished a 10-year stint as children’s watchdog in November.

The claim alleges that the deputy minister of children and family development met with Turpel-Lafond and her senior staff on Oct. 1, 2015, and advised that “the government would treat her as a ‘member of the opposition,’ ” and that the government “had developed a strategy to personally target” her work.

- See more at: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/former-children-s-watchdog-suing...

Retiring Independent MLA endorses another Independent. Delta South is probably not a winnable district for either the BCNDP or Greens.

http://nicholaswong.ca

Here is the type of people who support NR's Premier. After all it is all about outfitting jobs and we should not care about trophy hunting. Our province does not have a democracy in place. Rich assholes who want to kill things are allowed to have a larger financial impact on the election than any ordinary citizen could afford. 

So come on North Report lets hear some more cheerleading for the most corrupt government in Canada. 

Quote:

"If there’s one thing Donald Trump’s sons, Porsche-driving dentists and Texas oil barons love most, it’s straddling the lifeless body of an exotic endangered animal.

Chilled by the prospect of losing that opportunity in British Columbia, U.S. trophy hunters are digging deep to ensure the reelection of Premier Christy Clark.

As the Canadian chapter of Safari Club International explained in a Facebook post last Friday, “NDP have vowed to end the Grizzly hunt in BC if elected. SCI chapters from CANADA and the USA banded together donating $60000.00” (sic)."

https://dogwoodbc.ca/trophy-hunters-pass-hat-for-christy-clark/

Getting a judgement in small claims court is easy. Collecting on the judgement is nearly impossible. More smoke and mirrors from a broken system.  Linking to Tom Fletcher is a new low, even for you NR. He is Black Press's leading BC Liberal cheerleader. His columns are ill informed as a rule with half the facts spun together to make his party look good. Any inconvenient facts get ignored.

Derrick O'Keefe: Politicians who ignore renters could face eviction from office
http://thelasource.com/en/2017/03/20/politicians-who-ignore-renters-coul...

Quote:

There are more than half a million renters in British Columbia. In Vancouver fully half of us rent, although you wouldn’t know it from the way homeowners, developers, and real estate agents dominate the media and political discussion of housing. While those in the market get all the attention, the worst victims of our city’s out-of-control housing market are those who can’t afford to own and can barely afford to rent.

As I’ve written before, tens of thousands of Vancouverites live one paycheque or one renoviction notice away from losing their homes. If you can’t make rent, or can’t afford your landlord’s rent hikes, homelessness or at least relocation out of the city looms. Countless low- and middle-income people have already left the city, heading either to the slightly-cheaper suburbs or out of the Lower Mainland altogether.

Renters in Victoria are also feeling the squeeze, and the crisis is no longer even confined to the province’s major cities. Too many simply can’t afford to live in B.C., and for those who still can too much of our lives is spent working, often at multiple jobs, to pay the rent.

Despite this crisis, the B.C. Liberal government has shown precious little interest in offering meaningful support to renters. Take, for example, the issue of fixed-term leases with vacate clauses, a tactic landlords have been using to jack up rents way above the legislated annual limit (currently 3.7 per cent for 2017). Back in October, Rich Coleman, the minister in charge of the housing portfolio, told the Globe and Mail he was looking into a remedy to close this loophole, “If they’re using something that’s a legal document to game the system – because of a shortage of supply – that’s where I get concerned.”

At the time, Coleman said his staff would have an answer on how to fix the situation in 30 days. Five months later, as a brief pre-election session of the legislature was winding down earlier this month, Coleman conceded that there would be no solution brought in until sometime after the upcoming vote in May. In other words the government, when confronted with numerous reports of rent-gouging by landlords, dithered and then effectively shrugged its shoulders.

In a sense, it’s understandable the government just couldn’t find the time to get a simple measure implemented to help protect renters. A lot of MLAs own multiple properties, so as landlords themselves it might be hard for them to empathise with lowly tenants. Let’s remember, also, that it can be hard for constituents to get a politician’s attention at the best of times, and renters don’t tend to be able to buy $1000 tickets to attend B.C. Liberal fundraisers.

More seriously, the organization of this provincial government’s cabinet suggests a lack of focused ministerial attention on the housing crisis. Coleman, in addition to being in charge of housing, also happens to be the minister in charge of natural gas development. It must be hard to find time to deal with housing issues when you’re also in charge of desperately courting foreign investors to follow through on their plans to export B.C.’s liquefied natural gas. The B.C. Liberals won the 2013 election on a flagship promise of an LNG “bonanza” which has yet to materialize, and the oil and gas industry is a huge source of corporate donations to the governing party, so perhaps it makes sense that the needs of renters have been neglected.

While the government’s treatment of renters can be explained, it cannot be excused. As a renter myself, I’ve recently been in touch with others in Vancouver who are fed up and are planning to raise these issues with all parties during the upcoming election campaign by holding town hall forums and by going door-to-door and talking to other tenants. Whoever wins in May, they need to be pushed to build more affordable and social housing and to open up the Residential Tenancy Act to close loopholes that landlords are abusing.

All politicians in B.C. need to know that there’ll be a price to pay for ignoring renters’ concerns. It’s not like renters are a marginal group that can easily be ignored. There are more than 520,000 of us. With a little more collective organization, we can have a lot more power. If politicians don’t heed the demands of renters this May, they might even find themselves evicted from office.

Thanks for admitting the BC Liberals are "down", North.

You aren't really arguing that it's unfair for the BCNDP, the official opposition, to try to increase its lead by attacking the BC Liberals, the party who happens to be in government, are you?

​We all know you turned into a conservative at some point, but are have you actually turned into the sort of bitter, self-pitying reactionary who feels any decline in support for any conservative party in inherently unjust?

If so, you should probably just move to Alberta or Alabama and be done with it.

As your hero would say, "Sad!"

One can go on forever about the Liberals and the telegenic skank running it but the biggest obstacle to change is an opposition in thrall to the loony end of the political spectrum. Every attempt at running a creditable campaign based on good governance and progressive policy is hijacked by the loonies who, quite frankly, scare the crap out of BC voters. The irrepressible fame hound and her cohort are seen as a horrible choice but a known quantity compared to the vagarities of whatever weird social engineering the NDP will morph into in the next putsch. The BC NDP needs a Mike Harcourt or Jack Layton to beat the loonies back with a clear vision and no nonsense.

..the ndp has never had a clear vision. it has always been torn with being both capitalist and socialist which is something that has never been possible. 

..no one though needs the ndp to come to terms with this contradiction at this time. it's an election and not a time for soul searching. they need to run a decent and committed to a brave new world campaign. 

I'd alert on Martin N.'s post for the misogynist language, but at the moment we don't seem to be able to alert.  

​The issue with the premier is that she's corrupt and arrogant, not that she's a woman who might possibly have sex at some point.

And it's not "loony" to want a clear break from the status quo-we're in a global environmental crisis and every humane and democratic value is threatened by increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.  Most of the world recognizes that.

I realize that poster is mainly here to troll, but there are some things you can't leave unchallenged.

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"  Perhaps you can also give us your personal definition of: "smarmy", as in: "his smarmy passive/agressivism was mere disguise for ad hominem criticism".

​The issue with the premier is that she's corrupt and arrogant, not that she's a woman who might possibly have sex at some point.   

My intent was 'of a certain low cunning and moral ambiguity', nothing to do with sex. I'll change it if it's an issue. 

"Skank" has a particular meaning...check out the Urban Dictionary to find out what it is.   "Grifter" would fit, though.

I'm no fan of Christy Clark...but there is no reason to reference her gender as part of the fight against her.

As to the BCNDP...they have nothing to gain politically from supporting Kinder Morgan.  In every region of the province, the BC Greens are at around 15% in the polls.  Any votes that switched from the BC Liberals to the NDP as a result of the party endorsing Kinder Morgan would be counteracted by an equally large switch to the Greens.

​There'd be no way for the party to hold onto any environmentally conscious voters at all. 

As a practical point, provincial NDPs in every region where resource extraction is a major part of the economy are going to have to propose radical programs of economic restructuring.   Resource extraction is not a long-term guarantee of economic stability anywhere, and provincial intervention is going to have to happen in order to create the non-extractive decent-wage jobs that will be part of the future.

Besides...if Kinder Morgan was such a brilliant idea, why didn't Clark push it through when Harper was still in power federally?  Harper's regime would have done nothing to stop it. 

Doesn't the fact that she hasn't done so yet raise any questions in your mind about the worthiness of the project?

And the LEAP manifesto actually addresses that.

There need to be jobs.

Environmentally dangerous megaprojects aren't the only way to create them-and they CAN'T be the only way if the planet is to survive.

The need is for something like a Green New Deal.

​And the party of the B.C. corporate elite is never going to allow anything like that to happen.

Christy Clark is most disliked party leader running in B.C. election: poll

Premier Christy Clark’s popularity is dipping with less than two months until the provincial election, according to a national poll on the performance of premiers across Canada.

Clark’s popularity fell four points to 31 per cent this quarter, ranking her fourth of the most-popular premiers in the country, according to the Angus Reid Institute poll.

On the least-popular side, Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne’s approval rating also dropped four points to only 12 per cent.

A subsequent public opinion poll from Angus Reid, also published Friday, reported that three-quarters of B.C. residents (76 per cent) believe the current Liberal government is “only interested in helping its political donors and big business.”

But 62 per cent of people in the poll also said the opposition parties don’t have a plan to help British Columbians....

(self-delete).

Still close:

http://www.mainstreetresearch.ca/b-c-election-begins-minority-looms/