BC Election May 9 '17

Here's the full breakdown on the Forum poll from its website that shows a 8% NDP lead. 

Quote:

In a random sampling of public opinion taken by The Forum PollTM among 1067 British Columbia voters, amongst those and decided and leaning, the NDP (37%) has an eight point lead over the governing Liberals (29%). The Green Party has the support of a quarter (24%) of respondents, with (7%) saying they are supporting the Conservatives, and (3%) saying they support another party.

If the election were held today, the NDP would secure 47 seats, the Liberals 34 seats, the Green Party 4, with 2 going to other parties.

Respondents most likely to support the NDP include those 34 or younger (40%), 45-54 (38%), or 55-64 (38%), females (40%), earning $40,000-$60,000 (44%), $60,000-$80,000 (44%), or $80,000-$100,000, (43%) with a post-graduate degree (43%), and living on Vancouver Island (39%) or Vancouver/Lower Mainland (36%).

Respondents most likely to support the Liberals include those aged 65 and over (41%), males (32%), and the most wealthy (35%).

Respondents most likely to say they support the Green Party include those 34 and younger (30%) or 35-44 (31%), the least wealthy (30%) or earning $20,000- $40,000 (28%), and living on Vancouver Island (28%) and Interior North (25%).

Weaver most popular leader, Clark ticks up, Horgan ticks down

Just over a quarter (28%) approve of the job Christy Clark is doing as premier, 6- in-10 (62%), and (11%) don’t know. Premier Clark’s net favourable score (approve – disapprove) is -34, slightly better than the beginning of April (April 5: -36)

Just under a third (31%) approve of John Horgan’s job as the leader of the opposition, a similar proportion (34%) disapprove, and (35%) don’t know. Horgan’s net favourable score is -3, down five points since early April (April 5: +2).

4-in-10 (42%) approve of Andrew Weaver’s job as the leader of the Green Party. (17%) disapprove, and (40%) don’t know. Weaver’s net favourable score is +25, an increase of 11 points since early April (April 5th: +14).

Best Premier tied between Horgan and Clark

A quarter (25%) of respondents say, regardless of their party affiliation, that John Horgan would make the best Premier of BC, which is a statistical tie with Christy Clark (24%). Andrew Weaver (21%) is third, just behind the pair. (16%) say they don’t know, with (15%) saying none of the above would make the best premier.

"We’re beginning to see a considerable increase in support for the Green Party, and the favourability of their popular leader Andrew Weaver is well ahead of either of his main opponents. What remains to be seen, however, is how this surge in Green Party support will affect the final count on election day," said Dr. Lorne Bozinoff, President of Forum Research. 

http://poll.forumresearch.com/data/9c9dcbc7-ac83-4130-8f7b-b250383d57edB...

 

Ken Burch wrote:

Any possibility the BC Greens could move past the BC Libs, doing unto them as the Gordon Wilson BC Libs did unto the Socreds in '91?

I'd love to see the Liberals knocked into third place! That looks unlikely as the Green surge appears to be happening in areas of NDP strength.

I am fine with any outcome other than another Liberal majority.

It seems Weaver's increased popularity isn't helping the Greens.

Global TV News at 5 is reporting that the BC Liberals have given $140 million in tax benefits through Advantage BC to international corporations with no record of who got what. The President of Advantage BC  by former BC Liberal Finance Minister Colin Hanson.

Now that the New York Times has uncovered this, Global TV is reporting that the $140 million in tax giveaways has resulted in at most 300  jobs being created and possibly as few as 122 jobs. 

Christy Clark defended the $140 million giveaway by Advantage BC as a way of attracting international head offices to BC. Where are they?

Below is a quote from the Advantage BC website:

A Corporate Tax Incentive Program

Locating an international business in British Columbia can increase your company’s profits even further.

By registering in BC’s International Business Activity (IBA) program, a company can receive up to a 100% refund on provincial corporate taxes paid on qualifying international business activities (75% on patent income to a maximum of $8 million). This can result in an effective corporate income tax rate of 15% – considerably less than other locations – for example, lower than Hong Kong (16.5% tax rate) and lower than Singapore (17.5% tax rate).

Qualifying International Business Activities

• Corporate finance and treasury
• International Finance
• Factoring
• Administrative services
• Fund Management
• Film distribution
• Patents
• Digital media distribution (announced in 2010, not yet effective)
• Clean technology (announced in 2010, not yet effective)
• Carbon trading and certification (announced in 2010, not yet effective)

What makes British Columbia’s tax incentive program unique?

• In many cases, non-arm’s length as well as arm’s length transactions qualify.
• A company can locate anywhere in the province. Vancouver is only one of British Columbia’s many thriving cities. Learn more about BC here.
• A company does not need to be a financial institution to benefit. Qualifying activities go beyond traditional banking functions and include many financial activities and transactions, such as corporate finance and treasury functions, that are an essential part of every business.

Great to see Christy offloading BC taxes onto its peasants. 

It was the New York Times that uncovered the BC Advantage scandal. This is the second time this year the New York Times has broken a scandal having previously covered BC as the "Wild West" of political donations. It raises the question of why BC media can't do this. I'm afraid I already know the answer. 

Below is the New York Times article. 

British Columbia is well known for its spectacular landscape and outdoorsy living, its swanky urban real estate and bouillabaisse of cultures.

A fact not so well known? It has a sweet deal for businesses, offering them tax breaks in an unusually opaque arrangement.

Like many places, British Columbia set up a system of tax incentives to lure businesses to the far western Canadian province in the hopes of creating jobs and transforming Vancouver into a global financial center.

But if the program has been good for business, it’s been less beneficial for British Columbia.

Participating companies have created few jobs, according to government figures, while more than 140 million Canadian dollars ($ US 106 million) have been doled out in tax refunds since 2008, when the initiative was expanded.

The incentives operate under a cloak of secrecy that is unusual for similar efforts in Canada and the United States, critics say. The province will not name the companies that get the breaks. The only information available about them is on the website of a nonprofit that promotes the program.

“This is essentially a temporary foreign-worker program for the rich, with secret government subsidies for multinational corporations,” said Dermod Travis, the executive director of IntegrityBC, a nonpartisan political watchdog group based in Victoria, the provincial capital. “The government is selling B.C. as a tax haven for the global elite to park investment here, but not have to contribute.”

The provincial Ministry of Finance, which runs the effort, says it is a success, with 82 companies participating. Jamie Edwardson, a spokesman for the ministry, declined in an email to identify those companies or discuss the amount of refunds each has received, citing a ban on publicly disclosing taxpayer information in the law that created the incentives. He said the law protects taxpayer privacy.

At one point, the tax breaks were projected to create more than 13,000 jobs in British Columbia. According to ministry figures, though, fewer than 300 have been created as a result of the program, and possibly as few as 122.

To illustrate the plan’s success, Mr. Edwardson pointed to decade-old data in a consultant’s 2009 economic analysis, which estimated that between 2001 and 2007, the additional investment added anywhere from 124 million to 141 million Canadian dollars — between $91 million and $103 million — to the economy. Mr. Edwardson said these figures were the most recent available.

Experts say that with few public details, it is hard to tell whether the plan is worth the lost tax revenue. They also say the lack of disclosure prevents the public from knowing if companies are using the province as a pit stop on a global quest to avoid taxation. “There’s a real concern corporations are just stripping money out of places,” said Michael Knoll, a law professor and a director at the University of Pennsylvania Law School Center for Tax Law and Policy. “This lack of transparency is aiding that process.”

The secrecy is unusual, experts say. A comparable tax-incentive plan in Montreal makes more information public, records show, including the names of participants.

In the United States, it is standard practice for state governments to release the names of companies receiving targeted tax breaks, including credits and rebates. Most states also share other information about participants that British Columbia does not, like the amount of money each company has invested and where that investment has gone, along with what the state has received in return, said Greg LeRoy, the executive director of Good Jobs First, an American nonprofit that tracks state tax-break programs.

The International Business Activity Act, initially passed in 1988, allows companies to claim a refund of up to 100 percent of their provincial corporate income taxes on a number of business activities, including lending, foreign exchange trading and investment management, which could bring a company’s tax rate down to 15 percent.

Over the years, the plan was expanded several times. In 2010, an expansion allowed high-paid nonresidents of Canada who work in British Columbia for participating companies to receive new generous tax breaks unavailable to Canadian residents.

The tax breaks favor foreigners in other ways, too. Companies can receive refunds on real estate activities with foreigners, including mortgage loans on property in Canada for international buyers. Conducting the same domestic activities for Canadians would not qualify for the refunds. This has raised concerns that the tax refunds may encourage banks and other companies to prioritize foreigners over Canadians in Canada’s overheated housing markets.

The ministry runs the program. But the law that set it up requires participants to join and help finance a nonprofit, AdvantageBC, established in 1986 to promote British Columbia as a business destination. AdvantageBC advises its members on how to benefit from the tax breaks. The involvement of this group has also become a target for critics.

“There is no reason for this organization to be outside of government,” said Duff Conacher, a founder of Democracy Watch, a Canadian civic organization, “except to escape the ethics, transparency and accountability requirements government institutions have to face.”

Colin Hansen, a formerprovincial finance minister who helped expand the program’s tax incentives in 2010, is president and chief executive of AdvantageBC. He defended the group’s involvement in the tax-break program. “On all issues, we are fully accountable to our members, which is where that accountability should be,” he said in an email.

As finance minister, Mr. Hansen repeatedly declared that expanding the program would help attract companies doing international business and “create those jobs in British Columbia.”

In a recent interview, though, he said that its goal was really to enlarge the local financial services sector. “The program was not actually set up to be a job creator,” he said.

Mr. Hansen said most of the companies listed as “core members” on the group’s website were registered in the program. But he also said that some companies joined the group before seeking the benefits. He declined to provide a complete list of businesses. “Some companies are a little more sensitive about being included,” he said.

It is unclear which businesses listed on AdvantageBC’s website are in the program and receiving tax breaks. But a company must be a core member to get the refunds.

Provincial officials have praised the tax breaks as a boon to economic ties between China and British Columbia, and have devoted significant time and political capital in recent years to tailoring it to Chinese investors and the financial institutions that cater to them.

In 2014, the province expanded the program for foreign banks, which it said would raise the potential for investment from Asia, especially China. “These amendments to the International Business Activity Act send a strong message to foreign companies that B.C. welcomes their business, setting the stage for increased investment,” said Michael de Jong, the finance minister, according to a government news release.

Mr. de Jong declined to answer questions about the program, including whether the public should be able to know which companies are receiving the tax breaks.

Several of the businesses listed on AdvantageBC’s site are Chinese, including the Bank of China and a subsidiary of China Poly Group, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate. The companies did not respond to requests for comment on whether they had received any tax breaks.

PacNet Services Ltd., a payment processing company, had been a core member of AdvantageBC since at least 2006. In September 2016, the United States Treasury Department listed PacNet as a significant transnational criminal organization for its “lengthy history of money laundering,” and froze the company’s American assets. The company has denied the accusations. Rosanne Day, PacNet’s president, declined to comment on whether the company was in the tax-incentive program and has received benefits.

After inquiries by The New York Times, PacNet, two associated companies that have also been sanctioned and several other firms were removed from AdvantageBC’s website last month. Mr. Hansen later said they were no longer members.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/world/canada/british-columbias-busine...

Martyn Brown, former chief of staff to BC Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell, has outlined Miller's connections to many other BC Liberal scandals below: 

Quote:

Those charges relate to her conduct in Ontario’s McGuinty government, back in 2012—a scandal involving that premier’s former deputy chief of staff about which Christy Clark was well aware before she hired Miller in 2013. The announcement of those charges led Miller initially to step away from Team Clark before she was quietly rehired months later as someone who was too indispensible to the B.C. Liberals to be without. 

That issue is not to be mistaken with the Clark government’s own ''triple delete'' scandal. It already resulted in former ministerial assistant George Gretes being charged with lying while under oath to the freedom of information and protection of privacy commissioner, back in 2015.

He pleaded guilty to that offence last summer. Despite the special prosecutor’s request to impose the maximum fine of $5,000, he was fined a whopping $2,500.

Then, of course, there were the charges laid in 2014 by special prosecutor David Butcher against a corporation and two of its directors, for violating the B.C. Election Act in campaigning for the B.C. Liberals in the 2012 Port Moody–Coquitlam provincial by-election.

That case, too, was resolved, last May. The company pleaded guilty to one count of making an unreported political contribution and was fined $5,000, while the remaining charges it faced and the charges against the two Liberal campaigners were stayed.

Again, that case is not to be confused with the “quick wins” scandal that was overseen by that same special prosecutor.

After a three-year investigation process, last May he also charged one of those same individuals with breach of trust under the Criminal Code for his role in the ethnic outreach scheme, as the former communications director for the Clark government's multiculturalism ministry.

As we all know, just days ago, a special prosecutor was appointed “to provide legal advice to the RCMP in relation to an investigation being conducted into indirect political contributions and other potential contraventions of the BC Election Act”.

The special prosecutor? Once again, David Butcher. So much to keep track of.

No worries, Butcher’s on the case, and that’s probably enough for most vote

http://www.straight.com/news/889391/martyn-brown-prosecuting-bc-liberals

Pacnet is one of the firms receiving money from Advantage BC, but Pacnet is listed as a transnational criminal organization by the U.S. Treasury.

The U.S. treasury has listed Vancouver-based company Pacnet as a significant transnational crime organization, after decades of facilitating global mail scams.

The government says the firm has a lengthy history of laundering money, spanning over 20 years.

U.S. authorities say the downtown-based firm knowingly processes payments on behalf of fraudsters targeting victims throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world.

According to a report released by the treasury, Pacnet allegedly acts as a go-between for mail fraudsters and the thousands of vulnerable elderly people that they target.

The report goes on to say that scammers ask their victims to send their money to Pacnet, and after taking fees and commission, the firm forwards the rest to the scammers, making it hard for the banks or victims to follow the money trail.

Now recognised as a transnational crime organization, this puts Pacnet up there with the likes of the Los Zetas drug cartel and the Japanese crime syndicate known as the Yakuza.

Pacnet were unavailable for comment.

http://www.cknw.com/2016/09/22/u-s-treasury-lists-vancouver-based-compan...

The following tweet, which shows the BC Liberals and federal Liberals are doing nothing to deal with international corruption coming to BC,  says

#China asks #Cdnpoli #BCpoli to stop welcoming its corrupt rich folks http://sc.mp/g0WOs6  @ianjamesyoung70 #immigration #VanRe #BCelxn17

China reveals foreign addresses of corruption suspects living in Canada, US and beyond

The five Canadian addresses are all in British Columbia, four are in the New Zealand city of Auckland and 10 are scattered across the United States

https://twitter.com/DouglasTodd/status/859530696561369088

Front page article in Vancouver Sun "Clark defends mystery tax rebates" includes  US  labelled "international criminal organization" called PacNet. Dermod Travis of Integrity BC questions whether Advantage BC helped fuel Vancouver real estate boom by giving large tax breaks to massive international financial firms. 

According to the New York Times report there are 82 companies in the program called AdvantageBC which may be entitled to a tax refund of up to 100 per cent of their corporate income taxes. Their names and their claim amounts are not disclosed by the province’s Ministry of Finance, which oversees the program. B.C. government documents show that under the program workers who earn over $100,000 a year and are hired from outside B.C. are given income tax breaks.

B.C. NDP party Leader John Horgan said “AdvantageBC seems to be advantage for those that back the B.C. Liberal party. We don’t know who these companies are, or how much they’ve been able to pocket over the past number of years.” The program has operated under an NDP government, but was expanded during the Liberals current reign. ...

The New York Times reported that “companies can receive refunds on real estate activities with foreigners, including mortgage loans on property in Canada for international buyers. Conducting the same domestic activities for Canadians would not qualify for the refunds. This has raised concerns that the tax refunds may encourage banks and other companies to prioritize foreigners over Canadians in Canada’s overheated housing markets.” ...

Dermod Travis of Integrity B.C., however, said that as the program includes massive foreign financial companies involved in real estate development and mortgage loans, and also B.C. real estate industry-linked companies, B.C. citizens should be asking whether AdvantageBC helped to fuel Vancouver’s hot real estate market.

“Has this become a club to facilitate deals?” he said. “If you look at when Vancouver home prices really skyrocketed, it was at the time this program was expanded, along with others. I don’t think Advantage B.C. exclusively contributed to (Vancouver’s housing bubble) but these programs have contributed to it.”

Last fall, Postmedia reported that the U.S. government named Vancouver-based PacNet a “significant transnational criminal organization” that allegedly has worked for 20 years with “direct mailer” scammers to launder hundreds of millions of dollars defrauded from millions of vulnerable victims. The Obama administration put PacNet on an international shortlist of about seven organizations including internationally-known criminal cartels.

Travis said his review of AdvantageBC’s website showed that PacNet remained a member for months after Postmedia’s reports and that the company was only recently removed, apparently in connection to questions from the New York Times. Hansen said PacNet, which had been in the program for years, did not pay its membership dues this January and, along with media reports questioning its good standing, it was removed.

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/b-c-liberals-under-fire-for-myst...

 

josh wrote:

NDP 41

Liberals 40

Greens 15

Really detailed poll.

http://angusreid.org/bc-election-campaign-analysis/

Here is a chart I found very interesting. Note how the numbers change as the income rises.