"Humble" Poor Loser Liberal Christy Clark Refuses to Do the Right Thing and Resign

The B.C. Election Had A Fairy Tale Ending

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/dermodtravis/bcs-goldilocks-election_b_1697...

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More Liberal lies but what else would you expect from right-wingers!

http://vancouversun.com/business/energy/one-year-delay-of-site-c-dam-pro...

https://www.google.ca/amp/news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-pol...

https://www.google.ca/amp/www.macleans.ca/news/canada/why-the-b-c-libera...

Liberal Christy Clark’s Dangerous Site C Propaganda War

https://www.desmog.ca/2017/06/07/christy-clark-s-dangerous-site-c-propag...

Let's clue in to who we are dealing with here:

Harper - Clark - Guichon

Nuff said.

Anticipating B.C.’s ultimate knock-knock joke

Former deputy speaker Raj Chouhan (right, with NDP colleagues Harry Bains and Bruce Ralston) might have to repeatedly cast tie-breaking votes if he becomes the next speaker in the B.C. legislature.

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No doubt, that is what most voters might expect from Clark. Damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead, as long as there are "commies" to kill and a nuclear option at the ready.

Already she has essentially thumbed her nose at the people by ignoring their wishes for her to change her overly partisan ways.

"British Columbians sent a very strong message to all sides of the legislature," Clark said. "They want us to work together collaboratively and across partisan lines."

Yes, they did. And so they do.

Had Clark respected the people’s message and honoured their wish, even after the election, her party might not have lost the confidence of the three Green MLAs. They were not persuaded by the Clark government’s inadequate and half-hearted overtures to bridge the partisan divide.

Had Clark truly got that message, she would have recognized that a majority of the people’s elected representatives lack confidence in her government.

She would have already acted to facilitate those 44 members’ unanimous support for a new NDP government, ideally, without undue partisan resistance from her 43-member minority party.

Had the premier really taken the people’s direction to heart, she would have acted to ease the transfer of power that the NDP-Green majority is committed to affecting, instead of doing everything in her power to make it as difficult as possible.

She would have acknowledged that her B.C. Liberal party received 330,821 fewer votes than the combined vote won by the NDP and Green party, which together accounted for 57 percent of the vote, as compared to her party’s 40 percent.

Had Clark really got the voters’ message, she would have conceded that the 1,566 more votes and two more seats that her party won over the NDP should not trump that party’s one-seat majority alliance with the Green party. Which frankly, should have already been asked to form a government.

It is Clark who has chosen to put that alliance to the test with a confidence vote in the legislature.

She is the one who has deliberately fanned the flames of speculation about the prospect of an NDP speaker whose first act would be to depart from parliamentary convention and vote with the opposition to bring down the government.

Bring it on, Clark & Co. seem to be saying.

Indeed, all 43 B.C. Liberals now seem intent on playing more partisan games to frustrate the 44 members’ majority will. They are apparently hoping to create chaos and ongoing uncertainty that will soon force another election that is widely unwanted by British Columbians.

The words "working collaboratively" and "across partisan lines" are simply not in the Liberals’ playbook.

Is there no one among them who is willing to stand up and say, enough is enough, I’ll put my name forward for speaker: to help preserve the independence of that office, as far as possible, and to help avoid a crisis of confidence that is so obviously not in the public interest?

Reid, of all people should feel the special weight of that moral obligation to rise above her perceived personal political interests.

Then again, none of the Liberals are really fit for the speaker’s job, if they are so keen to be complicit in needlessly debasing the independence of that office. They know full well that their refusal to help diffuse the situation will only oblige a New Democrat to do that job in an inescapably partisan way, as an active and routine legislative tie-breaker.

Christy Clark (seen with B.C. Liberal caucus member Mary Polak) could face a backlash from the public if she forces another quick election.

There's a solution at hand

My hunch is, the closer we get to that day of reckoning, the more public pressure will grow on Clark’s Liberals to be reasonable and responsible.

Indeed, it might be wishful thinking, but I would not be surprised if Premier Clark inevitably bows to that pressure, in a great show of magnanimity. Which, in the final analysis, she will correctly deem to be in her party’s best political interests.

Why?

Because I can’t imagine that Clark or her party would want to have to defend their reckless obstinacy in frustrating the people’s will, whenever the next election might occur. Least of all anytime soon.

I can’t imagine that she would really want to turn the speaker into an overt partisan—an unnecessary consequence for which she would truly bear the most responsibility, by dint of her penchant for partisan gamesmanship.

Rather, I expect that she may well want to look like a constructive and responsible opposition leader, by making the ultimate "sacrifice" of "allowing" one of her own caucus members to stand as speaker.

If Clark really has the long game in mind, a more politically prudent move might be to flip the speaker conundrum on its head by further elevating and assuring the independence of the speaker.

She might take her cue from what is happening today in Australia. There, the Liberal/National coalition government now also holds a one-seat majority, in the 150-seat House of Representatives.

As the Guardian recently reported, the coalition’s speaker, Tony Smith, "has signaled he will not use his casting vote to hand the Turnbull government a majority on legislation if the government fails to command a working majority on the floor. …he said on legislative debates, or on no-confidence motions, you don’t, from the Speaker’s chair, use your casting vote to manufacture a majority that doesn’t exist on the floor of the chamber.

" 'If it’s a question about whether a bill should be amended or not, you generally leave it in its current form,’ [speaker Smith said.] Smith says the idea of a no-confidence motion proceeding in the current parliament is ‘highly hypothetical’ but he says the precedents and practice is clear. ‘If in the final vote there is not a majority, you don’t vote to give it one.’ "

Wow, right?

That would obviously not work for the NDP, in the current context.

Not if it had to devote one of it members to the speaker’s chair. For that would virtually assure an ongoing 43-43 tie in the legislature, which would prevent the government from passing almost anything that the Liberals resisted.

But what if Clark offered to put up Reid as the speaker, on set terms that forever changed the speaker’s role?

What if Reid or some other Clark nominee only agreed to serve in that capacity on the explicit undertaking by all parties that B.C. would act to embrace the Westminster model that Australia’s Smith seems keen to embrace?

The obvious choice for house speaker would be the previous one, Linda Reid, who was reelected as a B.C. Liberal in Richmond.

LINDA REID

Australian model offers lessons

Consider these tidbits from Australia’s decidedly independent new speaker in this podcast interview:

[In the U.K., speakers] "are entirely independent. So, what that means is, there’s a compact, really. And that is, when you become speaker, you leave your political party.

"Then at the subsequent election, or every election, you’re there as speaker in your constituency. You’re not opposed, so the parties agree to that. You stay speaker through a change of government and you also agree that that will be the last job you have. You won’t go back. And they’ve had that for a long period of time.…It relies on everybody abiding by it."

In the Westminster system, the speaker does not vote to break ties on bills, or even on confidence motions. He or she only votes to break ties in the interests of allowing debates to proceed.

It would be an easy enough model to apply in British Columbia, especially under a mixed-member proportional representation electoral system.

Under that model, one of the "top-up" seats that are reserved for ensuring greater proportionality in translating each party's popular vote into elected representatives could be allocated to the speaker.

Those "party list" seats are not geographically distributed. So the speaker's seat would not have to be dedicated to any constituency, as such. He or she might just be a common designate from each party's slate of candidates. To ensure that no individual becomes permanently entitled to holding thatoffice, a new neutral candidate/speaker might be agreed to perhaps every two or three elections. 

Point is, it is a model that the Mother parliament already employs under its electoral system. If there was a will to make it work, we could readily find a way to embrace it in B.C.

Suppose Clark and the B.C. Liberals embraced that model and insisted on all parties supporting changing the provincial Constitution Act to adopt it, as a prerequisite for giving up one of their members to serve as speaker.

Sure, that would serve to preserve and slightly strengthen the NDP’s government’s razor-thin legislative majority. Without the speaker available to vote in that scenario, it would effectively give the NDP-Green alliance a two-seat majority.

That result might seem as preposterous as it is counterintuitive for Clark to consider.

But in the long run, it could be a boon to the Liberals, and also a real service to our democracy.

First, it would resolve the uncomfortable prospect of any speaker having to vote non-confidence in the government, in the event of a tie, as it would also reduce the potential for tied votes.

Second, it would put a Liberal speaker in the chair for many years yet to come. If someone like Reid accepted the post, a mutual agreement by the parties to not run candidates against her in the next election would ensure she wasn’t unduly punished by angry Liberals who might think she was a "traitor". The risks of serving would be all but eradicated.

Third, it would strengthen the speaker’s optical independence, and would probably increase the likelihood that rulings on opposition-sponsored motions would succeed as they never would today, given the speaker’s ongoing, unspoken allegiance to the government.

That could be huge on matters that could seriously hurt the government, politically. The speaker would have new leeway to side with Liberal or Green opposition requests for emergency debates that are now routinely quashed by the speaker, and in determining whether opposition motions are in order.

It could really shake things up on motions of privilege. A speaker’s ruling that a minister deliberately misled the legislature or was guilty of any other alleged parliamentary offences could have dire consequences for the government. Today, the outcome of those decisions is virtually pre-ordained.

In the short run, that added degree of true neutrality might serve the Liberals’ interests, as it would also help strengthen the speaker’s licence for objectivity.

Fourth, in practical terms it would not actually change that much to disadvantage the Liberals.

As I previously explained in the Straight, even in the event that the NDP government loses a confidence vote, it would not necessarily precipitate an election. That fact still seems lost on many pundits.

The government would be free to simply ignore the odd lost confidence vote, as other governments have done in similar situations. Particularly if it was an "accidental" loss that might be rapidly corrected by a subsequent vote of confidence, to demonstrate the true will of the legislature.

Unless or until it became clear that the Green MLAs wanted to abandon their confidence and supply agreement and bring down the Horgan government, the government would not fall unless Horgan saw fit to ask the lieutenant-governor for a dissolution.

Under the Liberal speaker scenario I propose, if those three Green members ever decided to side with the 42 voting Liberals, they would still form a clear 45-seat majority that would easily topple the 41-seat NDP government.

Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, taking this bold path to shore up the speaker’s independence and to resolve the current impasse would be roundly applauded by most voters.

It would do much to assist Clark’s desperate road to rehabilitation, positioning her as someone who actually internalized the message she mouthed that the voters gave her.

It would create stability that most voters want. It would reduce the chances of an immediate election that most voters do not want.

It would look to be, and actually be, a gracious and appropriate act of leadership that would warrant voters’ respect.

It would defy most voters’ expectations of the uber-partisan Clark in a welcome way, one which newly positions both Clark and her party as a constructive force for more responsible government and for broadly supportable parliamentary reform.

When hell freezes over, you say? Certainly you would not be alone in that opinion.

I am not so sure. Never underestimate Clark’s willingness to survive. If nothing else, she is politically resilient and canny.

I say, she will be even less likely to survive if she is so reckless and stupid as to cause a crisis that might result in another snap election. It would probably see the NDP elected with a solid majority—not something I would especially fear, if I were John Horgan.

If Clark is to survive, her best bet is to demonstrate her undeniable prowess as an effective force in opposition. Her smartest play is to give the NDP-Green alliance enough rope to hang itself, as the weight of its wonderfully transformative, but politically challenging agenda sinks in.

The B.C. Liberals do have most of the mainstream media in their corner, after all. They can count on those outlets to make short work of Horgan’s honeymoon.

For Clark, patience is a virtue, whether or not she has already determined as much.

Might a new knock-knock joke be in the making?

Knock, knock.

I am Linda.

Linda who?

Linda who’s happy to be your speaker, and to open the door to change my party can count on.

Ha, ha, ha, ha! Gotcha!

http://www.straight.com/news/921736/martyn-brown-anticipating-bcs-ultima...

May 9th.

Tick tock, tick tock.

How many weeks / months will it be before she steps down?

The clock is ticking loudly and quickly on the doomsday Liberal Christy Clark scenario.

Who does Christy Clark and the V Sun think they are kidding with this charade! Hopefully the citizens of BC get the last laugh on these arrogant right-wing Liberal types.

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/christy-clark-will-be-sworn-in-a...

Meanwhile all this Liberal game playing is going to cost taxpayers a pretty penny!

Christy Clark’s ‘caretaker cabinet’ will make some bonus bucks

Christy Clark said Monday her new cabinet will operate in “mostly caretaker mode” with few new initiatives coming from a government that appears doomed to defeat in the legislature.

So why does she need 21 cabinet ministers and 13 parliamentary secretaries all racking up extra salary while they twiddle their thumbs and wait to get fired?

That’s a whole lot of caretakers making a whole lot of taxpayers’ money when Clark could have sent a fiscally prudent message to the public with a smaller cabinet.

Cabinet ministers get a 50-per-cent salary bonus on top of their $105,881 base salary as an MLA. That means each cabinet minister pockets an additional $52,940 a year.

Parliamentary secretaries bag bonus bucks, too: An additional $15,882 a year.

Who knew being a caretaker could pay so well?

It will only be a short-haul gravy train, of course. Clark has recalled the legislature for June 22, and her minority Liberal government is expected to be defeated on a confidence motion by the opposition NDP and Green parties in the days that follow.

But even if the Clark government lasts only another couple of weeks, it means taxpayers will be on the hook for more than $50,000 in bonus salary during that period.

Clark could have cut her cabinet in half and saved the public tens of thousands of dollars.

http://theprovince.com/news/bc-politics/mike-smyth-christy-clarks-careta...

http://www.nsnews.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-the-long-goodbye-1.205...

Big cabinet, big plans, but no future

http://www.vancourier.com/opinion/big-cabinet-big-plans-but-no-future-1....

!!

BC's Shady World of Election Spending Liberal Style

http://theprovince.com/opinion/op-ed/dermod-travis-b-c-s-shady-world-of-...

Hey CBC, what kind of principles would those be, eh!

You should have listened to the Liberal supporting right-wing talk shows  today in Vancouver, as the phoners and analysts spared no mercy in pillorying the Liberals again and again and again.

This is the worst possible thing the Liberals could have done. If there is a snap election now the Liberals will get crushed. 

B.C. Liberals adjusting principles for a shot at power

Throne speech expected to include major changes to long-standing Liberal policy

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-liberals-adjusting-pr...

https://www.google.ca/amp/theprovince.com/news/bc-politics/then-and-now-...