Premier Christy Clark & the BC Liberals are both toast - so what happens now? (Thread #3)

Awesome.  I like it when the politicos pick the right parade to get into. This is a winning issue for the NDP in the next election since it has the potential to draw in centrist Greens and young people who might not bother voting but who really get the tar sands bitumen pipeline issue.

change their name before the election next year? hope they do. it'll give uninformed voters a reality check.

Van Dongen is an interesting charachter. On the one hand, he's trying to make it look like he wanted to push Gordon Campbell out over this bit of corruption. On the other hand even though Gordo left in 2010, Van Dongen stayed in government until 2012. To believe that Gordo was the only charachter involved in this event is ludicrous, much of the government was implicated and anyone with at least half a brain can see this. Van Dongen is hardly completely clear of the taint that's stinking up this government, so for him to play the fool, or hero, is hardly believeable.

[url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/05/14/bc-ndp-p... percent plus one:[/url]

Quote:

Support for the B.C. New Democrats has grown to half of the decided voters, according to the latest poll by Angus Reid, which shows support for the official opposition party led by Adrian Dix has climbed seven per cent since April.

The 802 respondents were asked, "If a provincial election were held tomorrow in British Columbia, which one of the following parties would you be most likely to support in your constituency?"

With the next provincial election exactly one year away, support for the governing B.C. Liberals remained at 23 per cent, while support for the upstart B.C. Conservatives appeared to have fallen four percentage points to 19 per cent. The Green Party was fourth with six per cent support.

Christy Clark talks about leading a "free enterprise coalition," but it doesn't look like that coalition can win in any incarnation.

Caissa wrote:

Brian Topp, the NDP power broker who came second in the party's recent national leadership race, will manage the B.C. NDP's provincial election campaign in 2013.

"We want to run the best campaign we've ever run and Brian's going to help us do that," NDP leader Adrian Dix told The Vancouver Sun Wednesday.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/banks+Brian+them+over+Topp/6634666/story.html#ixzz1v85yJXus

Exactly where he needs to be. Welcome back aboard, Brian! I may have opposed your leadership bid, but that doesn't mean I had any doubt you know how to manage a campaign.

This is a headline I like

http://www.vancouversun.com/will+next+time/6710821/story.html

Quote:

The biggest driver of the future of energy policy in the province is linked to a third pipeline, one that would bring natural gas from the northeast corner of the province to the coast, where both parties hope to see it processed into liquefied natural gas.

The embryonic LNG industry could generate $20-billion worth of investment, thousands of construction jobs and more than $1-billion a year in government revenues. Those figures are based on three plants being in operation by 2020, which is the target of the Premier’s jobs plan.

But getting that gas out of the ground, squeezing it along a pipeline and then freezing it into liquid form is an energy-intensive business. It is a prime reason that B.C. faces a growing gap between its electricity supply and demand in the coming decade.

The LNG industry, if it gets off the ground, will likely force the government to water down its ambitious climate-change targets.

By law, British Columbia must cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 33 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020. It means total emissions are to be reduced to 45 million tonnes in 2020.

BC Hydro, in its recent draft integrated resource plan, is forecasting that peak energy demand will rise by 50 per cent over the next 20 years – and that is based on only the first two LNG plants going ahead. It proposes to meet some of that demand by leaving industrial customers to generate their own power by burning natural gas.

In part, that direction responds to the insistence by both the government and the Opposition that BC Hydro rein in spending to keep residential utility rates low.

NDP energy critic John Horgan says there is little opportunity for wedge politics on the LNG issue.

“Both parties see this as an opportunity for growth,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think there is much to delineate us from the Liberals.”

Ms. Clark said last month that the province’s climate-change targets could be amended to reflect the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions outside of the province if LNG replaces dirtier sources of energy such as coal-fired generation in China.

“I’m willing to have that discussion,” Mr. Horgan said. “If we are reducing coal generation offshore, surely to goodness we can use gas for compression to get to that target.”

Mr. Horgan said he is comfortable with being in step with the B.C. Liberals on LNG.

The interior of the province seems doomed to a fracking future.  This expansion is based on fracking and thus is destructive immediately as well as in the long term. The BC NDP should be opposing it but they have been riding the natural gas hobby horse since they held power in the 1990's.  To oppose it they would have to repudiate their own work as government in deliberately promoting gas exploration through tax, regulatory and royalty policy. Unfortunately the environmental problems associated with fracking seem to be of minor concern to the government in waiting and that does not bode well for water in much of the province.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/in-bc-energy-policy...

Assuming the poll is translated into real votes on election day I would hope that the BC NDP realizes that this is a mandate for change and spends "its political capital" as opposed to just wittling it away doing SFA.

BTW, I realize I should be happier about this poll. So on the positive side of things, I think my favourite part of this poll is that the "free enterprise coalition" is 11 points behind, even if their support  were to coalesce perfectly, which it's very unlikely to do.

Also, if the Liberals want to close the gap things like this won't help.

wow, looks like the bc liberals are going to privatize liquor distribution in bc as quickly as possible before the ndp gets in.  you have to hand it to these folks, they realize now that there's no reason even to make a pretense of moderation.

Except that liquor distribution in this province is pretty fucked up, as in extremely byzantine from a legal standpoint along with probably the most expensive prices in the western world. The legacies of prohibition and WAC Bennett's almost talibanesque revultion to alcohol are still very strong here. So, you're not going to get a lot of support for defending the status quo, even if the alternative is selling the LDB off to Christy's friends at bargin basement prices. They'll likely defend it (and have public support) by claiming that it will help this situation. Note, I'm not saying it will do anything about the current situation other than privatize the profits for Christy's friends, but the LDB isn't something that's popular to defend.

ETA: Although seeing as they'll be keeping the monopoly in place, it's hard to see the Liberals benefiting from this too. It's a part of Christy's wider problem, on the one hand she attacks the left (i.e. the unionized workers and the concept of the government owning the LDB) on the other hand she doesn't given into more (traditionally) right wing demands to completely open the distribution system to competition. It's another example of their political tone deafness.

yeah, ontario has a legislated monopoly on beer sales (the beer store) that's owned 98% by a weird joint venture between molson and labatt (with 2% owned by sapporo), and the prices there are insanely high compared with quebec, where saq has farmed off the retail side to basically anyone with a point of sale.  personally, i'm very conflicted - the notion that working in a liquor store is a well-paying union job is cool and just one more path for low-education folks into the middle class, and i'm reluctant to see that go, which it will with privatized distribution and retail.  but the liquor laws are indeed pretty nuts over there, very much a controlled-substance approach to alcohol, which i find annoying (i'm a big proponent of alcohol consumption).  of course, leave it to the liberals to pick the option that minimizes utilty and maximizes liberal donor gain at the public's expense.

I want to be happy that this rat is leaving the sinking ship, but he's just going to take some plum six-figure patronage position and get rich while he continues to attack BCs public service without the extra scrutiny public office invites.

They're not exactly making it difficult to win against them.

So is Shirley Bond going to become the minister of everything that nobody else wants to do? :P

Today is the 40th anniversary of Dave Barrett's historic win against WAC Bennett.

I was a young organizer in that campaign and have vivid memories of that momentous night and the campaign that resulted in it.

I was pulling the vote in a heavily NDP poll near Commercial Drive. About 10 minutes before polls closed I realized we had pulled every potential supporter, so enthusiastic was our base.

There were no public opinion polls in those days but you could feel the win coming for at least a week in advace. Canvassing was a dream. It seemed everyone was suddenly voting NDP. 

I remember listening to the radio in the headquarters when the first results came in. The NDP was leading in the first dozen or so polls scattered through the interior in unlikely ridings. Someone said it's too early and I said "But we're leading everywhere."

At the celebration that night their were old CCFers who were crying. They had had worked for the party through the previous FORTY years, which gives me some perspective today.

Congratualtions to Dave Barrett and everyone else who worked in that magical campaign.

As someone else alluded to, I can't help but have suspicions that something behind the scenes  is going on - probably an attempt to subvert democracy and somehow get the Northern Gateway pipeline through, knowing the provincial NDP are headed for a majority next year and will not let the pipeline through.

Yes, I know all about that. But Northern Gateway is the real biggie.

The Conservatives are looking to throw Cummins under the bus now, could be interesting to see how this plays out. Usually trying to oust a leader never works out well, though the NDP successfully did it, but in this case Cummins is a socially conservative nut who isn't premier material. A younger leader who isn't as far right could take more support from the Liberals and wipe them off the map.

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/John+Cummins+faces+challenge+from+w...

theleftyinvestor wrote:

Remember the BC Liberals ousted one Gordon to get another one in time for an election.

Exactly and it was disasterous. Would be interesting to see what would have happned had he not left.

A bitumen spill in Burrard Inlet in the same magnitude as the Kalamazoo spill would have exposed over a million people to toxic fumes.  There is no bitumen currently going though the pipeline which is old and needs replacing.  There could conceivably be approvals without hearings to "double" the capacity and shift from regular crude to bitumen.  There are already small ongoing leaks of crude seeping into the Inlet from decaying oil refineries and the pipelines that feed them from the tank farms at the end of Kinder Morgan's pipeline.

The Northern Gateway is being opposed by every progressive group in the province and at this point it will not go ahead unless they ram it through before the May election and even then the ground will not be broken for construction prior to Dix becoming Premier. The southern route faces far less hurdles in terms of environmental review because it already exists.  So far neither the federal nor the BC NDP have not taken the same kind of definitive stand on the issue and unfortunately the federal NDP MP spoke on his own, without central party support I am told, and opined that if the benefits were right then it was worth considering.  A world view that bears remarkable similarity with our current Premier's.

So from the shores of the Burrard Inlet I see one as being dead in the water while the other is flying under the radar with its stealth gear fully engaged. I am way more scared of the first strike bomber than a lame duck.

For Kinder Morgan we already have both Vancouver and Burnaby city councils speaking out. If Gregor and Derek need to call in a favour from their friends at the federal and provincial NDP, the lines of communication are certainly open.