BC Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson

um magoo if your reading BC political stuff get yourself up to speed on who is who.

i fine with reading their tweets cause you know i know who they are.

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um magoo if your reading BC political stuff get yourself up to speed on who is who.

Can you help me, and everyone who's not from BC?

Who is "Nic_Slater", and what would we know him for doing, if we were "up to speed"?  Is he an MPP?  A former MPP?  What's his story?

Is this him?

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Nic was a successful business owner for three decades. A graduate of McGill's Agriculture program, his eclectic career now has him fundraising for public policy Non-Profits. He is a certified ski coach and enjoys teaching children.

Sorry I didn't know to show a former municipal candidate who likes skiing and children the proper respect.

Wilkinson has the qualifications. A practicing medical doctor, lawyer and former deputy minister in the BC government who, as leader is out from under the thumb of the scheming Clark.

No wonder the left is busily slagging him - he is a real challenge to the cobbled together mismatch governing BC today. 

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looks like he's got the same credentials as our illustrious PM only he has more experience and a better education.

That must make it ten times more bittersweet that he's not the PM.

Nor anyone I should know about or care about.

Perhaps you know his name, the way I know the name of George Sawision.  Who cares?

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communism is such a grand ideology until you run out of 'unworked for wealth'. Just look at all the nations that became socialist utopias lately due to 'sharing' others' wealth: Russia and Venezuela spring to mind. Also East Germany before those capitalists in West Germany forced higher standards of living on the East and ruined it all.

Well, using Venezuela as an example, if you've squeezed all you can out of your own "one percenters" then you can always move on to other countries' "one percenters".

Oil may run out in a hundred years or so, but if times are tough, there will ALWAYS be others to blame, name and shame.

NorthReport wrote:

It is one thing to work honestly for a living but I wonder how many of those 3 million dollar plus homes were acquired via casino money-laundering that was ignored by the previous government?

I don't know but I'm pretty sure that it contributed to the fact that these homes are worth millions in the first place.

Free enterpriser that I am, I do believe that windfall capital gains, whether instant or earned over time are a legitimate target for taxation. Exponentially increasing costs for health and education are deserving of exponentially increasing revenue streams.

In the case of house rich, cash poor seniors, it makes sense to institute an inheritance tax with prorated exemption limits. In the case of speculators, a capital gains tax at the provincial level on r/e transactions.

The federal dippers had a good inheritance tax proposal a few years ago but chickened out.

The problem with affordable housing is not financial, it is political. It is a lack of supply that leads to maximizing housing unit features to drive pricing upward. If governments made a supply of land available for rental housing only, the availability of choice will force competition for renters/buyers which will align prices with incomes and remove the premium that attracts speculators.

JKR wrote:

Martin N. wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

It is time for the one percenters to share their unworked for wealth. Good on John Horgan, David Eby and the NDP.  

Yeah, because communism is such a grand ideology until you run out of 'unworked for wealth'. Just look at all the nations that became socialist utopias lately due to 'sharing' others' wealth: Russia and Venezuela spring to mind. Also East Germany before those capitalists in West Germany forced higher standards of living on the East and ruined it all.

It seems to me that social democratic countries like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Iceland are leading the world in quality of life comparisons.

Yeah, too bad we can't have one of those. They lead on quality of life metrics like a two tier health system that makes health care affordable and timely. 

Canadian apologists confuse access to a waiting list with access to healthcare. Canada needs to put funds into healthcare, not into more p.r. blokes lying their faces off about waiting lists and rationed surgeries.

You are talking social democrats and we have antisocial lunatics.

Tone what down? 

Martin N. wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

It is one thing to work honestly for a living but I wonder how many of those 3 million dollar plus homes were acquired via casino money-laundering that was ignored by the previous government?

I don't know but I'm pretty sure that it contributed to the fact that these homes are worth millions in the first place.

Free enterpriser that I am, I do believe that windfall capital gains, whether instant or earned over time are a legitimate target for taxation. Exponentially increasing costs for health and education are deserving of exponentially increasing revenue streams.

In the case of house rich, cash poor seniors, it makes sense to institute an inheritance tax with prorated exemption limits. In the case of speculators, a capital gains tax at the provincial level on r/e transactions.

The federal dippers had a good inheritance tax proposal a few years ago but chickened out.

The problem with affordable housing is not financial, it is political. It is a lack of supply that leads to maximizing housing unit features to drive pricing upward. If governments made a supply of land available for rental housing only, the availability of choice will force competition for renters/buyers which will align prices with incomes and remove the premium that attracts speculators.

Your proposals for revenue enhancement are laudable.

However on housing, we need social housing as well as affordable housing for the people who are very poor that cannot afford affordable housing.

Social housing will get people out of the low end of the private rental market, which will maintain affordable housing where it is, and keep prices down there as well. 

Releasing green belt land for housing is a political third rail, as Doug Ford discovered recently in Ontario.

I think they might have more luck buying suburban lots and building affordable apartment buildings on them, increasing density and the tax base, and lowering the cost per capita of providing services.

Yet even there, there will be a NIMBY factor as well. It is a Gordian Knot.

Martin N. wrote:

Try 'educating' yourself on the healthcare system in European social democracies and our healthcare system. Then come back and discuss it without the juvenile taunts. If you can't comprehend that they are not my "precious neo  liberals" then perhaps you need to work on your critical thinking skills.

Knee-jerk defence of Canada's single tier healthcare system without any comprehension of its part in decimating access to healthcare by substituting access to waiting lists among other egregious failures is the main obstacle to positive change. 

Which health care system(s) do you think are the best in the world that you think Canada should emulate?

NorthReport wrote:

This just about the rich wanting to get to the front of the line

Why? 

Because they are rich.

Think about it. If the rich want to get to the front of their own line and pay for it themselves, they are not in the public payer line. Doctors who are rationed surgery slots will be able to do more surgeries without any effect on public budgets but resulting in shortened public payer wait times.

You doctrinaire thinkers apparently do not realize that Canada already has a two tier system. WCB, RCMP, CAF and many others are private payers who go to the front of the line. With an official two tier system, they will have their own line along with those nasty 'rich' folks.

Yeah, I know what you are going to say: "the rich will take doctors away from the public system". No. Wrong. What will happen is that we will attract doctors, especially hard to find specialists who, under a two tier system, can fulfill their ambitions rather than chaffing in an under-resourced, artificially rationed public system.

but then again, maybe you prefer getting medical care from the Walmart clinic. From whatever part-time doctor Walmart hires.