Accept apology and move on. WHAT!?

[Rwede]

Majority of British Columbians wanted Olympics here" ?? I think you confused that statement with, "the majority of British Columbians wanted shorter wait lists in hospitals and don't want cuts to edjucation".

There have been NO cuts to "edjucation." Funding has increased EVERY SINGLE YEAR for the past 10 years.

NDP bullcrap. Put on your hip waders, 'cause it's getting DEEP!

[Rwede]

They will, as they did, bring up NDP faults, real or imagined from many decades ago, to "prove" their points.

Talk to me about the following facts. Tell me why this was good for me as a British Columbian with an NDP government in the 1990s. Keep it civil, and just address the figures presented. Explain to me why this was good fiscal policy by the NDP.


Real Per Capita GDP Growth 1992 - 2000

Nfld: 33.6%
SK: 27.3%
AB: 27%
ON: 24.2%
PQ: 22.3%
NB: 21.6%
PEI: 18.6%
MB: 17.5%
NS: 16.2%
BC: 5.3%

[Source: Statistics Canada, Provincial Economic Accounts, February, 2000.)

[Rwede]

I'm just happy that the most recent NDP stats I can present are over 10 years old.

[Kodidad]

Majority of British Columbians wanted Olympics here" ?? I think you confused that statement with, "the majority of British Columbians wanted shorter wait lists in hospitals and don't want cuts to edjucation".

There have been NO cuts to "edjucation." Funding has increased EVERY SINGLE YEAR for the past 10 years.

NDP bullcrap. Put on your hip waders, 'cause it's getting DEEP!

So my sister in law is a long time teacher in Surrey. ESL has been cut, she has to teach kids who don't understand english. Lunch programs have been cut. Field trips have to be funded by parents or fund raisers. Teacher's aids have been cut. Special needs programs (handicaped children) have been cut. My sister in law buys craft items out of her own pocket for her grade 2 class, with no repayment. YES funding has increase EVERY SINGLE YEAR, but so has the price of gas, bread, etc. You expect to see no increased cost each year? Your delusional.
Apparently the Tim Horton's at RCH is hiring nurses. Maybe they can serve coffee while the patients are waiting there.
Take off your Liberal sun glasses because they are clouding your vision of reality.

[Urbane]

Majority of British Columbians wanted Olympics here" ?? I think you confused that statement with, "the majority of British Columbians wanted shorter wait lists in hospitals and don't want cuts to edjucation".



There have been NO cuts to "edjucation." Funding has increased EVERY SINGLE YEAR for the past 10 years.

NDP bullcrap. Put on your hip waders, 'cause it's getting DEEP!

When the government doesn't provide as large an increase as is requested by the BCTF it's called a "cut" to education spending by many on the left. And they talk about schools having been closed (true) while not acknowledging declining enrolment. And they don't mention that many schools have actually been opened in growing areas. And then they talk about Liberal deception. Very ironic.

[Urbane]

Majority of British Columbians wanted Olympics here" ?? I think you confused that statement with, "the majority of British Columbians wanted shorter wait lists in hospitals and don't want cuts to edjucation".



There have been NO cuts to "edjucation." Funding has increased EVERY SINGLE YEAR for the past 10 years.

NDP bullcrap. Put on your hip waders, 'cause it's getting DEEP!


So my sister in law is a long time teacher in Surrey. ESL has been cut, she has to teach kids who don't understand english. Lunch programs have been cut. Field trips have to be funded by parents or fund raisers. Teacher's aids have been cut. Special needs programs (handicaped children) have been cut. My sister in law buys craft items out of her own pocket for her grade 2 class, with no repayment. YES funding has increase EVERY SINGLE YEAR, but so has the price of gas, bread, etc. You expect to see no increased cost each year? Your delusional.
Apparently the Tim Horton's at RCH is hiring nurses. Maybe they can serve coffee while the patients are waiting there.
Take off your Liberal sun glasses because they are clouding your vision of reality.

For as long as I was teaching the BCTF talked about "cuts to education" even during the NDP years. There were always cuts and everything was always bad and getting worse. A lot of people believed the BCTF and moved their kids into private schools. But if you really feel that schools are underfunded push for some cuts in administration because that will free up money for field trips and lunch programs. And vote to retain the HST.

[flamingfingers]

Carbon folly: squeezing schools to aid energy giant

By CraigMcInnes 7 May 2011 COMMENTS(13) Feeling the Heat

Thursday night the Vancouver school board approved a budget that reflected the cuts necessary to close an $8.4-million funding shortfall.

Earlier in the day, the B.C. government's Pacific Carbon Trust (PCT) announced a deal to buy 84,000 tonnes of carbon offsets from Encana, an energy company that reported net earnings of $1.5 billion in 2010 on revenues after royalties of $8.87 billion, all in U.S. dollars.

These announcements are related, because part of the money the PCT is using to buy the offsets comes from school boards, which, like other public bodies, are being required by the provincial government to reduce their own greenhouse-gas emissions enough to become carbon neutral or buy offsets to make up the difference.

The Pacific Carbon Trust is the company set up by the province to buy and sell carbon offsets. Carbon offsets are created when an organization or business, in this case Encana, is paid to reduce emissions in a manner it could not have achieved without the subsidy. That's the theory, anyway.

The PCT won't say how much it is paying Encana, but it is charging any organization that wants or needs offsets $25 a tonne.
The budget approved by the Vancouver school board includes $405,725 to pay for such offsets, money that board chair Patti Bacchus said Friday could have been put to better use.

"I could pay for about five teachers," she says.

Adding insult to injury, the board is required to pay the province about $45,000 for a "smart tool" to assess its carbon footprint and to supply staff to make it work. Bacchus said the payments are particularly galling because many of the schools operated by the VSB are old, poorly insulated and inefficient, so they have high energy costs.

"These are schools that are cold in the winter because we've turned down the heat to save money and we have parents and children and staff shivering and complaining about that," she said.

Rather than give the school board sufficient funds to bring them up to modern standards, the province penalizes them with its carbon neutrality requirements, Bacchus said.

School boards around the province are facing similar challenges, as are regional health authorities. In 2012, B.C. energy legislation calls for all municipalities to be carbon neutral, which means that they, too, will have to purchase carbon credits.
PCT estimates it will need to buy 800,000 to 1,000,000 tonnes of offsets to meet the demands of public-sector organizations in B.C.

In other words, up to $25 million dollars will be collected from taxpayers, and instead of being used to teach children, tend to the sick and shelter the homeless, it will be passed on to Encana and other companies and organizations to help them reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Encana is getting the money to change the drilling process it is using in a formation in northeastern British Columbia that releases a high level of emissions.

Unlike the emissions that you or I produce when we burn natural gas to heat our homes, those emissions are not subject to a carbon tax. So apparently Encana doesn't have any incentives to make these changes and reduce emissions on its own; it needs to be subsidized to do so at the expense of public services.

I'm not a fan of carbon offsets at the best of times. They are part of an artificial system designed to create an economic rationale for investments that result in reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that would not otherwise pay off.

At the same time we are told that carbon taxes and the capand-trade system are designed to create economic incentives for the same kinds of decisions by making it more expensive to continue to pollute as before. That should mean that businesses already have incentives to make changes to reduce emissions, and shouldn't need further cash incentives.
What kind of public policy leads to a school board subsidizing an energy company?

A very bad one, somewhat south of ridiculous.

http://communities.canada.com/vancouver ... giant.aspx

[Rwede]

Patti Bacchus - A member of left-wing Vision Vancouver and NDP member. She's rumoured by many, including Alex Tsukwhateverthehellhisnameis and Bill Tieleman, as aspiring to be an NDP MLA. Now that's a credible source to deliver a non-partisan evaluation of education funding under the BC Libs!

[flamingfingers]

Carbon crunch

By Ruth Lloyd - Caledonia Courier
Published: May 20, 2011 4:45 PM
Updated: May 20, 2011 4:45 PM

Nechako Lakes School District 91 paid over $72,000 in carbon tax this year.

The carbon tax goes to buying carbon offsets in order to make the schools carbon neutral.

The money is paid to Pacific Carbon Trust, which then provides funding for carbon-emission reducing projects in private industry.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/news/1223684 ... &bc09=true

[flamingfingers]

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Carbon offsets hurt schools, help Encana

School districts across B.C. are chopping budgets because they don't have enough money.

At the same time, they're being forced to fork over millions for global-warming carbon offsets - and some of the money is handed over as subsidies to profitable corporations.

It might be clever policy if you're sitting in the premier's office.

Not so much if you're a sitting in a elementary school in Big Lake, in the Cariboo.

Independent MLA Bob Simpson told the legislature that students from eight grades are in one classroom, including kindergarten and special needs students. The school district doesn't have enough money to provide another teacher.

But it still has to send $87,000 to the Pacific Carbon Trust, a Crown corporation, to buy credits to offset the greenhouse gases it produces busing students and heating schools.

read more:

http://willcocks.blogspot.com/2011/05/c ... ncana.html

[mr.bandaid]

There is no real idealogical difference between what is called left wing and right wing. It is two groups of socialists arguing with each other without being smart enough to understand that they are the same.

[Kodidad]

http://ivythesis.typepad.com/term_paper ... ducts.html
Poor oil industry. I suspect some CEO got a million dollar bonus for figuring out how to make money from nothing.

[The Green Barbarian]

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Carbon offsets hurt schools, help Encana

School districts across B.C. are chopping budgets because they don't have enough money.

At the same time, they're being forced to fork over millions for global-warming carbon offsets - and some of the money is handed over as subsidies to profitable corporations.

It might be clever policy if you're sitting in the premier's office.

Not so much if you're a sitting in a elementary school in Big Lake, in the Cariboo.

Independent MLA Bob Simpson told the legislature that students from eight grades are in one classroom, including kindergarten and special needs students. The school district doesn't have enough money to provide another teacher.

But it still has to send $87,000 to the Pacific Carbon Trust, a Crown corporation, to buy credits to offset the greenhouse gases it produces busing students and heating schools.

read more:

http://willcocks.blogspot.com/2011/05/c ... ncana.html

I agree with your condemnation of this idiotic program Flaming. The biggest beef I have with the Liberals is their swallowing of this nonsense about man-made global warming, and their adherence to stupid policy that forces public buildings to all go "carbon neutral" at the expense of real public services, like education and health care. This garbage policy (and the foolish carbon tax) should be abandoned as fast as possible. Unfortunately I just see this kind of stupidity getting even worse and not better under the New Dumms, who are close chums with the Church of Global Warming crowd and the enviro-nutbags who are responsible for this insanity.

[wthwyt]

Carbon tax IMO is nothing more than a grab and a way for politicians to try balance the books.

By the way politicians pretty well never apologize, they either retire or step down and move on.

[Captain Awesome]

Captain Awesome - How can you say the "Olympics broke even" ?

Organizational costs against operating revenue showed small profit according to Profit and Loss statements they published last year, that's what I'm saying. No, it didn't pay for infrastructure that is still in use (and it was never supposed to pay for it) because infrastructure is not the cost of organizing Olympics. But these are items that will be in use for many many years like Whistler highway. On infrastructure, British Columbians received a good deal since federal govt kicked in quite a bit of money. There's a question of few loans that city of Vancouver backed, I really don't know the status of them, but those are small potatoes.

Anyways, financially speaking Olympics were handled responsibly, so no, your kids won't be eating their eyeballs for dinner because liberals pushed us into debt for generations, like some people who can't read financial statements claimed.

That's my basis for saying "Olympics broke even".