Liberal Party.

[steven lloyd]

I'm bemused by the fact that the HST was a terrible tax because it supposedly gave too big a break to business and now we have some of the same people who opposed the HST complaining that the government isn't giving the film industry enough tax breaks. Just an observation. Keeping the HST would have been much better for the film industry.

Hmmm, probably true. Although some might think at this point the more important thing is that we stop voting to perpetuate the status quo and the continual re-election of “governments we deserve”. Others, of course, are quite happy with rewarding the ongoing malfeasance and corruption by our governments in power. Neither choice available to us right now is ideal. It’s just that voting for the status quo sends the clear and unmistakeable message we’re nothing more than docile sheep. Carry on.

[Urbane]

I realize the title of the thread is "Liberal Party" but it seems more useful to genuinely examine policies rather than accusing others of being sheep for simply not being automatically against every initiative that the government is taking. Some people who were so angry about the HST bristled when I (and others) mentioned the film industry and how it would be harder to attract films here if Ontario had the HST and we didn't now want our government to provide bigger tax incentives to the film industry. It's pretty inconsistent and the reason for the inconsistency is obvious. If anything the "sheep" characteristics are evident in those who ignore the pros of any government initiative and are always against no matter what. For the pleasure of some of you:

http://www.junglewalk.com/sound/sheep-sounds.htm

[NAB]

"Coleman given bruising by own colleagues"

Excerpt:

"Before the Surrey casino and smart-meter missteps, Coleman was also publicly called out by caucus colleague Randy Hawes over a lucrative tax break for a small brewery that had donated to Coleman's election war chest.

Coleman has alienated many of his Liberal colleagues, I'm told.

He may have permanently damaged his chances to take over the Liberal leadership should Christy Clark resign after the May election."

More: http://www.theprovince.com/technology/C ... story.html

[steven lloyd]

He may have permanently damaged his chances to take over the Liberal leadership should Christy Clark resign after the May election."

I think that after May the Liberal "party" could well be over.

[maple leaf]

104 days to many.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30, 2013
Regime change: T-minus 104 days?

A desperate governing party is looking at the calendar and the opinion polls and just might be realizing its stranglehold on power is running out. Better do something, anything. Quick!

The Christy Clark BC Liberals are where the Bill Vander Zalm (and Rita Johnston) Social Credit was in 1991 and the Ujjal Dosanjh NDP was in 2001. Running out of ideas, detached from voters, hungry for just one more election win.

Despite what the deluded pom-pom wearers and hired spinners will tell you, the Liberals could wake up on May 15 as a spent political force.

Oh, they’re spending millions of dollars to tell you Canada Starts Here, when Cape Spear, Nfld. actually gets the first sun rays every day and Charlottetown in 1864 was where historians say the Dominion of Canada was conceived. And the B.C. Jobs Plan means B.C. is standing tall, like a big, old, white iPod that cannot be toppled by many smaller, old black iPods. Even if the jobs statistics don't stand up to scrutiny.

Then there’s the Concerned Citizens for B.C., the political action committee otherwise known as Jim Shepard’s Christy Clark Fan Club. Shepard and his flock want to remind you NDP leader Adrian Dix backdated a memo in 1999 when he was Premier Glen Clark’s stepandfetchit and that the NDP ordered the three-vessel fast ferry fleet that cost more than $200 million higher than the original budget and didn’t have a proper business plan.

Shepard is blind to the fact the Liberals have bigger, newer skeletons in their closet. Such as the memos to file by Dave Basi which seem to implicate Clark in the leaking of confidential cabinet documents to a bidder for BC Rail. Clark is under investigation after a conflict of interest complaint by ex-Liberal MLA John van Dongen. The saga of B.C. Place Stadium is like a bookend. The Liberals were pondering a $100 million pre-Olympic spruce-up and roof replacement in January 2008. The final cost was $514 million and included a German-engineered retractable roof that is rarely opened. Taxpayers weren't consulted and they weren't even shown a business plan. Roof contractors are inching their way to a 100-day B.C. Supreme Court trial scheduled to begin Oct. 21. On Jan. 30, a lawyer for Canam disclosed before a judge that the company's claim against Freyssinet would be increased by $13 million to $39 million.

Remember the infamous NDP fudge-it budget of 1996, when an $87 million surplus became a $350 million deficit after Glen Clark won election? The Liberals don’t want you to remember their 2009 faux pas when they promised a $495 million deficit during the election but delivered a $2 billion deficit budget just months after Gordon Campbell won his hat-trick. Lest you think dirty thoughts that the Liberals are going to fudge the numbers in their Feb. 19 pre-election budget, Finance Minister Mike de Jong has found another "independent" Maritimer for hire.

Remember Stanley Cup riot investigator Doug Keefe, the former Nova Scotia mandarin who collaborated with ex-Olympics boss John Furlong and got paid $174,000? Meet Dr. Tim O’Neill, a Prince Edward Island economic consultant who is being paid at least $25,000 to look over de Jong's shoulder until budget time and give a passing grade.

Message to Premier Clark: save money, call the Office of the Auditor General.

But all is not lost. There are actually tiny rays of light showing through the fog that suggest someone in the Liberal party has realized the writing is on the wall.

But is it too little too late? Just for show?

On Jan. 30, BC Hydro announced it won't force smart meters on those customers who are holdouts, the thousands of people who are refusing to allow Corix crews on their property to install the iTron devices.

On Jan. 31 at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Community, Sport and Cultural Development Minister Bill Bennett will announce the creation of a new agency for B.C.'s film, arts and creative industries -- a merger of the B.C. Film Commission, B.C. Film + Media and the B.C. Arts Council. They'll combine to form a new body similar to the Ontario Media Development Corporation. A one-stop shop for the creative industries.

Bennett was at North Shore Studios for the #SaveBCFilm rally that drew 4,000 people on Jan. 22 and heard one of the many suggestions to revitalize an industry purposely left out of Clark's B.C. Jobs Plan.

William F. White's Vancouver general manager Garin Josey was spotted at the Canada Place Starbucks preparing for a Jan. 30 meeting in the Premier's Vancouver Office. Josey boosted the We Create B.C. social media campaign during the Jan. 22 North Shore Studios rally. He didn't tell me who he was meeting, but I confirmed independently that it was Bennett and Citizens’ Services Minister Ben Stewart.

The Liberals are trying to looking kinder and gentler, but it’ll take more action to convince me of their sincerity. Here is my five-point, modest proposal for the Liberals to prove they're worthy of staying in office beyond May 14.

Notwithstanding Chief Justice Robert Bauman's Jan. 29 verdict, how about waiving the solicitor-client privilege and delivering the Basi-Virk indemnity agreement to John Doyle so he can finish his audit?
Why not hire a retired judge and give him or her a one-year mandate and reasonable budget for a BC Rail public inquiry?
Perhaps publish the B.C. Place renovation business plan and ask the Auditor General to launch a full-blown value-for-money audit?
Possibly reveal the real reasons for the cancellation of the Liquor Distribution Branch logistics privatization?
Maybe rescind all those the Freedom of Information delay letters that everyone’s getting these days?
POSTED BY BOB MACKIN AT 9:06 PM 3 COMMENTS:
http://2010goldrush.blogspot.ca

[NAB]

Rather unbelievable considering it appears the government can spend as much taxpayer money on highly questionable advertising as it wishes for as long as it wishes, ....but not surprising with this bunch......
Nab

>>>>>>snips
Times Colonist
February 2, 2013

"The B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association is taking the provincial government to court over its election-advertising legislation. That shouldn’t be necessary — the legislation is flawed and should be fixed.

'In 2008, the government passed legislation limiting third-party spending on advertising in the 60 days leading up to an election campaign."

'The legislation was overturned in 2009 after public-sector unions challenged the law. The government appealed and lost. Instead of taking the hint, the B.C. Liberals then tweaked the legislation, shortening the restricted time period and pushing the amended law through in the final days of the 2012 spring legislature. They sent it to the Court of Appeal for scrutiny, where Justice P.D. Lowry ruled that shortening the time of restriction didn’t change the fact that the law limits freedom of expression."

Full editorial:
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/ed ... ge-1.64748

"

[Logitack]

the lieberals are so desperate they are choosing to waste money, a limited, finite resource, on pre election ads to the tune of 15 million dollars. add this to the ads they are spending tomorrow during the superbowl where ads are reportedly costing a million or more for a 30 second ad shows just how fiscally incompetent the liberals are at handling taxpayers money!

how much more evidence do voters need to realize this government is out of control, totally incompetent and could care less at how much further in debt they are putting this province.

For weeks now, we’ve witnessed the B.C. Liberal government ramp up its $15-million, taxpayer-funded advertising campaign.

<<<<snip

The collapsing dominoes – which are actually smartphones, how hip is that? – are supposed to represent jurisdictions whose economies have fallen on hard times because of poor economic management. B.C. is still standing tall, the ad wants you to believe, because of the prudent fiscal management of the Liberals – something everyone should keep in mind come election time in May.

Of course, the ad doesn’t come right out and say that but it doesn’t need to – it’s clearly implied.

Last week, pollster Angus Reid went into the field to see what kind of impact the ad was having with the public. It played the spot to 806 random British Columbians, a survey, we’re told, that produces a margin of error of 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20. Respondents were given 10 words that could be used to portray the ad; they were asked to pick four that best described their feelings toward it.

The options were: useless, deceiving, untrue, informative, fair, offensive, true, unfair, respectful, honest. So what did people think?

The three descriptors that received the greatest response were all negative: Useless got 43 per cent; Deceiving, 42 per cent; Untrue, 31 per cent. Not surprisingly, those people who said they voted NDP in the last election were more likely to see the ad in a negative light. That said, even many of those who said they voted Liberal in the last trip to the polls had problems with it.

For instance, 38 per cent of those 2009 Liberal voters said they felt the ad was useless, while 30 per cent saw it as deceiving and 22 per cent described it as untrue. (For the record,here is how the other words fared: informative 29 per cent, fair 24, offensive 17, true 16, unfair 15, respectful 14 and honest 11).

<<<<<< snip

So is the dominoes ad backfiring?

“In a certain way it is,” says Mario Canseco, vice-president of Angus Reid Public Opinion. “Because ultimately you want people to look at the record of government and establish a trust in the way it’s been handling things. That certainly hasn’t happened here. It’s not really helping the government at all.

“And the other thing is it’s not establishing any kind of emotional connection with the one person the ad is supposed to be supporting and helping and that’s Christy Clark.”

The pollster didn’t ask whether people felt that this was the best use of taxpayers’ dollars. My guess is a majority would have said no. The Liberals must intuitively know this themselves and yet persist with the ads. They obviously believe there is still more upside for them in running them than downside.

It’s a fairly cynical calculation, especially at time when the government is saying no to all sorts of groups, charitable and otherwise, as it slashes costs in a bid to present a balanced budget later this month. When you’re talking about a $41-billion budget, $15-million may not seem like a lot of money. But even a fraction of it could be the difference between life and death for an organization that relies on government help for its existence.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/bri ... le8144956/

[NAB]

This part of that article should be snipped in too, including the headline "Chest thumping B.C. Liberals could take a lesson from Ontario" (...not as though BC hasn't been run for over 3 decades primarily by Ontario Liberal interests and their back room gangs and political plants anyway)..... (Edit: Incidentally, The Ontario Government Advertising Act apparently came into force in November 2004)... (They have their elections in the fall too).

Other provinces have moved to outlaw this kind of outright pandering for votes at taxpayers’ expense.

Ontario, for instance, has the Government Advertising Act, which empowers the province’s auditor-general to decide what constitutes a partisan ad. In this role, the auditor-general has rejected several attempts by the Liberal government to launch ads at taxpayers’ expense on the grounds that they crossed the line from objective, unbiased and accurate to overtly political and self-serving.

To be fair, this is not a phenomenon in B.C. of which only the B.C. Liberals are responsible. During its decade in power, the NDP was just as guilty of using tax dollars to finance political ads that should have been paid for by the party itself. Even current NDP Leader Adrian Dix admits that.

But now he realizes how wrong that is and has vowed to enact legislation that is largely based on the Ontario law regulating government advertising. The proposed NDP law, in fact, would go even further and extend to online advertising, which the Ontario law doesn’t cover. It is almost certain to become part of the NDP’s election platform.

For that, the NDP should be applauded. It’s a law that should have been in place here a long time ago.

[flamingfingers]

Jobs? What jobs? We don't need no stinkin' jobs!!

Monday, February 4, 2013
Aiming for a low wage economy

Christy Clark says The BC Jobs Plan is working and remains a sound strategy for our economic future.

Oh really? For whom is it a sound strategy? Let us look at some numbers.

….See Chart from link:

Over the last four years, BC ranked 7th in job growth, by percentage. More alarmingly, average weekly wages in this province have been declining steadily. In 2012, BC ranked fifth.

….See Chart from link:

When NDP Premier Glen Clark left office, BC ranked second behind Ontario in average weekly wage. Under the Liberals, the province slipped to fifth position but the rate of change in weekly wages has been tenth of the ten provinces, between 2001 and 2011.

…See chart from link:

I believe the Liberal economic plan is working exactly as designed. Their big business sponsors want this province to become a low wage economy, excepting, of course, senior bureaucrats. That is the objective and the plan is working.

http://northerninsights.blogspot.ca/

[sooperphreek]

she can TALK about jobs all she wants but the people are still going to alberta. because there ARE jobs and they make it easy for you in many places if you dont want to move there.

[Alvis]

she can TALK about jobs all she wants but the people are still going to alberta. because there ARE jobs and they make it easy for you in many places if you dont want to move there.

Lots of jobs here in BC mining too......if you can speak Mandarin.

[Sn0man]

she can TALK about jobs all she wants but the people are still going to alberta. because there ARE jobs and they make it easy for you in many places if you dont want to move there.

Tons of jobs out here, and if you have skills or a bit of paperwork behind you, you can make big money. Many, many British Columbians out here - i've met more (former) BC'ers at work here than I have Albertans.

Only thing not so great here is the very "in your face" TFW program. Lots, and lots, and lots of TFW's.

[NAB]

Rumour has it that several MLA's have banded together to promote the idea that, following the May election, the fixed election date should be moved to the fall for future elections. I wonder what the chances are that may show up as a platform iissue for the Liberals, ...or if the NDP will latch onto it first? Or if any of them will salute the idea at all?

Edit: More than a rumour it appears...
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Indepe ... story.html

Nab

[flamingfingers]

Well, they proposed that in 2009 but can't say that I have heard them talk about it so far this year.

The Canadian Press
Published Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009 1:37PM PDT

Opposition Leader Carole James is calling on the provincial Liberals to move British Columbia's fixed election date to the fall to stave off any temptation by the government to fudge the budget.

James made the proposal to a half-filled room this morning in a speech to the Union of British Columbia Municipalities.
B.C. elections are currently fixed on the second Tuesday in May, every four years, but critics say the date is too close to the spring budget.

The Liberals have been criticized after tabling a revised budget early last month forecasting a $2.8 billion deficit, a far cry from the February prediction of about half a billion dollars.

An independent budget-improvements panel appointed by the government first suggested moving the date to further separate the tabling of the budget and the start of the campaign.

James says she wants the next election moved up to the fall of 2012. James also reiterated a familiar appeal to the government to cancel corporate tax cuts -- meant to offset the carbon tax -- and use those funds instead for improving transit and other green initiative.

Read more: http://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-s-ndp-wants-fa ... z2KARfVuX3

[maple leaf]

Wednesday, February 06, 2013
This Day In Snookland (ctd)...If A Poll Falls In The Forest...
AllTheStenographicHands
ThatSuddenlyStoppedClappingVille



This was then (i.e. last Tuesday)...

BC LIBERALS CLOSING GAP, POLL FINDS

VICTORIA — Premier Christy Clark's B.C. Liberals have narrowed the approval gap with the New Democrats to just 10 points, a new Mustel poll has found....

Released Tuesday, the poll put support for the New Democrats at 43 per cent, followed by the Liberals with 33 per cent...
JFowlie, Vancouver Sun
Tuesday Jan 29th, 2013

****

This is now (i.e. today, this Wednesday)...

BC NDP WIDENS GAP, POLL FINDS

LOTUSLAND - Opposition leader Adrian Dix's B.C. New Democrats have widened the approval gap with Liberals to 22% a new Justason poll has found.

Released Wednesday, the poll put support for the New Democrats at 48%, followed by the Liberals with 26%...
NobodyAnywhere, VancouverNotSun
Wednesday Feb 6th, 2013


****

Now.

Here's the thing....

The first bit, above, was up on the Vancouver Sun website almost before the Mustel poll was released last Tuesday, and its message was soon trumpeted all over the proMedia landscape and the Twittmachine by such luminaries as the VSun's own Mr. Fazil Milhar.

As for the second bit...Well, as of late Wednesday, it's crickets.

Surprised?



_______
The real thing, here, of course is that in both polls the 'changes' were within the MOE, which means that nothing changed...
And, as we noted last week in a 'credit-where-credit-is-due' post, at least one member of the local Lotulandian proMedia actually got the Mustel Poll result right...Seriously, you'll never guess who...

http://pacificgazette.blogspot.ca