B.C. Election 2013

Discuss the upcoming provincial election. Keep it civil in here, people. It's not the Political Arena.
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Drip_Torch
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by Drip_Torch »

Well, we can be certain the current Clark won't be found to be in Conflict of Interest by our currently conflicted Commissioner...

Paul Fraser sees nothing wrong with investigating a complaint by independent MLA John van Dongen into Premier Christy Clark’s actions while the commissioner’s son John Paul Fraser:

— Holds a senior B.C. government political job doing communications for Clark and her colleagues;

— Worked on Clark’s successful B.C. Liberal party leadership campaign;

— Used to work for the father of Clark’s son, her ex-husband political consultant, Mark Marissen.


http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2012/11/12/co ... connection
Last edited by Drip_Torch on Mar 17th, 2013, 4:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Drip Torch - an upright and steadfast keeper of the flame, but when tilted sideways the contents spill and then our destiny is in the wind...
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Urbane
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

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Surprisingly, the B.C. New Democrats support Fraser.

“We think Fraser has a high level of integrity and we support his judgement — we think he will do the right thing,” NDP MLA Shane Simpson told 24 hours Monday.


:dyinglaughing: :dyinglaughing: :dyinglaughing:
NAB
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by NAB »

It appears Simpson's confidence in Fraser "to do the right thing" wasn't misplaced (or was it?)... Perhaps it was anticipated he would do his job.....

"B.C. conflict commissioner steps down from probe of Premier Christy Clark"
By Christopher Reynolds, Vancouver Sun November 13, 2012

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/confli ... story.html

:dyinglaughing: :dyinglaughing: :dyinglaughing:
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Urbane
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by Urbane »

^^ Ha ha. Yes, he did the honourable thing, Nab, so thanks for filling that in for Drip_Torch since he left that part out. By suggesting that Clark wouldn't be found in contempt because of this commissioner he was trying "to create an alternate version of reality that suits his partisan purposes." LOL. I'm off for a nice St. Patrick's Day dinner and so I'll leave all of you NDP'ers to your own. Do have a nice evening though! Happy St. Patrick's Day!
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by NAB »

well, don't gloat just yet Urbane. After your celebration of St. Paddy driving out the snakes, you may want to research what happened after Fraser stepped aside, ....and where the whole thing sits now.

:dyinglaughing:
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Drip_Torch
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by Drip_Torch »

Urbane, fresh from battle with the imaginary socialist hoards breaking down the gates, strolls through town on his way to celebrate St Patrick, while humming along to "it's a beautiful day"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS5t6Ztx ... r_embedded
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by George+ »

Imaginary socialist hordes is right.
Just ordinary people
flamingfingers
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by flamingfingers »

Postby NAB » Today, 4:36 pm
It appears Simpson's confidence in Fraser "to do the right thing" wasn't misplaced (or was it?)... Perhaps it was anticipated he would do his job.....

"B.C. conflict commissioner steps down from probe of Premier Christy Clark"
By Christopher Reynolds, Vancouver Sun November 13, 2012


This suggests a bit more than surface take:

: Gerald Gerrand, QC and Christy Clark–One Member of Federal Liberal Dynasty Investigating Another???

BC Conflict Commissioner Paul Fraser, a well-know federal Liberal and family friend of Premier Christy Clark, was called upon by Independent MLA John vanDongen to investigate a possible conflict of interest in the sale of BC Rail, where it pertained to the conduct of then Deputy Premier Christy Clark.

Specifically, that Christy Clark, twice, declared her conflict in the house but still attended Cabinet meetings, and from a perusal of wiretap evidence collected by the RCMP and released by the Crown, Clark was clearly shilling for one of the bidders, OmniTRAX, while being coached to do so by Erik Bornmann–at the time, an unrepentant briber of public officials, and close friend of Christy Clark and her now ex-husband Mark Marrisen.

When Commissioner Fraser (whose reappointment was unanimously renewed by the house during this latest sitting) received the request by vanDongen, he was perfectly willing to proceed with an investigation, despite his family’s very close ties to the Clark/Marrisen political bailiwick. This included his son John Paul, who is still employed by the Premier’s government, and was part of her inner circle through the leadership campaign. Mr. Fraser saw nothing wrong in the obvious conflict, notwithstanding a growing chorus of media critical of the process which was to ensue. Mr. Fraser, accepting the, at least, apparent conflict, eventually relented to common sense and sound reason, announcing the appointment of Gerald L. Gerrand, QC, originally of Saskatchewan, but currently the Conflict Commissioner of the Northwest Territories, as the arbiter of the matter.


...snip... REad more here:

http://alexgtsakumis.com/2013/03/11/exc ... g-another/

seems like Gerrard has a conflict as well.....
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Urbane
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by Urbane »

    NAB wrote:well, don't gloat just yet Urbane. After your celebration of St. Paddy driving out the snakes, you may want to research what happened after Fraser stepped aside, ....and where the whole thing sits now.

    :dyinglaughing:

I'm glad that every "faux-scandal du jour" is keeping you on the edge of your seat Nab! Enjoy!
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steven lloyd
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by steven lloyd »

Drip_Torch wrote:Holy Crap! Craig McInnes may be well advised to get checked out by a doctor
- as it appears he might have been in a coma for the last 12 years.

That article written by McInnes really highlights just how desperate the Apologists have become.
It seems that minimization and deflection really are the last and only course left them - a beaten group.
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fluffy
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by fluffy »

I'm of the mind that provincial elections in BC have become a beast unto themselves, devouring time and resources that could have been devoted to actually running the province. It's all about winning, the business of the province has become secondary. We are an electorate driven by emotion not reason. It looks like, in all probability, we are going to elect an NDP government based on nothing of substance other than that we are mad at the Liberals. Liberals who came to power because we were mad at the NDP who came to power because we were mad at the Socreds. The NDP know that realistically, all they have to do to put this election in the bag is to keep quietly fueling the fires that are consuming the Liberal government. They can keep an appearance of moral high ground by speaking now and then of positive campaigns and avoiding open criticism which lets the fires look more like Liberal self-immolation but you can bet it's their hands that are gleefully turning the spit.

There's something horribly wrong with a system that has voters stepping into the polling both looking for someone who will do the least amount of damage.
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NAB
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by NAB »

NAB wrote:"violated conflict of interest laws" is not a chargable offense.


Urbane wrote:Who on here said that Glen Clark was found guilty of a criminal offence? Not me. Glen Clark was found to have violated conflict of interest laws. Do you put that in the same category as jaywalking Nab? I'm bemused by the standards that some of you set for NDP'ers and the other set of standards you set for the BC Liberals.


Was it not you who wrote...

I was responding to an erroneous comment that Clark was cleared of all charges. That is simply not true.


...and the standards (and related criticism here) I set have to do with the Government of the day. That the Government of the day happens to be people from the BC Liberal party so what they do or don't do as government happens to reflect poorly on the party executive and remaining membership is not my problem ........now that I have recently destroyed my BC Liberal membership card, will be asking them to remove me from their membership list, and stop harassing me via phone and e-mail for money and support.

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Urbane
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by Urbane »

    NAB wrote:...and the standards (and related criticism here) I set have to do with the Government of the day. That the Government of the day happens to be people from the BC Liberal party so what they do or don't do as government happens to reflect on the party is not my problem now that I have recently destroyed my BC Liberal membership card and will be asking them to remove me from their membership list.
    Nab
Nab, I knew it was unrealistic that any of the NDP'ers on here would read the McInnis column with any sense of objectivity but I posted it with the hope that at least a few people on here might be interested in what he had to say. I was well aware that once again we would be told that standards only need to be applied to the government of the day but his column examined the way those standards are being applied to this government as opposed to previous ones. Some of you, of course, go to great lengths trying to retroactively raise the standing of previous governments with little semantic games or by simply downplaying the actual breaking of laws but the facts in the McInnis column are there for all to see.
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by flamingfingers »

More from McInnis:

Craig McInnes: Liberal counterattack on outreach scandal falls flat

NDP outreach plan cut from a different cloth than the government’s version

By Craig McInnes, Vancouver Sun Columnist March 17, 2013

On a day when Liberals had every reason to be contrite, Community Minister Bill Bennett was in full attack mode.

It was the last question period before the provincial election. Earlier on Thursday, the damning report on the scheme to use government resources to woo ethnic voters to the Liberal Party was released. It confirmed allegations that public officials committed serious breaches of their duties, mixed party and government business, misused government funds and used private emails to try to cover their tracks.

While acknowledging that “two wrongs don’t make a right,” Bennett concentrated on hammering home the government’s talking points, conveniently leaked to my colleague Vaughn Palmer earlier in the day.

The key message was that the Liberals had apologized and dealt decisively with their scandal while NDP Adrian Dix refused to acknowledge an equally serious breach by his caucus.

“The NDP have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar,” he said, citing another leaked document that Bennett said showed they set up what he called a slush fund for illicit purposes, using money for political purposed that was supposed to be used by individual MLAs to pay for expenses in their riding.

Conveniently for Bennett’s attempt to deflect attention off the Liberal’s scandal, most of that money was used to pay a contractor for outreach services in the multicultural community.

So were the Liberals and the NDP essentially up to the same nasty business, misusing government resources to try to gain support from multicultural communities?

There are similarities. We only learned about both schemes from leaked documents. Without the leaks, there is no indication that either would have told us what they were up to.

The really damaging material about the Liberals came out after the initial leak was investigated by a team of deputy ministers, who confirmed that the details were as bad as could have been imagined.

The leaked document that informed the stories about the NDP outreach fund was a draft management letter from Auditor General John Doyle to the Legislative Assembly Management Committee, which includes Liberal and NDP MLAs.

The management committee was plucked from the obscurity from which it has long operated last summer by a devastating report from the Auditor General, who found the books on the internal affairs of the legislature were so poorly kept he couldn’t tell in many cases whether money was being properly spent or purloined.

It was in that murky world that the NDP caucus fund was set up, with the blessing of the comptroller general, in 2005. That comptroller has since been replaced.

Every NDP MLA contributed $200 a month from the money they received for constituency expenses to a fund that could be used for what were considered to be common benefits that they couldn’t otherwise afford.

One of the primary uses of the fund was to hire Gabriel Yiu for multicultural outreach, primarily in the Chinese community.

Yiu was hired as a contractor, according the New Democrats, not an employee. He did work for caucus, being paid as much as $75,582 in 2008 to a low of $31,841 in 2012. For that he provided translation services and attended events with MLAs.
He also wrote articles denouncing the Liberal government, but New Democrats say he did that on his own time, not for them. When he ran as an NDP candidate he wasn’t being paid from the fund.

When the auditor general finally took a look at the arrangement, he said it was inappropriate and a partisan use of funds, which is contrary to the guidelines given for the use of constituency funds in the MLA’s handbook.

When they got that advice from the auditor general, the NDP stopped using the fund.

So were the two breaches the same? Hardly.

To equate the two is to say there is no difference between the work MLAs do for constituents and the work political parties do to secure votes. Constituency work is political in the sense that everything a government does is political.

If people like what you are doing, they are more likely to vote for you, whether as a government or an individual MLA.

What the Liberals were doing was trying to use government resources, not just caucus funds, for the benefit of the political party. They were looking for “quick wins.” That was wrong and elements of it may even have been illegal.

What the NDP did was also wrong under the rules of the legislature, but the scheme met the loose standards of the time when it was set up, standards under which the Liberals had also been happy to operate until challenged by the auditor general. When it was finally flagged as inappropriate, not by the Liberals but by Doyle, it was shut down.


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Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Craig+ ... z2Nw2dvzfH
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steven lloyd
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Re: B.C. Election 2013

Post by steven lloyd »

NAB wrote: ........now that I have recently destroyed my BC Liberal membership card, will be asking them to remove me from their membership list, and stop harassing me via phone and e-mail for money and support. Nab

I quite enjoy the emails. Good humour. I also like laughing at those clips from Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and Ezra Levant.
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