The Daily Twigg May 15, 2013
Stunning election win for Clark Liberals
raises tough questions for Dix and NDP
By John Twigg
Wow! What a shocker, what an amazing turnabout in the direction of B.C. politics.
In defiance of opinion polls, media predictions and even of analysts in
her own ranks, Premier Christy Clark won a shocking majority in
Tuesday's election - somewhere around 50 seats for the B.C. Liberals, 33
seats for the B.C. New Democratic Party, 1 breakthrough seat for the
Green Party of B.C. (Andrew Weaver in Oak Bay - Gordon Head) and one
seat for Independent Vicki Huntington (an unprecedented re-election).
It was a result the leading media rightly called stunning - because it
was the polar opposite of what the experts had almost universally
expected, as well as regrettably what I expected too as documented in
the previous edition of this blog: that the Adrian Dix New Democrats
with their deliberately modest platform would almost by acclamation
replace the tired and scandal-plagued and mistake-prone Liberals with a
comfortable majority but when most of the polls had been counted it was
clearly a Liberal win, even an increased majority, though at time of
writing the outcome of Clark's own constituency battle in Vancouver -
Point Grey was still uncertain, she being behind by a few hundred votes
with a few polls yet to be counted. She will remain Premier even if she
does lose her seat, and there are several options for her procedurally,
such as running in a manufactured vacancy.
Though recounts probably will be needed in some constituencies the
margin was 17 seats, up 3 from the previous election and in no danger
from recounts; the popular vote was about 44% Liberal (up 1.8%), 39% NDP
(down 3%) Greens 8% (unchanged) and Conservatives 5% (up 2).
Clark was gracious in victory, and the shape and look of her new caucus
is quite interesting: a blend of broad regional interests and genders
and rookie and returning MLAs and quite a few re-elected cabinet
ministers for continuity; she pledged to work for all interests, balance
the environment and the economy and share the proceeds with people. And
probably there won't be many inquiries into the previous regime's many
scandals....
As much as the win was a personal victory for Clark and Deputy Premier
and campaign chair Rich Coleman it also must be seen as a huge personal
loss for Dix and a clear sign that the B.C. New Democrats will have to
do some soul-searching and face-lifting if they hope to compete better
in 2017, such as whether to out-green the Greens or try to out-do the
Liberals on economic development and job creation.
What went wrong for the Dix campaign? Many factors will need to be
explored, especially the party's decision to avoid any negative
campaigning and its milquetoast platform that blatantly failed to
include an full array of direct and indirect job creation and
public/private industrial and economic developments, no creative
financial or public-service instruments and overall nothing to
symbollically grasp the imaginations of voters; their pro-tem budget
cynically used Liberal numbers that they knew were phoney, for example.
Dix's poor performance in the leaders' debate was unhelpful but not
fatal and his campaign tour and media systems seemed fine so critics are
led to look for other problems and soon one finds plenty, especially
his ill-fated flip-flop against the Kinder Morgan pipeline proposal even
before it had been presented, which was done on Earth Day in the
release of the NDP platform and apparently under pressure from
environmental activists who were threatening to jump to the Green Party.
The Kinder Morgan move may have kept some Greens inside the NDP tent but
it also may have cost the NDP the election because up until then they
had a 20-point lead but soon that dwindled to only 8 points and on
voting day it vanished, albeit aided by some other policy and
politicking issues.
Dix's flip-flop on Kinder Morgan was identified as the key turning point
by Liberal strategist Colin Hansen in an interview with Global's Jas
Johal and that analysis was echoed by several other analysts who
explained that it re-awakened fears in the business community and others
about the 1990s New Democrats coming back, and it was reinforced by a
Liberal TV ad that portrayed Dix as a weathervane being blown around in
the winds of change.
"People wanted the economy to be the government's foremost concern,"
said Hansen, which was reflected in the Liberal campaign slogan "Strong
Economy - Secure Future".
Similarly Phil Hochstein, one of the most outspoken business
representatives against the NDP, said Clark was able to connect the
government to jobs while Dix miscalculated, ran a bad rope-a-dope
campaign and sent a terrible signal when he said no to the Kinder Morgan
project before even hearing its proposal.
While Dix has explained that he made up his mind when he heard that
Kinder Morgan was enlarging its proposal in a way that would greatly
enlarge its tanker traffic, the election results show now that that was a
terrible and fatal blunder by Dix.
But it would be wrong to blame the loss on only one big mistake because
there were numerous other flaws apparent in the NDP's campaign
packaging, including such things as the continued use of gender bias and
other quotas in candidate selections and party officer elections, the
continuing heavy influence of union money in party management decisions
(such as the pay for president Moe Sihota) and a general predominance of
single-issue activists versus community-based generalists as well as a
complete lack of support for province-building industrial developments
and economic strategies.
While the Dix and party-insiders' platform did contain tweaks for the
wine and farm industries and promises of a level playing field for the
film industry etc., what it did not contain was a grand vision for the
province in a national and global context, such as reviving the Bank of
B.C. and creating a new currency to help finance a massive job-creation
strategy.
Another key policy challenge for both the NDP and the Greens is how to
handle public concerns about climate change, which to some extent have
been artificially inflated by activists propogating misguided notions
about how much global warming is natural and how much (actually little)
is man-made; the NDP and Green solutions were to pander to those
misconceptions in order to get volunteers and votes but the Clark
Liberals approach was to rise above such debates and go for the gusto -
within reason - on such things as fracking and LNG. The lefty activists
may be horrified but the voters of B.C. have just spoken the last word
on that debate for another four years.
Another issue for the NDP to reconsider is the role of democracy and
governance inside the party, which now is somewhat dominated by a few
insider cliques; but about three years ago a cabal of 13 NDP MLAs and
some other activists more or less rebelled against that system when
Carole James was the leader but it has more or less continued in effect
under Dix, who furthermore didn't seem to go out of his way to campaign
for any of the so-called baker's-dozen rebels and yet almost all of them
who sought re-election were able to get it on their own account as MLAs
who serve constituents first. And of course there should and will be
some personnel questions in the party and caucus too, given that the
result was not even close.
Obviously more analysis will be needed to determine exactly what
happened in yesterday's B.C. election, such as what role Dix's
memo-to-file played and what role gender issues and poll results and
social media played, among other factors we don't yet know of, but
meanwhile it's obvious that the province suddenly turned a sharp corner
and now the focus must shift to what the province should do in
tomorrow's new world.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
The Daily Twigg May 14, 2013 1 pm
B.C. NDP likely to win solid majority
but result could become a landslide
By John Twigg
As British Columbia voters went to the polls this morning the outcome of a big NDP win in the provincial election was pretty much a foregone conclusion to party insiders and others such as media analysts familiar with the large amounts of near-unanimous polling data.
The last three polls with professional credibility showed the Adrian Dix New Democrats with 45 per cent of the popular vote or maybe a bit more, the B.C. Liberals under stopgap Premier Christy Clark maxed out 38 per cent or likely less, the B.C. Green Party solid at 9 per cent and possibly leading in two or three ridings in southern Vancouver Island, the B.C. Conservatives down at 6 per cent and falling and the Other category quite persistent at 3 per cent, reflecting that at least three Independent candidates and perhaps other non-mainstream candidates are quite competitive - which if all true will probably produce a comfortable majority for the NDP in the 85-seat Legislative Assembly as well as (hopefully) a multi-faceted Opposition.
In terms of seat totals it is harder to say because there are numerous ridings with anomalies and more than a few close contests, which can be deduced from the late-days campaign tours undertaken by Clark and especially Dix who added the novelty of a 12-hour final all-night plane and bus tour from 8 p.m. Monday to 8 a.m. today (Tuesday May 14 when polls opened), - but that said it looks like roughly 50 seats for the NDP, about 30 for the Liberals and maybe a handful for Greens and Others, which also was the consensus of callers to CKNW on Monday afternoon.
However my sense is that the result (after recounts in close contests) could become a landslide for the NDP including especially Premier Clark losing her Vancouver - Point Grey seat to the NDP's formidable David Eby, which is deduced from various subtle factors and especially from Eby's campaign winning the local sign war by about 6 to 1, with the virtual absence of Liberal lawn signs apparently indicating that many people who formerly supported the Liberals as the stop-the-NDP choice are no longer doing so, or if they are voting that way they are too embarrassed to admit it to their neighbours who may simply stay home and not vote.
It seems many other lesser Liberal incumbents will be going down too in swing ridings such as North Vancouver - Lonsdale and others in Burnaby and Surrey as B.C. citizens vote en masse against the devils who sneakily forced in the hated Harmonized Sales Tax and then botched its exit and who mishandled seemingly dozens but perhaps hundreds or even thousands of other policy and governance matters too, especially B.C. Hydro and B.C. Ferries, health and education and social services, the environment and the economy, taxpayer-paid political ads, quick-win ploys by partisan hacks paid for by taxpayers, and on and on, especially public-sector megaprojects tainted by over-runs and kickbacks.
The Liberal regime also became known for misrepresenting situations in numerous ways and places, especially the deficit and job numbers and even the supposed threats allegedly posed by an NDP regime. Their last grasp at a straw was to release an old internal policy paper from the NDP's governing Provincial Council and try to portray it as a dangerous secret plan but it was too little too late, especially when a party spokesman told the media it was merely a compilation of grass-roots wish-lists done before Dix had won the leadership contest more than two years ago to succeed former leader Carole James (who herself had been ousted by an internal revolt against her leadership style and weak politicking).
So the old anti-NDP scare tactics did not work this time, partly because the governing Liberals had morphed into something demonstrably even worse than the NDP and partly because Dix imposed a more disciplined and deliberately moderate policy regime onto the party's sometimes doctrinaire apparatus and then assembled an amazingly large, talented and united campaign team that literally and figuratively drove his bus home.
B.C. NDP likely to win solid majority
but result could become a landslide
By John Twigg
As British Columbia voters went to the polls this morning the outcome of a big NDP win in the provincial election was pretty much a foregone conclusion to party insiders and others such as media analysts familiar with the large amounts of near-unanimous polling data.
The last three polls with professional credibility showed the Adrian Dix New Democrats with 45 per cent of the popular vote or maybe a bit more, the B.C. Liberals under stopgap Premier Christy Clark maxed out 38 per cent or likely less, the B.C. Green Party solid at 9 per cent and possibly leading in two or three ridings in southern Vancouver Island, the B.C. Conservatives down at 6 per cent and falling and the Other category quite persistent at 3 per cent, reflecting that at least three Independent candidates and perhaps other non-mainstream candidates are quite competitive - which if all true will probably produce a comfortable majority for the NDP in the 85-seat Legislative Assembly as well as (hopefully) a multi-faceted Opposition.
In terms of seat totals it is harder to say because there are numerous ridings with anomalies and more than a few close contests, which can be deduced from the late-days campaign tours undertaken by Clark and especially Dix who added the novelty of a 12-hour final all-night plane and bus tour from 8 p.m. Monday to 8 a.m. today (Tuesday May 14 when polls opened), - but that said it looks like roughly 50 seats for the NDP, about 30 for the Liberals and maybe a handful for Greens and Others, which also was the consensus of callers to CKNW on Monday afternoon.
However my sense is that the result (after recounts in close contests) could become a landslide for the NDP including especially Premier Clark losing her Vancouver - Point Grey seat to the NDP's formidable David Eby, which is deduced from various subtle factors and especially from Eby's campaign winning the local sign war by about 6 to 1, with the virtual absence of Liberal lawn signs apparently indicating that many people who formerly supported the Liberals as the stop-the-NDP choice are no longer doing so, or if they are voting that way they are too embarrassed to admit it to their neighbours who may simply stay home and not vote.
It seems many other lesser Liberal incumbents will be going down too in swing ridings such as North Vancouver - Lonsdale and others in Burnaby and Surrey as B.C. citizens vote en masse against the devils who sneakily forced in the hated Harmonized Sales Tax and then botched its exit and who mishandled seemingly dozens but perhaps hundreds or even thousands of other policy and governance matters too, especially B.C. Hydro and B.C. Ferries, health and education and social services, the environment and the economy, taxpayer-paid political ads, quick-win ploys by partisan hacks paid for by taxpayers, and on and on, especially public-sector megaprojects tainted by over-runs and kickbacks.
The Liberal regime also became known for misrepresenting situations in numerous ways and places, especially the deficit and job numbers and even the supposed threats allegedly posed by an NDP regime. Their last grasp at a straw was to release an old internal policy paper from the NDP's governing Provincial Council and try to portray it as a dangerous secret plan but it was too little too late, especially when a party spokesman told the media it was merely a compilation of grass-roots wish-lists done before Dix had won the leadership contest more than two years ago to succeed former leader Carole James (who herself had been ousted by an internal revolt against her leadership style and weak politicking).
So the old anti-NDP scare tactics did not work this time, partly because the governing Liberals had morphed into something demonstrably even worse than the NDP and partly because Dix imposed a more disciplined and deliberately moderate policy regime onto the party's sometimes doctrinaire apparatus and then assembled an amazingly large, talented and united campaign team that literally and figuratively drove his bus home.
NDP could win 60 of 85 seats
Thus we also could see an election result something like 60 NDP, 15 Liberals, 4 Greens, 4 Independents and 2 Conservatives - which if it happened (yes that does include some wishful thinking on my part) would send B.C. politics into uncharted waters and maybe cause a brief tizzy in stock markets, bond-rating agencies, real estate brokerages and resource-company boardrooms, but in the long run (say three years) it could become a marvellous opportunity to remake British Columbia into a shining-light beacon of democracy and enlightened self-interest, of intellectual freedom (including religion!), equality of opportunity and human rights and a bastion of environmental excellence and economic self-sufficiency and stability in a world rapidly decaying towards war and social unrest.
As the Dix New Democrats said twice at the top of their final campaign news release they can grow the economy too and in fact that is probably the most hopeful aspect of all, that a Dix NDP regime can grab hold of the many strong horses in the provincial economy and get them pulling together with a clear purpose to a new and better direction, one practical step at a time.
Overall it was a brilliant, masterful and dogged campaign by the Dix-led New Democrats, certainly one of the best campaigns ever in the history of B.C. politics, while the Clark Liberals ran a rather morally cheap and shallow campaign, the Green campaign was good but only narrowly focussed regionally around leader Jane Sterk in Victoria - Beacon Hill and star candidate Andrew Weaver in Oak Bay - Gordon Head, and the B.C. Conservative Party never overcame its internal divisions and leader John Cummins made only a few ripples in the policy pond as its once-high hopes faded away.
Though Dix didn't win either of the leadership debates he also didn't lose them and nor did he blunder in the debates or elsewhere so he was able to end up winning the war by working overtime and assembling a team able to focus on what needed to be said and done to win.
NDP
news release May 14, 2013
10 Reasons Why BC Voters Will Vote for Change Today
10. Yes to Jobs and Economic Development: The NDP plan invests
in skills training to grow the economy and create jobs, and
takes concrete steps to support mining and natural gas, high-tech, forestry, film, agriculture, tourism and small business.
9. Skilled Workforce: We will invest $40 million in skills training and $100 million in a student grants program annually to grow the economy, create jobs and build a thriving middle class.
8. Honesty About Finances: Our fully-costed plan says exactly what we’ll do and how we’ll pay for it. There will be no income tax increases for 98% of British Columbians and there are no HST-like surprises.
7. Standing up for Ferry Riders: We will keep current ferry fares in place through March 31, 2015, while we clean up the mess the BC Liberals have made at BC Ferries.
6. A New More Positive Approach to Politics: We will ban corporate and union donations, eliminate taxpayer-funded partisan advertising and call a Public Inquiry into the BC Rail Scandal.
5. Helping Children: It’s time for a new government that cares about children, with real help like our new BC Family Bonus, reducing child care costs and opening more child care spaces.
4. Improving Classroom Learning: We will hire new specialist teachers and education assistants, to support special needs kids and to free up teachers so they can focus on giving every child the attention they need and deserve.
3. Better Health Care: Our plan will improve seniors’ care, mental health services for children and youth, and hospital care – especially in targeted rural communities
2. Protecting the Environment: We will take back control of pipeline decisions and protect our coasts from potentially catastrophic oil spills.
1. Change: British Columbians deserve better than more of the same. The HST broke your trust. So did the BC Rail and quick win scandals. It’s time for a change – change for the better.
These are 10 reasons British Columbians will vote for change today.
9. Skilled Workforce: We will invest $40 million in skills training and $100 million in a student grants program annually to grow the economy, create jobs and build a thriving middle class.
8. Honesty About Finances: Our fully-costed plan says exactly what we’ll do and how we’ll pay for it. There will be no income tax increases for 98% of British Columbians and there are no HST-like surprises.
7. Standing up for Ferry Riders: We will keep current ferry fares in place through March 31, 2015, while we clean up the mess the BC Liberals have made at BC Ferries.
6. A New More Positive Approach to Politics: We will ban corporate and union donations, eliminate taxpayer-funded partisan advertising and call a Public Inquiry into the BC Rail Scandal.
5. Helping Children: It’s time for a new government that cares about children, with real help like our new BC Family Bonus, reducing child care costs and opening more child care spaces.
4. Improving Classroom Learning: We will hire new specialist teachers and education assistants, to support special needs kids and to free up teachers so they can focus on giving every child the attention they need and deserve.
3. Better Health Care: Our plan will improve seniors’ care, mental health services for children and youth, and hospital care – especially in targeted rural communities
2. Protecting the Environment: We will take back control of pipeline decisions and protect our coasts from potentially catastrophic oil spills.
1. Change: British Columbians deserve better than more of the same. The HST broke your trust. So did the BC Rail and quick win scandals. It’s time for a change – change for the better.
These are 10 reasons British Columbians will vote for change today.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
The Daily Twigg May 9, 2013
Clark's very poor performance as Premier
provoked Liberal partisans into 801 revolt
By John Twigg
There are many questions lingering about the 801 Movement story broken last night by Global TV B.C., like exactly who the club members are and how many, but one other key question is "why?" - why would anyone revolt against B.C. Liberal Party Premier Christy Clark on the eve of an election?
That is, why would any intelligent partisan person revolt against their own party's leader in a way that would knowingly damage that leader's electoral prospects?
It does seem unthinkable but stuff happens, especially in B.C. politics, and a similar event happened almost simultaneously when a gay man suddenly quit as campaign manager in Langley for B.C. Liberal cabinet minister Mary Polak amidst allegations that he had been bullied and exposed to hatred by some old soldiers in the Liberal party.
Are the two events connected? Some Liberal partisans immediately suspected they were both dirty tricks engineered by New Democrats but what little evidence we have suggests the campaign manager's move was an individual one-of-a-kind thing whereas the 801 Club sounds like a loose cabal of business interests long active in the Liberal backrooms.
So why would seemingly loyal Liberal backroomers suddenly revolt against their leader at a most inopportune time? It could well be that they weren't intending to go public yet but once Global reporter Jas Johal and Victoria bureau chief Keith Baldrey realized they had separately discovered the same hidden story (replete with different button designs) they felt they had enough to turn it into a news item for yesterday's 6 p.m. news, which became a running debate this morning.
But again why? Why would partisans revolt against a sitting Premier? The answer is Clark's performance has been so revolting that she deserves to be revolted against and really the question could be "why did it take so long?".
Clark mishandled almost everything she touched
Partisans may not like this statement but it's a fair comment: Premier Christy Clark has mishandled almost everything she has touched.
From dropping her plans for a quickie provincial election soon after she won the B.C. Liberal leadership about two years ago (a win aided by numerous questionable tactics, as blogger Alex Tsakumis has revealed) to her recent abuses of taxpayer dollars with a dubious budget and taxpayer-paid political ads to support it, she has been a disaster.
Clark did a poor job of defending the Harmonized Sales Tax in the referendum on it and then she did a poor job of exiting from it, aided by more dubious financial shenanigans (backloading the deficit)
Clark's handling of the whole BC Rail scandal has been appalling too, including inconsistent comments about her own role in the sale of BCR and subsequent dubious evasions of a proper investigation of the sale of a very large asset for a very long term to buyers who were also friends and backers of the party, in a process seen to be flawed by rival bidders and with certain players obviously conflicted, most notably lobbyist and Clark backer Patrick Kinsella who was working for two or three participants at once.
Clark's abuse of the B.C. Legislature also was gross: it sat for only a few dozen days in two years, including the blatant cancellation of a Fall sitting apparently to among other things avoid questions from former Liberal John van Dongen about her exact role in the BC Rail sale. The revolving door in cabinet was extreme too as numerous veteran pols decided their lives would be better spent elsewhere.
Clark also alienated other Premiers and federal players, various mayors, many interest groups, virtually all unions and even some businesses (viz Telus and B.C. Place) - to the point that her main plus is being not-the-NDP.
Her budgets were jokes; she ran up the debt and now claims to be fighting against spending and deficits. Her hypocrisy is stunning.
Probably the last straw for more than a few Liberal insiders was the turmoil and revolving doors amongst her own staffers, which crew degenerated into the sort of tawdry partisan posturing that sought "quick wins" by pandering to targeted ethnic groups with promises of apologies over historic wrongs - which was revealed by leaked documents from other disgruntled insiders.
In fact there are probably thousands of reasons why Clark deserves to be ousted, possibly topped by her secretive approach to the huge Site C project (one of its main purposes could be to collect rainwater for use in natural gas fracking, and to produce power for LNG freezing), her duplicity on the Enbridge North Gateway and Kinder Morgan TransMountain pipeline projects, her tolerance of the carbon tax abuses, and on and on.
But surely one of those causes that deserves a lot more mainstream media attention was her role in preserving the coverup of numerous scandals until the possible perps could depart, particularly several lawsuits involving bulk water exports but conceivably other concerns too such as some awkward truths behind the Vanoc 2010 Olympics finances and related projects.
Blogger Laila Yuille has gone so far as to produce a Top 100 list of reasons Clark should be ousted and with reader input that list has grown to about 150 items (see http://lailayuile.com/tag/100-reasons-bc-liberals-need-to-go/ ), but a serious student of political science could conceivably list about 1,000 flaws, or certainly 801 (eg jumping a red light with her son and a newspaper reporter in the car on the eve of an election campaign).
It will be interesting to see what the professional pollsters find were the major causes of voting behaviour in the coming election but it's already obvious that voting against the misdeeds of Premier Christy Clark and Gordon Campbell beforehand is a major factor - even amongst party supporters! - though it may be manifested in stay-home not-voting decisions too.
So we may not learn about the 801 movement until 8:01 p.m. on Tuesday (when polls have closed) but if it didn't exist already it would soon have had to be created.
It's hard to believe but in only about two years Christy Clark has earned the reputation as probably the worst Premier in B.C. history, exceeding even the NDP's Ujjal Dosanjh.
In other words Clark's own poor performance provoked the formation of the 801 movement; it only should have happened sooner.
Dix New Democrats remind voters of Liberal flaws
Meanwhile the B.C. New Democrats under leader Adrian Dix have been running a professionally astute campaign that has them looking ready to govern, perhaps moreso than ever.
That was evident anew this morning when NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston gave a clear and plausible defence of the NDP's fiscal and economic plans on the Bill Good Show in response to a somewhat biased and negative policy analysis by Calgary academic Jack Mintz yesterday in the National Post (which failed to mention that Mintz also has had some business and political interests in B.C. affairs).
Ralston in the past has been a dreadfully boring speaker, with too many umms and aahs and long pauses and wanderings off topic but this morning he was clear and direct and obviously had a good grasp on the issues cited by Mintz like corporate investment and tax climates.
Dix also has maintained his one-a-day policy pronouncements and an effective touring schedule that gets him into lots of swing ridings and garners spots in lots of newscasts.
And best of all the NDP, perhaps mindful of something I wrote here earlier, has shifted their advertising themes from all and only positive stuff about the NDP platform to now a balanced mix including reminding voters why they should turn out to vote against the Liberals too, especially regarding the hated HST.
That's important because voter turnout is always a key factor in B.C. elections, which tend to be close in popular vote regardless of which party wins the most seats.
The early flow of voters to advance polls and other indicators suggest there are lots of people motivated to punish the B.C. Liberals for their many transgressions and it now seems the NDP will be the main beneficiary, though Conservatives and Independents will be the choice for that in a few ridings.
The Green Party of B.C. has run a good campaign too but their strength is focussed in only a few ridings on southern Vancouver Island, their finances are meagre and star candidate Andrew Weaver has becoming a sort of lightning rod for controversy while leader Jane Sterk has struggled for media coverage and may have hurt her cause with a strident position on climate policy and carbon taxes. The party also has become viewed by some as too anti-job and anti-industry to be supported.
Furthermore Dix's Earth-Day flip-flop to a position against added oil-tanker traffic also may have forestalled some environmentalist votes flowing to the Green Party though that position had the downside of also reminding business interests why they should work against the NDP, which seems to have been reflected in tightening opinion polls.
Anyway the outcome next Tuesday will be interesting as usual, and it could even depend on some official recounts in close contests with heavy advance voting.
Clark's very poor performance as Premier
provoked Liberal partisans into 801 revolt
By John Twigg
There are many questions lingering about the 801 Movement story broken last night by Global TV B.C., like exactly who the club members are and how many, but one other key question is "why?" - why would anyone revolt against B.C. Liberal Party Premier Christy Clark on the eve of an election?
That is, why would any intelligent partisan person revolt against their own party's leader in a way that would knowingly damage that leader's electoral prospects?
It does seem unthinkable but stuff happens, especially in B.C. politics, and a similar event happened almost simultaneously when a gay man suddenly quit as campaign manager in Langley for B.C. Liberal cabinet minister Mary Polak amidst allegations that he had been bullied and exposed to hatred by some old soldiers in the Liberal party.
Are the two events connected? Some Liberal partisans immediately suspected they were both dirty tricks engineered by New Democrats but what little evidence we have suggests the campaign manager's move was an individual one-of-a-kind thing whereas the 801 Club sounds like a loose cabal of business interests long active in the Liberal backrooms.
So why would seemingly loyal Liberal backroomers suddenly revolt against their leader at a most inopportune time? It could well be that they weren't intending to go public yet but once Global reporter Jas Johal and Victoria bureau chief Keith Baldrey realized they had separately discovered the same hidden story (replete with different button designs) they felt they had enough to turn it into a news item for yesterday's 6 p.m. news, which became a running debate this morning.
But again why? Why would partisans revolt against a sitting Premier? The answer is Clark's performance has been so revolting that she deserves to be revolted against and really the question could be "why did it take so long?".
Clark mishandled almost everything she touched
Partisans may not like this statement but it's a fair comment: Premier Christy Clark has mishandled almost everything she has touched.
From dropping her plans for a quickie provincial election soon after she won the B.C. Liberal leadership about two years ago (a win aided by numerous questionable tactics, as blogger Alex Tsakumis has revealed) to her recent abuses of taxpayer dollars with a dubious budget and taxpayer-paid political ads to support it, she has been a disaster.
Clark did a poor job of defending the Harmonized Sales Tax in the referendum on it and then she did a poor job of exiting from it, aided by more dubious financial shenanigans (backloading the deficit)
Clark's handling of the whole BC Rail scandal has been appalling too, including inconsistent comments about her own role in the sale of BCR and subsequent dubious evasions of a proper investigation of the sale of a very large asset for a very long term to buyers who were also friends and backers of the party, in a process seen to be flawed by rival bidders and with certain players obviously conflicted, most notably lobbyist and Clark backer Patrick Kinsella who was working for two or three participants at once.
Clark's abuse of the B.C. Legislature also was gross: it sat for only a few dozen days in two years, including the blatant cancellation of a Fall sitting apparently to among other things avoid questions from former Liberal John van Dongen about her exact role in the BC Rail sale. The revolving door in cabinet was extreme too as numerous veteran pols decided their lives would be better spent elsewhere.
Clark also alienated other Premiers and federal players, various mayors, many interest groups, virtually all unions and even some businesses (viz Telus and B.C. Place) - to the point that her main plus is being not-the-NDP.
Her budgets were jokes; she ran up the debt and now claims to be fighting against spending and deficits. Her hypocrisy is stunning.
Probably the last straw for more than a few Liberal insiders was the turmoil and revolving doors amongst her own staffers, which crew degenerated into the sort of tawdry partisan posturing that sought "quick wins" by pandering to targeted ethnic groups with promises of apologies over historic wrongs - which was revealed by leaked documents from other disgruntled insiders.
In fact there are probably thousands of reasons why Clark deserves to be ousted, possibly topped by her secretive approach to the huge Site C project (one of its main purposes could be to collect rainwater for use in natural gas fracking, and to produce power for LNG freezing), her duplicity on the Enbridge North Gateway and Kinder Morgan TransMountain pipeline projects, her tolerance of the carbon tax abuses, and on and on.
But surely one of those causes that deserves a lot more mainstream media attention was her role in preserving the coverup of numerous scandals until the possible perps could depart, particularly several lawsuits involving bulk water exports but conceivably other concerns too such as some awkward truths behind the Vanoc 2010 Olympics finances and related projects.
Blogger Laila Yuille has gone so far as to produce a Top 100 list of reasons Clark should be ousted and with reader input that list has grown to about 150 items (see http://lailayuile.com/tag/100-reasons-bc-liberals-need-to-go/ ), but a serious student of political science could conceivably list about 1,000 flaws, or certainly 801 (eg jumping a red light with her son and a newspaper reporter in the car on the eve of an election campaign).
It will be interesting to see what the professional pollsters find were the major causes of voting behaviour in the coming election but it's already obvious that voting against the misdeeds of Premier Christy Clark and Gordon Campbell beforehand is a major factor - even amongst party supporters! - though it may be manifested in stay-home not-voting decisions too.
So we may not learn about the 801 movement until 8:01 p.m. on Tuesday (when polls have closed) but if it didn't exist already it would soon have had to be created.
It's hard to believe but in only about two years Christy Clark has earned the reputation as probably the worst Premier in B.C. history, exceeding even the NDP's Ujjal Dosanjh.
In other words Clark's own poor performance provoked the formation of the 801 movement; it only should have happened sooner.
Dix New Democrats remind voters of Liberal flaws
Meanwhile the B.C. New Democrats under leader Adrian Dix have been running a professionally astute campaign that has them looking ready to govern, perhaps moreso than ever.
That was evident anew this morning when NDP finance critic Bruce Ralston gave a clear and plausible defence of the NDP's fiscal and economic plans on the Bill Good Show in response to a somewhat biased and negative policy analysis by Calgary academic Jack Mintz yesterday in the National Post (which failed to mention that Mintz also has had some business and political interests in B.C. affairs).
Ralston in the past has been a dreadfully boring speaker, with too many umms and aahs and long pauses and wanderings off topic but this morning he was clear and direct and obviously had a good grasp on the issues cited by Mintz like corporate investment and tax climates.
Dix also has maintained his one-a-day policy pronouncements and an effective touring schedule that gets him into lots of swing ridings and garners spots in lots of newscasts.
And best of all the NDP, perhaps mindful of something I wrote here earlier, has shifted their advertising themes from all and only positive stuff about the NDP platform to now a balanced mix including reminding voters why they should turn out to vote against the Liberals too, especially regarding the hated HST.
That's important because voter turnout is always a key factor in B.C. elections, which tend to be close in popular vote regardless of which party wins the most seats.
The early flow of voters to advance polls and other indicators suggest there are lots of people motivated to punish the B.C. Liberals for their many transgressions and it now seems the NDP will be the main beneficiary, though Conservatives and Independents will be the choice for that in a few ridings.
The Green Party of B.C. has run a good campaign too but their strength is focussed in only a few ridings on southern Vancouver Island, their finances are meagre and star candidate Andrew Weaver has becoming a sort of lightning rod for controversy while leader Jane Sterk has struggled for media coverage and may have hurt her cause with a strident position on climate policy and carbon taxes. The party also has become viewed by some as too anti-job and anti-industry to be supported.
Furthermore Dix's Earth-Day flip-flop to a position against added oil-tanker traffic also may have forestalled some environmentalist votes flowing to the Green Party though that position had the downside of also reminding business interests why they should work against the NDP, which seems to have been reflected in tightening opinion polls.
Anyway the outcome next Tuesday will be interesting as usual, and it could even depend on some official recounts in close contests with heavy advance voting.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
The Daily Twigg May 2, 2013
Could Dix NDP jump to pro-green stance
reinforce fears that NDP is anti-business?
By John Twigg
I was so disappointed by the televised leaders' debate on Monday (Apr 29) that I postponed plans to do a writeup on it and now we're beginning to learn some background to the debate and other issues that may explain some things happening in the B.C. election campaign.
The buzz news this morning was an opinion poll from the eastern-based Forum firm which reportedly found the B.C. NDP support at 39% - which would be a sharp drop from findings in other polls - and the B.C. Liberals at 35%, which if accurate would be a significant jump from previous polls and give them hope to eke out a win on May 14 (which IMO would be a travesty and disaster).
So are those numbers believable? Forum's record is a bit mixed but its methodologies seem sound so the numbers cannot be dismissed, and with a 3% margin of error they are not that far away from Angus Reid and Ipsos Reid, who reportedly have update polls coming out soon.
Some other pollsters of lesser renown also have released poll findings which suggest that the leaders' debate did not change voting intentions very much if at all but still it will be most interesting to see what the big pollsters report.
Several leading pundits are suggesting that the somewhat poor performance in the debate by NDP leader Adrian Dix may have lost some support, because he looked and sounded very nervous at the outset, but the post-debate polls generally found that Dix won the debate anyway because B.C. Liberal Party Premier Christy Clark failed to score a knockout punch while B.C. Green Party leader Jane Sterk and B.C. Conservative Party leader John Cummins both failed to sparkle and rise to the occasion.
Dix flip-flop on K-M seen anti-business
So if it wasn't the wet-firecracker debate that shifted public opinion, what was it? I think it was Dix's shocking flip-flop on the Kinder Morgan pipeline proposal to twin the Trans Mountain line and greatly increase oil exports out of the Burnaby terminal.
That proposal of course has numerous drawbacks, most notably the increased tanker traffic through Vancouver's Inner Harbour which Dix correctly cited, but to nip it in the bud before even giving the proponents a chance to make a formal proposal was in my view - and the view of many others including the mainstream media - a serious mistake because it sent an anti-business message at just the wrong moment in the campaign. And now it may be showing up in the polls.
Dix and the NDP may well still win the election anyway if only by a sort of acclamation because the three alternatives have even worse drawbacks (see the recent Angus Reid poll results on ethics and accountability re Dix vs Clark) but still one wonders why Dix did it in the first place, and if he did that then what would he also do as Premier?
It's all the more curious because Dix's position on Kinder Morgan had long been to withhold judgement until the formal proposal was submitted but when he released the party's official platform on Earth Day April 22 he also announced a new approach to Kinder Morgan, namely that he and the party would henceforth be opposing any major increase in tanker traffic from Burnaby.
NDP energy critic John Horgan quickly tried to argue that a twinned pipeline could still go to a different terminus, such as directly to refineries in Washington State, but the damage was done: Dix had taken an anti-business stance at odds with the historically pro-business sentiments of most B.C. voters.
Why? We still don't know for sure but snippets suggest my initial speculation in the previous issue was accurate, namely that certain environmental activists had pressured Dix to do so or else they would flock to the Green Party, and that probably coincided with internal polling by the NDP finding growing support for the Greens as well as a flurry of coverage by mainstream media about the improving electoral prospects for Green candidates in southern Vancouver Island, notably renowned climatologist Andrew Weaver in Oak Bay - Gordon Head and party leader Jane Sterk in Victoria - Beacon Hill where she is challenging former NDP leader Carole James in a riding that historically has had the highest level of Green support in the province.
Dix responded to pressure from greens
So now we begin to see more clearly that the main reason Dix suddenly veered to a pro-Green anti-business policy stance - at least on the Kinder Morgan issue - was to pander for votes.
We could be generous and pragmatic and acknowledge that that is simply what politicians must do if they want to win elections but the timing and timbre could still backfire against Dix. Yes it probably forestalled some voter shifts to the Greens but on the other hand it gave the Liberals a classic example to use against the NDP's Achilles Heel and claim anew that the NDP cannot be trusted with power because they tend to pander to non-business voters and implement anti-business policies.
Some evidence of that paradigm can be seen in the tweets issued this morning by the NDP campaign focussed on how their platform is pro-industry, especially high-tech and forests and sustainable Green jobs - but who isn't?
"A sustainable diversified economy, new opportunities for good jobs, and a strong middle class is the foundation of the NDP platform," one tweet said (in paraphrase, words not exact).
And just moments ago as I was writing this Dix appeared in a clip on BC1 saying (again in paraphrase) "The NDP is saying Yes to mining, Yes to forestry, Yes to film and television productions, Yes to natural gas - it's not just energy that we're interested in [i.e. opposed to]" - which further suggests that the Dix New Democrats are now in a damage-control mode.
Similarly there was an NDP tweet today announcing that the party in government would accelerate the recognition of credentials of foreign-trained professionals, which no doubt will be of interest to doctors and engineers, etc.
Creative vision still lacking
Meanwhile there is still a cone of silence around my proposals in the previous issue and in previous years for B.C. to get serious about moving towards full employment by reviving a Bank of B.C. and creating a new currency (paper, metal and electronic) to help finance direct job-creation projects (eg removiong scotch broom) and to provide social security and business stability in the event of a global failure of central banks and/or the collapse of the U.S. economy.
Nor has anyone picked up on suggestions to legalize and tax marijuana and industrial hemp, to engage in bulk exports of surplus water and to help all manner of new green renewable projects such as a new sewage-gas-fuelled ferry crossing from YVR-Iona to Gabriola-big island. Etcetera.
So we see that in this election campaign there is still a serious lack of vision and creativity and instead there is merely more of the same-old same-old pandering to vested interests and false but entrenched biases and wrong notions.
That said, we can now sit back and see what the big-boy pollsters are finding.
Could Dix NDP jump to pro-green stance
reinforce fears that NDP is anti-business?
By John Twigg
I was so disappointed by the televised leaders' debate on Monday (Apr 29) that I postponed plans to do a writeup on it and now we're beginning to learn some background to the debate and other issues that may explain some things happening in the B.C. election campaign.
The buzz news this morning was an opinion poll from the eastern-based Forum firm which reportedly found the B.C. NDP support at 39% - which would be a sharp drop from findings in other polls - and the B.C. Liberals at 35%, which if accurate would be a significant jump from previous polls and give them hope to eke out a win on May 14 (which IMO would be a travesty and disaster).
So are those numbers believable? Forum's record is a bit mixed but its methodologies seem sound so the numbers cannot be dismissed, and with a 3% margin of error they are not that far away from Angus Reid and Ipsos Reid, who reportedly have update polls coming out soon.
Some other pollsters of lesser renown also have released poll findings which suggest that the leaders' debate did not change voting intentions very much if at all but still it will be most interesting to see what the big pollsters report.
Several leading pundits are suggesting that the somewhat poor performance in the debate by NDP leader Adrian Dix may have lost some support, because he looked and sounded very nervous at the outset, but the post-debate polls generally found that Dix won the debate anyway because B.C. Liberal Party Premier Christy Clark failed to score a knockout punch while B.C. Green Party leader Jane Sterk and B.C. Conservative Party leader John Cummins both failed to sparkle and rise to the occasion.
Dix flip-flop on K-M seen anti-business
So if it wasn't the wet-firecracker debate that shifted public opinion, what was it? I think it was Dix's shocking flip-flop on the Kinder Morgan pipeline proposal to twin the Trans Mountain line and greatly increase oil exports out of the Burnaby terminal.
That proposal of course has numerous drawbacks, most notably the increased tanker traffic through Vancouver's Inner Harbour which Dix correctly cited, but to nip it in the bud before even giving the proponents a chance to make a formal proposal was in my view - and the view of many others including the mainstream media - a serious mistake because it sent an anti-business message at just the wrong moment in the campaign. And now it may be showing up in the polls.
Dix and the NDP may well still win the election anyway if only by a sort of acclamation because the three alternatives have even worse drawbacks (see the recent Angus Reid poll results on ethics and accountability re Dix vs Clark) but still one wonders why Dix did it in the first place, and if he did that then what would he also do as Premier?
It's all the more curious because Dix's position on Kinder Morgan had long been to withhold judgement until the formal proposal was submitted but when he released the party's official platform on Earth Day April 22 he also announced a new approach to Kinder Morgan, namely that he and the party would henceforth be opposing any major increase in tanker traffic from Burnaby.
NDP energy critic John Horgan quickly tried to argue that a twinned pipeline could still go to a different terminus, such as directly to refineries in Washington State, but the damage was done: Dix had taken an anti-business stance at odds with the historically pro-business sentiments of most B.C. voters.
Why? We still don't know for sure but snippets suggest my initial speculation in the previous issue was accurate, namely that certain environmental activists had pressured Dix to do so or else they would flock to the Green Party, and that probably coincided with internal polling by the NDP finding growing support for the Greens as well as a flurry of coverage by mainstream media about the improving electoral prospects for Green candidates in southern Vancouver Island, notably renowned climatologist Andrew Weaver in Oak Bay - Gordon Head and party leader Jane Sterk in Victoria - Beacon Hill where she is challenging former NDP leader Carole James in a riding that historically has had the highest level of Green support in the province.
Dix responded to pressure from greens
So now we begin to see more clearly that the main reason Dix suddenly veered to a pro-Green anti-business policy stance - at least on the Kinder Morgan issue - was to pander for votes.
We could be generous and pragmatic and acknowledge that that is simply what politicians must do if they want to win elections but the timing and timbre could still backfire against Dix. Yes it probably forestalled some voter shifts to the Greens but on the other hand it gave the Liberals a classic example to use against the NDP's Achilles Heel and claim anew that the NDP cannot be trusted with power because they tend to pander to non-business voters and implement anti-business policies.
Some evidence of that paradigm can be seen in the tweets issued this morning by the NDP campaign focussed on how their platform is pro-industry, especially high-tech and forests and sustainable Green jobs - but who isn't?
"A sustainable diversified economy, new opportunities for good jobs, and a strong middle class is the foundation of the NDP platform," one tweet said (in paraphrase, words not exact).
And just moments ago as I was writing this Dix appeared in a clip on BC1 saying (again in paraphrase) "The NDP is saying Yes to mining, Yes to forestry, Yes to film and television productions, Yes to natural gas - it's not just energy that we're interested in [i.e. opposed to]" - which further suggests that the Dix New Democrats are now in a damage-control mode.
Similarly there was an NDP tweet today announcing that the party in government would accelerate the recognition of credentials of foreign-trained professionals, which no doubt will be of interest to doctors and engineers, etc.
Creative vision still lacking
Meanwhile there is still a cone of silence around my proposals in the previous issue and in previous years for B.C. to get serious about moving towards full employment by reviving a Bank of B.C. and creating a new currency (paper, metal and electronic) to help finance direct job-creation projects (eg removiong scotch broom) and to provide social security and business stability in the event of a global failure of central banks and/or the collapse of the U.S. economy.
Nor has anyone picked up on suggestions to legalize and tax marijuana and industrial hemp, to engage in bulk exports of surplus water and to help all manner of new green renewable projects such as a new sewage-gas-fuelled ferry crossing from YVR-Iona to Gabriola-big island. Etcetera.
So we see that in this election campaign there is still a serious lack of vision and creativity and instead there is merely more of the same-old same-old pandering to vested interests and false but entrenched biases and wrong notions.
That said, we can now sit back and see what the big-boy pollsters are finding.
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