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.