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.