The Daily Twigg Vol. 1 No. 38 April 11, 2012
Canucks could and should go all the way
By John Twigg
Though my newsletter broadcasting is in abeyance I can't resist putting my hockey playoffs prediction onto the record via this blog posting because this IS the year that the Vancouver Canucks could, should and WILL go all the way to winning the first Stanley Cup for the city in the modern era, not forgetting that the Vancouver Millionaires also did that rare feat in 1915.
The main reason that this year's vintage of the Canucks will "win it all" is because it's such a strongly team-oriented team.
There are no individual megastars on this team, no Gretzky or Mario or Crosby, but there IS a great group of far-above-average talents who have formed a sort of egalitarian juggernaut that can prevail against whatever storms arise against it.
The statistics argue that in terms of points they were the best team in the league two years in a row and they are the first team to do so in the age of free-agency and salary caps, as captain Henrik Sedin pointed out to the media, which subtly reminded everyone that he and his twin brother Daniel and more than a few other players, notably linemate Alex Burrows, left money on the table in their contract negotiations so team management could recruit some better supporting players for other positions and lesser lines.
People wonder why the Canucks reputedly are so hated in other hockey markets and by other teams and that's probably one of the top reasons: money.
Not only is the team one of the most financially successful now in the league, with more than 400 consecutive home regular-season sell-outs and huge licensing revenues, its star players (apart from goalie Roberto Luongo who already had a sweet long-term deal) dared to also undermine the NHL Players Association's bargaining strategy a bit by informally taking less money to stay than they might have got through individual free agency, which was a de facto collective sharing of the pay cap space.
That is a rarity in modern-day pro sports but it may have been aided by the unique situation of having two co-stars who are twin brothers who get along well not only on the ice but off too and so sign for equal salaries and produce about equally too, but such sharing is also something quite in keeping with British Columbia's occasional socio-political tradition of caring and sharing, of co-ops and trade unions and of other enlightened self-interests even seen in various political parties.
Interestingly the Canucks' unusual pay structure apparently had little adverse impact on the team's game results because a study found the Canucks finished seventh in the league with 1.71 points per $1 million or salary (see link below), which wasn't as efficient as low-budget over-achievers like the Blues, Preds, Senators and Coyotes but it was close to the venerable Rangers and Red Wings franchises and it was ahead of the Penguins, Blackhawks, Devils, Bruins, Flyers, Kings, Capitals and others, especially most other Canadian teams.
The Canucks' two-goalies story is quite interesting too and I think the defining moment of the season was on April 3 at home when the Canucks were down 4-2 to the playoff-hungry Anaheim Ducks when coach Alain Vigneault yanked Roberto Luongo in the second period and sent out backup Cory Schneider, who pitched a shutout while the team rallied to 4-4 then won it in a shootout, which two points were the difference in winning the President's Trophy for top team two years running.
It was a test of character that the team passed with flying colours and set them on a path to a long and deep run in the playoffs. And lest anyone doubt, they finished the season with a 3-0 shutout of Edmonton with Luongo back in top form in goal.
The team now has a huge luxury in the form of two #1 goalies, both in good form, plus it is very deep at defence, very deep at centre and able to play four strong lines even when a top player goes down with an injury, as was the case with Daniel Sedin out with a concussion in the last week or so.
The team has no floaters, no wackos or weirdos, no serious head cases and dozens of guys willing to block shots and all willing to play the kind of defensive two-way game that prevails in the playoffs.
"Most of these people are better people than they are players," said coach V in his season-end media conference, obviously quite pleased that the team still won the most points in the league even though some of the key players such as Kesler and Salo seemed to have been pacing themselves so they'd have more energy remaining for the playoffs.
Even when the scores are low they are a team that has been, is and will be a treat to watch and cheer for. Thank you all for a great season, regardless of how the playoffs go.
Oh yes - how will the playoffs go?? Well anything can happen, and God help us there be no serious injuries, but the differences could come from anywhere in the lineup on any given night, even Jannik Hansen on a good-looking third line and/or Manny Malhotra playing wing on a fourth line centered by tough-guy Byron Bitz!
The team will win more than its share of faceoffs, take fewer penalties and this year not be bullied by anyone, and when injuries do happen or if Luongo turns sour then the management deserves credit for stocking the team with many capable replacements - for a playoffs process that could take several months to complete!
I'm watching for big plays from the likes of Alex Burrows and Sami Salo (who at ages 31 and 37 are amongst the older leaders on the team) but I'm also expecting strong steady two-way play from centre Ryan Kesler and defenceman Dan Hamhuis - the latter one of the few B.C.-born players on the team and who quietly posted the sixth-best plus-minus among league defencemen, but overall I have great expectations which I believe are deservedly so now.
So let's say Canucks in five over the Kings and after that the series could go longer, like seven games in the Western final.
But you can never tell for sure in sports whereas in politics it is perhaps easier to know what will probably happen, but I have a hope and a feeling that this year's playoff run could become something great for the Province of British Columbia too.
Whereas last year Premier Christy Clark as a rookie was shooting her mouth off about the Canucks, this year she and Opposition leader Adrian Dix are more maturely restraining themselves so as to not energize the opponents, which is another good portent.
And of course there is the riot question, which I would be remiss to not mention, but here I have a good feeling too. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson sounded well on top of the file when he was interviewed on CKNW and if a few hotheads do try to spark another riot I predict they will quickly be shut down not only by police but by citizens and hockey fans too.
It's a hard and often cruel world out there but it's stuff like this that illustrates we as a Province may be growing up, which is reflected as well in the Grey Cup won at home by the Lions and now the Whitecaps contending in Major League Soccer too.
What was once the farthest-flung and last outpost in the British Empire is now a significant centre of society and commerce in a continental and global context and to prove it we have a dominant hockey franchise and some other good sports teams too.
So Go Canucks! eh.
http://vancouver.openfile.ca/blog/curator-blog/curated-news/2012/canucks-spent-171m-every-point-year-bmo-report
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
New plans for Twigg newsletters
The Daily Twigg Vol. 1 No. 37 April 5, 2012
Newsletter will go on hiatus
while new format is created
By John Twigg
This will be the last issue of The Daily Twigg, at least for a while, and as I just heard said on the Masters broadcast, that may be a good thing.
I began publishing this title back in late December with the idea of trying it for three months to see if it would fly; it was intended to be similar to newsletters that I have issued thousands of times over the last 25 (!) years, focussed as usual on B.C. politics but also sometimes poking into other areas too, especially business, economics, sports and other matters that might be au courant in the hot media and/or befitting my move back to Vancouver.
What it evolved into was an opinion column broadcast to several hundred opinion leaders and occasionally republished by other media, and half way through those three months it also became a posted blog too, but its content evolved into a focus almost solely on politics in general and on the decline and disintegration of the B.C. Liberal Party government in particular (and deservedly so because that is a huge story which I deliberately encouraged).
It has been a tumultuous time in politics, not only provincially with John van Dongen's jump to the rising B.C. Conservative Party but also nationally with the revelation of the Pierre Poutine voter suppression conspiracy (which perhaps could or should invalidate the last federal election) and Thomas Mulcair's dramatic regime-changing win of the federal NDP leadership (which could grow into some kind of a hopefully-positive populist revolution in Canada).
Globally it has been a crazy time too, featuring the financial crisis in Europe, revolutions in Libya and Egypt, the U.S. Presidential primaries, an impending regime change in China and alas the perpetuation of unsolved conspiracies involving terrorism and massive financial crimes, the gross gory details of which are only just now beginning to leak out into the light of day, such as who held that bulge of financial puts placed in days shortly before 9/11 (which were [deliberately?] ignored by the official 9/11 commission but which have been revealed in a YouTube video and detailed in other online sources).
The criminal media manipulations by the Murdoch empire which were exposed in Britain are only the tip of one octopus's tentacle in a network of octopii buried inside governments and industries around the world, using such things as snuff porn to blackmail politicians and judges and other key people like bankers and police into overlooking or even doing evil deeds - and I regret that I have been unable so far to simplify and explain all that to my readers but those who care to can dare to look at the Abel Danger and waterwarcrimes websites, which are unrelated but which both contain some local aspects of what are obviously global conspiracies.
To try to put it briefly, there IS a global conspiracy of evil forces out there who are trying not only to enrich themselves and increase their political controls but also even to thwart God's plans for mankind, which strategies include using exaggerated scares about global warming in order to drive up oil prices, bankrupt national economies and drive the world down into a hellish third world war. (For example, you should know that Libya was the major supplier of oil to powerful Germany and to debt-burdened and corrupted Italy, which could make Europe more dangerously dependent on Iranian oil.)
And please don't assume that such things don't affect us much here in lovely British Columbia because as mentioned there are numerous local connections to it, and the previous and present provincial government regimes seem more intent on continuing to cover up possible links to it such as the real goings on around Piggy's Palace than in righting wrongs and truly governing in the public interest, such as by probing the crooked sale of B.C. Rail and the dubious dispositions of other Crown assets.
That of course is news you didn't read much about in your daily paper or see on the evening TV news, which is partly why I thought I should try to restart my newsletters. So when I return from a break I will have a new format in which a suite of blogs will each focus on different subjects. There also will be fewer broadcasts except to those who request direct deliveries, and one of those will be a revived B.C. Politics Trendwatch, which will carry a modest subscription price and will focus on opinion polls and other game-changers in the run-up to the 2013 provincial election.
I learned some lessons in the last three months too, beginning with a newfound admiration for Vaughn Palmer's ability to turn out top-quality stuff five days a week, and featuring my recent discovery of the powers of Twitter, which proved to be a profound source of breaking news tips and links to other useful cutting-edge information, such as recently finding a link in #bcpoli to an Andrew Nikiforuk column in the Tyee on politics and religion which is essential to understanding the motivations of Prime Minister Stephen Harper (his narrow religious beliefs appear to color his policy choices).
And my lessons ended with the difficult realization that I shouldn't do all-night working sessions to try to digest all of that information and still get a new issue out too, because that can produce some stupid brain-cramp errors.
In the first case I misread a statistical table and used a wrong set of numbers, which when it was pointed out caused me to quickly publish an abject apology to Premier Christy Clark for my allegation that she had deliberately used a misleading statistic in order to promote the supposed success of her job creation plans. But that apology turned out to have been premature because when I did dig further into the numbers I realized that that was in fact exactly what she had done, namely twist statistics to claim progress on job creation when it was not really true, but I had merely used the wrong data to prove it. So my first mistake was to use a wrong number and then that was compounded when I too-quickly apologized for it.
The second mistake was more troubling, because late one night after finishing a decent analysis of the political ramifications in and after the latest opinion poll I tossed in a paragraph about Clark's problems perhaps being compounded because her House Leader and cabinet enforcer Rich Coleman was supposedly being probed anew by the Auditor General over a land deal done when he was Minister of Forests. But alas I failed to notice that the news item I had found in a Google search (or was it a Twitter link?) was from 2008. Damn! Another apology.
That was all the more troubling to me because it lent credence to a very nasty criticism of me by prominent blogger Alex Tsakumis about my reporting of the John van Dongen jump, which criticism was somewhat unfair and exaggerated but in the circumstances of the Coleman mistake could not be rebutted. Briefly, he said I said that he had been the arranger of van Dongen's meeting with B.C. Conservative leader John Cummins which led to the jump but in fact I only said it was possible he was the go-between because his blog postings indicated he had been in close communications with both of them, but I subsequently learned the go-between was someone else (a mutual friend who played a minor role). Nonetheless Tsakumis was correct in complaining that I should have called him first to check on it before publishing his name, and I am sorry now that I didn't do that, but it too was another adverse result of late-night writing to a deadline that did not exist.
Subsequent to that I got blamed again for supposedly revealing that van Dongen was the alleged source of leaks from the B.C. Liberal caucus, which I never did report or even hint at, but in Coleman's post-jump rage he lashed out at everyone and especially at Tsakumis for which I wrongly caught some more blame. Stuff like that happens in political journalism, and that I can take. But I never alleged or even suggested that van Dongen had been a leaker.
Through all of those kerfuffles on very edgy issues I was pleased that several hundred people continued to receive my newsletters and in three months only about five people asked to be unsubscribed and only one of those was due to the Coleman mistake. And meanwhile several old colleagues kindly wrote to assure me that such mistakes happen to everyone and that the important thing is to quickly correct the record and move on.
Anyway, I am going to try now to take a break from publishing for a while, which will be very difficult for me because journalism and writing goes back at least three generations on both sides of my family and I've been doing it for about 50 years now, so if an urge does strike me to write something soon I'll post it on the blog and tweet an advisory.
If you'd like to ensure you continue receiving direct broadcasts of my new stuff, please send me an email. Meanwhile, have a happy holiday, which is about God's plans for mankind whether you observe it as Passover or Easter. If you'd like to study some scripture, look at Exodus 24:7 !
Newsletter will go on hiatus
while new format is created
By John Twigg
This will be the last issue of The Daily Twigg, at least for a while, and as I just heard said on the Masters broadcast, that may be a good thing.
I began publishing this title back in late December with the idea of trying it for three months to see if it would fly; it was intended to be similar to newsletters that I have issued thousands of times over the last 25 (!) years, focussed as usual on B.C. politics but also sometimes poking into other areas too, especially business, economics, sports and other matters that might be au courant in the hot media and/or befitting my move back to Vancouver.
What it evolved into was an opinion column broadcast to several hundred opinion leaders and occasionally republished by other media, and half way through those three months it also became a posted blog too, but its content evolved into a focus almost solely on politics in general and on the decline and disintegration of the B.C. Liberal Party government in particular (and deservedly so because that is a huge story which I deliberately encouraged).
It has been a tumultuous time in politics, not only provincially with John van Dongen's jump to the rising B.C. Conservative Party but also nationally with the revelation of the Pierre Poutine voter suppression conspiracy (which perhaps could or should invalidate the last federal election) and Thomas Mulcair's dramatic regime-changing win of the federal NDP leadership (which could grow into some kind of a hopefully-positive populist revolution in Canada).
Globally it has been a crazy time too, featuring the financial crisis in Europe, revolutions in Libya and Egypt, the U.S. Presidential primaries, an impending regime change in China and alas the perpetuation of unsolved conspiracies involving terrorism and massive financial crimes, the gross gory details of which are only just now beginning to leak out into the light of day, such as who held that bulge of financial puts placed in days shortly before 9/11 (which were [deliberately?] ignored by the official 9/11 commission but which have been revealed in a YouTube video and detailed in other online sources).
The criminal media manipulations by the Murdoch empire which were exposed in Britain are only the tip of one octopus's tentacle in a network of octopii buried inside governments and industries around the world, using such things as snuff porn to blackmail politicians and judges and other key people like bankers and police into overlooking or even doing evil deeds - and I regret that I have been unable so far to simplify and explain all that to my readers but those who care to can dare to look at the Abel Danger and waterwarcrimes websites, which are unrelated but which both contain some local aspects of what are obviously global conspiracies.
To try to put it briefly, there IS a global conspiracy of evil forces out there who are trying not only to enrich themselves and increase their political controls but also even to thwart God's plans for mankind, which strategies include using exaggerated scares about global warming in order to drive up oil prices, bankrupt national economies and drive the world down into a hellish third world war. (For example, you should know that Libya was the major supplier of oil to powerful Germany and to debt-burdened and corrupted Italy, which could make Europe more dangerously dependent on Iranian oil.)
And please don't assume that such things don't affect us much here in lovely British Columbia because as mentioned there are numerous local connections to it, and the previous and present provincial government regimes seem more intent on continuing to cover up possible links to it such as the real goings on around Piggy's Palace than in righting wrongs and truly governing in the public interest, such as by probing the crooked sale of B.C. Rail and the dubious dispositions of other Crown assets.
That of course is news you didn't read much about in your daily paper or see on the evening TV news, which is partly why I thought I should try to restart my newsletters. So when I return from a break I will have a new format in which a suite of blogs will each focus on different subjects. There also will be fewer broadcasts except to those who request direct deliveries, and one of those will be a revived B.C. Politics Trendwatch, which will carry a modest subscription price and will focus on opinion polls and other game-changers in the run-up to the 2013 provincial election.
I learned some lessons in the last three months too, beginning with a newfound admiration for Vaughn Palmer's ability to turn out top-quality stuff five days a week, and featuring my recent discovery of the powers of Twitter, which proved to be a profound source of breaking news tips and links to other useful cutting-edge information, such as recently finding a link in #bcpoli to an Andrew Nikiforuk column in the Tyee on politics and religion which is essential to understanding the motivations of Prime Minister Stephen Harper (his narrow religious beliefs appear to color his policy choices).
And my lessons ended with the difficult realization that I shouldn't do all-night working sessions to try to digest all of that information and still get a new issue out too, because that can produce some stupid brain-cramp errors.
In the first case I misread a statistical table and used a wrong set of numbers, which when it was pointed out caused me to quickly publish an abject apology to Premier Christy Clark for my allegation that she had deliberately used a misleading statistic in order to promote the supposed success of her job creation plans. But that apology turned out to have been premature because when I did dig further into the numbers I realized that that was in fact exactly what she had done, namely twist statistics to claim progress on job creation when it was not really true, but I had merely used the wrong data to prove it. So my first mistake was to use a wrong number and then that was compounded when I too-quickly apologized for it.
The second mistake was more troubling, because late one night after finishing a decent analysis of the political ramifications in and after the latest opinion poll I tossed in a paragraph about Clark's problems perhaps being compounded because her House Leader and cabinet enforcer Rich Coleman was supposedly being probed anew by the Auditor General over a land deal done when he was Minister of Forests. But alas I failed to notice that the news item I had found in a Google search (or was it a Twitter link?) was from 2008. Damn! Another apology.
That was all the more troubling to me because it lent credence to a very nasty criticism of me by prominent blogger Alex Tsakumis about my reporting of the John van Dongen jump, which criticism was somewhat unfair and exaggerated but in the circumstances of the Coleman mistake could not be rebutted. Briefly, he said I said that he had been the arranger of van Dongen's meeting with B.C. Conservative leader John Cummins which led to the jump but in fact I only said it was possible he was the go-between because his blog postings indicated he had been in close communications with both of them, but I subsequently learned the go-between was someone else (a mutual friend who played a minor role). Nonetheless Tsakumis was correct in complaining that I should have called him first to check on it before publishing his name, and I am sorry now that I didn't do that, but it too was another adverse result of late-night writing to a deadline that did not exist.
Subsequent to that I got blamed again for supposedly revealing that van Dongen was the alleged source of leaks from the B.C. Liberal caucus, which I never did report or even hint at, but in Coleman's post-jump rage he lashed out at everyone and especially at Tsakumis for which I wrongly caught some more blame. Stuff like that happens in political journalism, and that I can take. But I never alleged or even suggested that van Dongen had been a leaker.
Through all of those kerfuffles on very edgy issues I was pleased that several hundred people continued to receive my newsletters and in three months only about five people asked to be unsubscribed and only one of those was due to the Coleman mistake. And meanwhile several old colleagues kindly wrote to assure me that such mistakes happen to everyone and that the important thing is to quickly correct the record and move on.
Anyway, I am going to try now to take a break from publishing for a while, which will be very difficult for me because journalism and writing goes back at least three generations on both sides of my family and I've been doing it for about 50 years now, so if an urge does strike me to write something soon I'll post it on the blog and tweet an advisory.
If you'd like to ensure you continue receiving direct broadcasts of my new stuff, please send me an email. Meanwhile, have a happy holiday, which is about God's plans for mankind whether you observe it as Passover or Easter. If you'd like to study some scripture, look at Exodus 24:7 !
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Tories rise as Liberals fall
The Daily Twigg Vol. 1 No. 36 April 3, 2012
B.C. Politics Trendwatch
Clark Liberals fall into a low tie
with surging B.C. Conservatives
By John Twigg
The mainstream media have already covered the story of the latest B.C. opinion poll in some detail so I won't repeat the basic numbers here but in some ways that coverage has become the main story anyway, though a few of the more subtle key stats still tell big stories too.
The media coverage being the main message became apparent when Angus Reid on Monday morning posted the results of their latest poll and news of the new party rankings spread like wildfire through social media and topped most mainstream media newscasts right through to the evening TV news.
It wasn't that the New Democrats were the big story because their support was up only 1% to 43% among decided voters and was very similar to recent findings by all other pollsters.
No, the big story was the steep declines in support for the B.C. Liberal Party in general, down 5 points to only 23%, and for Premier Christy Clark in particular, whose approval rating fell 8 points to only 32% and whose preferred-premier score fell 5 points to a lowly 17%, which probably signals the end of her career in B.C. politics and may portend the end of the B.C. Liberal Party too.
That was the lowest showing for the Liberals since July 2010 after former premier Gordon Campbell had forced in the hated Harmonized Sales Tax, which led to his resignation, a divisive leadership contest and then Clark's succession in March last year.
Pollster sees humongous collapse
"This is humongous . . . one of the biggest collapses we've ever seen," said Angus Reid pollster Mario Canseco, citing factors such as only 15% of women voters now supporting Clark even though she has been pushing a so-called families-first policy agenda.
"You have to wonder whether voters have just tuned the Liberals out," said Global TV's Keith Baldrey, who over decades has specialized in analyzing polls and noted the latest numbers would produce "a cakewalk for the NDP in the next election."
And it wasn't only how the Liberals fell but also that the upstart B.C. Conservative Party gained too - all the way into a tie with the Liberals at 23%! That was up 4 points from the previous poll in January and also was in line with most other polls except the recent Mustel Group poll which had the Liberals still within striking distance of the NDP and clearly above the Conservatives. [And BTW that confirms my previous analysis of the Mustel findings, namely that they were a bit old and had the Liberals too high and the Tories too low.]
Furthermore the Conservatives under leader John Cummins have even moved into first place in the B.C. Interior, with 32%, followed by the NDP at 30% and only 26% for the Liberals in what was once their stronghold.
"I'm convinced that by the time the next election rolls around it will be a close two-way race between the B.C. Conservative Party and the NDP," Cummins told CKNW while apparently on his way to a party meeting in Vernon, echoing his previous claims that he intends to make them the main free-enterprise alternative to the NDP in the next provincial election (scheduled for May 14, 2013).
Elley surprised by rapid success
"I think the universe is unfolding as it should," added party president Reed Elley in a statement exclusively for The Daily Twigg. "We always thought that there would be a time when we would overtake the Liberals in the opinion polls. What is startling is that it has happened so soon."
"If this keeps up by the time the election rolls around, we will be in a solid position to be the only party which could prevent the NDP from forming government," he said, echoing comments by Cummins last Monday (March 26) after Liberal backbencher John van Dongen not only resigned from caucus but shocked everyone by instantly joining the B.C. Conservative Party too.
"What a difference a year makes," said Elley, apparently referring to when a group of former federal Conservative politicians took over the party (apparently from a group involving Bill Vander Zalm and Chris Delaney), installed Cummins as leader and began getting serious about building an organization from scratch.
Interestingly Canseco's posted analysis also took a year-long view: "Over the past 12 months, the New Democrats have slowly but steadily gained five points, and have seen (leader Adrian) Dix become both the preferred premier and the leader with the highest approval rating. In the same period, the BC Liberals have seen their support among decided voters drop by 20 points - going from first place to a tie for second - while the BC Conservatives have improved their standing by 18 points."
Liberals facing a leadership crisis
"The Liberals are losing half their votes from the last election," Canseco told one outlet, suggesting it could create a leadership crisis in the Liberal party, which of course they already have had at least since van Dongen left with a flame of vitriol against the Liberals' record in general and at Clark's performance in particular; he thus became the Conservatives' first sitting MLA though technically he sits as an Independent until the party can get three more members to achieve official party status.
Scuttlebutt such as comments to an Abbotsford paper by former MP Randy White suggest that more defections from the Liberal caucus are already planned to happen later this year and logic suggests they will happen well in time to give the party official status in the Legislature next spring and thus a seat in the televised leaders debate prior to voting day.
Van Dongen's jump was a pivotal move that shocked many people and it apparently also affected the results of the poll, which was an online sampling of 800 people done on March 29 and 30 carrying a variance of 3.5%.
Also influential on the poll would have been the ugly ways that Liberal House leader Rich Coleman reacted to the switch, with cheap character assassinations of van Dongen that van Dongen in a call-in to CKNW said were obviously intended to intimidate other backbenchers reportedly thinking similar thoughts of leaving caucus.
And the disingenuous ways that Clark responded the next day to van Dongen's move probably further alienated many people, because she repeatedly insisted that B.C. voters still had only two choices, free enterprise with the Liberals or socialism under the NDP, when as the new poll showed they already had decided to have three choices (and more if smaller parties are included, as they should be, notably the B.C. Green Party, which came in at 8%).
So the big message in the Angus Reid poll was that clearly there is now a three-way race in B.C. politics, but if Clark continues to cling to power in apparent denial of what's really going on around her then it could soon become a two-way race between the NDP and Conservatives, with her Liberals playing third fiddle much like how the corrupt and decaying Social Credit Party government fell to a pathetic third-place finish in the 1991 election (which for those who cannot remember that far back ended up 51 NDP, 17 Liberal and 7 Socred).
Some major media outlets no longer flatter Clark
Even more significant now is how some of the major media seem to be turning against Clark and her government too, though others are still treating her with some respect perhaps for the sake of the office she still holds.
Most notable was the Province newspaper which (at least in the online version Monday night) had a headline saying "B.C. Liberals collapse: Poll shows mass exodus to provincial Conservative party" and that was accompanied by a photo of Clark apparently taken last Tuesday that showed her scowling and with a cold sore clearly visible on her lower lip (which may explain why she was nowhere to be found on Monday after van Dongen jumped).
Similarly CTV Vancouver's newscasts at 5 and 6 p.m. featured video of Clark running through a downtown hotel's backroom corridors trying to evade questions about the latest poll, and when she was caught up to she not-credibly claimed she hadn't seen the poll numbers yet and so couldn't and wouldn't comment on them until she had seen them, which suggests she and all of her staff no longer have access to their handheld devices, or that she was lying.
In fairness it does require a bit of study time to analyze all of the poll numbers, but there's no degree required to understand the fall of the Liberals and the rise of the Conservatives. While the poll found the NDP holding on to 87% of its 2009 voters the Liberals have retained only 51% and roughly two-thirds of the departees are going to the Conservatives and one-third to the NDP.
Clark makes partisan appeal at business lunch
Interestingly Clark's lunchtime speech to about 800 people at an Urban Development Institute event was unusually partisan, perhaps even inappropriately so, and her direct appeal for support in order to save free enterprise made it obvious that Clark is in a panic about her political predicaments.
“I can't do it alone, my team can't do it alone. We need everyone in this room today,” she said, claiming an NDP government would increase the deficit and raise taxes.
Clark claimed she knew the job would be difficult and she admitted she has faced some challenges and will face more before the next election but she insisted it will still come down to a simple two-way fight.
“The choice is going to be between a government that looks after their money, that respects taxpayers, that decides it wants to support a thriving private sector ... or ... a government that will do the opposite,” she claimed, agreeing with the merits of shrinking the gap between rich and poor but that the way to do that is not by punishing those who are successful.
Though Clark reportedly did not mention the B.C. Conservative Party in her speech, the danger of vote-splitting was raised by prominent property marketer Bob Rennie who told the crowd that a vote for the Conservatives would be a vote for the NDP so "We have to get behind the Liberal party right now...".
Clark's appearance at the influential UDI meeting was part of what appears to be a deliberate strategy of news management related to propping up the party's image during the Port Moody and Chilliwack byelection campaigns, as if she realizes poor results for the Liberals in them could hasten her demise.
Clark's itinerary full of photo opps
Thus Clark's government last week appeared to rush an announcement of a go-ahead for the long-delayed Jumbo Glacier resort development near Invermere even though it is strongly opposed by local interests and yesterday morning she re-announced a number of components in the multi-billion-dollar Gateway transportation program initiated by Campbell, the details of which were obviously provided in advance to the Vancouver Sun which made it the main front-page story in Monday's paper.
Clark is thus still counting on using job creation as her main trump card in the next provincial election but as NDP transportation critic Harry Bains pointed out the announcements were so vague that it wasn't clear how much money if any was new or simply re-announcements of old commitments.
He said that while private-sector investments are welcome there has been no leadership from the government on direct job creation.
That jobs conundrum coincidentally was highlighted in the Province paper on Monday in a guest column by Ben Parfitt regarding the shortage of raw logs for local mills even will log exports have been allowed to soar, which can be viewed at
http://www.theprovince.com/Guest+column+strategy+stop+export+logs+jobs/6396108/story.html.
That issue popped up indirectly in the Angus Reid poll too, which showed that the economy is still by far the most important issue but at 24% it was down 3 points and health at 19% was down 2 points while leadership was up 5 points to 12% and education was up 5 points to 10% - all of which sort of reverbate of Clark's failures in office.
While Clark may talk a lot about job creation and follow an itinerary of photo opps that feature job-creation themes, what she is delivering now is a sort of worn-out screed that most B.C. voters just are not buying.
Since it is unlikely she will change her tunes and tones anytime soon, the next likelihood is she will be ousted, perhaps by a cabal of business leaders soon after the byelection results.
But another looming question is what kind of a platform the B.C. Conservative Party will put together for the election campaign, especially whether the right-wing social conservatives such as White will impose a sort of tough-on-crime get-a-job theme or whether populists such as Cummins and to some extent van Dongen will go for a more broad-based approach.
While the Cummins Conservatives have so far had success by being simply not the other guys, the time will soon arrive when they will have to do some policy advocacy too and that probably is when new polls will be really telling.
Links of note
Angus Reid poll results
http://www.angus-reid.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/2012.04.02_Politics_BC.pdf
Blogger Ian Reid raises BC Rail questions
http://therealstory.ca/2012-03-28/bc-liberals/are-van-dongens-bc-rail-questions-real
T-C's Iain Hunter responds to Geoff Plant on Basi-Virk deal
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/Rail+deal+still+causing+discomfort/6393717/story.html
Schreck finds source of historic GDP stats
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/Economy/EconomicAccounts/BCGDPMarketPricesFinalDomesticDemand.aspx
Detailed analysis of federal NDP voting stats
http://www.punditsguide.ca/2012/04/cullen-narrowly-won-convention-but-mulcair-victory-already-assured/
Unflattering photo of Christy Clark
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Liberals+collapse+Poll+shows+mass+exodus+provincial+Conservative+party/6399190/story.html#ixzz1qx1yuWji
B.C. Politics Trendwatch
Clark Liberals fall into a low tie
with surging B.C. Conservatives
By John Twigg
The mainstream media have already covered the story of the latest B.C. opinion poll in some detail so I won't repeat the basic numbers here but in some ways that coverage has become the main story anyway, though a few of the more subtle key stats still tell big stories too.
The media coverage being the main message became apparent when Angus Reid on Monday morning posted the results of their latest poll and news of the new party rankings spread like wildfire through social media and topped most mainstream media newscasts right through to the evening TV news.
It wasn't that the New Democrats were the big story because their support was up only 1% to 43% among decided voters and was very similar to recent findings by all other pollsters.
No, the big story was the steep declines in support for the B.C. Liberal Party in general, down 5 points to only 23%, and for Premier Christy Clark in particular, whose approval rating fell 8 points to only 32% and whose preferred-premier score fell 5 points to a lowly 17%, which probably signals the end of her career in B.C. politics and may portend the end of the B.C. Liberal Party too.
That was the lowest showing for the Liberals since July 2010 after former premier Gordon Campbell had forced in the hated Harmonized Sales Tax, which led to his resignation, a divisive leadership contest and then Clark's succession in March last year.
Pollster sees humongous collapse
"This is humongous . . . one of the biggest collapses we've ever seen," said Angus Reid pollster Mario Canseco, citing factors such as only 15% of women voters now supporting Clark even though she has been pushing a so-called families-first policy agenda.
"You have to wonder whether voters have just tuned the Liberals out," said Global TV's Keith Baldrey, who over decades has specialized in analyzing polls and noted the latest numbers would produce "a cakewalk for the NDP in the next election."
And it wasn't only how the Liberals fell but also that the upstart B.C. Conservative Party gained too - all the way into a tie with the Liberals at 23%! That was up 4 points from the previous poll in January and also was in line with most other polls except the recent Mustel Group poll which had the Liberals still within striking distance of the NDP and clearly above the Conservatives. [And BTW that confirms my previous analysis of the Mustel findings, namely that they were a bit old and had the Liberals too high and the Tories too low.]
Furthermore the Conservatives under leader John Cummins have even moved into first place in the B.C. Interior, with 32%, followed by the NDP at 30% and only 26% for the Liberals in what was once their stronghold.
"I'm convinced that by the time the next election rolls around it will be a close two-way race between the B.C. Conservative Party and the NDP," Cummins told CKNW while apparently on his way to a party meeting in Vernon, echoing his previous claims that he intends to make them the main free-enterprise alternative to the NDP in the next provincial election (scheduled for May 14, 2013).
Elley surprised by rapid success
"I think the universe is unfolding as it should," added party president Reed Elley in a statement exclusively for The Daily Twigg. "We always thought that there would be a time when we would overtake the Liberals in the opinion polls. What is startling is that it has happened so soon."
"If this keeps up by the time the election rolls around, we will be in a solid position to be the only party which could prevent the NDP from forming government," he said, echoing comments by Cummins last Monday (March 26) after Liberal backbencher John van Dongen not only resigned from caucus but shocked everyone by instantly joining the B.C. Conservative Party too.
"What a difference a year makes," said Elley, apparently referring to when a group of former federal Conservative politicians took over the party (apparently from a group involving Bill Vander Zalm and Chris Delaney), installed Cummins as leader and began getting serious about building an organization from scratch.
Interestingly Canseco's posted analysis also took a year-long view: "Over the past 12 months, the New Democrats have slowly but steadily gained five points, and have seen (leader Adrian) Dix become both the preferred premier and the leader with the highest approval rating. In the same period, the BC Liberals have seen their support among decided voters drop by 20 points - going from first place to a tie for second - while the BC Conservatives have improved their standing by 18 points."
Liberals facing a leadership crisis
"The Liberals are losing half their votes from the last election," Canseco told one outlet, suggesting it could create a leadership crisis in the Liberal party, which of course they already have had at least since van Dongen left with a flame of vitriol against the Liberals' record in general and at Clark's performance in particular; he thus became the Conservatives' first sitting MLA though technically he sits as an Independent until the party can get three more members to achieve official party status.
Scuttlebutt such as comments to an Abbotsford paper by former MP Randy White suggest that more defections from the Liberal caucus are already planned to happen later this year and logic suggests they will happen well in time to give the party official status in the Legislature next spring and thus a seat in the televised leaders debate prior to voting day.
Van Dongen's jump was a pivotal move that shocked many people and it apparently also affected the results of the poll, which was an online sampling of 800 people done on March 29 and 30 carrying a variance of 3.5%.
Also influential on the poll would have been the ugly ways that Liberal House leader Rich Coleman reacted to the switch, with cheap character assassinations of van Dongen that van Dongen in a call-in to CKNW said were obviously intended to intimidate other backbenchers reportedly thinking similar thoughts of leaving caucus.
And the disingenuous ways that Clark responded the next day to van Dongen's move probably further alienated many people, because she repeatedly insisted that B.C. voters still had only two choices, free enterprise with the Liberals or socialism under the NDP, when as the new poll showed they already had decided to have three choices (and more if smaller parties are included, as they should be, notably the B.C. Green Party, which came in at 8%).
So the big message in the Angus Reid poll was that clearly there is now a three-way race in B.C. politics, but if Clark continues to cling to power in apparent denial of what's really going on around her then it could soon become a two-way race between the NDP and Conservatives, with her Liberals playing third fiddle much like how the corrupt and decaying Social Credit Party government fell to a pathetic third-place finish in the 1991 election (which for those who cannot remember that far back ended up 51 NDP, 17 Liberal and 7 Socred).
Some major media outlets no longer flatter Clark
Even more significant now is how some of the major media seem to be turning against Clark and her government too, though others are still treating her with some respect perhaps for the sake of the office she still holds.
Most notable was the Province newspaper which (at least in the online version Monday night) had a headline saying "B.C. Liberals collapse: Poll shows mass exodus to provincial Conservative party" and that was accompanied by a photo of Clark apparently taken last Tuesday that showed her scowling and with a cold sore clearly visible on her lower lip (which may explain why she was nowhere to be found on Monday after van Dongen jumped).
Similarly CTV Vancouver's newscasts at 5 and 6 p.m. featured video of Clark running through a downtown hotel's backroom corridors trying to evade questions about the latest poll, and when she was caught up to she not-credibly claimed she hadn't seen the poll numbers yet and so couldn't and wouldn't comment on them until she had seen them, which suggests she and all of her staff no longer have access to their handheld devices, or that she was lying.
In fairness it does require a bit of study time to analyze all of the poll numbers, but there's no degree required to understand the fall of the Liberals and the rise of the Conservatives. While the poll found the NDP holding on to 87% of its 2009 voters the Liberals have retained only 51% and roughly two-thirds of the departees are going to the Conservatives and one-third to the NDP.
Clark makes partisan appeal at business lunch
Interestingly Clark's lunchtime speech to about 800 people at an Urban Development Institute event was unusually partisan, perhaps even inappropriately so, and her direct appeal for support in order to save free enterprise made it obvious that Clark is in a panic about her political predicaments.
“I can't do it alone, my team can't do it alone. We need everyone in this room today,” she said, claiming an NDP government would increase the deficit and raise taxes.
Clark claimed she knew the job would be difficult and she admitted she has faced some challenges and will face more before the next election but she insisted it will still come down to a simple two-way fight.
“The choice is going to be between a government that looks after their money, that respects taxpayers, that decides it wants to support a thriving private sector ... or ... a government that will do the opposite,” she claimed, agreeing with the merits of shrinking the gap between rich and poor but that the way to do that is not by punishing those who are successful.
Though Clark reportedly did not mention the B.C. Conservative Party in her speech, the danger of vote-splitting was raised by prominent property marketer Bob Rennie who told the crowd that a vote for the Conservatives would be a vote for the NDP so "We have to get behind the Liberal party right now...".
Clark's appearance at the influential UDI meeting was part of what appears to be a deliberate strategy of news management related to propping up the party's image during the Port Moody and Chilliwack byelection campaigns, as if she realizes poor results for the Liberals in them could hasten her demise.
Clark's itinerary full of photo opps
Thus Clark's government last week appeared to rush an announcement of a go-ahead for the long-delayed Jumbo Glacier resort development near Invermere even though it is strongly opposed by local interests and yesterday morning she re-announced a number of components in the multi-billion-dollar Gateway transportation program initiated by Campbell, the details of which were obviously provided in advance to the Vancouver Sun which made it the main front-page story in Monday's paper.
Clark is thus still counting on using job creation as her main trump card in the next provincial election but as NDP transportation critic Harry Bains pointed out the announcements were so vague that it wasn't clear how much money if any was new or simply re-announcements of old commitments.
He said that while private-sector investments are welcome there has been no leadership from the government on direct job creation.
That jobs conundrum coincidentally was highlighted in the Province paper on Monday in a guest column by Ben Parfitt regarding the shortage of raw logs for local mills even will log exports have been allowed to soar, which can be viewed at
http://www.theprovince.com/Guest+column+strategy+stop+export+logs+jobs/6396108/story.html.
That issue popped up indirectly in the Angus Reid poll too, which showed that the economy is still by far the most important issue but at 24% it was down 3 points and health at 19% was down 2 points while leadership was up 5 points to 12% and education was up 5 points to 10% - all of which sort of reverbate of Clark's failures in office.
While Clark may talk a lot about job creation and follow an itinerary of photo opps that feature job-creation themes, what she is delivering now is a sort of worn-out screed that most B.C. voters just are not buying.
Since it is unlikely she will change her tunes and tones anytime soon, the next likelihood is she will be ousted, perhaps by a cabal of business leaders soon after the byelection results.
But another looming question is what kind of a platform the B.C. Conservative Party will put together for the election campaign, especially whether the right-wing social conservatives such as White will impose a sort of tough-on-crime get-a-job theme or whether populists such as Cummins and to some extent van Dongen will go for a more broad-based approach.
While the Cummins Conservatives have so far had success by being simply not the other guys, the time will soon arrive when they will have to do some policy advocacy too and that probably is when new polls will be really telling.
Links of note
Angus Reid poll results
http://www.angus-reid.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/2012.04.02_Politics_BC.pdf
Blogger Ian Reid raises BC Rail questions
http://therealstory.ca/2012-03-28/bc-liberals/are-van-dongens-bc-rail-questions-real
T-C's Iain Hunter responds to Geoff Plant on Basi-Virk deal
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/Rail+deal+still+causing+discomfort/6393717/story.html
Schreck finds source of historic GDP stats
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/Economy/EconomicAccounts/BCGDPMarketPricesFinalDomesticDemand.aspx
Detailed analysis of federal NDP voting stats
http://www.punditsguide.ca/2012/04/cullen-narrowly-won-convention-but-mulcair-victory-already-assured/
Unflattering photo of Christy Clark
Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/Liberals+collapse+Poll+shows+mass+exodus+provincial+Conservative+party/6399190/story.html#ixzz1qx1yuWji
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Trudeau win shakes up Cdn. politics
The Daily Twigg Vol. 1 No. 35 April 1, 2012
Justin Trudeau's upset win in boxing match
could restructure centre-left politics in Canada
By John Twigg
A lot has already been said about the charity boxing match between Liberal MP Justin Trudeau and Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau on Saturday night in Ottawa and much more will be said in times ahead too because it turned out to be another major pivotal moment in Canadian politics, with ramifications all the way out to here in B.C. too.
What was the big deal? Well actually lots of things, which we'll compile and analyze here, but mainly it was some kind of a generational shift and it was obviously some kind of left-right thing too but perhaps not so much of a shift as a consolidation of who and what the new left now really comprises in Canadian politics, from coast to coast.
First the surface story itself was intriguing, in which young Trudeau, the 40-year-old son of the famous Prime Minister Pierre, and now the second-term MP for Papineau riding in Montreal, went looking in Ottawa for some Conservative MP who might engage him in a charity boxing match to raise funds for fighting cancer in recognition of his father having died from the prostate version, and Justin having been boxing for exercise for more than a few years.
Trudeau didn't find any Tory MPs willing to fight him even though at 6' 2" he's a rather thin 180 pounds but he did recruit a fairly new Conservative Party Senator named Patrick Brazeau, a Cree from Quebec with a black belt in karate, a background in the military, a similar age 37 and weight 183 pounds but a quite different height of only 5'10" - which gave Trudeau a real reach advantage but probably a disadvantage in strength and endurance. So it shaped up to be an interesting match.
Fight raised funds for cancer
It certainly drew interest, selling out all 600+ tickets in an Ottawa hotel, getting all sorts of hype and coverage, and raising $230,000 for the Ottawa Regional Cancer Fund, which the cynics sneered at, but to be fair Brazeau had a reason for doing it similar to Trudeau's - his mother had died of cancer and he wanted to honour her too.
Alas the pre-fight talk soon turned nasty and what began as a perhaps fun event soon was deadly serious, with Conservatives in particular openly slathering at the delicious taste of an iconic Liberal going down to an ignominious defeat literally at the hands of a Conservative, with odds running about 3 to 1 in Brazeau's favour, and the attendance reportedly about the same proportion.
The media circus soon discovered that Mr. Brazeau also had a controversial "chequered" past, including financial management problems when he headed a political-cultural group for off-reserve natives in Quebec and other scrapes, which are easily found on Google and which began raising questions about whether such a guy should even have been appointed to the Senate in the first place, and especially by a Prime Minister who long ago had fought against such partisan patronage in a dysfunctional institution.
In other words the more base instincts of free-enterprise Conservatives began to show but that seemed to not matter so long as the boy was from their side of the river or their side of their floor, with their colour on his shorts; their little boy blue was sure gonna show 'em and teach them Liberals a lesson eh.
Trudeau to his credit kept his cool and acknowledged that it would be a real fight with three 2-minute rounds using Olympic rules and a potential for real injuries but a prize of merely a haircut (both having long tresses) and having to wear around the winning side's colors for a week, which believe it or not seemed to really matter to them, which is a key point in this saga. It involved partisan pride but perhaps also some stark ideological differences, a kind of black or white good or bad.
Trudeau sent out brilliant Tweet beforehand
Shortly before the fight Trudeau sent out a Tweet which which had been retweeted onto the #bcpoli list I follow which I thought was brilliant, saying: "Odd. I just got a phone message from the organisers of tonight's fight. The venue's been changed to across town. I'm on my way there now." - which really played into right-wing thoughts that he might be too chicken to go through with it.
I LMAO'd because it was a wonderfully wry shot at the extreme partisanship of the Harper Conservatives, a few of whom (probably without Steve's direct knowledge) appear to have been behind an odious voter-suppression effort in maybe 10 or so close ridings in the last election which entailed known non-Tory voters getting phone calls on voting day redirecting them to an ostensibly new polling location. I know the ploy well because both me and my partner Laura remember getting such calls when we lived in the North Island and that now is one of the ridings where Elections Canada will be investigating further (we didn't file a complaint and had no trouble voting, but I've wondered ever since about who was really behind those weird calls). [I won't be surprised if the perp turns out to be a veteran operative based in B.C.!]
Anyway in reply I tweeted this to Trudeau and others just before the fight began: "Brilliant. Justin clearly has his mother's looks and moods but it seems he has a few of his father's genes too! Just watch him!!"
It was a reference to Justin's feisty wit but also to his father's famous catch phrase "Just watch me"regarding how far he would go in imposing the War Measures Act nationally in order to fight terrorist separatistes in Quebec (which I include as background for readers too young to remember the 1960s).
Soon afterwards Trudeau scored a stunning upset win over Brazeau, and I have no idea whether he or really anyone else of note saw that Tweet, but still it was in some harmony with some big kharmaic shift because that phrase "Just watch him!" also was used in at least one national TV newscast that night and it was the main headline for a time on the electronic version of the Globe and Mail the next day.
Fight win boosts Trudeau's political career
Just watch him. Indeed. And not just in the fight but now let's watch what it does to his political career, and I am far from alone in believing that it will be huge.
"In one evening, Trudeau has managed to obliterate all the stereotypical notions that surround him. The silver spooned prince, born of privilege and entitlement, forever within the long shadow of his father, there was always an element of the man that people didn't quite take seriously. There are many people who hate Justin Trudeau, and much of the loathing is based on what they perceive he represents, rather than observations about his true character. In a shocking performance, Trudeau defied the odds and will now benefit from a newfound respect that will forever change the way he is viewed, make NO mistake about it," said Steve V on http://farnwide.blogspot.ca/2012/04/sting-like-bee.html .
Certainly for Trudeau it will be huge in Parliament, perhaps now finally giving him a front-row seat? - and it should be big for the fibrillating Liberal Party of Canada too, which has been running a so-far-boring leadership contest coming up some months from now that Trudeau now has some time and momentum to enter into with. [My old English teacher is deceased, thank goodness she can't see that construction!]
Will Trudeau challenge Bob Rae for the top job? Or will Rae wisely endorse Trudeau as per les Desmarais' instructions??
Trudeau won with brains over brawn
Meanwhile as an old sports writer I can report that how Trudeau won the fight was brilliant too (its video is all over You Tube and on other sites), and while certain conservative commentators were rather quick to deride Brazeau's lack of conditioning and training, about which some bettors apparently were misled, they should admit that Trudeau knew Brazeau would come out hard early and that if he could weather the storm Brazeau afterwards could be controlled by Justin's long left jab, which is exactly what happened.
Brazeau got in two hard right punches early on but he didn't get the knockout he needed, and after that Trudeau's left took over (pun intended) and his semi-amateur footwork was just good enough to force Brazeau into a corner where Trudeau could pummel him until the referee stepped in, which routine Trudeau continued into the final round until he badly bloodied Brazeau's nose to end the fight with a TKO.
A knockout!! No kidding. For Trudeau. And against long odds. In a gutsy performance of human courage and wit. The disappointment of such right-wing icons as Ezra Levant was palpable all the way out to Vancouver.
And it was ecstasy for many left-leaning types of various partisan orders who are rightfully aggrieved at the Harper Conservatives for slashing environmental protections, railroading resource projects, trimming the CBC again and - of particular interest to Justin Trudeau - killing off Katimavik, a social development project for young northerners begun by his father in 1977 before he was born.
"You know, he knocked out a Conservative and frankly, it made my freakin' week," said a young Tweeter on #bcpoli .
Justin Trudeau also has deep roots in B.C.
And as B.C.ers let's remember that Justin is sort of a B.C. boy too, though he now lives in Quebec, prefers to speak in French (according to social media) and sometimes advocates for forms of Quebec separatism or sovereignty or independence [as BTW I still do for B.C. too, in a friendly way - and for Quebec!!].
Anyway Justin's mother is the famous Margaret Sinclair, one of five daughters of Jimmy and Kathleen Sinclair of North and West Vancouver, he being in the Air Force at war in Europe when he was elected as the Liberal MP for North Vancouver and later became a wealthy titan of both politics and business. Trudeau first met Margaret when she was a teenager holidaying with her family in the Caribbean and the rest as they say is history, some of which included Justin passing time in B.C. for a while too, including working several years as a low-profile teacher (French and/or history?) at a Vancouver private school.
In fact there is so much to tell about his family history, such as the perhaps overbearing role of Power Corp. in the affairs of state when and after Trudeau was Prime Minister, and whether Justin's brother Michel was murdered as a warning or reprisal to Trudeau sr. or was simply the victim of an accident while skiing in B.C.'s Kootenay region a few years ago. His body was never found, which raises the possibility he was murdered according to the Waterwarcrimes website.
Justin now free from his family's history
But meanwhile Justin as a politician is now free from all of that, if he wants to be, and is now his own man, his own politician, and is no longer merely the dilettante son from a silver-spoon family (his father's side having even more wealth and power than the Sinclairs).
Interestingly Justin proceeded with the charity fight even though his grandmother Kathleen had died on Thursday at age 92 in a nursing home near Victoria, and he was man enough to not only keep the fight date but also to let his mother watch the fight live in the hotel room too.
The only naysayers were those with predisposed conclusions, perhaps because subconsciously they knew this was a major game-changer in Canadian politics: a commentator on one blog said "Brazeau fought like a Canadian Senator in Parliament . . . (with) no accountablilty to the people, unprepared, no ramifications if he failed miserably, an epic embarrassment, overfed, lazy, self-absorbed narcissist with delusions of grandeur, earning way more money than he deserves."
Now Justin can run for leader in his own right, or talk of electoral arrangements in his own right, or revive the Liberals in his own image, maybe even talk strategy with the MP from the neighbouring riding of Outremont who just happens to be - wait for it, because this is too delicious: Tom Mulcair, as hopefully every reader here knows is the very-newly-elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party.
But more than that Mulcair has a bit of backstory not unlike Trudeau's, having only recently entered federal politics after many years as a Liberal in Quebec's fiery provincial politics, including a stint as Environment Minister, and now a fluently-bilingual francophone-first pro Quebecker bent on reforming the country. Not just moving the NDP to the middle where there are more votes but really enlarging the appeal of the party's policy platform so it will appeal to more people in more regions, especially in the Prairies but also, ahem, in B.C., where he did very well at gathering support too - especially because he was seen as the upstart outsider willing and able to challenge and supplant a rather tired, dogmatic and domineering old guard atop the NDP.
So what a strange and remarkable development - suddenly the two leading reform figures on the left side of Canadian partisan politics are representing neighbouring ridings in Quebec and advocating similar new reformist policies in Parliament.
Forum poll finds Mulcair competitive with Harper
And this is no pipedream mirage because a new poll by Forum Research reportedly has found that Mulcair is already equally competitive with Prime Minister Harper and in party popularity they are more or less equal too, though that's a bit academic with an election still three or four years away.
But what a sudden change in Canadian political winds eh? The old guard inside the NDP are already falling away though Mulcair to his credit has not done any purges; he took a high road during the campaign and now as leader he is staying there, and that's a path similar to what Justin Trudeau has taken too, finding a rather novel way to get out from under his father's shadow.
I won't predict yet how this will shake out but it looks like Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty were wise to not make the recent budget a big bag of do-it-early-in-the-term regressive cuts; there were some of those, but most observers felt most of their moves were so gradual as to not be provocative to many voters.
That sort of satisfies the tone and substance of what was in Mulcair's platform, a smart version of "give the people what they want" and it's kind of like what Trudeau embodies too - a youthful appeal towards social progress within practical economic strategies.
What if Mulcair and Trudeau agreed to each run candidates in all ridings or as many as possible but by prior arrangement determine which ridings they would really work on, such as say letting one party face a Conservative head-on in one riding and the other party face a Conservative in the next riding, in an informal gang-up of the left against the right?
That's sort of what NDP leadership candidate Nathan Cullen was advocating, excepting that Cullen wanted each party to not run candidates in ridings the other would contest whereas Mulcair is adamant about running a full slate, so maybe a blend could do both without violating election laws (as if the Conservatives would be credible if they tried to complain anyway, given their own many abuses).
Electoral co-operation could decimate Conservatives
Such a strategy of New Democrats and Liberals carving up territory could well decimate the right-wing ranks, such as the New Democrats not campaigning in areas such as Shaughnessy and West Vancouver to help Liberals win them and Liberals not campaigning in certain areas of Burnaby and Surrey to help the NDP win them, which could fill Parliament with a hodge-podge of center-left politicians and very few others. There also could be other deals such as both parties deciding to not campaign hard against Green Party leader Elizabeth May in order to prevent her Saanich seat from reverting to a Conservative.
Would that qualify as a new type of politics? A sort of co-operative progressivism without using the dreaded S word?? Yes, and some tweets suggest that Mulcair has even been advocating that "democratic socialism" be removed from the NDP's constitution.
Meanwhile there also is evidence from Tim Naumetz of Ottawa's Hill Times which suggests that Trudeau admires Mulcair's makeovers.
“I think he has managed to rebrand himself sufficiently,” Mr. Trudeau told The Hill Times. “Image matters in politics, and he has been chosen by the NDP and therefore he must be a real NDPer. After a good convention like that you would expect to have a bump in attention and support. For me, we’ve got a long game to play. There are still three years before the election and we still have to go through a leadership convention as well.”
That apparently was said before the fight; just watch what it becomes!
Justin Trudeau's upset win in boxing match
could restructure centre-left politics in Canada
By John Twigg
A lot has already been said about the charity boxing match between Liberal MP Justin Trudeau and Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau on Saturday night in Ottawa and much more will be said in times ahead too because it turned out to be another major pivotal moment in Canadian politics, with ramifications all the way out to here in B.C. too.
What was the big deal? Well actually lots of things, which we'll compile and analyze here, but mainly it was some kind of a generational shift and it was obviously some kind of left-right thing too but perhaps not so much of a shift as a consolidation of who and what the new left now really comprises in Canadian politics, from coast to coast.
First the surface story itself was intriguing, in which young Trudeau, the 40-year-old son of the famous Prime Minister Pierre, and now the second-term MP for Papineau riding in Montreal, went looking in Ottawa for some Conservative MP who might engage him in a charity boxing match to raise funds for fighting cancer in recognition of his father having died from the prostate version, and Justin having been boxing for exercise for more than a few years.
Trudeau didn't find any Tory MPs willing to fight him even though at 6' 2" he's a rather thin 180 pounds but he did recruit a fairly new Conservative Party Senator named Patrick Brazeau, a Cree from Quebec with a black belt in karate, a background in the military, a similar age 37 and weight 183 pounds but a quite different height of only 5'10" - which gave Trudeau a real reach advantage but probably a disadvantage in strength and endurance. So it shaped up to be an interesting match.
Fight raised funds for cancer
It certainly drew interest, selling out all 600+ tickets in an Ottawa hotel, getting all sorts of hype and coverage, and raising $230,000 for the Ottawa Regional Cancer Fund, which the cynics sneered at, but to be fair Brazeau had a reason for doing it similar to Trudeau's - his mother had died of cancer and he wanted to honour her too.
Alas the pre-fight talk soon turned nasty and what began as a perhaps fun event soon was deadly serious, with Conservatives in particular openly slathering at the delicious taste of an iconic Liberal going down to an ignominious defeat literally at the hands of a Conservative, with odds running about 3 to 1 in Brazeau's favour, and the attendance reportedly about the same proportion.
The media circus soon discovered that Mr. Brazeau also had a controversial "chequered" past, including financial management problems when he headed a political-cultural group for off-reserve natives in Quebec and other scrapes, which are easily found on Google and which began raising questions about whether such a guy should even have been appointed to the Senate in the first place, and especially by a Prime Minister who long ago had fought against such partisan patronage in a dysfunctional institution.
In other words the more base instincts of free-enterprise Conservatives began to show but that seemed to not matter so long as the boy was from their side of the river or their side of their floor, with their colour on his shorts; their little boy blue was sure gonna show 'em and teach them Liberals a lesson eh.
Trudeau to his credit kept his cool and acknowledged that it would be a real fight with three 2-minute rounds using Olympic rules and a potential for real injuries but a prize of merely a haircut (both having long tresses) and having to wear around the winning side's colors for a week, which believe it or not seemed to really matter to them, which is a key point in this saga. It involved partisan pride but perhaps also some stark ideological differences, a kind of black or white good or bad.
Trudeau sent out brilliant Tweet beforehand
Shortly before the fight Trudeau sent out a Tweet which which had been retweeted onto the #bcpoli list I follow which I thought was brilliant, saying: "Odd. I just got a phone message from the organisers of tonight's fight. The venue's been changed to across town. I'm on my way there now." - which really played into right-wing thoughts that he might be too chicken to go through with it.
I LMAO'd because it was a wonderfully wry shot at the extreme partisanship of the Harper Conservatives, a few of whom (probably without Steve's direct knowledge) appear to have been behind an odious voter-suppression effort in maybe 10 or so close ridings in the last election which entailed known non-Tory voters getting phone calls on voting day redirecting them to an ostensibly new polling location. I know the ploy well because both me and my partner Laura remember getting such calls when we lived in the North Island and that now is one of the ridings where Elections Canada will be investigating further (we didn't file a complaint and had no trouble voting, but I've wondered ever since about who was really behind those weird calls). [I won't be surprised if the perp turns out to be a veteran operative based in B.C.!]
Anyway in reply I tweeted this to Trudeau and others just before the fight began: "Brilliant. Justin clearly has his mother's looks and moods but it seems he has a few of his father's genes too! Just watch him!!"
It was a reference to Justin's feisty wit but also to his father's famous catch phrase "Just watch me"regarding how far he would go in imposing the War Measures Act nationally in order to fight terrorist separatistes in Quebec (which I include as background for readers too young to remember the 1960s).
Soon afterwards Trudeau scored a stunning upset win over Brazeau, and I have no idea whether he or really anyone else of note saw that Tweet, but still it was in some harmony with some big kharmaic shift because that phrase "Just watch him!" also was used in at least one national TV newscast that night and it was the main headline for a time on the electronic version of the Globe and Mail the next day.
Fight win boosts Trudeau's political career
Just watch him. Indeed. And not just in the fight but now let's watch what it does to his political career, and I am far from alone in believing that it will be huge.
"In one evening, Trudeau has managed to obliterate all the stereotypical notions that surround him. The silver spooned prince, born of privilege and entitlement, forever within the long shadow of his father, there was always an element of the man that people didn't quite take seriously. There are many people who hate Justin Trudeau, and much of the loathing is based on what they perceive he represents, rather than observations about his true character. In a shocking performance, Trudeau defied the odds and will now benefit from a newfound respect that will forever change the way he is viewed, make NO mistake about it," said Steve V on http://farnwide.blogspot.ca/2012/04/sting-like-bee.html .
Certainly for Trudeau it will be huge in Parliament, perhaps now finally giving him a front-row seat? - and it should be big for the fibrillating Liberal Party of Canada too, which has been running a so-far-boring leadership contest coming up some months from now that Trudeau now has some time and momentum to enter into with. [My old English teacher is deceased, thank goodness she can't see that construction!]
Will Trudeau challenge Bob Rae for the top job? Or will Rae wisely endorse Trudeau as per les Desmarais' instructions??
Trudeau won with brains over brawn
Meanwhile as an old sports writer I can report that how Trudeau won the fight was brilliant too (its video is all over You Tube and on other sites), and while certain conservative commentators were rather quick to deride Brazeau's lack of conditioning and training, about which some bettors apparently were misled, they should admit that Trudeau knew Brazeau would come out hard early and that if he could weather the storm Brazeau afterwards could be controlled by Justin's long left jab, which is exactly what happened.
Brazeau got in two hard right punches early on but he didn't get the knockout he needed, and after that Trudeau's left took over (pun intended) and his semi-amateur footwork was just good enough to force Brazeau into a corner where Trudeau could pummel him until the referee stepped in, which routine Trudeau continued into the final round until he badly bloodied Brazeau's nose to end the fight with a TKO.
A knockout!! No kidding. For Trudeau. And against long odds. In a gutsy performance of human courage and wit. The disappointment of such right-wing icons as Ezra Levant was palpable all the way out to Vancouver.
And it was ecstasy for many left-leaning types of various partisan orders who are rightfully aggrieved at the Harper Conservatives for slashing environmental protections, railroading resource projects, trimming the CBC again and - of particular interest to Justin Trudeau - killing off Katimavik, a social development project for young northerners begun by his father in 1977 before he was born.
"You know, he knocked out a Conservative and frankly, it made my freakin' week," said a young Tweeter on #bcpoli .
Justin Trudeau also has deep roots in B.C.
And as B.C.ers let's remember that Justin is sort of a B.C. boy too, though he now lives in Quebec, prefers to speak in French (according to social media) and sometimes advocates for forms of Quebec separatism or sovereignty or independence [as BTW I still do for B.C. too, in a friendly way - and for Quebec!!].
Anyway Justin's mother is the famous Margaret Sinclair, one of five daughters of Jimmy and Kathleen Sinclair of North and West Vancouver, he being in the Air Force at war in Europe when he was elected as the Liberal MP for North Vancouver and later became a wealthy titan of both politics and business. Trudeau first met Margaret when she was a teenager holidaying with her family in the Caribbean and the rest as they say is history, some of which included Justin passing time in B.C. for a while too, including working several years as a low-profile teacher (French and/or history?) at a Vancouver private school.
In fact there is so much to tell about his family history, such as the perhaps overbearing role of Power Corp. in the affairs of state when and after Trudeau was Prime Minister, and whether Justin's brother Michel was murdered as a warning or reprisal to Trudeau sr. or was simply the victim of an accident while skiing in B.C.'s Kootenay region a few years ago. His body was never found, which raises the possibility he was murdered according to the Waterwarcrimes website.
Justin now free from his family's history
But meanwhile Justin as a politician is now free from all of that, if he wants to be, and is now his own man, his own politician, and is no longer merely the dilettante son from a silver-spoon family (his father's side having even more wealth and power than the Sinclairs).
Interestingly Justin proceeded with the charity fight even though his grandmother Kathleen had died on Thursday at age 92 in a nursing home near Victoria, and he was man enough to not only keep the fight date but also to let his mother watch the fight live in the hotel room too.
The only naysayers were those with predisposed conclusions, perhaps because subconsciously they knew this was a major game-changer in Canadian politics: a commentator on one blog said "Brazeau fought like a Canadian Senator in Parliament . . . (with) no accountablilty to the people, unprepared, no ramifications if he failed miserably, an epic embarrassment, overfed, lazy, self-absorbed narcissist with delusions of grandeur, earning way more money than he deserves."
Now Justin can run for leader in his own right, or talk of electoral arrangements in his own right, or revive the Liberals in his own image, maybe even talk strategy with the MP from the neighbouring riding of Outremont who just happens to be - wait for it, because this is too delicious: Tom Mulcair, as hopefully every reader here knows is the very-newly-elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party.
But more than that Mulcair has a bit of backstory not unlike Trudeau's, having only recently entered federal politics after many years as a Liberal in Quebec's fiery provincial politics, including a stint as Environment Minister, and now a fluently-bilingual francophone-first pro Quebecker bent on reforming the country. Not just moving the NDP to the middle where there are more votes but really enlarging the appeal of the party's policy platform so it will appeal to more people in more regions, especially in the Prairies but also, ahem, in B.C., where he did very well at gathering support too - especially because he was seen as the upstart outsider willing and able to challenge and supplant a rather tired, dogmatic and domineering old guard atop the NDP.
So what a strange and remarkable development - suddenly the two leading reform figures on the left side of Canadian partisan politics are representing neighbouring ridings in Quebec and advocating similar new reformist policies in Parliament.
Forum poll finds Mulcair competitive with Harper
And this is no pipedream mirage because a new poll by Forum Research reportedly has found that Mulcair is already equally competitive with Prime Minister Harper and in party popularity they are more or less equal too, though that's a bit academic with an election still three or four years away.
But what a sudden change in Canadian political winds eh? The old guard inside the NDP are already falling away though Mulcair to his credit has not done any purges; he took a high road during the campaign and now as leader he is staying there, and that's a path similar to what Justin Trudeau has taken too, finding a rather novel way to get out from under his father's shadow.
I won't predict yet how this will shake out but it looks like Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty were wise to not make the recent budget a big bag of do-it-early-in-the-term regressive cuts; there were some of those, but most observers felt most of their moves were so gradual as to not be provocative to many voters.
That sort of satisfies the tone and substance of what was in Mulcair's platform, a smart version of "give the people what they want" and it's kind of like what Trudeau embodies too - a youthful appeal towards social progress within practical economic strategies.
What if Mulcair and Trudeau agreed to each run candidates in all ridings or as many as possible but by prior arrangement determine which ridings they would really work on, such as say letting one party face a Conservative head-on in one riding and the other party face a Conservative in the next riding, in an informal gang-up of the left against the right?
That's sort of what NDP leadership candidate Nathan Cullen was advocating, excepting that Cullen wanted each party to not run candidates in ridings the other would contest whereas Mulcair is adamant about running a full slate, so maybe a blend could do both without violating election laws (as if the Conservatives would be credible if they tried to complain anyway, given their own many abuses).
Electoral co-operation could decimate Conservatives
Such a strategy of New Democrats and Liberals carving up territory could well decimate the right-wing ranks, such as the New Democrats not campaigning in areas such as Shaughnessy and West Vancouver to help Liberals win them and Liberals not campaigning in certain areas of Burnaby and Surrey to help the NDP win them, which could fill Parliament with a hodge-podge of center-left politicians and very few others. There also could be other deals such as both parties deciding to not campaign hard against Green Party leader Elizabeth May in order to prevent her Saanich seat from reverting to a Conservative.
Would that qualify as a new type of politics? A sort of co-operative progressivism without using the dreaded S word?? Yes, and some tweets suggest that Mulcair has even been advocating that "democratic socialism" be removed from the NDP's constitution.
Meanwhile there also is evidence from Tim Naumetz of Ottawa's Hill Times which suggests that Trudeau admires Mulcair's makeovers.
“I think he has managed to rebrand himself sufficiently,” Mr. Trudeau told The Hill Times. “Image matters in politics, and he has been chosen by the NDP and therefore he must be a real NDPer. After a good convention like that you would expect to have a bump in attention and support. For me, we’ve got a long game to play. There are still three years before the election and we still have to go through a leadership convention as well.”
That apparently was said before the fight; just watch what it becomes!
Friday, March 30, 2012
Many reasons Clark must go
The Daily Twigg Vol. 1 No. 34 March 30, 2012
In this issue
1. MLA van Dongen's party jump said just the first of more
2. Robin Mathews shreds Clark govt's credibility on BC Rail
3. MLA Claire Trevena summarizes Legislature's busy week
4. Links to items of note for students of B.C. public affairs
Van Dongen's jump still reverberating
as White insists three more will follow
By John Twigg
I am working on another extensive polemic about why B.C. Premier Christy Clark should resign or be ousted sooner rather than later, but since it is going to take me perhaps a few days to write it I am instead today sending only a brief synopsis and then adding some excellent commentaries by other writers.
Meanwhile, my own analysis is that MLA John van Dongen's jump from the B.C. Liberal Party to the B.C. Conservative Party on Monday sent huge shock waves through B.C. politics that are still reverberating, especially his hiring of lawyer Roger McConchie to further probe the B.C. Rail scandal.
Indeed even as this little gist was being prepared there was more big news that Conservative backroomer Randy White is now predicting the BCCP will have four MLAs and thus official party status before the next election! That's according to a report today by Neil Corbett in the Abbotsford News.
“Not only do I think it may happen, I’m telling you it’s going to happen,” said White, a longtime former MP for Abbotsford for the Reform Party and then the federal Conservatives who has been busy helping his friend B.C. Conservative Party leader John Cummins rebuild the party brand in B.C., a brand which van Dongen by the way says needs to be broadened.
White claimed that the coalition of conservatives and Liberals that Premier Christy Clark says she is trying to hold together has already broken down, and poll numbers and van Dongen's jump suggest he is correct, as do the lukewarm comments from senior cabinet ministers Kevin Falcon, George Abbott and others undecided about running again in 2013.
Calls still mount for Clark's ouster
There are several reasons why van Dongen did that dramatic jump, including some personal ones such as grievances over how he was ousted from cabinet in 2009, but it's obvious his stated concerns about the B.C. Rail sale and her government's botch of the B.C. Place naming deal are adding weight to calls for Clark's immediate ouster, though really when you look at the full list of reasons to oust her one sees that van Dongen's list is only the tip of an iceberg.
There are in fact dozens of serious issues over which Clark bears lots of blame, such as the current government-manufactured dispute with teachers (which goes back to her years as education minister under former premier Gordon Campbell, and now a new dispute is also looming with the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union).
But even those serious problems are minor compared with such emerging allegations that despite her many denials Clark herself may have been involved in some wrongdoing in the tainted sale of B.C. Rail - which can be read about mainly on the Alex Tsakumis blog, namely that she may - may - have herself done some document leaking, or at least that she fraternized a lot with others who did such things as proffer bribes.
Furthermore, it gets worse, and more current, because it appears B.C. government lawyers (including a senior one who worked on Clark's leadership campaign and/or others now working under her indirect auspices) have been trying to maintain a coverup of certain aspects of the B.C. Rail scandal which has caused the Auditor General to have to go to court for access to some documents - a rare and perhaps unprecedented move for that office.
Attorney General Shirley Bond just told CKNW's Simi Sara that the documents in question are controlled by an unidentified third party and that she has instructed the government's lawyers to disclose everything else, but even there one wonders why she had to instruct them again to do so when the auditors have been trying for many months to get them.
So we'll have to wait to see how all that shakes out but it certainly destroys Clark's claim Tuesday that "there's nothing left to investigate" about her role in the B.C. Rail sale and meanwhile I'll try to explain how that fits into a compilation of other reasons why her leadership IS in question and should be moreso.
Clarification re who helped van Dongen's jump
And while I'm here, let me clarify for the record that Alex Tsakumis was not the go-between or marriage-broker between van Dongen and B.C. Conservative leader John Cummins, as I had speculated in a recent issue was a possibility based on some comments in Tsakumis's blog. While Tsakumis had been talking to both men from time to time, the person who suggested that van Dongen and Cummins actually meet to discuss van Dongen possibly crossing over was someone else so far unidentified (maybe Randy White as per above?).
Fresh meat for your Friday feeding:
Editor's Note: The following article by Robin Mathews, a veteran analyst of B.C. politics and public affairs, is published here as an opinion on matters of public interest and does not imply that I endorse and agree with each and every interpretation and analysis; readers are advised to draw their own conclusions and do their own fact-checking and lawyering if they wish to use it further.
Also, the article below it, by NDP MLA Claire Trevena, also is published as a matter of public interest and does not imply any endorsement of her by me or vice-versa; it is a document taken from the public domain which I as the editor believe provides some useful insights and perspectives on B.C. politics and public affairs.
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/editorials/columnists/9-robin-mathews
MLA Claire Trevena reviews
busy week in B.C. Legislature
By Claire Trevena
NDP MLA - North Island
Despite the political drama playing out in the corridors of the Legislature - the departure from the Liberal Party of a former cabinet minister and questions over who among the BC Liberals will stay on to fight the next election - the work of committees and questioning continued through the week.
Editor's Note: The B.C. Legislature recessed on Thursday for what will be a two-week break and will resume on April 16, only days before the Port Moody and Chilliwack byelections on April 19.
Links of interest for students of B.C. politics and public affairs
Link to Randy White interview in the Abbotsford News re more party-jumpers coming
http://www.abbynews.com/news/145191995.html
Link to Mark Hume piece on Auditor General fighting to get BC Rail documents
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-politics/auditor-general-battles-bc-for-access-to-documents-in-corruption-case/article2384998/
Link to Alex Tsakumis's analysis and contexts of legal fights over BC Rail scandal documents
http://alexgtsakumis.com/2012/03/29/court-documents-reveal-that-the-bc-government-is-withholding-basi-virk-documents-putting-the-auditor-generals-review-in-jeopardy-will-shirely-bond-do-the-honourable-thing-and-resign/
Link to Geoff Plant defending government's handling of Basi-Virk settlement (it still looks like a coverup IMO)
http://theplantrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/basi-virk-open-letter-to-john-van.html
Link to Premier Clark's video interview about her first year in office (have a barf bag handy?):
http://christyclarkmlabc.ca/news/constituency-report-march-18-2012/
Link to Briony Penn on Robocalls and the petrostate politics
http://focusonline.ca/?q=node/355
Link to a story about a huge new export sale of B.C. water to Japan which proves the huge potential value of this industry
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/03/24/bc-bottled-water-japan.html
In this issue
1. MLA van Dongen's party jump said just the first of more
2. Robin Mathews shreds Clark govt's credibility on BC Rail
3. MLA Claire Trevena summarizes Legislature's busy week
4. Links to items of note for students of B.C. public affairs
Van Dongen's jump still reverberating
as White insists three more will follow
By John Twigg
I am working on another extensive polemic about why B.C. Premier Christy Clark should resign or be ousted sooner rather than later, but since it is going to take me perhaps a few days to write it I am instead today sending only a brief synopsis and then adding some excellent commentaries by other writers.
Meanwhile, my own analysis is that MLA John van Dongen's jump from the B.C. Liberal Party to the B.C. Conservative Party on Monday sent huge shock waves through B.C. politics that are still reverberating, especially his hiring of lawyer Roger McConchie to further probe the B.C. Rail scandal.
Indeed even as this little gist was being prepared there was more big news that Conservative backroomer Randy White is now predicting the BCCP will have four MLAs and thus official party status before the next election! That's according to a report today by Neil Corbett in the Abbotsford News.
“Not only do I think it may happen, I’m telling you it’s going to happen,” said White, a longtime former MP for Abbotsford for the Reform Party and then the federal Conservatives who has been busy helping his friend B.C. Conservative Party leader John Cummins rebuild the party brand in B.C., a brand which van Dongen by the way says needs to be broadened.
White claimed that the coalition of conservatives and Liberals that Premier Christy Clark says she is trying to hold together has already broken down, and poll numbers and van Dongen's jump suggest he is correct, as do the lukewarm comments from senior cabinet ministers Kevin Falcon, George Abbott and others undecided about running again in 2013.
Calls still mount for Clark's ouster
There are several reasons why van Dongen did that dramatic jump, including some personal ones such as grievances over how he was ousted from cabinet in 2009, but it's obvious his stated concerns about the B.C. Rail sale and her government's botch of the B.C. Place naming deal are adding weight to calls for Clark's immediate ouster, though really when you look at the full list of reasons to oust her one sees that van Dongen's list is only the tip of an iceberg.
There are in fact dozens of serious issues over which Clark bears lots of blame, such as the current government-manufactured dispute with teachers (which goes back to her years as education minister under former premier Gordon Campbell, and now a new dispute is also looming with the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union).
But even those serious problems are minor compared with such emerging allegations that despite her many denials Clark herself may have been involved in some wrongdoing in the tainted sale of B.C. Rail - which can be read about mainly on the Alex Tsakumis blog, namely that she may - may - have herself done some document leaking, or at least that she fraternized a lot with others who did such things as proffer bribes.
Furthermore, it gets worse, and more current, because it appears B.C. government lawyers (including a senior one who worked on Clark's leadership campaign and/or others now working under her indirect auspices) have been trying to maintain a coverup of certain aspects of the B.C. Rail scandal which has caused the Auditor General to have to go to court for access to some documents - a rare and perhaps unprecedented move for that office.
Attorney General Shirley Bond just told CKNW's Simi Sara that the documents in question are controlled by an unidentified third party and that she has instructed the government's lawyers to disclose everything else, but even there one wonders why she had to instruct them again to do so when the auditors have been trying for many months to get them.
So we'll have to wait to see how all that shakes out but it certainly destroys Clark's claim Tuesday that "there's nothing left to investigate" about her role in the B.C. Rail sale and meanwhile I'll try to explain how that fits into a compilation of other reasons why her leadership IS in question and should be moreso.
Clarification re who helped van Dongen's jump
And while I'm here, let me clarify for the record that Alex Tsakumis was not the go-between or marriage-broker between van Dongen and B.C. Conservative leader John Cummins, as I had speculated in a recent issue was a possibility based on some comments in Tsakumis's blog. While Tsakumis had been talking to both men from time to time, the person who suggested that van Dongen and Cummins actually meet to discuss van Dongen possibly crossing over was someone else so far unidentified (maybe Randy White as per above?).
Fresh meat for your Friday feeding:
Editor's Note: The following article by Robin Mathews, a veteran analyst of B.C. politics and public affairs, is published here as an opinion on matters of public interest and does not imply that I endorse and agree with each and every interpretation and analysis; readers are advised to draw their own conclusions and do their own fact-checking and lawyering if they wish to use it further.
Also, the article below it, by NDP MLA Claire Trevena, also is published as a matter of public interest and does not imply any endorsement of her by me or vice-versa; it is a document taken from the public domain which I as the editor believe provides some useful insights and perspectives on B.C. politics and public affairs.
Musical Chairs in Corrupt British Columbia. Interesting Times.
By Robin Mathews
The phrase “like rats leaving a sinking ship” can’t help coming to mind with the switch of MLA John van Dongen from his role as seventeen-year Liberal loyalist to a new, shiny incarnation in the B.C. Conservative Party.
The phrase “like rats leaving a sinking ship” can’t help coming to mind with the switch of MLA John van Dongen from his role as seventeen-year Liberal loyalist to a new, shiny incarnation in the B.C. Conservative Party.
Mr. Van Dongen crossed the B.C. House this week, (March 26, 2012) joining a Party he didn’t represent to get elected. He hasn’t signified that he’ll resign and run as a Conservative to validate his seat. And he was welcomed by John Cummins, B.C. Conservative leader, happy to have him – in fact unelected – sitting in the legislature as a Conservative (the only).
One journalist reminded Cummins that his position when in federal politics was that “House Crossers” should resign and re-run. Cummins, it seems, had forgotten….
British Columbia’s governing alliance – at least since the Second World War – has frequently been formed of all things Right of the CCF/NDP. (Keep the raging Socialists from getting their hands on political power!)
Except the B.C. NDP is, now, far from Socialist, let alone “raging”, as corporate lap-dog Adrian Dix makes clear on almost every public appearance. He will take power in 2013 … and British Columbians will hardly notice the change.
Embattled Boadicea, Liberal premier Christy Clark, said van Dongen’s move will only help the NDP. True. But not for any reasons she wants to offer. Mainstream Media voices say there will be no more defections. We’ll see. Even van Dongen’s leaving lets the NDP say that any rotten apple that falls from the Liberal tree is grabbed up and hugged to John Cummins' bosom. The more they fall and are hugged into the Conservative Party, the more the NDP can say “Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Try to tell them apart.”
If there is one thing British Columbians are growing certain of, it’s that the Liberal Caucus, one and all, have to go. Cummins and Co. know that. But if the leaving Conservatives-playing-Liberal try to tuck themselves into the John Cummins creation, that Party will lose, too. Tough choices for John Cummins. Where do the hard rock Conservatives who are in the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark party go…? Today Kevin Falcon [present Liberal finance minister and a natural for the Conservative Party] says he is thinking of stepping aside in 2013, the dailies tell us.
The Party that wants to hold power for 25 years will begin with criminal investigations into BC Rail, BC Hydro, BC Ferries, Public Private Partnership Infrastructure deals, River Energy contracts … to start. That will reveal the heaving, corrupt, steamy stew that is B.C. A Party that sets about – really – to clean will stay and stay in power.
But sell-out, greed, fear, and love of power will probably prevent that from happening.
Which brings us back to John van Dongen. He has crossed the House in search of purity. A known Fraser Valley Christian, he knows his New Testament (Matthew 7:7, Luke 11:9).
“Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
The Liberal leader, Christy Clark, he has said – in and out of the legislature – has not faced the need for change, has not been a good administrator, has not been honest about the BC Rail Scandal, has not been transparent about the outrageous payment of “$6 million in legal fees [paid to Defence], completely contrary to government policy”. Those are legal costs paid for convicted Dave Basi and Bob Virk by government, with cabinet approval, to slam shut the BC Rail trial and – many believe – save the skins of (a) major cabinet operatives, (b) private corporate dealers in on the scam (c) the BC Liberal government and Party.
Van Dongen does not, of course, mention the $10.7 million paid to the Special (Crown) Prosecutor whose questionable appointment invalidates ALL the Crown’s work in the Basi, Virk, and Basi matter. No one, so far, will touch that burning brand.
So deeply is John van Dongen moved by the spirit of purity, so beset is his conscience by moral perturbation that he has hired North Vancouver lawyer Roger McConchie to review BC Rail matters involving Basi, Virk, and Basi and then to advise him.
That might be called “Gilbert and Sullivan in Hell”.
Regulars in the nearly four year Basi, Virk, and Basi pre-trial/trial grew familiar with Roger McConchie. He appeared whenever the Globe and Mail (and like others) wanted to contest publication bans and other kinds of restrictions on information. He spoke always for what we name “the Mainstream Press and Media”. I have no remembrance of him speaking meaningfully and directly on behalf of British Columbians, the public, you and me … insisting on our right to see all documents on public record. I may be wrong.
At the end of the trial, as has been pointed out, Mr. McConchie reviewed ‘thousands’ of Prosecution documents with the Globe and Mail in order to get release of the material “to the public”. Why the release was set up … and made … is hotly contested. It was not a release of all materials, by any means. And it was not a release to the public.
Some say, and I believe them, that the release “to the public” was a complete sham, a piece of theatre, “smoke and mirrors”. It was, in fact, a release of selected material to a chosen few, dependable, insider, tamed Mainstream journalists.
It was made, I believe, to smear the two convicted men (who seemed to be getting off very, very lightly), Dave Basi and Bob Virk. And it was made, I believe, to throw up a smokescreen in front of the major wrongdoers in cabinet and in corporate boardrooms.
Those are strong allegations. They have a history. Observe:
Out of the corrupt fog called "the administration of justice" in British Columbia, the B.C. Supreme Court has set up (and maintains) a completely (in my judgement) fraudulent process. It is called "the journalist accreditation process".
Under the eye of a Supreme Court judge a committee of Mainstream journalists ”serves” the Court, to vet anyone wanting journalist status in B.C. Supreme court trials. “Approved journalists” may take recorders into the court and may examine all materials placed “on public record”.
Out of the corrupt fog called "the administration of justice" in British Columbia, the B.C. Supreme Court has set up (and maintains) a completely (in my judgement) fraudulent process. It is called "the journalist accreditation process".
Under the eye of a Supreme Court judge a committee of Mainstream journalists ”serves” the Court, to vet anyone wanting journalist status in B.C. Supreme court trials. “Approved journalists” may take recorders into the court and may examine all materials placed “on public record”.
(1) All Canadians should be able to do both things in our “democratic”, “Open Court” system. They are denied their citizenship by corrupt courts, as I see it.
(2) The Mainstream Media committee members are servants of the Court and so contaminated. They both work for the Court and are – as representatives of “a free press and media” - supposed to criticize the Court and judges freely when they deem such action necessary. They live in conflict of interest.
In the nearly four years I attended the Basi, Virk, and Basi process, not one Mainstream Press and Media journalist EVER criticized a judge, though occasions inviting legitimate criticism were frequent.
(3) The fraudulent process permits the Mainstream Journalist committee to pick off their rivals. For nearly three years I reported things the Mainstream Press and Media journalists wouldn’t touch or were ordered by their bosses not to touch. When I applied (because I was forced to do so) for “accreditation” as a journalist after three years of steady reporting of the pre-trial, I was denied accreditation by journalists I had been showing up for three years as failing to do their job.
(4) My application to Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie (who was handling the case) was ignored. Instead, a court officer informed me I could – in fact – appeal a judgement made by court non-persons (journalists) acting on behalf of the court. I could apply, pay money, go through what is, in fact, an appeal process – without any certainty of being approved. I refused to have anything to do with such galloping Banana Republic fraud.
(5) The effect of the process is that the relation of court, judges, and Mainstream Press and Media is too close. One may feel – watching sensitive events in court – that each is “looking after” the other.
To my knowledge, Roger McConchie, the Law Society of B.C., the Canadian Bar Association, as well as the Canadian Judicial Council all are completely content with that “system”. It is plainly an affront to democratic freedom and the rule of law. Not one of them has spoken out publicly against it.
John van Dongen is employing Roger McConchie to advise him on matters involving the Basi, Virk, and Basi case, the payment by government of their Defence costs, and – who knows? – the possibility of involvement by premier Christy Clark in the shady and nefarious dealings that led to the accusations against the three accused. Defence counsel hinted at such a possibility in pre-trial hearings years ago.
Such is the passion for virtuous government felt by former cabinet minister and present MLA John van Dongen that he has hired Roger McConchie at his own expense!
Let us look back at John van Dongen’s seventeen years of loyalty to the B.C. Liberal Party.
He was there when co-chair and fund-raiser David McLean worked on Gordon Campbell’s 1996 campaign – and was major fund-raiser later, it is said. That is the David McLean who was president of CNR when BC Rail was “delivered” to CN in 2003-04. Mr. van Dongen didn’t seem, then, to have a moral qualm.
Mr. van Dongen was in cabinet while BC Hydro was being ripped apart. The Auditor General of B.C. hasn’t approved B.C. Hydro accounting practices for ten years! Mr. van Dongen – to my knowledge – never has asked a question on the matter.
He was there when a relation of Gordon Campbell was embroiled in a scandal in the ministry of Children and Families, was removed, was covered for, was whisked to trial in Prince George on a completely different charge – while something like $400,000.00 was “written off” by the ministry. Mr. van Dongen said nothing … asked (as far as I know) no questions of anyone.
He was there when BC Ferries was looted as a cash cow, transformed, and stripped of any responsibility to British Columbians. He was there when David Hahn, U.S.-sourced BC Ferries president, was revealed to have an annual salary of one million dollars a year! Not a word from Mr. van Dongen that I remember.
Mr. van Dongen was there in cabinet when – it is alleged – Gordon Campbell and his team went consciously to work to dessicate BC Rail, to destroy its profitability, and to make it look, falsely, a losing operation. He was in cabinet when those actions – which I believe constitute criminal breach of trust – were being carried out.
Mr. van Dongen didn’t – it seems – suffer even a slight moral twinge.
He was in cabinet in the first years of staggering revelations and allegations of high-level corruption made by Defence counsel in the Basi, Virk, and Basi BC Rail Scandal pre-trial hearings. He was an MLA for the full trial and its outrageous conclusion, a conclusion blessed by the questionably appointed Special Prosecutor and the sitting judge, Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie.
Through all those years and those highly dubious events … and more … John van Dongen remained silent. Silent.
Silent.
Now he is no longer silent. Now he wants to find answers. Now? Why? The $6 million paid to Defence counsel of Dave Basi and Bob Virk was approved of by the Gordon Campbell cabinet. Does Mr. van Dongen want to pull Gordon Campbell down, now, from his eminence as Canadian High Commissioner in London? After nearly two decades of van Dongen faithful, silent loyalty?
Does Mr. van Dongen want to find ways to implicate Christy Clark in the lower levels of alleged BC Rail Scandal bribery, BC Rail information leaking, and related actions? If he could do so, that would wipe the B.C. Liberals in 2013 … for certain.
We are in murky depths here. Much more is happening than meets the eye.
Conservative voices in British Columbia are making themselves heard, are revealing that beneath their Liberal hides Conservative hearts are beating, and that they despise Liberal premier Christy Clark … that they want to get her.
Like gays ‘in the closet’ for twenty years, these Conservatives want to go on a huge Conservative PRIDE parade. They are mad, too. Christy is in the embrace of Stephen Harper – their ideal Conservative. They want to be in his embrace. They want to be able to reveal their real selves, their real neo-liberal, (neo-fascist?), public servant-hating, robocalling selves, standing in Stephen Harper’s shadow. Christy has taken Stephen’s aides and agents into her circle. Christy, the dumb Liberal, (they think) is playing Conservative, is schmoozing (in photo ops) with Stephen Harper. Liberal Gordon Campbell shouldn’t be Canadian High Commissioner to the Court of St. James! A Conservative should be in that post!
How can B.C. Conservatives break the unholy alliance between the Christy Clark Liberals and the Stephen Harper Conservatives? How can they get a British Columbia which is more Conservative than the ruling party in the House of Commons? By making Christy Clark too hot for Stephen Harper to handle. Even, perhaps, by making Gordon Campbell too hot to keep in London.
These are dark and murky depths, but they are the place where real struggles for power go on. John van Dongen has just announced that the Liberal/Conservative struggle for power on the Right has begun in British Columbia. All the media and pundit talk about John van Dongen’s virtuous desire for a cleansed political landscape is wonderful, refreshing, heady, Springtime intoxication. He may really want a cleansed political landscape … after all power on it is possessed by Stephen Harper-style British Columbia Conservatives.
We – who are not B.C. Conservatives – can only watch (and cover our backs). The Chinese curse is upon us: we live in interesting times.
Other columns by Robin Mathews can be found here:http://www.vivelecanada.ca/editorials/columnists/9-robin-mathews
MLA Claire Trevena reviews
busy week in B.C. Legislature
By Claire Trevena
NDP MLA - North Island
Despite the political drama playing out in the corridors of the Legislature - the departure from the Liberal Party of a former cabinet minister and questions over who among the BC Liberals will stay on to fight the next election - the work of committees and questioning continued through the week.
One of the reasons that John van Dongen said he was leaving the Liberal caucus was because of the still unanswered questions about BC Rail and taxpayers paying the legal costs for Basi and Virk. We raised this scandal yet again in question period: but the government continued to stonewall. We also raised again questions about the multi-million dollar overspends at BC Place, and the cavalier rejection of the Telus sponsorship deal.
However, we urged the government to put politics aside and show support for the workers who recently lost their jobs at Aveos, the company that operated maintenance services for Air Canada. On Thursday the Legislature unanimously voted in support of such a move.
We were not so lucky when we asked the Minister of Jobs to act to protect the hundreds of retirees from Catalyst pulp mills whose pensions could be at risk because of the company’s insolvency. He refused to take any responsibility. Likewise we asked ministers again about the impact of raw log exports on mills and local economies, only to have the question sloughed off.
I was able to talk about the sometimes difficult balance between protecting the environment and encouraging employment in the mining sector. I spoke about the situation for both Myra Falls, in Strathcona Provincial Park, and Quinsam Coal with the close oversight it receives for impacts on the watershed.
The government’s initiative to download more work on municipalities, through the Local Government Auditor General office, has now become law. We spent several days examining the bill closely and presented a number of amendments to it to try to make it more palatable but they were not accepted.
We also examined the Advanced Education Statutes Amendment Act. This is the bill which takes away the right of elected executive members of faculty associations to be on the boards of governors of universities and colleges. This is an unnecessary bill, an arbitrary attack on both unions and on the good governance of post-secondary education.
We have been drawing attention to problems with the government’s testing of senior drivers through the DriveAble programme. We asked a number of questions about the test’s validity as well as problems in accessing it, both because of the distance to test centres and the cost. I will be holding two DriveAble meetings next month (on April 27th) to talk to seniors in the North Island about problems they have faced or are facing.
We also asked the Minister of Transportation how he can allow yet another increase in ferry fares. The rates are due to go up on April 1st by more than 4%, despite the Ferry Commissioner’s report acknowledging the fact that ferry dependent communities find it impossible to continue to bear such increases.
As the critic for Children and Families I asked the Attorney General about an horrific failure in the justice system which allowed a case of alleged child sexual abuse to be stayed. What I was hoping to hear was that the government would put priority on cases in the courts system - whether it be criminal or child protection - to protect children.
I also had the opportunity to ask the Minister of Agriculture if there was any specific government assistance to communities who want to expand their agricultural base. Campbell River is already looking at ways to do this and I hear from other communities in the constituency that they are also considering it.
And I had the opportunity to tell the Legislature about the walk that Phoenix student, Janine Annett, is making from Port Hardy to Victoria over the coming month. She’s raising awareness about child poverty - here and abroad - and to encourage youth empowerment.
I’ll be at the start of Janine’s walk in Port Hardy on Tuesday morning. Before that I will have been to Prince George as part of the Opposition Forest Working Group tour, and will be at the No Pipeline Rally in Comox on Saturday at the public hearings on Enbridge. Editor's Note: The B.C. Legislature recessed on Thursday for what will be a two-week break and will resume on April 16, only days before the Port Moody and Chilliwack byelections on April 19.
Links of interest for students of B.C. politics and public affairs
Link to Randy White interview in the Abbotsford News re more party-jumpers coming
http://www.abbynews.com/news/145191995.html
Link to Mark Hume piece on Auditor General fighting to get BC Rail documents
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/bc-politics/auditor-general-battles-bc-for-access-to-documents-in-corruption-case/article2384998/
Link to Alex Tsakumis's analysis and contexts of legal fights over BC Rail scandal documents
http://alexgtsakumis.com/2012/03/29/court-documents-reveal-that-the-bc-government-is-withholding-basi-virk-documents-putting-the-auditor-generals-review-in-jeopardy-will-shirely-bond-do-the-honourable-thing-and-resign/
Link to Geoff Plant defending government's handling of Basi-Virk settlement (it still looks like a coverup IMO)
http://theplantrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/basi-virk-open-letter-to-john-van.html
Link to Premier Clark's video interview about her first year in office (have a barf bag handy?):
http://christyclarkmlabc.ca/news/constituency-report-march-18-2012/
Link to Briony Penn on Robocalls and the petrostate politics
http://focusonline.ca/?q=node/355
Link to a story about a huge new export sale of B.C. water to Japan which proves the huge potential value of this industry
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/03/24/bc-bottled-water-japan.html
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
BC Rail scandal behind van Dongen's jump
The Daily Twigg Vol.1 No. 33 March 28, 2012
B.C. Politics Trendwatch
In this issue:
1. The moves behind van Dongen's jump
2. New polls add to Premier Clark's woes
3. MLA Bob Simpson views feeding frenzy
Revolt against Basi-Virk payoffs
was behind van Dongen's jump
By John Twigg
The sometimes frantic pace of B.C. politics seemed to take a bit of a breather yesterday as if everyone wanted to stand back and digest the earthquake from the day before when longtime B.C. Liberal MLA John van Dongen not only left that party but also instantly became the first sitting member of the upstart B.C. Conservative Party.
While lots of people had known for quite a while that van Dongen (Abbotsford-South) was amongst the most aggrieved Liberal backbenchers on the verge of leaving the Liberals in protest of Premier Christy Clark's evident mismanagement of numerous issues, very few if any other MLAs or any pundits knew he would take a second step into the Conservatives' ranks too. (I saw one suggestion that Independent MLA Vick Huntington knew it was coming, but no others.)
Clark sees Liberals as the only free-enterprise choice
Several versions of what had happened eked and leaked out about exactly what took place, including various versions from van Dongen, Conservative leader John Cummins, blogger Alex Tsakumis and other participants, and there were even more versions about what it all will mean and lead to going forward, and of course there was lots of misleading spin from Clark when she finally faced the media shortly after the noon newscasts yesterday to the effect that in her mind she's determined to keep the B.C. Liberal Party as the only practical way to preserve a free-enterprise coalition that can prevent the New Democratic Party from winning power in the 2013 provincial election (which sounds to me like a line coached into her by strategist Patrick Kinsella).
"The only thing that John van Dongen accomplished yesterday was making it a little easier for the NDP to get elected in British Columbia," Clark said, typically understating the gravity of her situation.
The gist of van Dongen's motives which I gathered from monitoring a lot of reports and making a few calls was that he had been quite upset about several issues going back a long time, especially when he stepped aside as Solicitor General over several speeding tickets he incurred in the run-up to the 2009 election and then afterwards being passed over for reinstatement by first former premier Gordon Campbell (whose drunk-driving conviction had not prevented him from remaining a minister) and then Clark, whose perhaps-more-than-peripheral involvement in the B.C. Rail scandals (yes, plural is cct) and other brushes with notoriety hadn't prevented her from winning the party leadership and succeeding Campbell in March 2011.
It was around then that van Dongen seemed to become fixated with several aspects of wrongdoing in and around the BC Rail corruption trial, especially with the now and still notorious settlement with former aides David Basi and Bob Virk, in which they admitted to corrupt practises in the bidding process for the sale of BC Rail but still got to keep their houses, avoid jail time and have their $6-million legal fees paid by the government even though it was against government policy to make such payments to guilty parties, and ostensibly that was because (in a version given again yesterday by Justice Minister Shirley Bond in Question Period) that the deputy minister to the Attorney General and the deputy minister of Finance decided upon the advice of officials - and unbeknownst to any politicians - that such a settlement would be in the public interest even though the timing made it look like a blatant partisan coverup of a scandal because it avoided a series of cabinet ministers beginning to testify about just what had gone on and maybe gone wrong in the troubled sale of BC Rail.
The whole deal still stinks, such as Campbell hiding the fact that the deal with Canadian National Railway, a company chaired by one of his main financial backers and lobbied for by his longtime strategy adviser Kinsella (who furthermore was working for three sides at once in the deal!), had several sweetheart provisions in it such as arguably a too-low price and certainly a too-long term of 990 years - making a supposed lease into a de facto sale - but especially galling to van Dongen was the sweetheart payoff to two junior Indo-Canadian guys to take the fall for everyone and do so on the taxpayers' tab.
Van Dongen planned showdown in caucus
Around then van Dongen began leading a revolt inside the Liberal caucus against Campbell, the existence of which was unknown to me until the last day or two, and apparently it wasn't known much by others either because when Campbell suddenly announced his resignation Nov. 3, 2010 a whole bunch of other issues and factors were blamed, especially the backlash against the Harmonized Sales Tax [which Campbell had brought in to try to hide the fact that he had lied about the size of the government's deficit in the 2009 election campaign] but also Campbell's abysmal plunge in opinion polls [he became the most unpopular first minister in the history of North American polling], and his audacious massive restructuring of the resource ministries to shortcut their project approval processes which furthermore had been planned in so much secrecy by Campbell and two deputy ministers that even the ministers involved were surprised by it and then there was a sudden shuffling of ministers too (which again omitted van Dongen).
But what the news of the day did not reveal was that van Dongen was livid at the deal given to Basi and Virk, which happened on Oct. 18, 2010, and which van Dongen was going to mount a showdown about in a caucus meeting just before the B.C. Liberal Party's then imminent convention in Penticton. But it never happened because Campbell announced his resignation shortly beforehand, albeit he clung to office until mid-March 2011, which was just long enough to vault him one spot into fourth place on the all-time longevity list of B.C. Premiers.
So van Dongen patiently waited until the leadership contest was determined, and even though he was openly disappointed and troubled by the selection of Clark (which apparently involved some questionable bulk signups of Indo-Canadians) he patiently gave her a year to act upon his concerns about the B.C. Rail process, which by then apparently included some comments about it that Clark had allegedly made during the leadership contest which van Dongen now says were inconsistent. And when Clark's one-year anniversary arrived and nothing had been done about it he issued an ultimatum and when it apparently was not acted upon he took the advice of a third party - possibly Tsakumis, based on hints dropped in his blog - who arranged a meeting with Cummins, and a week or so later the jump was made in public.
Van Dongen and Cummins of course had known each other somewhat for many years, both being from the Fraser Valley and both having been involved in the fishing industry (van Dongen was the provincial minister when Cummins was an activist Reform-Alliance MP and active fisher) but they apparently had not talked policy and strategy about such a move beforehand (which is plausible given the shock it caused).
When they did meet they quickly found they had lots of mutual interests, and lots of policy agreements, namely small-c fiscal conservatism, safe streets and a desire to give B.C. voters a viable free-enterprise alternative to both the corrupt Liberals and the socialist New Democrats. And so a simple deal was done and van Dongen would henceforth sit in the House as the revived party's first MLA, though technically he is an Independent without party status in the House (because party status requires four or more MLAs) plus he and his status would be enormously helpful in the Chilliwack byelection on April 19 (where the Conservatives have a good candidate in criminologist/pundit John Martin).
Several and various Liberal Party players tried to besmirch van Dongen's character, noting he has been in an evolving relationship for four years with his constituency assistant Sherri Wacker with whom he is engaged while a divorce is pending from his first wife, and suggestions he had become mentally unstable, but the vast majority of people in his riding supported the move, and Cummins explained away the impracticality of his party's previous policy of requiring party jumpers to first resign and then win a byelection because a possible six-month delay and the looming election made that silly, not to mention that there was no great ideological reversal involved.
Van Dongen retains lawyer McConchie
Van Dongen did cite several other issues of concern that influenced his decision, including that the last straw was the Clark cabinet's ever-changing explanations of what exactly had gone awry in the B.C. Place naming rights deal, and Clark's bungling management style in general, but the original thorn was the special payoffs to Basi and Virk and other related matters - an item so irritating to him that he has personally retained prominent lawyer Roger McConchie to pursue details about it - an activity also being pursued by the Auditor General through the courts, though Minister Bond claimed the government has been cooperating on providing documents so the much-called-for public inquiry is not necessary, she and Clark claim.
"We'll be working on a number of fronts to get to the bottom of the legal fees deal and other specific issues that I think are relevant to the people of British Columbia," he was quoted as saying by the Vancouver Sun, in particular statements Clark made to the media in January and February of 2011, and what her relationships were with lobbyist Erik Bornmann and others involved in the matter.
"There are no unanswered questions about BC Rail," Clark (again wearing a blue blouse) told the press gallery pack on Tuesday, but that of course is another gross misrepresentation, especially when Tsakumis has published allegations that RCMP had been investigating her role in the affair and which may even have included her leaking some of the documents in question when she was Campbell's deputy premier.
Anyway, the facts are that van Dongen won his seat last time with 59% of the vote, his fourth consecutive win, and almost everyone who has worked with him has been impressed by his dedication and integrity, including as a successful dairy farmer, a director at Dairyland, a church elder and as an MLA, so while the Liberals and even some New Democrats might like to tear him apart it won't be easy to do, and he does plan to seek re-election next year.
"I'm comfortable I made the right decision," he said. "I put my views out there and now I'm moving forward." And yesterday that meant moving files into his new office, doing more media and not participating in recorded votes and not seeking a spot in Question Period - but those will come soon enough, and NDP House Leader John Horgan quickly indicated he will give consideration to van Dongen's requests for time in the same way he now does for Independent MLAs Huntington and Bob Simpson.
So suddenly and once again there is a whole new paradigm in B.C. politics and what was previously a mainly two-way race is now suddenly a real three-way contest whether Premier Clark likes it or not, and clearly she does not.
New polls add to Premier Clark's woes
By John Twigg
As if B.C. Premier Christy Clark didn't have enough problems already, her struggles to keep her regime together were compounded Tuesday by two new opinion polls casting doubt on her waning clout.
A new poll from Vancouver-based Mustel Group, which hadn't published anything for quite a while, came out confirming that the New Democrats were solidly in the lead with 42% of the decided popular vote while the B.C. Liberals were lagging at 34%, the B.C. Conservatives were more than a flash in the pan at 17% and the Greens were a bit weak at only 6%. The undecideds were at 17%, perhaps a bit low for a mid-term snapshot.
That result was widely reported in the mainstream media even though it was with a relatively small sample of only 518 respondents with a margin of error of 4.3% 95% of the time, which is a bit high, and it was done by direct phone calls over a long period (March 5 to 19), suggesting it may have been a bit stale.
Still it came with a nice-looking graph ( http://www.mustelgroup.com/pdf/20120327.pdf ), its methodology was consistent, its interpretations were plausible and its findings generally fit well with what other larger polls have found recently.
The mainstream media also made much of an Angus Reid national poll of provinces' satisfactions with their leaders, in which Clark's again fell sharply to only 33% approval while her disapproval jumped 52% which the pollster noted made her the second most unpopular Premier in Canada, behind only Quebec's Jean Charest.
Clark tried to minimize the damage by claiming "Poll numbers sometimes are vastly different" but that was just another one of her typical misrepresentations because lately and historically most polls have been finding similar trends, especially if they are compared to previous results from the same pollster but less so when compared to each other.
B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix meanwhile had an approval of 47% and a disapproval of only 37% which are consistent with other polls' findings that he has recently passed Clark in B.C.'s ready-to-govern or best-to-be-Premier contest, and that furthermore was helpful timing because it tending to help blunt news stories about Dix recently having been caught using SkyTrain without a ticket, which he claims he had lost.
Polling critic Bernard von Schulman quickly published an analysis of the new data and other recent polls ( http://bciconcoclast.blogspot.ca/2012/03/polls-of-bc-political-landscape.html ) and concluded there is agreement that the New Democrats are over 40% but there is disagreement over whether the Liberals and Conservatives are more or less tied or whether the Liberals still have a large lead over the Conservatives, with some of the differences possibly due to different methodologies. (And I would add that some pollsters seem to favour Liberals more than Tories.)
My own view is that the relatively large Forum polls and the relatively insightful Angus Reid polls are both quite accurate, namely with the NDP in a large lead and the Liberals and Conservatives now more or less tied, but it is more or less academic because the byelections on April 19 will provide new benchmarks and then the countdown to the May 14, 2013 provincial election could make the outcome unpredictable, especially if Clark has some success with her apparent strategy which is to deliver a whole lot of job creation in the months and weeks before the vote.
It also should be noted that while critics such as myself and Tsakumis as well as Vaughn Palmer and Mike Smyth have often been harshly critical of Clark's numerous mistakes, it remains a fact that she has still done a few good things too, such as launching a much-needed review of the dysfunctional justice system (albeit with some questions about time and process), a review of business taxes and has been making a serious push to get developments happening, such as the recent approval of the contentious Jumbo Glacier project near Invermere.
I won't predict that Clark will still be Premier by the time the 2013 election rolls around, especially because Finance Minister Kevin Falcon probably would do a better job of managing the government, but I will predict that the B.C. Liberals will still have a full slate of candidates and they'll still win lots of their stronghold seats.
On the other hand the Georgia Straight had this interesting comment from University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Hamish Telford: “I think the problem here is that a feeling has started to set in with the voters that the B.C. Liberal Party has really lost its moral authority, its moral legitimacy to govern. When that sentiment seeps into the electorate, it’s very, very difficult to turn it around.”
While some pollsters such as Forum have been predicting an NDP landslide based on recent results, the reality is that the provincial election will not be held tomorrow and in fact will be held still more than a year from now. Which in B.C.'s volatile politics can be an eternity.
Independent MLA views political feeding frenzy
By Bob Simpson
Indep. MLA - Cariboo North
The feeding frenzy in the hallways of the BC Legislature continued Tuesday as the media scrummed any Liberal MLA who was silly enough to pause and face the cameras and give a reaction to the defection of one of their colleagues to the BC Conservatives.
In part, this was a result of the BC NDP using the Member from Abbotsford South as a poster child for a large portion of Question Period today. If some of the BC Liberals had laser vision, John van Dongen would have been burnt to a crisp — and I’d likely have been collateral damage as we now sit beside each other!
A defection from any party’s Caucus will dominate the news cycle for at least 24-48 hours, and the defector will get more than his or her 15 minutes of fame. When I was ejected from the BC NDP Caucus I got more press coverage and TV news exposure in 24 hours than I had accumulated over my political career up to that time; despite having made every effort to raise substantive public policy questions during the five years leading up to that event.
Public policy isn’t “sexy”; political scandal is. So, the latter gets major coverage. Unfortunately, news coverage of political scandal and intrigue simply adds to the cynicism that voters have towards politics and politicians in general. In the case of a defection or ejection from a Party Caucus, the principles that drove the actions of the MLA get lost in the political firestorm that results.
I hear echoes of my concerns about Caucus discipline and the cone of silence that covers internal Caucus debate in what John Van Dongen is now saying. He’s decided to raise his concerns publicly because he was unsuccessful getting them addressed privately, within the confines of a political party he’s served since 1995 and under whose banner he won 5 elections. John was a Cabinet Minister and served as BC’s “top cop” — if he has questions about the Basi Virk deal, then it suggests that something truly stinks about what the BC Liberals did to squash the public trial investigating the sale of BC Rail.
But, just as importantly, do party MLAs owe more to their political party than they do to the public? How long should MLAs be forced to work their internal party systems before they can choose to put the public interest ahead of their party interests and reveal their concerns publicly, without fear of being labelled a traitor?
The media firestorm surrounding defections and ejections from party caucuses never gets past the sensationalism of the actual event. After the 24-48 news cycle the media moves on, without ever substantively exploring the unhealthy and undemocratic dynamics within the party system that precipitate MLAs taking internal concerns into the public domain. A deeper investigation of the internal dynamics of political parties by the press, however, might force political parties to reform their internal “democratic” systems, which would go a long way to renewing our democracy overall and make being a Caucus MLA less of a soul destroying enterprise.
For other interesting columns by Mr. Simpson, see www.bobsimpsonmla.ca .
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Note to News Editors: reproduction of John Twigg's items are welcome provided due credit is given and a notice is provided.
B.C. Politics Trendwatch
In this issue:
1. The moves behind van Dongen's jump
2. New polls add to Premier Clark's woes
3. MLA Bob Simpson views feeding frenzy
Revolt against Basi-Virk payoffs
was behind van Dongen's jump
By John Twigg
The sometimes frantic pace of B.C. politics seemed to take a bit of a breather yesterday as if everyone wanted to stand back and digest the earthquake from the day before when longtime B.C. Liberal MLA John van Dongen not only left that party but also instantly became the first sitting member of the upstart B.C. Conservative Party.
While lots of people had known for quite a while that van Dongen (Abbotsford-South) was amongst the most aggrieved Liberal backbenchers on the verge of leaving the Liberals in protest of Premier Christy Clark's evident mismanagement of numerous issues, very few if any other MLAs or any pundits knew he would take a second step into the Conservatives' ranks too. (I saw one suggestion that Independent MLA Vick Huntington knew it was coming, but no others.)
Clark sees Liberals as the only free-enterprise choice
Several versions of what had happened eked and leaked out about exactly what took place, including various versions from van Dongen, Conservative leader John Cummins, blogger Alex Tsakumis and other participants, and there were even more versions about what it all will mean and lead to going forward, and of course there was lots of misleading spin from Clark when she finally faced the media shortly after the noon newscasts yesterday to the effect that in her mind she's determined to keep the B.C. Liberal Party as the only practical way to preserve a free-enterprise coalition that can prevent the New Democratic Party from winning power in the 2013 provincial election (which sounds to me like a line coached into her by strategist Patrick Kinsella).
"The only thing that John van Dongen accomplished yesterday was making it a little easier for the NDP to get elected in British Columbia," Clark said, typically understating the gravity of her situation.
The gist of van Dongen's motives which I gathered from monitoring a lot of reports and making a few calls was that he had been quite upset about several issues going back a long time, especially when he stepped aside as Solicitor General over several speeding tickets he incurred in the run-up to the 2009 election and then afterwards being passed over for reinstatement by first former premier Gordon Campbell (whose drunk-driving conviction had not prevented him from remaining a minister) and then Clark, whose perhaps-more-than-peripheral involvement in the B.C. Rail scandals (yes, plural is cct) and other brushes with notoriety hadn't prevented her from winning the party leadership and succeeding Campbell in March 2011.
It was around then that van Dongen seemed to become fixated with several aspects of wrongdoing in and around the BC Rail corruption trial, especially with the now and still notorious settlement with former aides David Basi and Bob Virk, in which they admitted to corrupt practises in the bidding process for the sale of BC Rail but still got to keep their houses, avoid jail time and have their $6-million legal fees paid by the government even though it was against government policy to make such payments to guilty parties, and ostensibly that was because (in a version given again yesterday by Justice Minister Shirley Bond in Question Period) that the deputy minister to the Attorney General and the deputy minister of Finance decided upon the advice of officials - and unbeknownst to any politicians - that such a settlement would be in the public interest even though the timing made it look like a blatant partisan coverup of a scandal because it avoided a series of cabinet ministers beginning to testify about just what had gone on and maybe gone wrong in the troubled sale of BC Rail.
The whole deal still stinks, such as Campbell hiding the fact that the deal with Canadian National Railway, a company chaired by one of his main financial backers and lobbied for by his longtime strategy adviser Kinsella (who furthermore was working for three sides at once in the deal!), had several sweetheart provisions in it such as arguably a too-low price and certainly a too-long term of 990 years - making a supposed lease into a de facto sale - but especially galling to van Dongen was the sweetheart payoff to two junior Indo-Canadian guys to take the fall for everyone and do so on the taxpayers' tab.
Van Dongen planned showdown in caucus
Around then van Dongen began leading a revolt inside the Liberal caucus against Campbell, the existence of which was unknown to me until the last day or two, and apparently it wasn't known much by others either because when Campbell suddenly announced his resignation Nov. 3, 2010 a whole bunch of other issues and factors were blamed, especially the backlash against the Harmonized Sales Tax [which Campbell had brought in to try to hide the fact that he had lied about the size of the government's deficit in the 2009 election campaign] but also Campbell's abysmal plunge in opinion polls [he became the most unpopular first minister in the history of North American polling], and his audacious massive restructuring of the resource ministries to shortcut their project approval processes which furthermore had been planned in so much secrecy by Campbell and two deputy ministers that even the ministers involved were surprised by it and then there was a sudden shuffling of ministers too (which again omitted van Dongen).
But what the news of the day did not reveal was that van Dongen was livid at the deal given to Basi and Virk, which happened on Oct. 18, 2010, and which van Dongen was going to mount a showdown about in a caucus meeting just before the B.C. Liberal Party's then imminent convention in Penticton. But it never happened because Campbell announced his resignation shortly beforehand, albeit he clung to office until mid-March 2011, which was just long enough to vault him one spot into fourth place on the all-time longevity list of B.C. Premiers.
So van Dongen patiently waited until the leadership contest was determined, and even though he was openly disappointed and troubled by the selection of Clark (which apparently involved some questionable bulk signups of Indo-Canadians) he patiently gave her a year to act upon his concerns about the B.C. Rail process, which by then apparently included some comments about it that Clark had allegedly made during the leadership contest which van Dongen now says were inconsistent. And when Clark's one-year anniversary arrived and nothing had been done about it he issued an ultimatum and when it apparently was not acted upon he took the advice of a third party - possibly Tsakumis, based on hints dropped in his blog - who arranged a meeting with Cummins, and a week or so later the jump was made in public.
Van Dongen and Cummins of course had known each other somewhat for many years, both being from the Fraser Valley and both having been involved in the fishing industry (van Dongen was the provincial minister when Cummins was an activist Reform-Alliance MP and active fisher) but they apparently had not talked policy and strategy about such a move beforehand (which is plausible given the shock it caused).
When they did meet they quickly found they had lots of mutual interests, and lots of policy agreements, namely small-c fiscal conservatism, safe streets and a desire to give B.C. voters a viable free-enterprise alternative to both the corrupt Liberals and the socialist New Democrats. And so a simple deal was done and van Dongen would henceforth sit in the House as the revived party's first MLA, though technically he is an Independent without party status in the House (because party status requires four or more MLAs) plus he and his status would be enormously helpful in the Chilliwack byelection on April 19 (where the Conservatives have a good candidate in criminologist/pundit John Martin).
Several and various Liberal Party players tried to besmirch van Dongen's character, noting he has been in an evolving relationship for four years with his constituency assistant Sherri Wacker with whom he is engaged while a divorce is pending from his first wife, and suggestions he had become mentally unstable, but the vast majority of people in his riding supported the move, and Cummins explained away the impracticality of his party's previous policy of requiring party jumpers to first resign and then win a byelection because a possible six-month delay and the looming election made that silly, not to mention that there was no great ideological reversal involved.
Van Dongen retains lawyer McConchie
Van Dongen did cite several other issues of concern that influenced his decision, including that the last straw was the Clark cabinet's ever-changing explanations of what exactly had gone awry in the B.C. Place naming rights deal, and Clark's bungling management style in general, but the original thorn was the special payoffs to Basi and Virk and other related matters - an item so irritating to him that he has personally retained prominent lawyer Roger McConchie to pursue details about it - an activity also being pursued by the Auditor General through the courts, though Minister Bond claimed the government has been cooperating on providing documents so the much-called-for public inquiry is not necessary, she and Clark claim.
"We'll be working on a number of fronts to get to the bottom of the legal fees deal and other specific issues that I think are relevant to the people of British Columbia," he was quoted as saying by the Vancouver Sun, in particular statements Clark made to the media in January and February of 2011, and what her relationships were with lobbyist Erik Bornmann and others involved in the matter.
"There are no unanswered questions about BC Rail," Clark (again wearing a blue blouse) told the press gallery pack on Tuesday, but that of course is another gross misrepresentation, especially when Tsakumis has published allegations that RCMP had been investigating her role in the affair and which may even have included her leaking some of the documents in question when she was Campbell's deputy premier.
Anyway, the facts are that van Dongen won his seat last time with 59% of the vote, his fourth consecutive win, and almost everyone who has worked with him has been impressed by his dedication and integrity, including as a successful dairy farmer, a director at Dairyland, a church elder and as an MLA, so while the Liberals and even some New Democrats might like to tear him apart it won't be easy to do, and he does plan to seek re-election next year.
"I'm comfortable I made the right decision," he said. "I put my views out there and now I'm moving forward." And yesterday that meant moving files into his new office, doing more media and not participating in recorded votes and not seeking a spot in Question Period - but those will come soon enough, and NDP House Leader John Horgan quickly indicated he will give consideration to van Dongen's requests for time in the same way he now does for Independent MLAs Huntington and Bob Simpson.
So suddenly and once again there is a whole new paradigm in B.C. politics and what was previously a mainly two-way race is now suddenly a real three-way contest whether Premier Clark likes it or not, and clearly she does not.
New polls add to Premier Clark's woes
By John Twigg
As if B.C. Premier Christy Clark didn't have enough problems already, her struggles to keep her regime together were compounded Tuesday by two new opinion polls casting doubt on her waning clout.
A new poll from Vancouver-based Mustel Group, which hadn't published anything for quite a while, came out confirming that the New Democrats were solidly in the lead with 42% of the decided popular vote while the B.C. Liberals were lagging at 34%, the B.C. Conservatives were more than a flash in the pan at 17% and the Greens were a bit weak at only 6%. The undecideds were at 17%, perhaps a bit low for a mid-term snapshot.
That result was widely reported in the mainstream media even though it was with a relatively small sample of only 518 respondents with a margin of error of 4.3% 95% of the time, which is a bit high, and it was done by direct phone calls over a long period (March 5 to 19), suggesting it may have been a bit stale.
Still it came with a nice-looking graph ( http://www.mustelgroup.com/pdf/20120327.pdf ), its methodology was consistent, its interpretations were plausible and its findings generally fit well with what other larger polls have found recently.
The mainstream media also made much of an Angus Reid national poll of provinces' satisfactions with their leaders, in which Clark's again fell sharply to only 33% approval while her disapproval jumped 52% which the pollster noted made her the second most unpopular Premier in Canada, behind only Quebec's Jean Charest.
Clark tried to minimize the damage by claiming "Poll numbers sometimes are vastly different" but that was just another one of her typical misrepresentations because lately and historically most polls have been finding similar trends, especially if they are compared to previous results from the same pollster but less so when compared to each other.
B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix meanwhile had an approval of 47% and a disapproval of only 37% which are consistent with other polls' findings that he has recently passed Clark in B.C.'s ready-to-govern or best-to-be-Premier contest, and that furthermore was helpful timing because it tending to help blunt news stories about Dix recently having been caught using SkyTrain without a ticket, which he claims he had lost.
Polling critic Bernard von Schulman quickly published an analysis of the new data and other recent polls ( http://bciconcoclast.blogspot.ca/2012/03/polls-of-bc-political-landscape.html ) and concluded there is agreement that the New Democrats are over 40% but there is disagreement over whether the Liberals and Conservatives are more or less tied or whether the Liberals still have a large lead over the Conservatives, with some of the differences possibly due to different methodologies. (And I would add that some pollsters seem to favour Liberals more than Tories.)
My own view is that the relatively large Forum polls and the relatively insightful Angus Reid polls are both quite accurate, namely with the NDP in a large lead and the Liberals and Conservatives now more or less tied, but it is more or less academic because the byelections on April 19 will provide new benchmarks and then the countdown to the May 14, 2013 provincial election could make the outcome unpredictable, especially if Clark has some success with her apparent strategy which is to deliver a whole lot of job creation in the months and weeks before the vote.
It also should be noted that while critics such as myself and Tsakumis as well as Vaughn Palmer and Mike Smyth have often been harshly critical of Clark's numerous mistakes, it remains a fact that she has still done a few good things too, such as launching a much-needed review of the dysfunctional justice system (albeit with some questions about time and process), a review of business taxes and has been making a serious push to get developments happening, such as the recent approval of the contentious Jumbo Glacier project near Invermere.
I won't predict that Clark will still be Premier by the time the 2013 election rolls around, especially because Finance Minister Kevin Falcon probably would do a better job of managing the government, but I will predict that the B.C. Liberals will still have a full slate of candidates and they'll still win lots of their stronghold seats.
On the other hand the Georgia Straight had this interesting comment from University of the Fraser Valley political scientist Hamish Telford: “I think the problem here is that a feeling has started to set in with the voters that the B.C. Liberal Party has really lost its moral authority, its moral legitimacy to govern. When that sentiment seeps into the electorate, it’s very, very difficult to turn it around.”
While some pollsters such as Forum have been predicting an NDP landslide based on recent results, the reality is that the provincial election will not be held tomorrow and in fact will be held still more than a year from now. Which in B.C.'s volatile politics can be an eternity.
Independent MLA views political feeding frenzy
By Bob Simpson
Indep. MLA - Cariboo North
The feeding frenzy in the hallways of the BC Legislature continued Tuesday as the media scrummed any Liberal MLA who was silly enough to pause and face the cameras and give a reaction to the defection of one of their colleagues to the BC Conservatives.
In part, this was a result of the BC NDP using the Member from Abbotsford South as a poster child for a large portion of Question Period today. If some of the BC Liberals had laser vision, John van Dongen would have been burnt to a crisp — and I’d likely have been collateral damage as we now sit beside each other!
A defection from any party’s Caucus will dominate the news cycle for at least 24-48 hours, and the defector will get more than his or her 15 minutes of fame. When I was ejected from the BC NDP Caucus I got more press coverage and TV news exposure in 24 hours than I had accumulated over my political career up to that time; despite having made every effort to raise substantive public policy questions during the five years leading up to that event.
Public policy isn’t “sexy”; political scandal is. So, the latter gets major coverage. Unfortunately, news coverage of political scandal and intrigue simply adds to the cynicism that voters have towards politics and politicians in general. In the case of a defection or ejection from a Party Caucus, the principles that drove the actions of the MLA get lost in the political firestorm that results.
I hear echoes of my concerns about Caucus discipline and the cone of silence that covers internal Caucus debate in what John Van Dongen is now saying. He’s decided to raise his concerns publicly because he was unsuccessful getting them addressed privately, within the confines of a political party he’s served since 1995 and under whose banner he won 5 elections. John was a Cabinet Minister and served as BC’s “top cop” — if he has questions about the Basi Virk deal, then it suggests that something truly stinks about what the BC Liberals did to squash the public trial investigating the sale of BC Rail.
But, just as importantly, do party MLAs owe more to their political party than they do to the public? How long should MLAs be forced to work their internal party systems before they can choose to put the public interest ahead of their party interests and reveal their concerns publicly, without fear of being labelled a traitor?
The media firestorm surrounding defections and ejections from party caucuses never gets past the sensationalism of the actual event. After the 24-48 news cycle the media moves on, without ever substantively exploring the unhealthy and undemocratic dynamics within the party system that precipitate MLAs taking internal concerns into the public domain. A deeper investigation of the internal dynamics of political parties by the press, however, might force political parties to reform their internal “democratic” systems, which would go a long way to renewing our democracy overall and make being a Caucus MLA less of a soul destroying enterprise.
For other interesting columns by Mr. Simpson, see www.bobsimpsonmla.ca .
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Note to News Editors: reproduction of John Twigg's items are welcome provided due credit is given and a notice is provided.
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