Following a rather sleepy weekend, Decision BC 2013 heads into the final three weeks of British Columbia’s 40th provincial election.
Thus far, nothing has taken the NDP off message, and no issues of burning concern have arisen that have caught the public’s attention. As Globe and Mail BC columnist Gary Mason writes in today’s newspaper …

Liberal Leader Christy Clark and her party did not have the opening week for which they were hoping. It wasn’t that it was particularly bad; they just didn’t get the kind of clear win they needed to start gnawing away at the NDP’s lead in the polls. Now Ms. Clark and her team have one less week in which to start making those critical inroads.

For Mr. Dix, the challenge will be to avoid taking the kind of hit that gives the electorate second thoughts. For Ms. Clark, the task is more complicated. If she enters the debates sensing she needs a big, gravity-defying moment, she might overreach and end up portraying herself in a way that is not at all beneficial.

As the latest ThreeHundredEight.com polling indicates, the NDP maintain a solid lead heading in to Week 2 of Decision BC 2013.

In important news, culturally sensitive news, news that you’re not likely to see reported elsewhere, unless you make a habit of visiting the darkest regions of the provincial NDP website, in an announcement made last week, the BC NDP committed a new NDP provincial government to support for the preservation of Aboriginal languages in British Columbia.

“B.C. is home to 60% of the First Nations languages spoken in Canada, but many of them are in danger of disappearing,” Scott Fraser, the NDP candidate in Alberni-Pacific Rim, and New Democrat aboriginal affairs critic during the last legislative session told the media on April 18th. “As a matter of respect for First Nations peoples, we need to work together to prevent that from happening.”

“Language is a critical part of First Nations history, culture and identity. If a language is lost, traditional oral histories in their original form are also lost. We will work with First Nations to help save at-risk languages.”

Scott announced that an NDP adminstration would provide The First People’s Cultural Council, a crown corporation run by First Nations, with an additional $1 million in funding, dedicated to support the preservation and revitalization of First Nations languages, arts and culture in British Columbia. Fraser said the loss of language is largely attributable to federal residential school policies which took children away from their families, and punished them if they spoke their own language.

“Most fluent speakers of aboriginal languages are over 65 years old,” said Fraser. “Only 1.5 percent of fluent speakers are under the age of 25. Clearly, now is the time for action to begin to bring change for the better to First Nations communities.”

A responsible government responds not only to the big ticket items like health care and education, but dedicates itself to meeting the needs of the broadest cross-section of the British Columbia electorate, in every region of the province. And, in the case of the announcement directly above, most particularly, the often neglected priorities of language and culture.
BC Election 2013: A Round-Up of News from Elsewhere
Truth to tell, we’re hard-pressed to come up with a lot of reporting by the mainstream press, but here goes …

• Vancouver Sun. How much does the Vancouver Sun not like federal NDP leader, and how in the tank are they for any party but the NDP? All you have to do is take a look at the photo of Tom Mulcair at the top of this story. Editorialize in your photo choice much, Vancouver Sun editors? Anyway, back to matters at hand: federal New Democrat leader Tom Mulcair joined the BC election campaign this past Friday (while we were still recovering from the shenanigans at the Kits Community Centre AGM), telling a cheering crowd of 350 people gathered at the Vaisakhi event in Surrey that a provincial NDP victory on May 14th will serve as a warm up for a federal NDP win in 2015.”

  Next. We would take a moment to editorialize on the Vancouver Sun’s shakedown story but, really, why bother? And, oh yeah, don’t forge to read - or not - Vaughn Palmer’s barely even-handed wrap-up of Week One of the provincial election campaign.

• Alex Tsakumis. BC’s resident political shit disturber publishes his usual, but interesting and readable, online report taking the apparatchiks in the Christy Clark administration to task. The allegation this time? According to Tsakumis, the BC Liberals are waging an all out war on Global TV legislative reporter Keith Baldrey, and his beleaguered wife Anne Mullens, for failing to be in the tank enough for the BC Liberals. And here, all along, VanRamblings thought that Baldrey was all but bought and paid for by the BC Liberals. Apparently not, if the snide rumour the BC Liberals are spreading around — that Baldrey will be leaving the employ of Global TV to take a job as Communications Director for NDP leader Adrian Dix, post election night victory, May 14th — is true, which is doubtful at best. Those Liberals.
• The Straight. The folks at The Straight have created their very own BC Election page, replete with news respecting NDP campaign announcements on lower fees for infant and toddler care and reducing child poverty (which First Call, the BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coaltion, called pathetic), as well as a commentary by Vancouver Langara NDP candidate (and good guy, as it happens), George Chow.

Well, that’s it for today, folks.
By the way, you’re probably looking at a sparse Decision BC 2013 posting Tuesday, as VanRamblings will attend (and speak at, it would seem) tonight’s regularly scheduled and always contentious Park Board meeting.
For the latest VanRamblings election coverage, click on Decision BC 2013)
(For those of you who arrived here looking for coverage of last week’s Kitsilano Community Centre AGM — as sorry an example of untoward democratic engagement as you’re ever likely to witness — VanRamblings’ coverage of the KitsCC AGM may be found here. The Vancouver Courier’s Sandra Thomas has written about the KitsCC AGM, as well, her coverage of the delirious, anti-community meeting to be found here.)

Should you click on the graphic above, you’ll be taken to The Tyee’s B.C. election map, which provides a breakdown of B.C.’s 85 electoral ridings, who the candidates are in each riding, riding related news and other bumpf.
The early days of Decision BC 2013 are, necessarily (as the headline above suggests): dull. The media is barely engaged, the election is hardly on the electorate’s radar as the more prosaic matters of daily life take precedence, and with polls suggesting a smashing victory for the BC New Democrats, a goodly portion of those who are even remotely engaged all but tune out, expecting that sweeping NDP victory May 14th. Liberals in power for 12 years, the thinking goes, it’s time for a new government. Barring any major missteps, or a terrible performance by Adrian Dix in the leaders debate on April 29th (which NDP campaign manager Brian Topp will never let happen), the election will bring what the gods have writ: a near smashing victory for the all-but-inevitable and soon-to-be BC New Democratic government.
Post the leaders debate on April 29th, interest will ramp up; that’s when the real campaign will start. You just have to look at the last federal election. Going into the leaders debate, with just two weeks to go in the campaign, then federal NDP leader Jack Layton was mired at 13% in the polls. The word was he was sickly, and on his way out of politics. Following the leaders debate, though, in which Layton’s ‘performance’ was deemed to be engaging by a public hankering for a touch of humanity in its politicians, the NDP catapulted to 31% in the polls, and opposition in the Canadian Parliament. Following the BC leaders debate, there’ll be two weeks left in the BC election campaign — it’ll be anybody’s game from that point on.

VanRamblings spent the day getting smucked at the Kitsilano Community Centre, where we had our tookus handed to us on a platter at the AGM. Migawd, we couldn’t even manage to secure a position as a member-at-large. Maybe next time we’ll have to leave our devil horns at home.
Sad to say, dear and constant reader, that you’re going to have to put up with VanRamblings in something of a foul mood (youse just can’t cover up these kind of things, y’know?). Hell, maybe the writing’s even better.
Or, maybe not (that’s a bitter tear trickling down my cheek, by the way).

So, what went on in the big bad world of BC politics on Thursday?

• Early in the day, over in Courtenay, in the First Student Bus workyard, of all places (I mean, really, a virulently anti-Union company staging ground?), BC NDP leader Adrian Dix committed an NDP government to spending $372 million over three years to improve public education in B.C. (a good thing, a needed thing), and another $100 million over three years to lower costs and increase child care spaces for infant and toddler care (the proverbial drop in the bucket, and hardly the $10/day Child Care Plan advocates have been demanding for months).

  In this Vancouver Sun story, you’ll find a particularly nasty exchange between CTV’s Rob Brown and Adrian Dix, where Adrian acquits himself well. Let’s hope he brings the same cojones to the leaders debate.

Otherwise, that’s about it, folks. Not much coverage of the election in the Mop and Pail. There’s always this, though: The Province giving the beleaguered John Cummins, leader of the BC Conservatives, a bit of coverage, even if it’s only a 166-word CP wire story. Ah well.
Not to be mean (because we don’t believe in the politics of personal destruction), but we simply can’t help ourselves. Hey, the Raeside editorial cartoon is not ours, but y’know what, I bet there are a few people out there (including BC Liberals) who agree with the sentiment.

That’s all she wrote, folks. Til tomorrow.
(For the latest VanRamblings election coverage, click on Decision BC 2013)
(For those of you who arrived here looking for coverage of last week’s Kitsilano Community Centre AGM — as sorry an example of untoward democratic engagement as you’re ever likely to witness — VanRamblings’ coverage of the KitsCC AGM may be found here. The Vancouver Courier’s Sandra Thomas has written about the KitsCC AGM, as well, her coverage of the delirious, anti-community meeting to be found here.)

The University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, once again in 2013, will run their Election Prediction Market, having succeeded in 2009 in quite accurately predicting the results of British Columbia’s previous provincial election. For the duration of the 2013 election, the fine folks out at UBC will provide daily updates to the Globe and Mail, with their up-to-minute projection of popular vote share and legislature seat share predictions. VanRamblings will continue to provide you with links and graphics, although you may want to bookmark the Globe and Mail page.
Otherwise, it was a rather quiet day on the hustings on Wednesday, April 17th — so, without further ado then, we’ll just jump right in to the media coverage of Decision BC 2013 for the day.

Vancouver Courier. Andrew Fleming posits that we’ll see at least three new MLAs take their seats in the British Columbia legislature following May 14th, suggesting in his article that newly-minted Liberal candidate, multi-hyphenate doctor / lawyer / Rhodes Scholar, etc. Andrew Wilkinson remains an absolute lock to take Vancouver Quilchena, while the odds favour former BC Civil Liberties Executive Director David Eby in Vancouver Point Grey to defeat Premier Christy Clark, with Sierra Club BC Executive Director George Heyman set to take Vancouver Fairview away from physician and BC Liberal Minister of Health, Margaret MacDiarmid.
The Tyee. Meanwhile, Natascia Lypny encourages us to meet the youngest candidates vying for a seat in the legislature: a delivery driver, a bank staffer, a restaurant manager, and a grocer, viable candidates all.
With an average age of 24, BCNDP candidate for Langley Andrew Mercier, Green Party of BC Victoria-Swan Lake candidate Spencer Malthouse, Liberal candidate for Port Coquitlam, Barbara Lu, and BC Conservative candidate in Nanaimo Bryce Crigger (gotta love that ‘stache) are the youngest candidates from each of the four main parties in this provincial election.
GlobalBC / Glacier Media. Keith Baldrey writes that the NPD are favourites in 50 of the province’s 85 ridings, identifying 40 strong and 10 NDP-leaning ridings, 8 strong Liberal and 14 Liberal-leaning ridings, with14 toss-up ridings, while suggesting that Independents, incumbent Vicki Huntington in Delta South, and Arthur Hadland, in Peace River North will likely emerge triumphant election night.
Globe and Mail. Éric Grenier updates the ThreeHundredEight.com poll VanRamblings published on Tuesday, writing in BC Votes 2013 that …

“Adrian Dix’s New Democrats remain heavily favoured to prevail on May 14 … the New Democrats would take 48 per cent of the vote, the B.C. Liberals 30 per cent, the B.C. Conservatives 12 per cent, and the B.C. Greens 9 per cent. With such a large margin over the Liberals, the NDP should be able to capture between 57 and 73 seats to form a majority government. The Liberals would be reduced to between 10 and 27 seats, while as many as four independents could be elected.”

Bleak numbers for the Liberals, indeed, as Mr. Grenier suggests.
In their Day 2 wrap up story, titled “Confident Clark taking aim at NDP territory“, Justine Hunter and Ian Bailey cover Liberal leader Christy Clark’s day on the hustings. The story’s headline seems misleading, though, given that Clark spent most of her day in traditional Liberal territory, while NDP leader Adrian Dix spent the entirety of Wednesday encroaching on Liberal turf, visiting ridings throughout the traditionally unfriendly Fraser Valley.
For those of you who haven’t read it, the Globe and Mail’s Justine Hunter has written a standout piece on Adrian Dix that is well worth reading.
Georgia Straight. Editor Charlie Smith opines that housing as an issue is getting short shrift by the four main parties, reporting that the Greens pay the most attention, the NDP hasn’t released their platform position on the issue as yet, and the Liberals “brush over housing in their 84-page platform document.” Earlier in the week, Charlie posited five unusual scenarios that could yet make Decision BC 2013 a barn burner interest grabber — the first couple of days of the campaign have emerged as anything but. Interest oughta wax high, though, following the leaders debate (6:30pm – 8pm, April 29th) — which we hope will be more about substance than style.
Yolanda Cole interviewed $10/day Child Care advocate Sharon Gregson, who pretty much called the BC Liberals’ proposed child care registry useless, while The Straight’s Carlito Pablo reports that the Green Party of BC remains the only provincial political party that has as a tenet of their platform that they would legalize and tax marijuana.
Vancouver Sun. Reporter Francois Marchand interviews Ryan McCormick, a director of the Vancouver-based non-profit Safe Amplification Site Society (Safe Amp) - an organization dedicated to creating a permanent all-ages music and arts venue in Vancouver - as Safe Amp injects itself into Decision BC 2013 by calling for an overhaul of BC’s antiquated liquor laws.
In a Canadian Press story published on the Vancouver Sun website, Christy Clark is reportedly attempting to shore up support in bellwether ridings where the Liberals currently trail the NDP.
News from other places. In Andrea Klassen’s Kamloops This Week story, Kamloops-South Thompson BC Liberal candidate Todd Stone seems to be doing everything he can to distance himself from the BC Liberal label, with Klassen suggesting in her article that the argument for Stone’s Decision BC 2013 candidacy “sounds a lot like ‘Stone, not Liberal.'”
Castanet, the Interior online newspaper and magazine, reports that disgraced, now former NDP candidate for Kelowna-Mission Dayleen Van Ryswyk will run as an Independent, Twitter all agog with speculation that she could actually hurt the candidacy of Liberal incumbent Steve Thomson with her racist, intolerant views.

The healthy advocates over at the BC Cycling Coalition urge you to bike to vote and exercise your pedal power on May 14th, suggesting that “through the simple act of pedaling to the polls, you can play your part in actively decreasing traffic congestion, while making our streets and neighbourhoods safer, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saving time and money, all of which salutary effort will result in improving our collective health and well-being.” We’re putting our helmet on now, and heading out for a ride along the beach, all in preparation to bicycle to our polling station on E-Day.
BC Election 2013: What the Parties Were Up to Wednesday
What platform positions did the four main parties release on April 17th?

• The British Columbia New Democratic Party committed to freezing ferry fares while a newly-elected NDP government awaits the results of an NDP-mandated audit of the financially troubled company. BC NDP leader Adrian Dix also announced that an NDP government would invest $40 million in skills training and $100 million in a student grants programme, annually, as part of the NDP’s plan for jobs and growth.

  Adrian Dix took the fight to Liberal Finance Minister Mike DeJong’s Abbotsford riding on Wednesday, where he NDP told supporters he felt Abbotsford West was an eminently winnable riding for the NDP in 2013.

  You may click here to see the entire 2013 BC NDP candidate team.

• The BC Liberal party campaign: as we reported earlier Christy Clark spent most of her day shoring up support for her trailing party by spending time in Surrey, the Fraser Valley, Chilliwack and Kamloops, before traveling further north in the late evening.

  The Globe and Mail’s Justine Hunter asked the question, “What will happen to the B.C. Liberals if they lose?”

  “What happens to the Liberals after the polls close at 8pm on May 14? It is treasonous talk, not out in the open. But if the governing party is reduced to a rump — a fate many in the party seemed resigned to — then their focus is on saving seats and resources to rebuild in the election aftermath. Liberal party headquarters is cooking up ways to win back voters. But those pessimists in the party who don’t see that succeeding are already trying to identify the likely survivors to decide who would best lead the coalition so that the NDP victory doesn’t last more than a single term. It is a reason that some candidates in the B.C. Liberal campaign seem to have distanced themselves from Ms. Clark. If her name appears at all on campaign signs, it is in small print. While Ms. Clark is focused on a comeback strategy, some in her party are running a parallel campaign: A comeback in 2017”.

  A “what if” scenario that VanRamblings has been told Ms. Clark has pondered herself in the days leading up to 40th provincial election.

  You’ll find the entire BC Liberal team here.

• The BC Conservatives are pretty much off the radar in Decision BC 2013. We’re seeing no coverage by the mainstream media, apart from this call by provincial Conservative leader John Cummins to jettison the Pacific Carbon Trust, which he says is nothing more than a scam and corporate welfare system. One suspects that the BC Conservatives are running a stealth campaign in those Interior ridings where they think they’ve got a fighting chance at winning a seat in the legislature. Mainstream media coverage of Mr. Cummins and the BC Conservatives will likely improve after the April 29th leaders debate, with only two weeks to go from that date til election day.

  You’ll find all of the BC Conservative candidates here.

• The Green Party of BC has found itself surprisingly successful in gaining coverage, most particularly because of the opportunity Andrew Weaver, running in Oak Bay – Gordon Head (a riding to watch election night), has to become British Columbia’s first elected Green Party member in the provincial legislature.

  Green Party of BC candidates? Yep, they’re all here.