With the BC provincial party leaders off the election trail today and preparing for the leaders’ television debate this coming Tuesday at 7 p.m. on a TV station near you, VanRamblings will seek to bring you up-to-date on the various peregrinations of BC Votes — Campaign 2005.
First off, though, VanRamblings directs your attention to a couple of new entries under Sites of Interest, top right. The Vancouver Sun offers BC Election 2005, an amalgam of election-related stories, quick facts, and blogs by Vancouver Sun reporters. Yvonne Zacharias is covering the BC NDP campaign, while Jeff Lee is covering the boy in the bubble campaign (whoops, I mean, the BC Liberal campaign), with Glenn Bohn relegated to covering the also-ran, lacklustre Green Party campaign.
Then, for your amusement (we’d laugh, if we weren’t crying so loud, and the cuts weren’t such a tragedy) there’s the Amazing All-Purpose Full-Proof Never Fail Liberal Truth Translator, brought to you by the good folks at the BC NDP election campaign headquarters.
Human rights consultant and Director of the Poverty and Human Rights Project, Shelagh Day, recently spoke to concerned British Columbians about the erosion of social programmes in our province, including …

• The elimination of the Human Rights Commission in BC, replaced by a powerless adjudicating tribunal
• The Legal Aid budget slashed by 38%, a reduction in the number of offices from 42 to 7, and a decision by the BC Liberal government that the Legal Aid budget is not to be spent on family or poverty law
• Monies slashed from the Native Court Workers Programme
• The closure of 1/3 of court houses in BC
• The closure of Residential Tenancy offices, resulting in weakened tenants’ rights
• Immigrant settlement services cut by 15%
• The budget for the Ombudsman, Office of the Police Complaints Commission, the Chief Electoral Office, and the Auditor General slashed
• And, the elimination of the position of the Children’s Commissioner

A transcript of Ms. Day’s speech is available here.
Meanwhile, over at Tyee Election Central, Russ Francis’ latest story, titled Foiling Freedom of Information, takes the Liberals to task for weakening the Freedom of Information process in BC. Francis’ earlier story, titled ‘Open, Transparent and Accountable’, suggests that the BC Liberal government under Gordon Campbell has been anything but.

Artist: Ingrid Rice

Here’s today’s roundup of provincial election news and views …
In his April 20th column in The Vancouver Sun, columnist Stephen Hume took the BC Liberals to task for wooing voters with their own money, for at the drop of the writ on April 19th greasing the skids for its candidates to shower voters with endless promises. For Hume, the end — election to government for a second term — does not justify the means.

Considering that our provincial Liberals are the same tough-love folks who just a short while ago were axing support for shelters for battered women fleeing abusive relationships, terrifying the poor and disabled with their hard-boiled approach to restraint, separating aged spouses to achieve efficiencies in nursing homes, beating up on hospital cleaning staff and telling us they had to endure the pain because there wasn’t enough cash, the ease with which they embarked upon the present spending spree is particularly odious.

In his April 27th column, Hume once again goes after the Liberals, and Gordon Campbell as the “architect of a heartless plan to balance the books on the backs of the most defenceless among us — battered and abused women, the disabled, the poor, the sick, troubled kids at risk, welfare recipients and frail seniors.” Read the entire column here.
Over at The Tyee, Russ Francis finds that BC Liberals haven’t delivered on their promise for “open, transparent and accountable” government, while Vancouver School Board trustee Noel Herron writes that “Once the BC Liberals’ increased pre-election education funding grant is spent, school boards almost certainly will find themselves back in the red …”
Meanwhile, the NDP continue to bash Gordon Campbell’s covert boy in the bubble campaign, saying that Liberal handlers are keeping Campbell away from the public by keeping a lid on the his daily campaign itinerary, staging events where only invited guests were welcome.
In an April 25th column in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Joel Connelly has this to say about the role of the Green Party in the provincial election …

A Bowron River-sized clearcut, visible from satellites: Naders of the North, the B.C. Greens once again threaten to split the center-left vote as British Columbia goes to the polls May 17. The likely result is re-election of the not-very-liberal B.C. Liberals of Premier Gordon Campbell. The Campbell government has dismantled the province’s environment ministry, blocked action on Victoria sewage dumping, and allowed the timber industry to cut virtually without restraint or regulation. Its main opposition, the leftish New Democratic Party, doubled the province’s provincial park system during the 1990s, but found itself targeted by the Greens in the province’s 2001 election.

Will the Greens once again prove spoilers in the May 17th election?
In his updated election prediction model, BattleGround BC, the Tyee’s Will McMartin has the NDP in line for solid wins in 9 ridings — adding sure NDP wins in Surrey-Whalley, Nelson-Creston, West Kootenay Boundary, Nanaimo, Victoria-Hillside and NDP leader Carole James’ home riding of Victoria-Beacon Hill — as well as likely to win in 9 additional ridings, and in contention in as many as 20 more ridings across the province.