Announcements, firings, former Chief of Staff to Gordon Campbell calling it for the NDP, sale of BC Place and maybe the Convention Centre pending a new administration in power post May 14th, Vancouver Point Grey on the verge of sending Premier Christy Clark on a permanent vacation — who says that British Columbia politics is dull?
If you take a look at the UBC Sauder Business School Market prediction to the right, you’ll see that the Liberals are in worse shape than they were last week: the NDP up from 54 to 58 seats, the Liberals down to 19 from 22. Too bad, so sad, the Liberals are going on a long, long vacation, as Vancouver Sun columnist writes that “Adrian Dix’s election strategy is to crush opponents and avoid the one-term blues.”
In other words, “Hello the Right Honourable Adrian Dix, forever more Premier of the lush, thriving Province of British Columbia.”

BC Election 2013: Media Coverage from here, there and everywhere
We are trying for pithy in today’s edition of our always informative Decision BC 2013 coverage, so let’s get right down to it, shall we?

• Vancouver Sun. British Columbia’s daily paper of record has ramped up it’s coverage of the election big time this week. Wednesday kicked off with this story from two of The Sun’s campaign trail reporters, Jonathan Fowlie and Tracy Campbell.
  

  An NDP government would attempt to sell the newly renovated BC Place Stadium, and possibly the Vancouver Convention Centre, to help cover the significant losses at both publicly owned facilities, Adrian Dix announced Wednesday.

  “When the operation of a facility draws tens of millions of dollars in public subsidy every year, and has left taxpayers with a mountain of debt, I believe we have to take a close look at whether that’s a business we should be in,” the NDP leader said while standing in front of BC Place.

  “If the private sector can do a better job running BC Place, freeing taxpayers of millions of dollars in losses and reducing public debt, we’ve got a win-win, and we’ll pursue that.”

  Dix said any sale would have to protect the future of both the B.C. Lions and the Vancouver Whitecaps, who use the stadium as their base of operations.

  Elsewhere in Vancouver Sun coverage of Decision BC 2013, their April 24th editorial strongly urges British Columbians to get out to vote — ”It’s your own future you will be helping to decide. Not voting will only ensure somebody else decides it for you.” Well worth reading the entire, well-crafted editorial.

  The Vancouver Sun’s Gordon Hoekstra, in a Prince George riding profile, writes that Liberal Attorney-General Shirley Bond, and neophyte Liberal candidate Mike Morris, a former RCMP north district commander, are in for the fight of their lives in this bellwether riding.

  Lori Culbert, Chad Skelton and Gordon Hoekstra report that “the NDP raised just under $1 million from corporations in 2012, four times what they collected from the corporate sector in 2011.” Fortis B.C., a natural gas supplier, gave 30 times more money to the Liberals than the NDP from 2005 to 2011, but in 2012 made heftier donations to the NDP ($24,500) than to the Liberals ($18,000). Ah, ain’t that sweet.

  And finally from the Vancouver Sun, the BC Conservative Party dumped their oleaginous Vancouver False Creek candidate, Ian Toothill, with Liberal candidate in the riding, former Mayor Sam Sullivan (an equally oleaginous fellow), and neophyte NDP candidate Matt Toner dancing a metaphorical jig. Vancouver False Creek will be one of the ridings to watch election night. With his name recognition, and a plethora of conservative voters in the riding’s Yaletown precinct, Sullivan could eke out a victory. Toner’s chances are probably somewhat diminished with Toothill out of the race. Still. Guess, we’ll just have to wait and see how much of a nail biter this one’ll be.

• Georgia Straight. Charlie Smith is really feeling his oats these days, and that’s a good thing. In this editorial, the estimable editor of The Straight writes that “the B.C. Liberals will be punished for the disgusting attack ads on Adrian Dix,” arising from soon-to-be Premier Dix’s heroic efforts on the campaign trail despite suffering the rigours of Type 1 diabetes. A very good piece, and well worth reading.

  Talking about estimable people, former Chief of Staff to Gordon Campbell, Martyn Brown, continues to drive nails into Christy Clark’s candidacy for Premier, and the Liberal’s chances for anything akin to a phoenix-like victory come May 14th.

  And finally from The Straight, a commentary from Vancouver Point Grey candidate, David Eby, who writes about “investing in our youth, and improving access to higher education.” Yep, that’s the same Dave Eby who’s running again Christy Clark, our soon-to-be ex-Premier. Yeah, that one. Full disclosure. I’m volunteering on David’s NDP campaign, so maybe I’m just a tad more enthusiastic about David’s candidacy than some, but you would be, too, if you knew him.

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.)