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We’ll check in each week with Milton Chan and his Election Prediction Project, to track where pundits and those on the ground believe Decision BC 2013 appears headed, riding-by-riding, as we approach E-day, just three weeks from today, on May 14th, 2013. The change this week from last, a pickup for the NDP’s Gabriel Yiu in Vancouver Fraserview, third time lucky it would seem for the affable Mr. Yiu. Otherwise, third time around, Maple Ridge-Mission NDP candidate Mike Bocking, former Union Prez from VanRamblings’ days working at Pacific Press (when NDP Provincial Secretary Jan O’Brien was the Union’s Business Agent) appears set to find himself spending a fair bit of time in British Columbia’s ‘high tea‘ capital, as well.
On Earth Day, while campaigning in Kamloops (the quintessential bellwether riding), the increasingly well-travelled BC NDP leader Adrian Dix made a dual campaign announcement: his administration would dissolve the Pacific Carbon Trust, and deploy at least some of the carbon tax revenue to fund transit or other green initiatives. The surprise second-part of the green campaign announcement was this: the BC NDP are opposed to an expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which would turn Vancouver into an oil port if the proposed twinning of the existing Kinder Morgan pipeline was to be approved. The announcement was met with huzzahs by environmentalists, and skepticism by the always quizzical Vancouver Sun provincial affairs columnist, Vaughn Palmer. And it was ever thus.
BC Election 2013: Wrap Up For The Day
On Monday, Christy Clark and the BC Liberals attempted, unsuccessfully and in a woeful fashion, to defend the indefensibile, that the budget presented by Liberal Finance Minister Mike de Jong in the legislature, back in February, would move British Columbia towards a balanced budget. Yeah, sure, right, said the bond-rating agencies. So much for that gambit.
The BC Conservative Party, meanwhile, named Allan Molyneaux as their new candidate in North Vancouver-Lonsdale, who replaces the disgraced Jeff Sprague, who stepped down amidst allegations of impaired driving.
And that’s the kind of day it was on Day 7 of Decision BC 2013.
 The Liberals are set to lose big on Vancouver Island |
(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.)
