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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.)
