BC Poli | New (& Old) Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries

November 27, 2020BC Politics, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

British Columbia Premier John Horgan smiling during 2020 swearing in ceremony

On Thursday afternoon, November 26th at 2pm, Premier John Horgan, with the support of British Columbia’s Lieutenant Governor, Janet Austin, announced a larger and still diverse Cabinet, and a new slate of Parliamentary Secretaries. Omissions? Where the heck is Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert in the mix announced on Thursday?
VanRamblings had thought that Mr. Chandra Herbert was a shoe-in for Speaker of the House, but that — apparently — is going to Raj Chouhan, MLA for Burnaby-Edmonds since 2005. Almost leaves one thinking that out-and-proud, multi-year MLAs can’t find favour with …
And what of Pam Alexis, former Mayor of Mission and recently-elected MLA representing Abbotsford-Mission, or former Surrey Councillor Mike Starchuk, who took the longtime B.C. Liberal stronghold of Surrey-Cloverdale? And neither of the recently-elected MLAs in the Chilliwack ridings made it into Cabinet, although former Chilliwack school trustee Dan Coulter was appointed as the Parliamentary Secretary responsible for accessibility. Fifty-seven BC NDP MLAs, an enlarged Cabinet of twenty-four, including the Premier, with all but three of the appointments made Thursday coming from either Metro Vancouver, or Vancouver Island.
Nathan Cullen, a future BC NDP leadership hopeful — and who, when he was an MP in Ottawa held a senior shadow minister portfolio, that of federal NDP Finance crtitic — gets a slap on the wrist from the Premier by being appointed only to a junior Minister of State portfolio? Same goes for multi-talented and very bright Bowinn Ma — what do the stars of the BC NPD caucus have to do to become full Cabinet ministers in the Horgan government? And Rob Fleming is Bowinn Ma’s new boss? Really? Really?
The most salutary appointment of the day? One time leadership hopeful, Nicholas Simons, longtime MLA for Powell River-Sunshine Coast, and one of only four openly gay members of the provincial legislature, becomes the new Minister for Social Development and Poverty Reduction, a sort of latter day Corky Evans in the 2020 John Horgan Cabinet. There’ll also be a good number of folks who’ll be over the moon former NDP MP Finn Donnelly is the new parliamentary secretary responsible for Fisheries and Aquaculture.

Biggest disappointment of the day (next to Spencer Chandra Herbert being shut out)? The failure of the Premier to appoint the incredibly competent, longtime Member of the Legislature representing the riding of Vancouver-Kensington, Mable Elmore — there’ll be quite a number of folks in British Columbia’s politically astute and active Filipino-Canadian community whose noses will be very much out of joint Mable Elmore was snubbed yet again.
Seems, as well, that Vancouver-Point Grey MLA David Eby really wanted to retain his Attorney General portfolio (into which has been folded his Minister of Justice responsibilities), a position to which he was appointed for a second term. At least, as VanRamblings predicted, Mr. Eby becomes the Minister of Good News, having taken on the responsibility for Housing — making him, once again, the busiest, hardest working man in B.C. politics.
Out Surrey way, Surrey-Green Timbers MLA Rachna Singh made it in as a parliamentary secretary, while former BCTF President, and two-term MLA for Surrey-Panorama, Jinny Sims, seems not to have revived her reputation enough to find herself back in Cabinet, or in the Premier’s favour.
Twenty-four Cabinet positions, thirteen parliamentary secretary positions, and one Speaker of the House — all of which leaves 19 BC NDP elected Members of the Legislature twiddling their thumbs & getting up to no good.
As Andrew McLeod writes in The Tyee, Horgan opted for stability, a stand pat, middle-of-the-road, nominally social democratic NDP government.

Premier: John Horgan

Attorney General (and Minister Responsible For Housing): David Eby

Parliamentary Secretary — Anti-Racism Initiatives: Rachna Singh

Advanced Education and Skills Training: Anne Kang

Parliamentary Secretary — Skills Training: Andrew Mercier

Agriculture, Food and Fisheries: Lana Popham

Parliamentary Secretary — Fisheries and Aquaculture: Fin Donnelly

Citizens’ Services: Lisa Beare

Children and Family Development: Mitzi Dean

Minister of State for Child Care: Katrina Chen

Education: Jennifer Whiteside

Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation (and Minister Responsible for the Consular Corps of B.C.): Bruce Ralston

Environment and Climate Change Strategy (and Minister Responsible for Translink): George Heyman

Parliamentary Secretary — Environment: Kelly Greene

Finance: Selina Robinson

Parliamentary Secretary — Gender Equity: Grace Lore

Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development: Katrine Conroy

Minister of State for Lands, Natural Resource Operations: Nathan Cullen

Parliamentary Secretary — Rural Development: Roly Russell

Health (Minister Responsible for Francophone Affairs): Adrian Dix

Parliamentary Secretary — Seniors Services and Long Term Care: Mable Elmore

Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation: Murray Rankin

Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation: Ravi Kahlon

Minister of State for Trade: George Chow

Parliamentary Secretary — Technology and Innovation: Brenda Bailey

Labour: Harry Bains

Parliamentary Secretary — New Economy: Adam Walker

Mental Health and Addictions: Sheila Malcolmson

Municipal Affairs: Josie Osborne

Public Safety and Solicitor General: Mike Farnworth

Parliamentary Secretary — Emergency Preparedness: Jennifer Rice

Social Development and Poverty Reduction: Nicholas Simons

Parliamentary Secretary — Community Development and Non-Profits: Niki Sharma

Parliamentary Secretary — Accessibility: Dan Coulter

Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport: Melanie Mark

Parliamentary Secretary — Arts and Film: Bob D’Eith

Transportation and Infrastructure: Rob Fleming

Minister of State for Infrastructure: Bowinn Ma

Clearly, in Premier Horgan’s second term, there remains an “inner Cabinet” of confidantes, their number expanded from his first term, and now consisting of “senior advisor” and former Finance Minister, Carole James; David Eby; new Finance Minister, Selina Robinson; Adrian Dix; Mike Farnworth; the Premier’s chief of staff, Geoff Meggs, and Don Wright, deputy minister to the Premier, cabinet secretary and head of the BC Public Service, who announced on November 10th that he’d be stepping down.

Time will tell whether the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation likes rookie New Westminster MLA Jennifer Whiteside any better than they did her predecessor, Rob Fleming, whether Sheila Malcolmson can get a handle of the overdose crisis, or whether Katrina Chen can convince the Premier to move just a bit more quickly on implementation of $10-a-day child care.
All of which will count for naught until and unless the government can get a firmer handle of the coronavirus crisis. Fortunately, Adrian Dix remains British Columbia’s Health Minister, with the full confidence of the Premier.

Metro Vancouver Alliance | Faithful Activism from the Heart, Pt. 2

November 25, 2020BC Politics, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

As VanRamblings wrote yesterday, tonight at 5pm, the Metro Vancouver Alliance (MVA) — an alliance of faith, educational institutions, non-profits, and union groups located across the Metro Vancouver region — will hold a critically important fundraiser, titled Bridging the Gap, in order that the MVA might raise $15,000 in funds to hire a full-time organizer, matching funding for monies raised last month by member organizations within the MVA.

Bridging the Gap
Metro Vancouver Alliance Fundraiser
5pm, Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Register: click on this link to RSVP

Today on VanRamblings, we’ll focus on two interviews we conducted yesterday with Deborah Littman, the Metro Vancouver Alliance’s original organizer, and Joey Hartman, the first chairperson of the MVA — both of whom will fill you in on the history of one of Metro Vancouver and our province’s most important, difference making social justice organizations.

Here’s Deborah Littman on the formation of the Metro Vancouver Alliance, issues the MVA addressed during her multi-year tenure, VanRamblings’ interview concluding with Ms. Littman’s insight into an April 2017 leadership debate at the Italian Cultural Centre, organized by the Metro Vancouver Alliance that, perhaps, helped to create the conditions for an “alliance” of two of the leaders on stage that night, subsequently allowing John Horgan and the B.C. New Democratic Party to form government in July 2017.

Metro Vancouver Alliance | Voices on the History of the MVA | Deborah Littman, Organizer, and former MVA Chair, Joey Hartman

Again, please attend tonight’s Metro Vancouver Alliance fundraiser.

Bridging the Gap
Metro Vancouver Alliance Fundraiser
5pm, Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Register: click on this link to RSVP

Once you register for tonight’s fundraiser, the good folks at the Metro Vancouver Alliance will post a Zoom participant link to your e-mail address. The fundraiser will be online at 4:30pm this evening, with the official fundraiser to get underway at 5pm, the whole event to wrap at 5:45pm, as VanRamblings wrote yesterday, perhaps the best, most selfless and most rewarding activity in which you might engage throughout the entire upcoming holiday season.

The Metro Vancouver Alliance has established a charitable Canada Helps account. Whether you want to make a one time donation to the MVA, or become a sustaining monthly donor, all you have to do is click on this Canada Helps link, click the down arrow on the right-hand side of the page, choose the Metro Vancouver Alliance (MVA) option, and then click on the CONTINUE WITH DONATION “button”.

Give to the Metro Vancouver Alliance through Canada Helps. Click On This Graphic to Access the Canada Helps MVA website.

Click on the graphic above to go to the Canada Helps website, to donate to the Metro Vancouver Alliance’s Bridging the Gap Fundraiser. You’ll be glad you did! Don’t forget to click on the down arrow to choose the Metro Vancouver Alliance option.

Whether you give just once, or wish to become a sustaining MVA donor, your contribution to the Metro Vancouver Alliance will succeed in making a proportional difference of meaning in the lives of a great many people who need our help. As the MVA is designated as a non-profit, charitable organization, any donation you make will be tax deductible — all the more reason to give generously and from your heart. MVA members thank you.

The members of the Metro Vancouver Alliance look forward to meeting you online tonight.

See you then !!!

Metro Vancouver Alliance | Faithful Activism from the Heart, Pt. 1

November 24, 2020BC Politics, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

For nearly 30 years now, the Metro Vancouver Alliance (MVA), an alliance of faith, non-profit, educational institutions and union groups situated across the Lower Mainland, has played a pivotal and continuing role in ensuring that those whom government and our society has let down and made vulnerable have a loud and clarion voice in helping set policy to redress the societal wrongs that inhibit their full participation in the life of the society.

In the 1990s, the group who would come to form the Metro Vancouver Alliance almost two decades later were comprised of various members of the faith and union communities across the metro Vancouver region, who came together, informally, to fight for change and social justice.

As you’ll hear tomorrow in an interview VanRamblings conducted with recent, and now retired, Metro Vancouver Alliance organizer, Deborah Littman, in point of fact, the genesis of what would become the Metro Vancouver Alliance did not begin to occur in earnest until 2009, with work continuing on through 2013, when as you’ll hear tomorrow from former Vancouver and District Labour Council President, and former Metro Vancouver Alliance chair, Joey Hartman, 1000 people of varied backgrounds and interests came together at the Maritime Labour Centre, to create what is now the thriving activist organization, the Metro Vancouver Alliance.

Although the Metro Vancouver Alliance has been around in some form or another dating back 1993, since 2013 in its most recent and current incarnation, the MVA has worked assiduously and with conscience to …

Develop innovative solutions to social isolation, to break down the pervasive sense of anomie that has so many in its grip, particularly in the time of our current COVID-19 pandemic;
Successfully worked with British Columbia’s current provincial government to establish free transit for children ages 5 through 12, in fact all children under the age of thirteen — an initiative enunciated by Premier John Horgan in the recent provincial election;
Successfully fought with the organizers within the Living Wage for Families offices to establish living wage policies in municipalities across not just the Metro Vancouver region, but across the entire province;
Committed to working with MVA member organizations and community groups to address the social and affordable housing crisis, to strengthen existing by-laws that protect the rights of tenants, and worked with municipal governments, and the province, to establish covenants that would mandate that landlords could not increase rents beyond the established provincial rate when tenants vacate an apartment, condominium, house or other housing type.

In recent days, Patrick Condon, the founding chair of the UBC urban design programme, and Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick have made contact with the Metro Vancouver Alliance to encourage the organization to work with them to establish a Tiny Homes pilot project, to be established at member locations of ten faith-based churches, synagogues and temples.

In order to continue the invaluable work of the Metro Vancouver Alliance, and in order that the MVA might hire a full-time organizer, the MVA is currently engaged in a fundraising campaign they’re calling Bridging the Gap, a fundraising initiative that it is hoped will raise $15,000 from a broad cross-section of community members of conscience who live across our region who are committed to social justice, monies that would match the $15,000 raised in 45 minutes at a Thursday, October 15th MVA meeting.

In the time of COVID-19, the Bridging the Gap Fundraiser will occur as a warmly engaging online participant Zoom meeting. You may consider today’s VanRamblings column your special invitation to participate in the Bridging the Gap Metro Vancouver Alliance Fundraiser, scheduled for 5pm tomorrow evening, on Wednesday, November 25th, 2020.

Bridging the Gap
Metro Vancouver Alliance Fundraiser
5pm, Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Register: click on this link to RSVP

In order to participate in tomorrow night’s fundraiser, click on this link to RSVP for tomorrow evening’s fundraising meeting. Once registered, the good folks at the Metro Vancouver Alliance will post a Zoom participant link to your e-mail address. The fundraiser will be online from 4:30pm, with the official fundraiser getting underway at 5pm, the whole event to wrap at 5:45pm, perhaps the best, most selfless and most rewarding activity in which you might engage throughout the entire upcoming holiday season.

The members of the Metro Vancouver Alliance look forward to meeting you online at 5pm tomorrow evening. We’ll see you then !!!

#BC Poli | New Provincial Government About to be Sworn In

November 23, 2020BC Politics, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

In two days, the eight-seven new, and in most cases returning, members of the British Columbia legislature will be sworn into office for the next term.
The newly-elected British Columbia New Democratic Party caucus is comprised of a record 29 distaff members, which means that more than half of the NDP’s 57 member caucus are women — good on the BC NDP, and a hearty congratulations to all new female members of the NDP caucus.

John Horgan has made various announcements leading up to Wednesday …

Cabinet, part 1. The new Cabinet, as was the case with the NDP’s most recent Cabinet, will be comprised of 50% women and 50% men — for which we have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his trusted advisors, Gerald Butts and his continuing Chief of Staff, Katie Telford to thank.
Cabinet, part 2. The new BC NDP Cabinet will be sworn in on Thursday. Here’s what we know for sure as of this writing. Contrary to VanRamblings speculation last month that David Eby would become the new Minister of Housing — well, that’s off the table, given that Premier Horgan let it slip that Selina Robinson will maintain her dual role as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Minister Responsible for Housing. Now, we know for sure that David Eby will not continue as Attorney General and Minister of Justice, given that Mr. Horgan let it slip that newly-elected NDP MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head would take on that role. Where does that leave the NDP caucus’ beloved David Eby? We’ll know on Thursday.

Meanwhile, though, this morning, the hapless B.C. Liberal party will be leaderless, given that Andrew Wilkinson stepped down from that role over the weekend. Update: Shirley Bond was selected as the Interim leader of the B.C. Liberals in a vote of the 28 Liberal caucus, early afternoon Monday.

Let’s use successful example of 2015 Tories post-Harper, who successfully appointed #RonaAmbrose as interim leader.

1. Leader must be a woman
2. Must command respect of the caucus
3. Clear experience in Legislature
4. Likable, media savvy & resilient

Guesses? @bcliberals https://t.co/w7jUZ3Nyqp

— Mike Klassen (@MikeKlassen) November 22, 2020

As for the Greens, the party didn’t achieve their much-desired first seat on the Lower Mainland, with the Green candidate for West Vancouver Sea-to-Sky going down to defeat to incumbent B.C. Liberal, Jordan Sturdy, in a close race, confirmed in a recount. Still, there’s good news for B.C. Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau, and her Green Party colleague, Adam Olsen — John Horgan has agreed to afford the Green Party official party status in the B.C. Legislature, which means millions of dollars in funding to the party.

How Elections Are Won | Some Reasons for NDP Success

Nominated candidates in all 87 electoral districts.
Created more than 2,000 online ads (in 9 languages).
Earned more than 47,000,000 views on their digital ads.
Sent more than 300,000 text messages to British Columbians.
Trained 750 volunteers to call people all over B.C. and got out the vote during 2,479 volunteer-driven shifts!
Distributed more than 10,000 lawn signs.
Printed more than 150,000 leaflets.
Ran 5 television ads non-stop for a month.

A great deal of work goes into mounting a successful political campaign.

Now onto the stuff you really care about: the $1,000 for couples, and the $500 for individuals that Mr. Horgan had promised during the recent election campaign. Good news? The money is on its way. When the Legislature is called back into session on December 7th, the first order of business will be to enable the government to shovel that money out the door. In the spring, the BC NDP government gave most British Columbians $180 in a non-taxable Climate Action grant to households with a combined of under $125,000, money that was either deposited directly into your bank account, or mailed to you. The expectation is that monies will be deposited into your bank account on Christmas Eve (and, no, we’re not kidding), or will arrive by January 5th by snail mail — happy, happy days!