BC Politics

April 7, 2009

UBC's Great Farm Trek '09, 3:30 p.m. Today. Save the UBC Farm.

The UBC Farm has been an integral part of UBC since the Point Grey campus was founded in 1922. The UBC Farm is 24 hectares and is located on UBC Vancouver's south campus. It is the last working farm in Vancouver and an irreplaceable resource for our future that once gone, is gone forever. The farm provides a unique centre for innovative teaching and research about sustainable food systems, food security and health.

The UBC farm serves as an important educational resource to members of the academic and non academic community, including a wide variety of aboriginal groups, school children and others. In addition, the UBC Farm is a complex ecosystem and home to many species such as coyotes, frogs, eagles, owls, snakes and over 70 species of birds.

Why is the UBC Farm in crisis?

UBC may use the farm land for other purposes. Students and community members have worked very hard in the past year to preserve the farm. UBC has acknowledged that the farm needs to be considered in their planning process; however, we still need the University to commit to: keeping the farm at its current size and location, providing stable funding, and including key users in determining the farm's future

HOW YOU CAN HELP save UBC Farm

Come to the Great Farm Trek '09 today, Tuesday, April 7th. The Trek will gather at the Student Union Building at 3:30 p.m. and trekkers will walk to the UBC Farm for a celebration with food and music, and a ceremonial planting. Free parking is available at UBC Farm anytime. A free bus shuttle, originating at the SUB, will take participants to and from the Trek, which will be in progress between 3 p.m & 6 p.m. We'll see you at the rally today!

Sponsored by UBC Alma Mater Society, and the Friends of the UBC Farm.

April 3, 2009

Grand March for Housing - 12 noon, Saturday, April 4, 2009

The Citywide Housing Coalition's march to end homelessness, build social housing, and raise the minimum wage takes place this weekend.

Muster stations are located at Thornton Park (due west of the bus depot / train station), Hastings and Main streets, and Peace Flame Park (at the south end of the Burrard Street bridge). Marchers will walk peacefully (but noisily, we hope) from the march starting points to the Vancouver Art Gallery, meeting in front of the Art Gallery, on Georgia Street, at 1:30 p.m.

Given the failure of the federal government to step up to the plate and build affordable housing for Canadians - when many across Canada are experiencing a housing crisis - is unconscionable. We need a renewed, affordable, well-funded and effective co-operative housing programme, as well as the construction of special needs housing (for women, and for single parent families, for the homeless). Housing is an issue which affects us all.

Let's make this a march for change, for a renewed commitment to social agency, and to programmes benefitting the most vulnerable in our society. Let's march to encourage government to bring in programmes to protect renters, and construct social housing for the homeless and for families in Vancouver, throughout British Columbia, and across our great country!

March 20, 2009

A Fever Dream or Wishful Thinking: The Fate of the BC Liberals

With a provincial election just around the corner (May 12), and the pollsters reporting a current BC Liberal government lead of 16-points in public confidence, the results of the upcoming election would seem to be a forgone conclusion.

Still and all, given that it's BC politics we're talking about here, and with just shy of two months to go before the election, an accurate prediction as to the outcome is, really, anyone's guess.

With the above in mind, there's one person who seems to know what the future has in store for British Columbians, at least as far as the political scene is concerned. Going way out on a limb, savvy astrologer Lasha Seniuk writes in this week's issue of the Georgia Straight ...

Gordon Campbell's astrological chart reveals him to be a cunning negotiator who works tirelessly to achieve his goals. While publicly congenial, privately he is capable of unusual political methods. Campbell is, however, a skilled and passionate leader. Astrologically, he will be the victor in the upcoming election. But not by much and not for long.

Carole James, a resourceful and shrewd politician, will also be a permanent fixture in British Columbia politics. After the election, she will use her hard-won street smarts, energetic appeal, and social altruism to challenge Campbell's slender power advantage. Within three months, her influence will be undeniable.

By mid August, a financial controversy or political mutiny from Campbell's back benches will trigger a crisis of leadership. The fight will be fierce, dramatic, and painfully public. Before the end of December, James and the New Democrats will win leadership of the house.

So, is it possible that the May 12th provincial election will be that close? Will Gordon Campbell and his merry band of corporate capitalists emerge victorious in a third consecutive provincial election, only to lose it all this summer, only six months away from his cherished 2010 Winter Olympics?

December 20, 2008

The Sleeping Giant Awakes: VanRamblings Resumes Posting

A wintry, December day in Vancouver (from the Safeway parking lot facing Kits library)

There has been this past two months, since VanRamblings last published, a great deal of interest to VanRamblings' readers that has occurred near to our little secluded isle, due east of the Pacific Ocean.

For instance ...

• The election of a Vision Vancouver government to City Hall. We have not weighed in on the ascension of Gregor Robertson to the Mayor's chair, nor evinced any particular opinion on the councillors who were elected. But in the days to come, we will opine about the star in the making that is Geoff Meggs, and just what a destructive dunce Suzanne Anton will be to the forces of the NPA as she plays Republican style politics with the notion of democratic decision-making in our City. We might have something of interest to say.

• While we're on the subject of municipal politics, mention should be made about the launch of citycaucus.com, a centre-right apologia for the do-nothing government of Sam Sullivan. But, heck, the site is readable, the page design terrific (Frances Bula, take note), the writing first rate (damn those right wingers for being able to write and design, so well), and much to the horror of VanRamblings, the site surprisingly manages to be even-handed on occasion, as witness this piece by citycaucus.com contributor, Eric Mang.

  We would be remiss in our duty, as well, if we didn't point you to this story on the quick action taken by Mayor Gregor Robertson and Premier Campbell in creating 200 new homeless shelter beds, arising citycaucus.com points out from months of preparatory work by the previous, Sam Sullivan administration. Fair's fair, after all ... Vision shouldn't get all the credit.

• We at VanRamblings are 'lists' people. Top 10 lists of the best movies of the year, the best music, and books ... we just eat this stuff up. VanRamblings fully intends to drive you to complete distraction in the days to come with our take on the upcoming Oscars, what we've admired and were moved by on film this year (Brideshead Revisited, Elegy, Frozen River ... all released earlier this year), as well as our favourite music of the year (no surprise that Adele will be right up there ... we simply love her début, 19).
• The up-until-recently impeccably well-orchestrated Obama transition, somewhat undone in recent days by the apparent thuggery of Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich.
  
• And, finally, as a topic we'll raise briefly in this entry and explore at greater length another day, the whole issue of homelessness, why homeless persons choose to sleep on the street rather spend overnight in a shelter, and just how difficult it will be in the coming days, weeks and many, many months to address the issue of homelessness in a compassionate, yet effective manner. Of course, homelessness is not the only issue in respect of housing that requires addressing: VanRamblings will also explore the affordable housing crisis in our City.

As we say, there are a great many topics to tackle in the days to come, to write about and reflect on. Some topics to be explored by VanRamblings will be of a serious nature, others not quite so much.

We hope to see you returning to visit VanRamblings, often.

July 2, 2008

Vancouver Sun Civic Affairs Reporter Frances Bula Resigns Her Post

Frances Bula, the Vancouver Sun civic affairs reporter since 1994, abruptly announced her resignation from the newspaper today.

Dear all of my blog-readers,

This will be my last post on this Vancouver Sun blog, as I have resigned from the paper.

As Vancouver-based blogger Rob Cottingham states in his farewell tribute to Ms. Bula today, "Her blog post makes it clear that she thoroughly understands blogging - which makes losing her voice at the Sun doubly painful." Another Vancouver blogger, Bill Tieleman, weighs in on Ms. Bula's departure from the Sun, on Sean Holman's Public Eye Online, writing ...

This is indeed bad news for all of us who either report on municipal politics, follow them or are active in local government.

Frances Bula has done an outstanding job for many years and amazingly maintained her sense of humour despite sitting through endless rounds of pointless Vancouver city council meetings and much more.

Good luck to Frances wherever she goes - she will have many fans who will follow.

The Pivot Legal Society's David Eby writes on his blog, "For her to leave the Sun is, well ... shocking."

In what is shaping up to be the most important Vancouver civic election in almost a half century, Ms. Bula's resignation from the Sun, and rumoured movement to Vancouver Magazine — with its three month advance deadline, and consequent lack of reportorial immediacy — represents the loss of a critical voice, at a critical juncture, on Vancouver's civic scene.

Unless Ms. Bula commences with her new blog (which she promises) by early autumn, Vancouver citizens will find them far less informed on the machinations of the fall civic election than otherwise would be the case.

We are all the lesser for Ms. Bula's departure from the daily journalistic rigours of reporting on the often tempestuous Vancouver civic scene.

July 28, 2006

Board of Variance Fired. Story Over. Not By A Long Shot.

Now, you'd think what with Vancouver City Council (not to mention, the Vancouver Courier's Allen Garr) on vacation for the remainder of the summer, and Supreme Court Justice Robert J. Bauman having trampled on the hurt feelings of the recently deposed members of the City of Vancouver Board of Variance, that this 'story that won't die' would be over.

But you'd be wrong. You can take the hint from the latter sentiment expressed in the previous paragraph: the Board of Variance sacking is a story that won't die. And, why not?

Well, just when you thought to yourself, good riddance to that Ray Tomlin fella, and fair thee well to Quincey Kirschner, Terry Martin, Tony Tang and Jan Pierce, it would be too soon if I ever heard any one of their names ever again ... it seems that your cherished opinion in the matter has been overturned by citizens honourable and true, an as yet unidentified band of truth and justice seekers who, when the Board was fired four weeks ago today, filed a complaint with the Office of the BC Ombudsman.

So what, you say? Well, this is what: the office of the City Clerk, City of Vancouver, informed Secretary to the Board of Variance, Louis Ng, on Thursday afternoon that the aforementioned Ombudsman's office has launched a "full and thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of the City of Vancouver Board of Variance." Mr. Ng was instructed to co-operate fully with the investigation.

Justice Robert Bauman ruled that Board of Variance counsel, Derek Creighton, had not proved evidence of "bad faith" by Vancouver City Council in its dismissal of the Board. But now, with a truly independent arm of government conducting an investigation into the firing, perhaps evidence of "bad faith" might finally be proven. We'll wait and see.

Seems that the Office of the Ombudsman will issue a full report on the matter sometime later this year, or as late as next spring.

Board of Variance fired. Story over. Not by a long shot. This is the story that won't die.

July 25, 2006

This Just In: Board of Variance Crushed by Supreme Court

This morning, in Courtroom 20, in the British Columbia Supreme Court building at 800 Smithe Street, in the city of Vancouver, during the course of a 45-minute video tele-conference address, Mr. Justice Robert J. Bauman ruled decisively against the recently deposed members of Vancouver's beleaguered Board of Variance. Okay, let's be honest: with one devastating body blow after another, he slammed them to the ground, and crushed their cheery little faces into the dirt multiple times. But who's counting?

Justice Bauman ruled that the decision by Vancouver City Council to rescind the appointments of all five members of the Board of Variance constituted "an institutional change," ruling that Vancouver City Council — as the legislative authority — had the "unfettered right" to fire the Board of Variance, and were not compelled either to give reasons for their decision, nor were they to be concerned about any possible damage to the personal and professional reputations of the deposed Board of Variance members.

Tuesday afternoon at 5 p.m., Council appointed a 'new' Board of Variance, made up of Alex "Sleepy" Lam, Francesca "I used to be an NDPer, but I seen the light, and now I'm a Liberal" Zumpano, Marguerite "I don't know why some people think I'm scary" Ford, and ("what must they have been thinking, jumping into this mess?"), former 1993 - 1999 Board of Variance member Parveen Adrakar, and newcomer, Jagdev Dhillon.

The best part of this whole fiasco? VanRamblings is now free to write any (responsible) thing it wishes on this blog about Council, without fear of retribution by Mayor Sam Sullivan and cohorts. That's the good news.

The bad news: the terrible loss that the 350 families — and all of the other members of the community who approach the Board of Variance, each year, for an appeal of the Director of Planning involving a development decision in their neighbourhood — who will almost certainly suffer an untoward experience at the hands of a Board of Variance whose determinations must surely be seen to be tainted by the recent action of Council to fire the previous Board, in a decision taken with no just and reasonable cause.

In respect of Mr. Justice Robert Bauman, and in fairness to the fulsomeness of his ruling, given the impeccable and compelling presentation of counsel for the City, Mr. George Macintosh QC, to Mr. Justice Bauman's court, there was very little room left for Justice Bauman to rule other than he did (although, one supposes, the door would always be open to a broader interpretation of the matters placed before a Supreme Court Justice).

Mr. Justice Robert Bauman ruled as he felt he must. VanRamblings believes in the rule of law, and all those who believe in civil society must stand by the rightness of a decision of the Court, whatever the negative personal consequences one might experience as a result. That an appeal of Justice Bauman's ruling is under consideration speaks only to points in law counsel for the Board feels may not have been fully explored.

Still and all, VanRamblings would ask: Was it absolutely necessary for Justice Robert Bauman to award costs to the City, risking bankruptcy for the good-hearted, principled volunteer members of the Board of Variance who have worked so hard and well, and so ethically, this past year?

July 21, 2006

Board of Variance Fate To Be Decided Tuesday morning, July 25

After three long, miserable weeks of psychic, emotional and other pain for the author of this blog, notice was given Friday afternoon that Justice Robert Bauman, of the BC Supreme Court, will hand down his decision this coming Tuesday morning, at 9 a.m., July 25th, as to whether Vancouver will maintain an independent Board of Variance, or have its members replaced with individuals friendlier to development interests, and the interests of the NPA, the municipal political party currently governing Vancouver City Hall.

For those of you who have not been following the torrid and often heartrending saga of the sacking of Vancouver's Board of Variance (of which VanRamblings is one of the deposed members), there's been a great deal reported in the press on the issue, as there might well have been given the import of the issue for the average Vancouver citizen, and for all of us.

Allen Garr, of the Vancouver Courier, has proved particularly dogged in his coverage of what he has suggested "may be the biggest story of the year," beginning with his July 7th column, Board firing bad for citizenry, continuing on to July 12th with Board firing stretches credulity, July 15th's PR plan followed board firing, and yet another column published this past Wednesday, which (inexplicably) The Courier has yet to post to the 'Net.

The Vancouver Sun's Barbara Yaffe, who in appealing on behalf of her neighbourhood to the Board of Variance in the autumn of 2005, lost in her bid to have overturned what she and her neighbours felt was a "wholly unsuitable" duplex development, has taken a surprising, yet ethical and principled stand in support of an independent Board of Variance.

On July 5th, Ms. Yaffe, in a column titled Citizens need a Board to stand between them and city hall (pdf), and again on July 12th in a column titled, Variance board our last hope to rein in a city hall run amok provided insight and much needed coverage of an issue which should have grabbed the attention of all Vancouver citizens.

So, this coming Tuesday morning, stay tuned to your local radio station for news from the BC Supreme Court.

Justice Robert Bauman has a very difficult ruling to make, given the able presentations of both legal counsels, Derek Creighton for the Petitioner (the fired Board of Variance members), and George Macintosh for the Respondent, the City of Vancouver / Province of British Columbia.

February 28, 2006

Provincial Liberals Introduce a Children's Budget. Some Doubt It.

Vancouver Kensington NDP MLA David Chudnovsky in the British Columbia provincial legislature on Monday, February 27th ..

Let’s turn to education, kindergarten-to-grade-12 education, because the people in our schools are children. We’re told by the Minister of Finance that it’s a children’s budget. So what’s in the budget for our public schools? The Premier and the minister are all over the media crowing about the increase in funding, but as usual with this government, it pays to look at the numbers a little bit more closely.

The increase in per-pupil funding that the government is projecting is 2.35 percent over the next three years. Inflation is expected to be 6.5 percent over the same period. Therefore, per-pupil funding in our public schools — that’s children — is to lag more than 4 percent behind inflation for the next three years. There’s a children’s budget for you. There is a commitment to children.

At the same time, funding for private schools is going to go up 10.7 percent. It’s not a big secret where this government is going, not a big secret what their priorities are, not a big secret what their agenda is for public schools and what their agenda is for private schools. The numbers tell the story.

You do have to wonder what’s going on in the corridors of power. Who’s running the ship? Is there anyone over there learning lessons from their own experiences?

Only a couple of months ago this government precipitated a completely unnecessary confrontation with teachers, parents and communities across this province. It was a confrontation precisely about the funding and resources available to public schools. It was about class size problems and class composition problems. Now, we know that after years of denying there was a problem, after years of pretending that the government’s massive cutbacks in services to children had a positive impact on schools and students, finally, last fall, the Premier and the Minister of Education admitted that yes, we do have a problem in our schools when it comes to class size and class composition.

You’d expect to see that realization, late as it was, reflected in the budget. You’d expect to see resources allocated in the budget to deal with the real challenges in our public schools, challenges the Premier and the Minister of Education have finally noticed. But no, there is no allocation for class size improvements and class composition improvements in the budget — not there. They didn’t make it into the children’s budget — no allocation in the budget for the results of the minister’s much ballyhooed round table.

You remember the round table, Madam Speaker. The minister told us that was going to be the solution for class size and composition: get everybody together around a table and abracadabra, the problems would be solved. But of course it takes resources to solve the problems of class size and composition in our schools: 9,000 classes with more than 30 students in them; 11,000 classes in the province with four or more identified students with special needs. You can’t solve those with a discussion, no matter how round the table is and no matter how many folks you invite in for a talk. It takes resources. It takes political will. You’d think it would be there in a children’s budget, but sadly, tragically, it’s not.

You’d think that in the throne speech we would have seen a commitment to class size limits and class composition guarantees in the School Act. That was what the students of this province were promised at the end of the government's dispute with the teachers. The government created a two-week crisis in the schools, and to get out of it, they promised to guarantee services to students and that the guarantee would be enshrined in public policy. Now, as we know, that wasn’t the preference of the teachers. The teachers' position and the teachers' preference was to provide those guarantees in collective bargaining. But the teachers were willing to compromise, and in return for that compromise the government committed to guarantees for class size and class composition in legislation.

You’d think we would have heard about that legislation in the throne speech. You’d think this government, bruised and battered and isolated during the fall because of its disastrous education policies, would have tried to calm the waters by making good on its commitment to B.C.’s children. But no such legislation was announced, at least not yet. So we look forward in this session, in the season of the children’s budget, to the government getting around to keeping its commitment to the children of the province when it comes to class size and class composition.

Thanks to former COPE School Board trustee Noel Herron for passing Mr. Chudnovsky’s speech in the legislature along to VanRamblings’ readers.

December 5, 2005

Mayor Sullivan Makes His First Set of Appointments

Mayor Sam Sullivan

Mayor Sam Sullivan was sworn in today as the 44th mayor of the City of Vancouver.

In addition, new NPA councillors Suzanne Anton (formerly a member of the Parks Board), social activist Kim Capri, arts maven Elizabeth Ball (terrible website; was she really counting on being elected), and incumbent and humanitarian Peter Ladner were also sworn in.

Vision Vancouver Council members, and Council incumbents, Raymond Louie (who oughta lose his ‘holier than thou’ smirk ... just a suggestion, if he wants to be Mayor some day) and Tim Stevenson, as well as newly elected Vision Vancouver Council members Heather Deal and George Chow were also sworn in, along with the lone COPE incumbent David Cadman.

Announced today were Mayor Sullivan’s first set of appointments — to the GVRD and Translink Boards (the websites have not been updated as of this writing), as well as a number of other regional bodies, non-profit boards and statutory committees.

Next up, but still a ways away, appointments to the various civic agencies which either carry out or help to develop policy for Council. Applications for the current vacancies (all committees, with the exception of the Board of Variance, dissolve prior to an election, and re-appointment does not take place until well into the new year ... the appointments are often construed as ‘pay-offs’ to supporters of the winning party ... although VanRamblings would suggest that such a construction in relation to these appointments would be ungenerous and wrong-headed in the extreme).

Update, December 6: Announced in his inaugural address yesterday, Mayor Sullivan will institute a Triple R Review (roles, relationships and responsibilities) of the function of existing civic agencies. The results of the review will be announced in the spring. Appointments to what are almost surely to be newly reconstituted advisory committees will likely take place in June 2006. As a first order of business, could Mayor Sullivan have instituted a more anti-democratic policy than his bludgeoning of these very important, democratic advisory civic agencies? VanRamblings thinks not.

Update, December 8: The Council package for December 13th from Mayor Sullivan will recommend that Council approve the re-establishment of the following Advisory Committees for the term December 5, 2005 to December 8, 2008, with current members reinstated until successors are appointed:

• Building Board of Appeal

• Development Permit Board Advisory Panel

• Urban Design Panel

• Vancouver Athletic Commission

The following civic agencies are established by federal or provincial legislation, and will also be continuing "business as usual":

• Board of Variance

• Family Court-Youth Justice Committee

• Vancouver Public Library Board

• Vancouver Economic Development Commission

• Vancouver Heritage Foundation

To be fair, here's Mayor Sullivan in his own words on the Triple R Review ...

I would like Council to determine how best to get input from citizens. The contribution of community voices to Council is a vital part of being informed and responsive. We have many dedicated citizens who contribute to our city on advisory committees. We owe them the respect of Council by enabling their advice to be heard through the most effective mechanisms of involvement.

At the end of every Council term all committees except those mandated by law end, until they are re-constituted by the new Council. I am recommending that Council delay the re-establishment of our committees pending the clarification of roles as part of the Triple R Review (roles, relationships and responsibilities).

The re-establishment of citizen advisory processes should await clarification of the strategic directions this Council wants to take for the city. I will ask Council early in this term, concurrently with the review of roles, responsibilities and relationships, to engage in a process to determine strategic directions and objectives.

VanRamblings wishes the new Council wisdom and sober second thought, humanity, a sense of humour, civility and respect for varying opinions, and at least a modicum of non-partisanship in their important deliberations.

November 28, 2005

School Board Loss: Whither Now Education in Vancouver?

Perhaps the most devastating loss in the recent Vancouver civic election was the NPA School Board majority win, and the consequent turfing out of the respected, hard-working, centrist, consultative and initiative-driven majority COPE school trustee slate — Kevin Millsip, Noel Herron, Angela Kenyon, Jane Bouey, and Green Party trustee Andrea Reimer.

Even given the downloading, by the provincial Liberal government, of a teacher pay raise onto school boards throughout the province, the COPE School Board was the only Board in the province to not lay teachers off during their three-year term, and to maintain smaller class sizes (or in the case of kindergarten, reduce class sizes and go to full day kindergarten).

Unlike past COPE School Boards, the 2002 - 2005 COPE Vancouver school trustees did not pick unwinnable fights with the provincial government, but instead worked together with senior staff in the provincial Ministry of Education to secure additional funding for inner city schools for our region’s most vulnerable children; developed a programme to make all schools across our province seismically safe; expanded literacy programmes, and increased spaces for French Immersion; and developed groundbreaking multi-cultural, anti-racism and anti-homophobia programmes.

Why was the popular COPE School Board defeated? Easy question that. COPE school trustees fell victim to the infighting between COPE Classic and COPE Lite / Vision Vancouver, as slate voting took over to elect a majority NPA slate to the Vancouver School and Park Boards, and City Council.

A diverse NPA Council will be what it will be. Mayor-elect Sam Sullivan will set the agenda for his, and the NPA’s, coming term of office. The Park Board is, for the most part, a largely non-partisan (no pun intended) entity, a Board that tends to work co-operatively and without rancour; commissioners from COPE and the majority NPA Board will almost assuredly act in the best interests of Vancouver citizens, and citizens across the Lower Mainland.

But School Board? Children, parents, teachers, and non-teaching support staff are in for a rough ride with a Ken Denike-led NPA majority on the 2005 - 2008 Vancouver School Board. The NPA School Board will almost certainly prove to be a right wing, ultra-conservative and ideologically driven Board.

Read More...

November 23, 2005

Sam Sullivan: The New Mayor of Vancouver

On Saturday, November 19th Sam Sullivan became the 44th Mayor of Vancouver. What does Mr. Sullivan’s ascension to the highest political office in Canada’s third largest city mean for the people of Vancouver?

Well, first off, a return to decorum. Sullivan has promised that City Council debate will not be defined by acrimony, personal invective, and ad hominem attack. All points of view will be heard and decisions will be arrived at only after due consideration. Is Mr. Sullivan to be believed on this front? VanRamblings believes Mr. Sullivan to be a reasonable person who will do everything in his considerable power to return civility to Council debate.

In setting a new — and potentially co-operative — tone at City Hall, perhaps the first tentative steps might be taken towards healing the divide that exists in our City between rich and poor, East side and West side, privilege and anomie. The most salutary aspect of a new start is the sense of hope that is inspired when one does not know for sure what is to come. VanRamblings hopes for the best and trusts that the newly elected majority Non-Partisan Association Council will, while working with the Vision and COPE members of Council, move this City forward toward brighter days.

Lest you think that VanRamblings has been consuming a little too much of the NPA Kool-Aid, we would be remiss if mention were not made of the controversy surrounding Mr. Sullivan’s election to the Mayor’s job. If you look at the chart above, you'll see that Independent candidate James Green polled third in the mayoralty race. Adding James Green’s vote to that of Vision Vancouver mayoralty candidate Jim Green’s vote places Vision’s Jim Green 526 votes ahead of Mr. Sullivan, the declared winner of Saturday’s mayoral contest. Were there “dirty tricks” involved in the NPA’s alleged support of an independent James Green candidacy, a cynical, dastardly ploy designed to confuse voters? Vision Vancouver certainly thinks so.

Re-elected COPE councillor David Cadman chalks Green’s loss up to hubris

You only have to be aware of Jim Green’s history to know that the issue of NPA “dirty tricks” will not be going away anytime soon; Jim’s a fighter and will see it through to the end. Meanwhile, Mayor-elect Sullivan has made statements to the press that he wants to get on with the job, and to that end has extended an olive branch to his Vision Vancouver opponent, suggesting that there continues to be a role for Mr. Green to play in the development of the Woodward’s site, a long cherished dream of Mr. Green.

Read More...

November 20, 2005

Vancouver Elects New Council: The People Have Spoken

The 2005 race for Vancouver Municipal Council, School and Park Board is over. The NPA scored a stunning come-from-behind victory, all but decimating the COPE civic party. The election of four of five Vision Vancouver councillors sets a new direction for the progressive forces on Council. What all of these changes mean at the end of the day, it’s too early to say. But development in the City will most certainly take a different direction, and municipal issues will be re-prioritized. And it was always thus.

In the coming days, VanRamblings will publish our take on the meaning behind the change in direction for civic politics, in Vancouver and across the Lower Mainland. In the meantime, we can take heart that the people have spoken, and over the course of the next three years we will receive the kind of civic governance for which a majority of Vancouverites voted.

November 14, 2005

Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation: COPE Has The Right Plan

l-r: Spencer Herbert, Anita Romaniuk, Omar Kassis, Jenn McGinn, Mel Lehan, Loretta Woodcock

Last week, VanRamblings published a story endorsing COPE — Vancouver’s Coalition of Progressive Electors civic party — as the only municipal party that champions a sustainable programme of development that balances economic and environmental interests, towards the creation of a more livable city for all of us. Have already wholeheartedly endorsed the COPE slate of candidates for City Council and School Board, VanRamblings turns its attention today to the robust COPE Park Board slate.

Over the course of the past three years, a COPE Park Board, while enhancing public participation and access to the Board, has ...

• Championed the inclusion of 26 acres of park, and a 30,000 sq. ft. community centre at the future southeast False Creek development

• Expanded wheelchair access in our parks and introduced universal design principles to accommodate all members of the public, regardless of physical and mental ability

• Established skateboard parks beneath the east end of the Georgia Viaduct, and in the Strathcona and Quilchena neighbourhoods

• Expanded the Champlain Community Centre, including new child care facilities; rebuilt and expanded the Killarney Pool; undertook an extensive renovation of Renfrew Pool; completed the Millennium Lawn Bowling and Gymnastics facility at Riley Park; established a new artificial turf playing field in Kerrisdale embraced by the community; and established new, or renovated, parks including Emery Barnes, Sahali, Tea Swamp, Strathcona, Heather, George Wainborne, David Lam Phase Two, and Kingcrest

• Extended off leash hours for dog parks, while promoting public education for dog owners

• Promoted and facilitated community gardens throughout the city, and

• Improved environmental practices, including the diversion of rainwater into daylighted streams, as well as the re-use of rainwater for irrigation; expanded the use of green building technology and energy conservation; expanded the recycling programme and the re-use of materials; and continued our commitment to the Cool Vancouver Climate Change plan, with the goal of reducing greenhouse gases

In only a few days, you will be asked to cast your ballot for a new Park Board. Sitting COPE Park Board commissioners Anita Romaniuk and Loretta Woodcock, and new candidates Mel Lehan, Spencer Herbert, Omar Kassis, and Jenn McGinn are deserving of your vote. If a majority COPE Park Board is elected to a second term, a COPE Park Commissioners team would ...

• Continue the renewal and expansion of community centres, ice rinks, swimming pools, and fitness centres

• Move Park Board meetings into community centres, and create an open dailogue with the community

• Approve a plebiscite for the 2008 civic election on whether or not to phase out the containment of whales and dolphins in Stanley Park

• Continue the development of guidelines for waterfront and shoreline activities through the new Waterfront Planning Study

• Engage in a consultative process with young people to enhance youth programming in parks and recreation centres

• Adopt the LEED gold standard for new facilities, thus reducing future operating costs as well as reducing environmental impact

• Keep annual operating expenses and annual inflationary fee increases for facilities and programmes within the target inflationary increases set by the City, while rolling back the NPA-approved 7% increase in seniors fees for golfing, swimming, and fitness centres passed for the 2003 budget

These are good people. Hard-working people. Caring people. On November 19th, when you cast your ballot for a reinvigorated Vancouver Park Board, VanRamblings urges you to support the COPE team of Park Board candidates — Spencer Herbert, Omar Kassis, Mel Lehan, Jenn McGinn, Anita Romaniuk, and Loretta Woodcock — all of whom will work towards the creation of a more livable city for each and every one of us.

November 12, 2005

Wal-Mart The Movie: The High Cost of Low Price

Click on picture to enlage poster

Sunday, at 7 p.m. at the VanCity Theatre, director Robert Greewald’s much-praised and controversial new film Wal-Mart - The High Cost of Low Price will première in Vancouver as a benefit screening for Vancouver’s COPE municipal party.

You know Wal-Mart’s inglorious history. Child exploitation. Earlier this year, Wal-Mart Stores agreed to pay $135,540 to settle federal charges in the U.S. that it violated child labour laws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire.

Wal-Mart’s culture of crime and greed. In March of this year, only eight short months ago, Wal-Mart paid $11 million to settle charges that it employed hundreds of illegal immigrants to clean its stores across the United States.

Workers have been illegally fired for trying to form a union, and Wal-Mart spends millions to thwart workers basic rights, giving its union-breaking staff priority on resources (like corporate jets) over even higher-placed managers. In 2000, meat cutters at a Wal-Mart in Texas voted for the union — and Wal-Mart promptly violated the law by shutting down the meat-cutting department in the store and, for good measure, closed every other meat-cutting department in 179 other stores across the U.S. and Canada, just to make sure they had stamped out any smell of unionism.

And let’s not forget Wal-Mart’s shuttering of their Jonquierre, Québéc store, in May of this year, after its employees received union certification. A former employee at that store has filed a class-action suit in the Québéc Supreme Court claiming that Wal-Mart, in closing the store, “violated the rights of its workers” by breaching the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees freedom of association to all citizens.

Then there’s Wal-Mart’s wage policies, which deny its workers the basic right to a living wage, not to mention the off-the-clock work they force on their employees, and unequal pay and treatment to which they subject their employees. Wal-Mart's discriminatory policies in regards of their female staff have resulted in the largest workplace-bias lawsuit in U.S. history.

You know the story: poverty-level wages, with a staff turnover rate of 50% a year; destruction of local businesses due to predatory pricing (an Iowa State University study found that in the first decade after Wal-Mart arrived, the state lost 111 men’s and boys’ apparel stores, 116 drug stores, 153 shoe stores, 158 women’s apparel stores, 161 variety stores, 293 building supply stores, 298 hardware stores, and 555 grocery stores); numerous labour law violations, ranging from illegal spying on employees and falsification of time cards to avoid paying overtime to fraudulent record keeping and illegal firings for union organizing; the record-holder for the most suits filed against a U.S. company by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Wal-Mart had to pay a $750,000 fine for blatant discrimination in Arizona against the disabled. The judge even ordered Wal-Mart to air commercials confessing their guilt); and more, much more.

But you don’t know the whole story. You won’t gain a true insight into Wal-Mart corporate practices until and unless you attend this Sunday evening’s screening of Wal-Mart — The High Cost of Low Price. Until you hear for yourself the shattering experiences of the current and former Wal-Mart employees Greenwald interviewed, this story will be little more than words on a screen. Sunday evening. See you at the VanCity theatre.

November 6, 2005

Elect a COPE Vancouver School Board in 2005

Noel Herron was the Principal at my children's elementary school (University Hill) in the 1980s, and after that Principal at another half-dozen Vancouver schools. Since that time, and before, Noel has continuously advocated for public education, speaking out and publishing for the betterment of the education system.

Over the course of the past couple of years, VanRamblings has had the opportunity to become re-acquainted with Noel, in his capacity as Chair of the Personnel and Staff Relations Committee of the Vancouver School Board, and as a liaison with the employees of Cardinal Transportation Vancouver who, this year, achieved successful CUPE bargaining unit status.

The work of the COPE trustees on the Vancouver School Board has been invaluable this past three years in preserving the integrity of our education system, even while suffering the slings and arrows of a provincial government and Ministry of Education seemingly hellbent on ideological warfare with teachers, trustees, parents and children.

The following e-mail arrived in my computer yesterday, a missive from the desk of valued public servant, COPE School Board Trustee Noel Herron. Today, VanRamblings passes on to you an edited version of the e-mail ...

Dear Friend of Public Education,

The civic election is just around the corner -- Saturday November 19.

As people who care about kids and public education -- the COPE School Board candidates are asking you to vote for people who care about kids and public education, who believe in the potential of all children. We will do everything in our power to make public schools work for every child.

Before casting your vote on November 19th, we would ask that you check out the record of the COPE School Board trustees.

In just 3 years a COPE Vancouver School Board has:

• Stopped $3 million in provincial cuts to inner city schools and our region's most vulnerable children, and introduced a successful consultative budgeting process
• Played a key role in winning $150 million in provincial funding for public education in BC
• Worked closely with the province to develop a programme to make all schools across our province seismically safe
• Re-hired multi-cultural workers laid off by the previous NPA controlled Board, while reaching out to Vancouver's diverse communities, and making our schools safer and more welcoming with new anti-racism and anti-homophobia programmes
• Dedicated increased monies into text books, restored teacher librarian hours and achieved lower class size at the elementary level
• Supported student input into district decision-making
• Worked tirelessly to repair relations with parents, students and staff -- relations that had been damaged under previous NPA Boards
• Expanded all-day kindergarten
• Hired one of the country's most respected educational leaders as our Superintendent of Schools -- without resorting to use of an expensive headhunting firm
• Expanded literacy programmes, and increased spaces for French Immersion
• Worked with both the SFU and the UBC Education departments to educate the community about the value of public education

l-r: Allan Wong, Allen Blakey, Angela Kenyon, Conrad Lew, Jane Bouey, Kevin Millsip, Noel Herron, Sharon Gregson

There remains much that needs to be done. We still have a lot of work to do. We need to protect these achievements and build on them.

If re-elected, a COPE School Board will:

• Continue to advocate effectively for proper resources for public schools
• Fight to keep local educational decisions in the hands of our community
• Work for smaller classes for all children enrolled in the Vancouver school system
• Provide increased support for ESL, and children with special needs
• Get junk food out of our schools
• Work hard to build strong and respectful relationships with local aboriginal and First Nations organizations while working towards making our schools more inclusive and relevant for aboriginal students
• Continue to participate and support joint initiatives between the School Board, Park Board and City Council such as the Joint Council on Childcare
• Make each school a centre of environmental sustainability

The COPE Vancouver School Board has made decisions based on sound educational principle -- not Fraser Institute fiction. We need all caring Vancouver citizens to help make sure that the positive accomplishments of the COPE Vancouver School Board to support children and make public schools work for every child will not be undone by the NPA.

The Vancouver School Board -- a great reason to vote COPE!

November 5, 2005

Elect COPE Candidates for a More Livable Vancouver

l-r: Anne Roberts, David Cadman, Ellen Woodsworth, Fred Bass, Tim Louis

The time has come for VanRamblings to weigh in on the current municipal election in the City of Vancouver. Without any hesitation or reservation, VanRamblings wholeheartedly recommends the entirety of the current COPE slate — for City Council, School Board and Park Board — good people all.

Over the course of the past three years — since electing majority COPE Council Members, School Board trustees and Park Board commissioners to civic government — Vancouver has become a more livable city for all citizens of our fair city, the whole of the community has gained greater access to (and participation in) civic governance, and fiscal responsibility tempered by caring and a commitment to social justice have come to define governance in the City of Vancouver. Therefore, we’re recommending COPE in 2005.

For VanRamblings, the key issues in the campaign are this: development of the south side of False Creek, ensuring a mix of rental and subsidized housing, parks and community gardens, and greenways; re-development of the Woodward's building, and the resulting salutary impact that will occur in the surrounding neighbourhood; the provision of subsidized transit passes for students and persons on low incomes; keeping our libraries open and accessible; and the continued revitalization of neighbourhoods. Only COPE, and their unity partners Vision Vancouver, can deliver on these key issues.

In the coming days, VanRamblings will explore each of the civic issues outlined above, and express why it is that we believe only a majority COPE / Vision Vancouver City Council can deliver on these and other issues, while working towards the creation of a fairer and more livable City for all of us.

Who Will You Cast Your Vote For Vancouver Mayor?

With the Vancouver municipal election less than two short weeks away, VanRamblings will post various election-related polls in the coming days.

To begin, we’d appreciate some input into your choice for Mayor.

August 30, 2005

Pivot Legal Society: Advancing the Interests and Improving
The Lives of Marginalized Persons Through Law Reform

From time to time you read about the Pivot Legal Society, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside advocacy organization dedicated to using law reform, legal education, and strategic legal action to advance the interests and improve the lives of those on the fringes of society: sex workers, drug addicts, and the homeless, among other disenfranchised groups of people.

As the Pivot Legal Society explain in their mission statement ...

The basic concept underlying Pivot’s name and mission is that a critical pressure point of social change is to be found at the lower edge of legal and social boundaries. By systematically challenging the attitudes and institutions of power than enable marginalization, Pivot strives to move us towards a more tolerant, inclusive and compassionate society. By aggressively advancing the interests and defending the legal entitlements of the most disenfranchised, Pivot aims for a ‘trickle-up’ effect of respect and acceptance that will ultimately benefit all.

Of course, in advocating for citizens the general populace (not to mention the police) would sooner ignore, or incarcerate, Pivot’s actions on behalf of their constituency are not always met with the degree of equanimity one might hope for. Vancouver Police Chief Jamie Graham, in particular, frequently lashes out at Pivot, and its Executive Director, John Richardson.

As for Mr. Richardson, rather than respond with invective, he instead offers a reasoned rejoinder, as was the case when Pivot issued the 28-page report Towards More Effective Police Oversight, in which the society called on the Vancouver City Council Peace and Justice Committee to vote to endorse “integrity testing” of Vancouver police officers ...

“An integrity test creates a realistic condition or situation designed to generate a natural reaction by an individual or individuals so that their conduct, behaviour and professional standards can be assessed,” say the report’s authors. “Much in the same way that the VPD’s bait car programme reduces the incidence of auto theft, an effective integrity testing program can help reduce the instances of misconduct in relation to marginalized persons by VPD officers.”

Fortunately, not all sectors of society look upon the work of the Pivot Legal Society with disfavour. In 2004, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network recognized the Pivot Legal Society for their humanitarian work furthering Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights, winning praise, as well, from the BC Chapter of the Canadian Bar Association, among others.

From their advocacy work representing Vancouver sex-trade workers, to their work with housing activists supporting the Woodward’s housing squat (Windows Media Player), and their ongoing work responding to alleged police misconduct, the Pivot Legal Society performs a service for all of us.

If you would like to subscribe to the Pivot mailing list, please click here. Information on membership in the Pivot Legal Society is available here. If you, or someone you know, have been or feel you may become subject to police harassment, you may wish to avail yourself of the instructions on the Pivot Legal Card. And finally, donations to Pivot are readily accepted.

August 10, 2005

Public Transit: Essential For Economic Health and Prosperity

As the Bus Riders Union states in its April 2005 position paper, Lower The Fares Now, “public transit is a critical economic and social resource in the lives of transit-dependent people to negotiate our lives, to access work, social networks, and such important social services such as education, childcare centres, community centres, and health care.”

Despite Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell’s characterization of the Bus Riders Union as a group of “total losers,” the health and social justice struggle in which the BRU is engaged is a direct response to the targeting of our society’s most vulnerable citizens — parents, low-wage workers, the unemployed, refugees, students, children, seniors, people with disabilities and immigrants. A majority of bus riders are women and disproportionately Aboriginal and people of colour. Inevitably then, policies that negatively impact transit-dependent people are implicitly racist, sexist and unfair.

Higher fares and poor bus service act as a barrier to our independence and mobility, and as a result the health of our community suffers. Some bus riders are forced to choose between taking the bus and other basic necessities, such as food and rent. High fares force transit dependent people to work longer hours to pay for the rising cost, causing intense strain on their own health and the health of their families.

In Greater Vancouver, bus riders pay for 50% of Translink’s operating costs through fares, as well as paying through the Hydro levy and gas taxes. High transit fares are, in fact and in practice, a form of regressive taxation that takes more money from those who can least afford to pay.

What can you do to redress the wrong? Start of by visiting the Bus Riders’ Union website. E-mail them at bru@resist.ca. Get involved. Make your life better. Help make the lives of others better. Do it now !!! We need you.

August 8, 2005

No One Is Illegal: Fighting Back Through Struggle and Action

Taking action to combat the racial profiling of immigrants and refugees, as well as discriminatory detention and deportation policies, and the wage-slave working conditions of migrant workers and non-status people — while engaging in the struggle to maintain their own livelihoods and resist war, occupation and displacement — the grassroots anti-colonial immigrant and refugee rights movement No One Is Illegal finds itself very much engaged in the struggle for people’s democratic, social and economic rights.

Most of NOII’s organizers hail from immigrant / refugee backgrounds (South Asian, Persian, Latina/o, Arab and Middle Eastern), and are predominantly women. While taking action to combat racial profiling, detention and deportation, NOII organizers provide political and legal advocacy in defense of families and individuals in the refugee determination process — by drafting legal submissions, organizing multilingual community forums, and fighting against the prospect of deportation through direct action at immigration offices, detention centres and airports.

One of the principle struggles in which No One Is Illegal is engaged is the Campaign for Regularization, the movement to have all persons living without legal immigration status in Canada (non status migrant and immigrants) afforded permanent resident or landed immigrant status.

Restoring Legal Aid Funding in British Columbia is another key campaign that No One Is Illegal has launched. Out of the $83 million that the provincial government cut from the Legal Aid services budget in 2001, 40% came by eliminating legal services to marginalized communities. In 2003 - 2004, Legal Aid funding for immigration cases totalled $4.9 million. In this past year, an agreement between the provincial and federal governments provided only $1.7 million in funding for immigration cases, resulting in the implementation of a profiling-based “merit-screening” process.

Operating an office in Vancouver — located at 714 - 207 West Hastings — the work undertaken by No One Is Illegal comes at an enormous cost. While planning direct action, producing educational materials, and raising emergency funds, No One Is Illegal receives no funding from government, and none of its organizers constitute paid staff.

For more information about No One Is Illegal — or to become a sustaining member, or provide a donation — go to their website, e-mail the organizers directly at no one is illegal vancouver, or call them today at 778-552-2099.

August 6, 2005

Under The Volcano: Stewards of Our Future Bring Art To Life

August 2, 2005

Talkin' Bout a Revolution: Art and Change At Under The Volcano

July 31, 2005

A Sad Day for Canadian Sovereignty: Canada Now 51st U.S. State?
Marijuana Activist Marc Emery Nabbed By U.S. for Seed Sales

On Friday July 29th, marijuana activist Marc Emery — the 47-year-old leader of the British Columbia Marijuana Party — was arrested in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on a U.S. indictment charging him with selling millions of dollars worth of marijuana seeds to customers throughout the United States.

Jennifer Garner, in an article titled Canada Now Officially 51st State, suggests that “the highest levels of the Canadian provincial and federal governments were involved in setting up the (US-authored Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters treaty between the US and Canada) investigation and raid, in the process raising obvious issues of Canadian sovereignty and revealing to Canadians in a very stark way that Canadian law enforcement can sometimes be a tool of US drug agents.”

Vancouver Police spokesperson Howard Chow admitted that Emery’s selling of marijuana seeds “is not enough” for him to have been arrested by Canadian authorities acting on their own, and confirmed that the arrests came solely as a consequence of DEA motivation and information.

Libby Davies, Vancouver East NDP Member of Parliament, stated that the arrests go against the views of most Canadians, who support decriminalization of marijuana and who had not demanded that Emery’s marijuana businesses be shut down.

“I think it’s very disturbing that the Vancouver police department is raiding a local business and arresting people for the U.S. war on drugs,” Davies told The Vancouver Sun. “It feels to me like the long arm of U.S. enforcement reaching into Canada.”

Here’s the video of the US DEA press conference. In this video, Halifax Police provide information on their role in the arrest. At BlogsCanada, Canadians have begun to express their alarm at Emery’s arrest, detention and possible extradition, taking the federal government to task — most pointedly federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler — for their collusion with the U.S. government, in a clear unadulterated breach of Canadian sovereignty.

Mr. Emery and two others are wanted in the United States to face charges of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana, conspiracy to distribute seeds and conspiracy to engage in money laundering. Mr. Emery was in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia, where he was scheduled to speak at a music festival that raises funds for the organization, Maritimers Unite for Medical Marijuana.

Mr. Emery spent Friday night in a Halifax holding cell, and was remanded to another correctional facility by midday Saturday, where he’ll remain pending arrangements to transfer him to British Columbia early this coming week.

July 27, 2005

Community Comes Together To Save Downtown Hospital

Save St. Paul’s Hospital Coalition co-chair Aaron Jasper will appear live on Rafe Mair’s morning talk radio show on CKBD 600 AM this morning (July 27) from 8:40 - 9:00 a.m. The show is available live, and archived, on the web at 600am.com.

Providence Health Care, a faith-based health care provider, operates five hospitals across Vancouver, the largest of which is St. Paul’s, located in downtown Vancouver. Providence Health Care proposes to close the current West End site and move the hospital three kilometres east, to False Creek Flats, just southeast of the Prior Street exit of the Georgia Viaduct. A thriving community resource widely acknowledged as one of the finest acute care teaching and research hospitals on the continent, St. Paul’s Hospital serves the largest downtown urban core population anywhere on this continent, outside of New York City.

Rick Barnes, at Politics in BC, and Steve Wansleeben at Panorama, provide further insight into St. Paul’s Providence Legacy Project.

The home of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, and the designated heart centre for the province, St. Paul’s Hospital treats more than 116,000 patients every year, many of whom are members of the majority elderly and gay and lesbian population of the West End / Coal Harbour / Yaletown downtown core.

“What people need is access to the site,” Vancouver Burrard MLA Lorne Mayencourt recently told the Vancouver Courier. “There are seniors in the West End that need to be close to where they get services. There’s a gay population that accesses the hospital’s Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. The plan leaves me with a great deal of concern for health care in my community.”

The West Ender recently also ran a story on the possible move of the 111-year-old hospital, although the West Ender failed to adequately report on the utter lack of community consultation — by Providence Health Care, the City and the province — involved in the proposal to move the hospital. The lack of consultation is particularly egregious given that more than 90,000 residents live within a 10-block radius of St. Paul’s, and another 50,000 work in the downtown core each week day — significantly more than the 20,000 people who live within 10 blocks of the False Creek Flats site.

By moving St. Paul’s Hospital away from the population it serves — should the move come to pass — there is little doubt lives will be lost and health care jeopardized, not least because of the distance of the proposed site from the West End and the relative inaccessability of False Creek Flats.

May 18, 2005

Look Out Liberals: BC NDP Mount Stunning Comeback

In one of the most stunning political comebacks of this new millennium the British Columbia NDP gained 31 seats in the legislature, emerging once again as the conscience of British Columbia and government in waiting.

The people of British Columbia sent the Gordon Campbell Liberals a message: we’re not gonna put up with your mean-spirited policies which target the poor and the vulnerable, children and the disabled, the rural areas of our province, and seniors and women across the province.

Today is a day for celebration, a day to acknowledge that British Columbians are a fair-minded people, dedicated to fairness and social justice for all. The people have spoken. Democracy reigns.

May 11, 2005

Restoring Common Sense: The NDP Gains On The Liberals

In the latest Mustel Group poll, although the Liberals are ahead of the NDP by five points — down from an eight-point lead in April — pollster Evi Mustel told the Victoria Times-Colonist that “the five-point gap makes the election too close to call” when considering the ±4.0% statistical probablilty factor.

Meanwhile, Strategic Thoughts columnist David Schreck says it’s ‘payback time’ for the BC voters ...

In an ideal world voters would evaluate each of the candidates, read the platforms of all of the parties, and carefully consider informed debates during the course of the campaign. In the real world people have busy lives with much more to do than follow every nuance in politics.

Traditionally voters are said to have very short memories, but the 2005 election may be very different. Most policy issues do not personally affect very many voters, hence it is easy to put them out of mind. The same isn’t true when you get laid off, have your pay cut, or have your tuition doubled. There are dozens of decisions taken by the Campbell government that inflicted significant harm on tens of thousands of voters. Chiropractors, podiatrists and physiotherapists lost patients because MSP delisted their services; on the patients’ side, they either paid more or did without. Some people skipped their regular eye exams because they no longer had coverage. Some seniors walked away from the prescription counter after learning how much more they had to pay for their drugs. The use of provincial parks declined when families got hit with $1 an hour or $5 a day parking fees. It is not just about the gut wrenching stories of seniors being separated from their spouses after 50 years of marriage as a result of the Liberal’s community care policies, or about the tragedies created when people were turned away from emergency rooms. The election is about thousands and thousands of stories big and small where people know that they were hurt as a result of a mean spirited, uncaring government. May 17th is the time when those who were hurt can inflict some pain on Gordon Campbell. For some voters, it is payback time.

Over at The Tyee, Tyee election prognosticator Will McMartin is now calling for the NDP to win 25 seats, with another 8 seats up for grabs. But when you consider that, according to the Mustel Group poll, that a full 11% of BC voters have not decided on how they’re going to cast their ballot, and news reports have Green Party support soft with the potential of half their supporters voting strategically to defeat Gordon Campbell’s government, the potential for a squeaker must be looming heavy in the Liberal camp.

And factor in, too, the record number of voters eligible to vote this time around — 700,000 more than last year and more than ever in the province’s history — attributable to a decision by Elections BC to make British Columbia the first jurisdiction in North America to allow voters to register, update and confirm registration online. Who’s most comfortable with online registration? That’s right, younger voters. And will the vote of young people go to the Liberals, considering a doubling of tuition fees at post-secondary institutions across the province over the course of the past four years; not to mention, cuts to bursaries and scholarships?

The denouement to Campaign 2005 is shaping up to be interesting, indeed, no matter how quiet the parties have been on the hustings. Campaign 2005, in the end, has become our opportunity to tell the Liberals just how unhappy we are with a government that dramatically reduced funding to legal aid; cut funding to 37 women’s centres; got rid of the Ministry of the Environment and cut staff whose job it was to protect our eco heritage.

Slashed funding for childcare; slashed funding for programmes that would have brought street kids off the streets and into safe conditions; closed 1/3 of the court houses across the province; closed major departments in 69 hospitals in BC while closing three hospitals altogether; closed 1,464 long-term care beds, 2,529 residential care beds and 1,200 hospital beds.

Raised fees in provincial parks and put parking meters in place; sold off BC Rail; gutted labour legislation to the point where it’s now almost impossible to certify a bargaining unit in British Columbia; privatized hospital services with the attendant loss of 7000 frontline health care worker jobs, leading to a radical decline in the quality of food and support services, and dietary and hygiene standards; raised MSP premiums by 50%; doubled or tripled fees for most government services, ranging from renewing your driver’s license to applying for a birth certificate; fired 3000 teachers, raised class sizes, and closed 100 schools; the list could go on and on and on.

Enough is enough. Vote for change May 17th. Kick da bums out of office.

May 8, 2005

Gordon Campbell: British Columbia’s Premier Hates Women
And: Children, Aboriginals, Seniors, the Disabled, and the Poor

The following is a reprint of a story originally published on VanRamblings, April 24, 2004.

Much like support by women across the U.S. for the Bush administration, support among women for Gordon Campbell’s Liberals is all but absent.

According to a recent Ipsos-Reid poll, only five percent of women “strongly approve” of Campbell’s performance as premier. Ten times more British Columbia women, 50 percent, “strongly disapprove” of the way the B.C. Liberal premier does his job.

In a recent cover story published in Vancouver’s alternative newspaper, Georgia Straight news editor Charlie Smith reports on the changes to the welfare system that have increased the health, social and other risks of, mostly female, single parents, and the increase in child apprehension that has followed; changes to employment standards that have had a disproportionately negative impact on women; a $12.7-million cut in child-care services that has all but eliminated funding for before-and after-school care for children in this province; deep cuts in programme funding for women’s services; and dramatic reductions in funding for a raft of other social programmes, including deep cuts to legal aid, and the virtual elimination of funding for school-based hot meal programmes.

In total, while introducing dramatic tax cuts for their rich friends — in the process eliminating some 50,000 goverment-related jobs to pay for the tax cuts (mostly affecting women, and the immigrant community) — the B.C. Liberals have cut $5 billion from the provincial budget, while making devastating cuts to programmes which have disproportionately affected women, aboriginals, children, seniors, the disabled, and the poor.

In 2003, a United Nations-sponsored coalition of women’s non-governmental organizations, The B.C. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (B.C. CEDAW), released a damning report (here available in pdf form) providing insight into “the wholesale withdrawal of programmes and protections” for women and children since the election of the Gordon Campbell lead Liberal government, on May 16, 2001.

Drastic and discriminatory changes to provincial legislation and programmes have been made since May 2001 ... that have had an especially pernicious effect on women and girls who are most disadvantaged and most vulnerable. Specifically, elderly women, and women and girls who are Aboriginal, of colour, disabled, lesbian, recent immigrants or refugee claimants, living on low incomes, or living in rural areas experience the harms ... in particular and intensified ways.

In an accompanying Georgia Straight article to this week’s cover story, titled “In Their Own Words”, contributing writer Gail Johnson not only provides information on cuts of $843 million from the three government Ministries with responsibilities for child care, children, women, and families: the Ministry of Community, Aboriginal and Women’s Services; the Ministry of Human Resources; and the Ministry of Children and Family Development, through the personal stories of women across this province, she reports on the real-life impact of the government cuts to programmes for women and girls of all ages, ethnicities, abilities, and economic circumstance.

May 4, 2005

The Leaders' Debate. A Clear Win For Carole James?

Debate excerpt

The leaders’ debate on Tuesday came and went, and consensus opinion among the pundits was that the 60-minute forum was a clear win for NDP leader, Carole James. Former BC Liberal leader and NDP cabinet minister, Gordon Wilson, was particularly impressed with James’ performance. Whether opinion on the street, though, matches that of the pundits and politicos is another matter. Next week’s Ipsos-Reid poll oughta prove very interesting, indeed, as will the latest poll from the Mustel Group, also due next week.

According to an Angus Reid poll conducted in the hours following the debate, “Voters in British Columbia saw no clear victor in last night’s showdown of party leaders.”

In this CBC story, linked from Only Magazine, the CBC reports that “Premier Gordon Campbell was forced onto the defensive during Tuesday night’s leaders’ debate, as NDP Leader Carole James accused him of being someone who can’t be trusted to keep his campaign commitments.” Only Magazine goes on to present their opinion on the leaders’ debate.

There is no question Carole James mopped the floor with Gordon Campbell and Adrienne Carr last night. She dominated the debate in a low-key, but relentless way, hammering at Campbell to explain the policies of his government to the citizens of BC.

VanRamblings’ adds another website to our BC Election blogroll, BC Liberals Suck, a timely creation by the good folks at Only Magazine.

May 2, 2005

A Second Term for Gordon Campbell? Adding Insult To Injury.

Seven p.m. Tuesday evening, May 3, 2005: the leaders’ TV debate. A possible turning point in BC Votes — Campaign 2005.

Ramping up for the all-important television debate, the New Democratic Party released three new, very effective television ads. Windows Media Player is required to view the NDP ads on the Liberals’ despicable record over the past four years, and the necessity for a strong, balanced and compassionate government in British Columbia, a government that will allow all British Columbians to share in the wealth created in this province.

Over to the right, VanRamblings has added another site of interest to our regularly-updated BC election blogroll, this time the provocative, thoughtful and frequently updated Have You Had Enough, Yet? website, created by Surrey teacher Bill Piket, and the folks at Black Rock Communications.

In his latest column for The Tyee, broadcaster Rafe Mair suggests that “if the NDP gets a bit lucky there’s still room for an upset.”

With the Liberals sitting at seven points up you would think that May 17th would be a slam dunk for Campbell & Co. and so it will likely prove. But if there is to be an upset ... I would be looking behind those numbers for signs that there may be weaknesses in the Liberal position ... the Liberals must worry about Vancouver Island and large pockets of the interior and the north where their numbers are not great ... then there is the environment, something that the Liberals have ignored except to the extent they’ve allowed their pals to bugger it up ... (although) a seven point lead for the Liberals looks insurmountable ... if it gets much closer as the day approaches, look-out. If the popular vote is that close, and the NDP gets a bit lucky, there could be an upset.

Meanwhile, Tyee contributing editor Barbara McLintock has ten questions for Gordon Campbell, ranging from his government’s position on continued public service layoff and a consequent move toward more privatization, to whether or not further cuts will be made to the child welfare budget.

Finally, Vancouver professor, poet, and polemicist Robin Mathews writes about the “attack on ordinary” British Columbians in both part one and part two of his essay, A Time to Rage, where he reflects on “the savage attack by the Campbell corporate totalitarians upon decent living in B.C.”

May 1, 2005

Leaders Prepare For The All-Important Television Debate

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.

April 28, 2005

You Lied To The People Of BC - You B*ST*RD!

April 27, 2005

The Dark Side To the Liberals' Success

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.

April 26, 2005

The Campbell Liberals Have Closed The Door On Women

April 23, 2005

Better To Die On Your Feet, Than Live On Your Knees

photo, copyright Strawberry Tea Productions, 2005

In the past four years homelessness across British Columbia has grown to such an alarming extent under the Gordon Campbell Liberal government that, for the first time, scenes such as the one above have become a common feature of the urban landscape. The deinstitutionalization of mental patients has succeeded in emptying government-funded beds, filling the streets with the chronically mentally ill, many of whom have been denied the most basic assistance from the Ministry of Human Resources.

While business and the wealthiest 10% of the population received a $3.5 billion tax cut, $350 million was slashed from the budget of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. The consequence?

Almost one-in-five children in British Columbia now live in poverty, an increase of 41% since 2001; that’s 167,000 children, more than the entire population of Victoria and New Westminster combined. The BC rate of child poverty, at 19.6%, is the third highest in Canada, significantly higher than the 15.6% for Canada as a whole.

In the past four years, the population of seniors has grown by 11%. Yet, according to a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives ...

• There has been a net decrease of 1,464 long-term care beds since the election of the Liberals in 2001. Between 2001 and December 2004, BC also cut 2,529 residential care beds, and closed 1,200 hospital beds, while BC’s aged population continued to grow. BC now has the lowest level of access to residential care beds in Canada for seniors aged 75 and over, falling 13 percent below the national average;

• The budget for home support (personal care) was also slashed, by 13% since 2001, while home care (i.e. professional nursing) was cut by 8%. In the rural areas of our province, the situation is even worse, as home support hours per client was 18 to 19 per cent below the provincial average.

The cuts have affected not only seniors but each and every one of us: working people, children, and the disabled in communities across British Columbia. Here’s a list of just a few of the devastating changes to the social, cultural and political landscape of British Columbia that have come to pass since the election of a provincial Liberal government in 2001 ...

• The implementation of a $6 an hour training wage, in concert with the introduction of the most regressive child labour legislation anywhere in the western world;

• A $100 million budget cut in services to people with physical and mental disabilities, women fleeing abusive relationships, and children in violent homes;

• The elimination of funding for safe houses for 13 to 15 year old homeless, runaway children, as an uncaring B.C. Liberal government showed more interest in saving money than saving lives, and contempt for the safety of our most vulnerable, preyed upon, children;

• Cuts to the number of special education teachers by 17.5%, the elimination of 20% of ESL teachers, the closure of more than 100 school libraries, and the elimination of 23.4% of teacher librarians;

• Draconian cuts to legal aid, the closure of 37 women’s centres, plus 35% cuts, or higher, in funding to government oversight agencies such as the offices of the Ombudsman, the Auditor General, Information and Privacy Commissioner, and the Police Complaints Commission;

• The permanent, life-long banning of protestors from the British Columbia Legislature, meaning the very real crushing of political dissent in BC;

• The tearing up of legally-bargained-for collective agreements, and the Supreme Court of Canada decision just this past Friday to hear a case challenging a controversial provincial labour law, Bill 29, that allowed the Liberals to invalidate collective agreements, contract out work and lay off health-care workers;

• The erosion of basic rights to working people, including the elimination of overtime pay, stat holiday pay for part-time workers, and the repeal of pay equity legislation;

• The expansion of gambling in British Columbia, expected this year to take half a billion dollars out of the pockets of the most vulnerable;

• The sale of BC Rail and two-thirds of BC Hydro, and the attendant scandals surrounding each sale;

• The privatization of hospital services, leading to skyrocketing surgery wait lists, the loss of 7000 frontline health care worker jobs, and a radical decline in the quality of food and support services, and dietary and hygiene standards;

• The retreat from the promise of universal child care, with 57% fewer subsidized child care spaces, a 49% decrease in enrolment, and a 31% rise in fees.

This shameful list of degrading wrongs committed against the interests of all British Columbians could go on and on. What are we to do?

Over the course of the past four years, Gordon Campbell and his far right-wing, agenda-driven Lie-beral government has brought British Columbia to its knees. The time has come for all of us to stop living on our knees, and stand up and fight for the rights of each and every one of us, for a better and fairer British Columbia where social justice once again becomes a central tenet of a British Columbia by the people and for the people, where democracy shall not perish but flourish.

Take action.

Get up off your knees, and help someone else off their knees. Volunteer for the candidate in your local riding who is most likely to defeat the Gordon Campbell Lie-beral candidate. Work in office reception, canvass door to door, fold brochures, place signs for your candidate throughout your riding. There is so much that needs to be done to work for change.

You can change the world. Start today. Volunteer. We need you.

April 21, 2005

Campaign 2005: Day Three Towards a Better Tomorrow

Here we are into Day Three of Campaign 2005, and the New Democratic Party would appear to have grabbed hold of the political agenda, as they have set about to determine the tone for the provincial campaign that will decide on who will form the next provincial government.

As hecklers have dogged Campbell at every one of his campaign stops, a sense of palpable anger — verging on rage — permeates the air whenever Gordon Campbell opens his mouth to lie to the people of British Columbia. Meanwhile, the experience of NDP premier-in-waiting, Carole James, is quite different, one where at each stop she is met by enthusiastic campaign well-wishers, shouts of support, and a heartfelt belief that, once again, British Columbia will soon be a province where everyone matters.

As promised in an earlier posting, VanRamblings will attempt to keep you up-to-date on Campaign 2005 by directing you to published story links reflecting on the current provincial election. So, let’s get started ...

• Campbell Misled Public on NDP Finances: In a story published on The Tyee website, co-author of Liberalized and regular Tyee columnist Will McMartin makes the case that “far from inheriting a fiscal disaster from the NDP, (Gordon) Campbell and his party were given a provincial treasury brimming with cash. But the voting public was led to think very much otherwise.”

• Want To Reach Young Voters? Try Cellphones: Mark Hume, writing in the Globe and Mail, introduces “Get Your Vote On, a non-partisan group that is trying to ignite the power of young voters like never before.”

• Election sports number of firsts: Here’s Gordon McIntyre’s April 20th story in The Province newspaper.

• Left Turn: Ran into Gary Cristall at last Sunday’s COPE AGM, as he reminded VanRamblings that left turn is once again active and in the struggle to remind the electorate about just what we’re fighting for.

• Campbell calls rural B.C. heartland, but some see it as ‘hurt land’: Dirk Meissner, in a Canadian Press story quotes UBC political scientist Richard Johnston on the pain many rural B.C. communities have endured under a Gordon Campbell government, “The proportionate impact of any kind of service cut back, particularly where it’s kind of concrete — court houses and that sort of stuff — is going to weigh more heavily in small places than in a place like Vancouver ... the government is going to be in trouble in some parts of the so-called heartland, there’s no question about that ...”

In the fight to defeat Gordon Campbell, the efforts of every one of us are required. Which means more than sitting on your duff waiting to cast your ballot on May 17th. The NDP campaigns need your volunteer support to canvass ridings, stuff envelopes, mainstreet with the candidate in your riding, work on communications and fundraising, answer the phones, offer IT support and website management, co-ordinate events, host coffee klatches, distribute signs, and much, much more. Rest assured, your local NDP campaign office will greet you with open arms.

VanRamblings leaves you with this thought, offered by pioneering cultural anthropologist and social historian Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

April 19, 2005

Election 2005: The Campaign Is Finally (Officially) Underway

Carole James, BC NDP leader

Having just returned from the Carole James’ NDP Campaign Kickoff at the Italian Cultural Centre, VanRamblings looks forward in the coming days to linking to Ms. James’ address to the party faithful, via a Working TV link, just as soon as the video becomes available.

For the past 24 hours, VanRamblings was unavailable due to what Arne, at our server host Synercom/edi, reports as “a serious hardware failure of our primary network file-server AND of our backup (fail-over) network file-server ... because of the catastrophic nature of the problem, the issue was not remediated until early Tuesday morning.” When all is said and done — given the information Arne reports — rather than post early in the day Tuesday, April 19th, as normally would be our wont, VanRamblings will post at the end of a very busy, and at times, tumultuous (but ultimately satisfying) Campaign 2005 Kickoff Day.

Now down to business ...

According to a column written by Sean Holman in the Wednesday, April 13th edition of The Vancouver Sun, internal polling conducted by both the provincial Liberals and the NDP indicate that the New Democratic Party is leading, or in contention, in 53 out of the 79 provincial ridings.

Regardless of what the March Ipsos-Reid poll or early April Mustel Group poll report, the 2005 provincial election is a neck-and-neck race, with every possibility that the NDP may form the next provincial government.

According to informed sources, the internal party polls found that British Columbians are looking to put a strong opposition into place, and to that end Green Party supporters, and a substantial number of Liberals across the province, are prepared to hold their nose and vote NDP. The Liberals are so concerned about what their polling is showing that they’re putting out the word that the “current scenario is not unlike the 1972 election, when British Columbians looking to create a strong opposition to the Socreds inadvertently elected a majority NDP government.”

How the Liberals intend to consolidate their core constituency vote come May 17th, and bring a disenchanted electorate back onboard is anybody’s guess. But, they’ve got to be worried about what the future holds.

Meanwhile, Milton Chan’s Election Prediction Project, and The Tyee’s BattleGround BC — an election seat prediction model designed by political commentator and historian Will McMartin — as well as the usually reliable UBC Election Stock Market, have yet to ramp up into full election mode.

In other election news this first day of the 38th British Columbia election, the NDP have released the first two, low-key, ads (available here and here) in their million-dollar strategy to convince voters that “everyone matters,” the first addressing the economy, the second broken promises.

In closing today’s column, VanRamblings offers Vancouver Sun political columnist Vaughn Palmer’s April 19th, campaign kickoff, column (hidden behind a subscription firewall but available on VanRamblings anyway).

April 18, 2005

A British Columbia Call To Action: Because Everyone Matters

The countdown to the 38th British Columbia election is underway, the official dropping of the writ mere hours away.

Over the course of the next 30 days, VanRamblings will post daily opinion on issues surrounding this most important mid-decade provincial election.

To kick things off, VanRamblings offers the following clickable links:

• Tommy Douglas: Standing just five foot six and weighing just 148 pounds, Tommy Douglas’ voice booms and echoes with passion in this radio broadcast, where the, then, federal NDP leader tells the story of Mouseland. Although the speech was originally given some 43 years ago, the sentiments expressed are relevant still today.

• The Hospital Employees Union: Across British Columbia, over the last four years, Gordon Campbell’s Liberals have closed 1,464 long-term care beds, 1200 hospital beds, while waiting lists are up by 30 percent, and hospitals and emergency rooms have closed in communities across British Columbia despite fervent opposition — including St. Mary’s Hospital in New Westminster and the only hospital in Kimberley. For a more graphic illustration of the cuts to health, click here.

Over on the right-hand side of the screen at the top, please find a series of links to election-oriented websites. In the coming days, the list of websites and blogs will continue to grow. See you back here often.

February 21, 2005

Teachers Win Significant Victory In B.C. Court of Appeal

Dispirited because the creeps who run government affairs in British Columbia seem, almost always, to get their nefarious way when it comes to collective bargaining, stripping funding from programmes serving the interests of our most vulnerable citizens, or just generally riding roughshod over every cherished social programme caring citizens have put in place over the course of the past century?

Well, our provincial Lie-beral government doesn’t get its way every time.

British Columbia teachers, and advocates for the public education system, are celebrating a landmark Court ruling. The B.C. Court of Appeal has affirmed that teachers can grieve violations of the class size numbers in the School Act. The government had previously stripped class size limits from the teachers’ hard-bargained-for collective agreement, a move which resulted in larger classes and less individual attention for students.

According to a press release issued by the B.C. Teachers’ Federation ...

In an unanimous decision handed down today, the B.C. Court of Appeal ruled in favour of B.C. teachers ... ruling that “aggregate class sizes (are) a significant part of the employment relationship” ... the Court of Appeal has ruled that an arbitrator can enforce the class-size limitations embodied in the School Act ... BCTF President Jinny Sims said, “this is great news for students and teachers ... the courts have once again ruled that this government is wrong.”

The BCTF was also awarded costs that the B.C. Public School Employers’ Association must pay.

Upon release of the ruling, Premier Gordon Campbell was quoted in The Vancouver Sun as saying “What I always try to do is follow what I understand the rules to be,” forgetting to add in his statement that the moon is made of cheese, employers always treat their employees fairly, and that he’s a ne’er-do-well renowned far and wide for being a lyin’ bastard.

February 20, 2005

British Columbia Budget 2005: Too Little, Too Late

After setting the record for the largest deficit in British Columbia history only two years ago, Gordon Campbell‘s Liberal government is about to close out 2004/05 with B.C.’s largest-ever surplus, at around $2 billion.

With the February 15th ‘Golden Era’ budget have the Lie-berals made the decision to reduce poverty and re-invest in public services for the benefit of all British Columbians? According to David Schreck, at Strategic Thoughts, the answer is: no.

The 2005 budget threw a few crumbs back to the masses in an attempt to buy forgiveness and the election, (translating) into a benefit of $34 a year compared to more than $20,000 a year they gave to top income earners in 2001. The spending side of the budget also looks like crumbs when the announcements are put in perspective relative to past cuts: if all of the monies for the homeless that were announced in Budget 2005 went just to the City of Vancouver, it wouldn’t scratch the surface of the problem; as well, under the Campbell government’s plan it will take until 2008 to get back to the 2001 level of funding for adult community living services; and remember June 2001 when the Campbell government announced $1.5 billion in personal income tax cuts ... just 11,000 tax filers who report incomes in excess of $250,000 per year, received $200 million in tax cuts, or $20,000 a piece, while the rest of us had our taxes reduced by $34 to $386 a year.

Is B.C. doing better than it was four years ago, and is the current record surplus due to prudent Lie-beral fiscal management? VanRamblings suggests: absolutely not. Why is B.C. running a budget surplus? Could draconian cuts to services to children, seniors, the disabled and the very poorest among us have anything to do with the surplus? Yes.

Are record federal transfer payments to B.C. for health care and equalization a factor in our budget surplus? Yes. Are Crown Corporation revenues adding to the provincial bottom line, including a 50% increase in gambling revenues? Yes. Are large revenue gains that stem from Medical Service Plan premium hikes, tuition fee increases, and windfalls in property taxes and resource royalties also factors? Yes, again.

The next provincial election, May 17th, is only 86 days away. Will you be voting Lie-beral this time out?