Pete's Viewpoint

To believe BC Liberal rhetoric on fuel prices in BC, the NDP are responsible for the highest gas prices in North America. Facts however, tell another story. What are the BC Liberals asking for in this narrative? Subsidized gas? Because the taxation regime in place is largely untouched since they left office. While it is true that the carbon tax in BC went up by a penny, that's hardly the explanation for the recent dramatic jump in price. There are several factors. Regional governments, city halls, transit authorities all have a hand in adding layers of taxation to fuel costs in BC. To believe the BC Liberal version of this: the NDP is responsible for 100% of this tax burden. What's even more asinine is the failure to build Kinder Morgan that the NDP opposes is also responsible for this fuel price overload. Would someone please tell the BC Liberals that the expanded Kinder Morgan project is for export only? The Alberta based tar sands fuel that ends up in our vehic...

Just when the MSM was about to get serious about some honest reporting, this egg was laid by senior political reporter playing the 'both sides' card. Almost on cue. No Keith. The NDP doesn't get the blame for travel expenses that Craig James and Gary Lenz traded signatures on. It was unknown enough that it took Speaker Daryl Plecas by surprise when he dug around for the information. This 'both sides' narrative is a BC Liberal talking point because they know how ethically exposed they are already; this makes matters worse merely a week ahead of the Nanaimo byelection they're poised to lose. Now with this stink out there, it feeds into the narrative that BC Liberals are the party of crony capitalism and insiderism; so lets throw some mud at the NDP and make them to blame too. Nothing in the #plecasreport implicates the NDP government or any of its MLA's or cabinet ministers. How embarrassing.

Go ahead, read his article here . The background here is that BC Liberal candidate for Nanaimo, Tony Harris was caught editing out the word 'speculation' on his bio page just ahead of his announcing of his candidacy. For anyone born yesterday or unplugged from the affairs of BC for the last 10 years, real estate speculation has turned the industry into a giant slot machine for developers and realtors. Its become a tough slog for first time home buyers as the average starter home has consistently and dramatically become more out of reach for average folks. None of which is directly to blame on Tony himself. But being given a front page exposure for apparently trying to hide his affinity to the speculation part of real estate seemed that it needed an explanation. So that's where we begin and that's where it gets awkward for Tony. Thing 1. Young people aren't tuning out of politics; they're tuning out of the big parties. Yes, your Trump/MAGA hat stunt wa...

Global writer Keith Baldrey penned an opinion piece on the coming storm regarding the carbon tax. More than anything, it muses about the politics around the carbon levy and its future. My bet is that it isn't going anywhere. Both Justin Trudeau and John Horgan have little to be concerned about regarding the political noise being made around it. The legal challenge. Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan have filed a legal challenge to attempt to stop the federal government from imposing a carbon tax (in the absence of a provincial one) of up to $50/tonne once fully in place. The trouble is that the federal government, constitutionally, has no limit to what tax it can impose. Literally, in Article 91(3) it reads , "The raising of Money by any Mode or System of Taxation.". So if I was a betting man, this challenge doesn't go far. The Confidence and Supply Agreement The NDP and Green Party in BC signed a "CSA" in 2017 that put the NDP into office for t...

Again, I don't want to minimize the struggle by middle and modest income earners who already struggle to pay rents in BC, but this call for a 'rent freeze' by some civic political candidates I believe is misguided and fraught with risks. A Rent Freeze by definition is a price control mechanism. BC already has a rent control device, which apparently is inadequate for it to allow a 4.5% annual maximum increase for 2019. Its true that the regulatory framework that the Residential Tenancy Branch uses to establish such rate controls could use some reform. But to arbitrarily freeze rates would open a can of worms that I believe are unintended consequences of their intended goal. In real world experiences where this has been done, its triggered an ironical result of higher rent increases and a drop in rental supply; almost the same result as general price controls in the early 70's in the OPEC Oil embargo, fuel shortages were triggered. I haven't signed up to the neo-...

Maclean Kay is a former speech writer for former BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark As it turns out, when a government that comes to office whose largest support base is from the centre-left including from organized labour, they may at times try to change the rules from the old regime whose support base comes from conservative and big corporate circles. Also, as it turns out, making changes to governing policy that takes advantage away from said corporate circles and advantages the many groups elsewhere, it upsets conservatives. Enter, the NDP's infrastructure policy . Under the policy, there's a heavy emphasis in skills training and apprenticeships, hiring from under-represented groups, and local hiring, and union labour. Completely objectionable in the eyes of the former government supporters who landed in a lot of hot water in their public spending policy over infrastructure. The notion of a 'project labour agreement' is reprehensible to BC Liberals. In elim...

This is going to be uncomfortable for some, but if you voted NDP to "stop fracking" or shut down the LNG trade, then that's an unrealistic expectation and incorrect interpretation of their platform and if you're that person, you have yourself to blame. The NDP, in fact, has supported LNG. When in power in the 90's, they oversaw a significant expansion of the natural gas industry in the north east. It paid off too; billions of dollars in provincial revenue in support of healthcare and education, roads and highways, etc. Good paying, family supporting careers. Where the NDP differed significantly from the BC Liberals is where the Campbell/Clark gov't put so many eggs in one basket. Their policy narrative was that LNG would be bigger to BC than oil would be to Alberta. This is the crux of their imaginary trillion dollar Prosperity Fund™ that never materialized. After destroying 30k private sector jobs in the forest sector because of ill thought out reforms, t...

Voters did not re-elect Christy Clark into another term of government. Voters did not elect the NDP into power. Voters did not vote for any 'coalition' arrangement. Voters elected a minority parliament, and by extension, told said MLA's to work together. NDP learned that lesson. Green Party learned that lesson. One (now former) BC Liberal MLA got that lesson. Christy Clark, Rich Coleman and the rest of the BC Liberal caucus did not learn. After the dust settled that produced the 43-41-3 legislature, two parties figured out that they were going to have to give a little on what they wanted in order to make government work. The BC Liberals had other plans. In one of the most cynical stunts ever, Christy Clark offered up a throne speech that mirrored much of what the NDP and Green Party had campaigned on. Oh, it wasn't because the BC Liberals had a change of heart, it was because they needed to pull at least one opposition vote away from the NDP/Green side to pas...

Say what you wish about Christy Clark's "integrity", but her desperate moves to either retain power or trigger an election were motivated by larger concerns. Hear me out. Since 2005, the BC Liberals have enjoyed a fractured vote on the left. 2001 was their only election win where their support exceeded 50% of the popular vote. Since then, both Campbell and later Clark learned the dark arts of playing one progressive party against the other. In 2017, it failed. Yes, the BC Liberals got just over 40% of the vote and 43 seats (one short of a technical 'majority'), but the combined NDP/Green vote was over 57%. Its true that not all Greens would vote NDP if pushed. But a far larger would go orange than BC Liberal. And this exposes a problem for the BC Liberals. The lesson of which takes us back to 1952 where the established right-of-centre parties were trying to keep the growing CCF from winning an election. As you see, the CCF in fact won the first round vot...

To be clear, I hadn't heard of the pending event until only last week. I consider myself at least an ally of women's rights and affiliated movements, so attending the march would have been an easy decision. Of course I would go. I could have though, relaxed at home, basking in the white male privilege that I enjoy by default. Its not that I haven't worked for the place and status I am at, its just that I am measured by a different yardstick than women and others. I am a single father who has care and control of his child well over half the time. I work full time, I'm a union activist and a partisan political activist as well. I manage, but its not easy to balance everything. I don't do it alone, I have friends and family that assist. Single parenthood is a struggle. Yet, because of my white-male-ness doing what millions of women do every day, I get accolades and 'atta-boy's' from folks who think the world of how I "get'er done". While t...

The BC Liberals have done something unique. They have managed to rake in an unprecedented sum of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from the overheated Vancouver Real Estate market while simultaneously crashing it with their new "Foreign Buyers Tax" (more after images) That escalated quickly. Toronto, your move. pic.twitter.com/SMX52TLUY8 — Donut Shorts (@DonutShorts) September 15, 2016 (cont'd) The BC Liberals are on their typical pre-election spending spree and promise making. Today it was their pledge to cancel the planned 4% hike to MSP premiums. This amounts to an extra $3 per month that won't be charged any more. Predictably, the governing party is making a lot of noise about this after having a rough go of it lately. They had been rightly skewered for increasing said premium by 100% since taking office in 2001. More recently, far more controversially, the government announced that while increasing the monthly allowance for disabled Britis...