Pete's Viewpoint

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...

It's a new industry, this on-demand ride hailing service that exists in several large cities around the world (and coming to BC). It's being cited as a partial solution in the fight against climate change; reducing the need for car ownership while getting more usage from vehicles currently owned. While valid points, ride hailing services also create issues that the new industry haven't yet answered. Point/counter point. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/04/how-uber-and-lyft-could-do-better-by-the-planet/558866 / My 2 bits

Despite the powerful taxi lobby in BC, the ride sharing companies cannot legitimately be stopped from entering the BC market. Not unless the government wants to expose the taxpayer to significant legal expenses. What the government can (and should) do, is regionalize the taxi certification/license process and require that anyone involved in a ride sharing operation be up to the same license and training standards as any taxi driver including the appropriate car insurance for their vehicle. Wanna be a taxi? Play by the same rules. My 2 bits

It started out as a curious discussion on a facebook group called "Canadian Political Forum" where the groups sole administrator opened up a thread to take a swipe at the notion that 'white privilege' is even a thing. According to the admin, the 'liberal-left' harping on about white-privilege is the same as hate speech. But don't take my word for it, read it for yourself. Given that I identify as one of those in the liberal-left, I thought I'd add a response; initially mocking the notion that white men are under attack, given that white-European demographics in Canada are sitting at around 77% of everyone. White men occupy most of the seats of power in politics and the corporate world; in our country at least. Just for your edification, remember that promoting hate speech is actually a crime. You cannot do that and not face the potential of legal sanction resulting up to including jail time. To make a long story short, in trying to point out that i...

So this story appeared in the media recently where the then non-politician Justin Trudeau appears to have inappropriately touched ("handled"?) a young female reporter at a music festival about 20 years ago. I haven't a clue why it showed up now, except that, noteworthy, it was promoted or raised by a powerful federal liberal insider. Fast forward to today and the reporter who's not in the industry anymore, reluctantly spoke out on the matter. In essence, she remarked that the issue came and went at the time, that Justin apologized at the time and she considers the issue closed...and that she doesn't want to participate in any further public dialogue on the matter. So be it. Its not my place to tell a victim or survivor how to deal with their incident or fallout later on in life. She wants the matter to go away and be left alone and folks to respect her and her family's privacy. So she should. But Justin's managing of the messaging of this speaks t...