Time To End The BC Liberal Dynasty
Oooooh, we’re so scared of the NDP and their nasty, unreformed socialist ways here in B.C. So, we hold our noses and vote, time and again, for the BC Liberals.
I’m done.
Between the HST and jacking up the MSP Premiums, the carbon tax, outright lies during the election campaign, and the blatant disregard for the people of British Columbia during a crippling global recession, I’m finished voting for them.
Let me see … higher taxes, arrogance and deception … sounds an awful lot like Federal Liberals to me.
Obviously I can’t vote for the NDP, but I will not be voting BC Liberal either.
Ever.
I can hear it now from my BC Liberal holdouts, “But Paul, you can’t split the vote and get the NDP elected.”
Too bloody bad. I’m done.
It used to be a decision between socialism or the free market. Now it’s a decision between socialism or arrogance and deception.
I hope that a new party emerges to prevent an NDP victory (or, at the very least, the NDP gets their wits about them and reforms themselves before they get elected and drive this province into the toilet … again).
But I no longer believe we are better off with the current alternative.
Harmonized Sales Tax
The quietest massive policy shift in British Columbia (and Ontario) is underway.
The Harmonized Sales Tax seeks to make tax collecting more efficient by combining the policies for the Federal GST with that of the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) in target jurisdictions. The unfortunate side-effect the B.C. Government has already admitted to is that sales taxes for consumers will go up.
Here are a few other things that they won’t want to talk about:
It’s A Regressive Tax
The obvious one is that, unlike income taxes, sales taxes are “regressive”. That is, the poorer you are, the more costly this tax is to you as a percentage of your income vs. richer Canadians. The reason is that poorer people spend a higher proportion of their income on consuming the very things that the HST will be charged on (richer Canadians have more money to put toward things that do not have a standard sales tax structure: investments, travel abroad, rents and mortgages, education, etc.).
There are good arguments for flat taxes (everyone gets taxed evenly), and good arguments for progressive taxes (the richer pay a higher percentage of their income), but I have yet to hear a good argument for “regressive” taxation. This said, the BC Liberals seem to love them. The highly regressive Medical Services Plan Premium was effectively doubled for most middle-class British Columbians under Gordon Campbell back in 2002; the closer these middle-class British Columbians were to being classified as “poor”, the higher the rate (as a percentage of income).
Bad For Business
Businesses that had to only charge GST previously become less competitive now. There are numerous examples out there, but I’ll offer one more that I am quite familiar with: e-Commerce Services.
This industry only had to charge GST since the very beginning. All this will change next July.
They already compete with GST-free Alberta, not to mention other countries, like National Sales Tax-free America. But this latest move will make B.C. and Ontario-based e-Commerce Services companies even more uncompetitive.
To date, HST has been a non-issue, as Atlantic Canada is hardly a hotbed of e-Commerce. With their long history of HST, setting up a company there would have been a foolish undertaking.
With British Columbia and Ontario joining the HST mix, you can expect to see an exodus of e-Commerce firms, and they will all be heading to Alberta. I have heard this first hand from quite a number of my own competitors in both B.C. and Alberta (of course, nobody will go “on the record”).
An End To Progressive Tax Policy
The BC NDP has pointed out that the provincial government will lose the ability to use the PST to promote green (or any other) policies.
An Election Lie
The BC Liberals were on record as saying that they were not going to implement HST. This message was very clearly laid out prior to, and during the election campaign. Obviously they lied.
Maxime Bernier
The ever brilliant Chantal Hébert has reminded us all that the most popular Quebec Conservative remains Maxime Bernier.
So the guy made a bad relationship decision (OK, really bad). I’m over it, hopefully the RCMP will be over it soon, too. Sigh.
But here are the facts – as Quebec Conservative Minister’s go, he was the biggest star to date – not just in terms of good looks and celebrity, but in terms of hard work and competency.
(Oh, and there’s a nasty rumour that he’s actually a “conservative” Conservative.)
Now he has his own blog – so what, who doesn’t? Well, most Members of Parliament don’t. Too risky.
As soon as this RCMP business is over, Maxime Bernier needs to be restored to Cabinet, and restored as Quebec Lieutenant for the party.
Here’s a fun sidebar – I just discovered a Twitter account attempting to recruit Maxime to lead the ADQ. This would be a terrible loss for the Conservative Party of Canada. Would they rename the ADQ to Action démocratique du Québec-Équipe Maxime Bernier instead of Équipe Mario Dumont?
BC Election Number Crunching and “Vote-Splitting”
STV is dead for a century.
So, we are back to the same old, same old. We all vote for Gordon Campbell because we’re scared to death of the NDP. And Gordon Campbell takes it all as a personal endorsement of his great work, while voter turnout falls and falls, as voters just get fed up and give up.
Hooray! Ugh.
On “vote-splitting”, here’s some interesting numbers for those who think about such things.
BC Conservative Party
Upon analyzing the numbers from Elections BC, there is not a single campaign where the “BC Conservative Party” split the vote and caused the NDP to win. Take any of the ridings, add the BC Liberal vote to the BC Conservative vote, and the outcome is the same.
Green Party of BC
The same can absolutely NOT be said of the Green Party (if you presume, as I do not, that the natural home for Green voters is the NDP).
I count 11 ridings where a combined Green-NDP vote would have turned the tide in favour of the NDP (and 1 which would have been an automatic recount, Vancouver-Fraserview).
The seat count was 49 to 36 for the Liberals (with Wally Oppal winning by 2 votes, so far).
If you move 11 of those seats to the NDP from the BC Liberals, we would have had a majority NDP government, with 47 to 38 seats.
How does that make you feel today?
My shortest blog post ever.
Time for Carole James to go!
The most boring election in history!
Politicians always tell you that this is “the most important election”, then follow it up with something serious sounding like “in a generation” or “since the cold war” or “since James Polk declared 54’40 or fight!”
Please.
I’d like to declare this election in British Columbia “the most boring”, and follow it up with “in the history of the universe”.
This is unfortunate, and it didn’t have to be this way.
There are issues, like, oh, say, the economy. But nobody is proposing anything interesting or colourful enough to care about. The big issues are turning out to be BC Hydro and BC Rail. Wow, dams and railroads – this is cutting edge 19th century stuff people!
If the total lack of inspiration results in low voter turnout, then I hope the BC Liberals and the rest of us enjoy the next 4 years under Premier Carole James.
Because, as any politico will tell you, the NDP is very good at getting out their vote – even when things are exceedingly dull.
I suspect things won’t be that dull once Carole James and her union buddies start running things.
Maybe I’ll have to move to somewhere a little more business-friendly – I hear Venezuela is nice.
The REAL problem with BC elections
The REAL problem with BC elections is the sorry state of the NDP.
The NDP is a party stuck in 1963. They are an unreformed socialist party. As a result, they scare the hell out of anyone who isn’t a radical socialist.
If they were a fringe party, this wouldn’t be an issue at all. The problem is that they are the only potential alternative for those who are fed up with Gordon Campbell and the Liberals. One has to presume that they will eventually win again.
If they were more like the Saskatchewan NDP, or European Social Democrats, we could grumble about an NDP victory, but at least not wake up with cold sweats, wondering whether their next move is nationalizing McDonald’s through the Ministry of Fast Food (OK, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad).
The same disease afflicts the federal wing of the NDP, but they don’t have a hope of ever winning, so their presence isn’t nearly as frightening.
So, how do we fix the problem?
The truth is, we don’t. I’m a libertarian-Conservative, I can’t help matters at all. They must fix it.
Patient, Heal Thyself.
There has been the odd movement here and there toward modernizing the party, but it’s always been quashed before it got too far. Part of the problem is the voting structure of the party itself, heavily weighted to automatic voting for unions and their proxies. But the other part is a simple lack of will on the part of moderate social democrats to take on the task.
Here is my hope for the upcoming election:
First of all, heaven help us, the NDP must lose. Carole James must move on.
What else must happen is that moderate social democrats with leadership potential must win – candidates such as John Horgan. These leaders must then have balls enough to take on the union establishment. It won’t be easy, but it will certainly make the NDP a less scary proposition for the province.
It will also be good for democracy. Instead of being herded into voting for Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberals, people will be free to consider an alternative. (Of course, STV will go miles toward accomplishing this as well.)
Shouldn’t we just allow them to fester and die in their backwardness?
If STV passes, then maybe. But I don’t think it will pass. So, we’re right back where we started.
And since the NDP will eventually win again, the question isn’t do you want the NDP to form government, but what kind of NDP government do you want when they do win?
This is a double-edged sword.
If they do modernize, they would instantly become a more viable competitor, and would be far more likely to win. But the far scarier prospect is if they continue down the current path and we have a re-run of the last time they were in power.
If that happens, everyone* loses.
* Note: excluding union bosses and radical left-wing hippy protester-types.
Vote for Jane Sterk
Although I am a fan of the BC Green Party policy on independent power producers, I am not a “Green”, nor will I be endorsing “The Green Party” this election.
In fact, after a great deal of consideration, I have decided not to endorse any party. Instead, I will be endorsing individual candidates from different parties.
My first endorsement: Although I have never met her, I feel very strongly that the good people of Esquimalt-Royal Roads should vote for Jane Sterk.
Why?
Because she is competent, intelligent, and leader of a terribly under-represented, though incredibly serious (and increasingly reasonable, mainstream), provincial party.
Think about it.
In 2005, the Green Party received 9% of the vote – 9 out of every 100 voters voted this way. They voted this way despite the fact that they almost certainly knew that their chosen candidate would lose. In 2001, it was 12%.
Who knows how many votes the Green Party “would have” received if they had a chance of winning – I’m sure many people who wanted to vote Green voted BC Liberal or NDP because they didn’t want their votes to be “wasted”.
STV could certainly change the game in future elections, but that may or may not pass.
Chances are many people are voting like me this election – voting AGAINST somebody, not FOR anybody. If everyone in Esquimalt-Royal Roads took the initiative to vote “AGAINST” the other parties, and “FOR” a provincial party leader, the Green Party will win one seat, and will get their voice (whether you agree with them or not) to the table.
This is good for democracy, and good for the Province.
Support Competitive Electricity Market: Vote Green?!?
According to their large collection of YouTube videos, the BC NDP doesn’t have much to say about the economy.
Even the one called Carole James on the Economy says something vague about putting working people first. I don’t know what this means (I presume this is code for some socialist ideal, but I’m not sure). What I am sure about is that nothing in this video (or any of the others) have anything to do with the economy. I think Gary Mason says it best in the Globe and Mail. When it comes to the economy, James is simply out of her depth. Is she hoping that this election will end up being about something else?
The NDP is on about Gordon Campbell wanting to privatize everything and the kitchen sink (the NDP believes the kitchen sink is an important public asset). This NDP anti-privatization rant wants to ensure you that hospitals are not built by private companies, and making sure that BC Hydro doesn’t get privatized by those evil BC Liberals.
If only this last point was remotely true, man would that motivate me – I’d be far more excited about the BC Liberals!
- The latest example of BC Liberal support for the BC Hydro monopoly states that they will “[develop] the proposed Site C Hydroelectric dam in Northern B.C. as a public asset, owned by BC Hydro.”
- As mentioned, the NDP is pretty clear about their love for BC Hydro – the bigger and publicker BC Hydro, the better.
- Even the tiny BC Conservative Party has a policy that states “BC Hydro will not be disposed of without the permission of the voting public via referendum.” (PDF)
- Want free market economics? Look to the long-haired hippies in the Green Party:
BC Greens will foster the building of green and clean, renewable energy facilities with an emphasis on co-operative and municipally-owned utilities, while providing the opportunity for private producers and transmission operators to participate in a mixed public / private energy system.
Private transmission operators? What the hell is this, Europe!?
Independent power producers are nimble, innovative, and generally “greener”. BC Hydro and its powerful union has done everything possible to put the brakes on these energy alternatives and innovations at every turn. Gordon Campbell has taken some baby steps to reign in the 800-pound gorilla (or, in NDP-speak, MASSIVE PRIVATIZATION), by freeing up private energy producers to operate in BC, but to a very limited degree.
More should be done! Perhaps Gordon Campbell could take a page out of the Green Party’s radical free market approach.
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