The Never Ending Story

The Harmonized Sales Tax will unfortunately be introduced on July 1st, 2010 in British Columbia after Bill 9 was passed by the Liberal majority in the Legislature earlier today. We have not lost ladies and gentlemen; in fact we have won a major battle.

Elections BC have announced that Colin Hansen's plan to provide the public with information regarding the HST is a breaching of the Recall & Initiative Act. In response, Colin Hansen plans to file a complaint with the organization, because he doesn't agree with his own government's law.

This coupled with the fact that the initiative now has about 175,000 signatures total, and is exceeding the threshold in 21 of the 85 ridings, the Liberals are getting scared. None of the government members voted against the Consumption Tax Rebate & Transition Act. All NDP MLAs including Independent member Vicki Huntington voted against the bill.

For now, both sides must play the waiting game. With the session ending on June 3rd, and the initiative ending on July 5th, we might be able to go a day without constant yelling during Question Period about a certain sales tax. I would expect that the Initiative will pass, and if the tax does not die then, the political careers of many government members, might...

Bigger & Better Issues

The debate on Bill 9, also known as the HST legislation is soon to come to an end. The Liberals will soon hold the final vote on the act on Thursday allowing the law to come into effect on May 1st. No, the HST is not going into effect in under a week, but purchased made before hand to be delivered on or after July 1st will be charged HST. This rant though isn't about the HST (shocking I know), this is about why they are speeding up this whole process.

Mike de Jong stated earlier this week that the elected representatives of this province must get to work on more important issues. Just think about that for a moment. Everything that this government has done since the 2009 election has been controversial, and really quite regressive as far as effectiveness. Funding cuts to education, health care, and even families with autistic children. What's next? Will it be corporate votes? Will it be the disestablishment of BC Rail? Or something else that wasn't included in the Liberals platform?

The point of this is I'm scared for my province. Eight years of Campbell tyranny was bad enough, but just in this past year, they have used every dirty trick in the book. We must do whatever is necessary to either get the Liberals back on Common Sense Crescent, or better yet throw them out of their desk in the Legislature via a recall petition or face the possibility of a 20th century British Columbia, again...

I am willing to admit that there have been some solid pieces of legislation that have come from the 39th Parliament. To be fair, the Liberals haven't put out terrible pieces of legislation, but the stuff that is acceptable isn't earth shattering, and is easily overshadowed by a certain Finance Ministers lies.

If getting on to "more important business" includes things like the Motor Vehicle Amendment Act, or the Zero Net Deforestation Act then all should be fine. If however, we start to see some bills calling for the privatization of BC Hydro or ICBC, I think a coup is in order.

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

A little while back there, I was talking about which Liberal MLAs we could recall beginning on the 15th of November. I was looking forward to the possibility of people like Ida Chong or Gordon Campbell being removed from the Legislature. Since then though, Colin Hansen has proven that it's capable for this government to break another one of its own laws.

Recently, he has announced that he will be sending information to every household in the province informing them about the budget. He then went on to say that he would also attempt to stop the apparent misinformation about the HST that is being spread by the NDP, the FightHST campaign, and Bill Vander Zalm himself.

If I remember correctly, and as my MLA clearly stated in the Legislature on Thursday, there is no opponent group for the Initiative to end the harmonized sales tax. Yet Mr. Hansen is using public tax dollars to get the public on his side that his new tax won't cost them more even though about 82% of British Columbians know it is not going to be revenue neutral. Another Liberal MLA is breaking the law.

I was stopped by the Recall and Initiative Act, so shouldn't he be too? Mr. Hansen, like everyone else in this province is not above the law. He must apply as the sole opponent to the Initiative, or else that is another law he is breaking. I could write a novel listing all of the acts these damn Liberals have broken in the past 11 months.

It has become increasingly apparent that the Liberals don't like democracy. First, they broke the mandate that they were elected on only three days after the polls closed. Then, they attempted to push the bill through even earlier then they announced to suck more dollars out of our wallets. Now, after all of this, they are attempting to defeat a citizen's initiative. You can't make this stuff up.

These are the final days of the Campbell ministry; it is only a matter of time until Gordon cracks under the pressure...

Step 2: Recall

November 15th, marks the start of possible recall campaigns. After this initiative is over, it is expected that citizens will mobilize and concentrate on areas of weak Liberal prominence. During a recall campaign, 40% of all registered voters are required to support the motion. If this is achieved they will be recalled. The following ridings are areas where according to the 2009 election results we could recall the Liberal MLA if we all banded together.

-Abbotsford-Mission (Mining Minister Randy Hawes)
-Abbotsford South (John van Dongen)
-Abbotsford West (Attorney General Mike de Jong)
-Boundary-Similkameen (John Slater)
-Burnaby-Lougheed (Harry Bloy)
-Burnaby North (Richard Lee)
-Cariboo-Chilcotin (Donna Barnett)
-Chilliwack (John Les)
-Chilliwack-Hope (Environment Minister Barry Penner)
-Comox Valley (Don McRae)
-Coquitlam-Burke Mountain (Douglas Horne)
-Kamloops-North Thompson (Terry Lake)
-Kamloops-South Thompson (Tourism Minister Kevin Krueger)
-Kelowna-Lake Country (Norm Letnick)
-Kelowna-Mission (Agriculture Minister Steve Thomson)
-Kootenay East (Community and Rural Development Minister Bill Bennett)
-Langley (Mary Polak)
-Maple Ridge-Mission (Marc Dalton)
-Nechako Lakes (John Rustad)
-North Vancouver-Lonsdale (Intergovernmental Minister Naomi Yamamoto)
-North Vancouver-Seymour (Jane Thornthwaite)
-Oak Bay-Gordon Head (Health Minister Ida Chong)
-Parksville-Qualicum (Ron Cantelon)
-Peace River North (Pat Pimm)
-Penticton (Speaker Bill Barisoff)
-Port Moody-Coquitlam (Small Business Minister Iain Black)
-Prince George-Mackenzie (Forests and Range Minister Pat Bell)
-Prince George-Valemount (Transportation Minister Shirley Bond)
-Richmond East (Linda Reid)
-Saanich North and the Islands (Labour Minister Murray Coell)
-Shuswap (Aboriginal Relations Minister George Abbott)
-Surrey-Panorama (Stephanie Cadieux)
-Surrey-Tynehead (Dave Hayer)
-Vancouver-Fairview (Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid)
-Vancouver-False Creek (ActNow BC Minister Mary McNeil)
-Vancouver-Fraserview (Kash Heed)
-Vancouver-Langara (Advanced Education Minister Moira Stilwell)
-Vancouver-Point Grey (Premier Gordon Campbell)
-Vernon-Monashee (Eric Foster)
-Westside Kelowna (Ben Stewart)
-West Vancouver-Sea to Sky Highway (Joan McIntyre)

That is quite the list ladies and gentlemen. A full 41 Liberal MLAs could be recalled if we all worked together. Unfortunately, MLAs representing the north would be harder to recall as organizing in rural areas is much more challenging then urban cities.

Apparently, the first recall we are going to attempt it going to be Gordon Campbell's riding of Vancouver-Point Grey. If we could recall him, force a by-election, and win, then his political career would be over. How nice that would be...

The Night of Resignations

Political suicide has been committed today; twice even, one in Victoria, and the other off in Ottawa. Ms. Helena Guergis as you have most likely heard about, has resigned her position as Minister of State (Status of Women). The other, is Mr. Kash Heed, leaving the post of Solicitor-General and Minister of Public Safety.

It has been a day since Helena Guergis' husband was linked to fraudsters claiming unrestricted access to the Prime Minister's Office. In a surprising move, Mr. Harper called in the RCMP to investigate the junior minister, she later resigned. Across the country in the capital of British Columbia, Kash Heed resigned after the police accused the minister of violating the Election Act. Both legislators insist they will retain their seat in the Assembly and the House of Commons.

Now for the political spin. Will Helena Guergis survive in the next election? Geurgis' seat of Simcoe-Grey is solidly Conservative, and if anyone is going to pick it up, it will be the Liberals. Still, this is the best election since 2000 for the Liberals, and if I were in Simcoe-Grey, I would be starting to question things. Kash Heed, who by the way was a former police chief in Vancouver (irony, I love it), might have a tougher challenge in front of him in 2013. New Democrats came close there, and this seat might help us form the government in BC. In an interesting note from CTV, this is the third Solicitor-General since 2008 to resign in the current Executive Council. I sense a pattern developing.

Update (December 2011): Kash Heed is still in the political wilderness over campaigning financing breaches. Helena Guergis however was practically framed by Stephen Harper. While she did make some poor calls in the past (the airport business, etc.), the allegations that she did anything wrong in this latest round of beyond that were unproveable. She stayed on as an independnet member in the House of Commons, ran in the May 2011 election and was defeated. She was taken down single handedly by Mr. Harper. She now plans to sue the Conservative Party, the Prime Minister and members of the PMO for defamation of character.