Bill Tieleman in Mexico - adios & hasta luego!

Amigas y amigos:  I am on vacation in Merida, Mexico from December 9 to 20!

Bill Tieleman in Todo Santos, Mexico 2011

I will try to post comments as able between cerveza, margarita, pool, beach and Mayan cultural events!

And I will return before the Mayan Calendar indicates the end of the world on December 21, 2012.

Hasta luego!

BC Liberals meeting with BC Business Council December 14 to develop election platform!

BC Liberal Party working with the Business Council of BC to develop its election platform at behind closed doors meeting of top business leaders on December 14

The BC Liberal Party and some media have been in a near-frenzy over the "news" that the BC Federation of Labour is meeting with the New Democratic Party to discuss a labour platform for the 2013 provincial election.

Mike McDonald, BC Liberal Party Campaign Director on Global TV

The document obtained by The Province newspaper was in fact widely circulated at the BC Federation of Labour Convention last week, as President Jim Sinclair pointed out, but no matter - it makes for a great tabloid front page screamer, with BC Liberals like cabinet minister Mary Polak chiming in with shock and outrage.

So let's see if The Province reacts similarly to this news:  I have obtained a document that shows the BC Liberal Party is meeting behind closed doors with the Business Council of BC to develop its own election platform!

And unlike the BC Federation of Labour's Convention, this meeting is not open to the public or media.  Nor do there seem to be plans for the BC Liberals to meet with labour and get its input, even though the NDP is regularly meeting with business as well as unions.

So - big business tycoons will meet in private with the BC Liberal Party's Campaign Director Mike McDonald to hear a "campaign update" and then offer their "policy ideas" to help develop the Liberals' "election platform."


Sounds like a story to me.

Here is the full email I obtained that was sent out by longtime BC Liberal backer Victor Vrsnik - a communications consultant and lobbyist and ex-Canadian Taxpayer Federation staffer with strong ties to business, with personal information removed for privacy reasons, and key parts in bold type added.   

From: Victor Vrsnik
Date: 30 November, 2012  

To: 

Subject: Meeting invite with Mike McDonald, Campaign Director, BC Liberal Party

Dear Xxxxxx,

You are invited to a stakeholder meeting with Mike McDonald, Campaign Director of the BC Liberal Party, on Friday, December 14, 2012, from 10:00AM to 11:00AM at the boardroom of the Business Council of British Columbia (1050 West Pender St., Suite 810).

A renewed Cabinet, combined with seasoned returning MLAs, and an impressive slate of new candidates, the 2013 BC Liberal team is looking strong.

The grassroots of the party are energized from the successful convention in Whistler, and they are stepping up to get the party campaign ready. 

Sold out fundraising dinners have been held around the province, most recently Wednesday night's Resource Dinner in Vancouver that will net a record-breaking total.  Campaign preparations are well under way, but there is still much work to be done.

With the election fast approaching, Mike wanted to provide you, and other industry and business associations, with a Campaign Update and a high level overview of the Party’s plan over the coming months. 

He would like to structure the session so there is plenty of time for discussion and feedback, and also an opportunity for you to offer up policy ideas to feed into the election platform. 

Please RSVP by email xxxxx or by phone xxxxxxx.

Thank you.

Yours,

Victor Vrsnik

-- 
Victor Vrsnik, APR
Principal
SPIRE Public Relations

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Electoral cooperation on Canada's "left" or with "progressives" not possible when Liberal and Green parties fail test!

Unite? Liberals, Greens Are Not 'Progressive'

Nathan Nun cartoon - with thanks for permission

Why I'm not buying into an electoral cooperation pact with New Democrats in next federal election.

Bill Tieleman’s 24 hours/The Tyee column

Tuesday December 4, 2012

By Bill Tieleman 

"The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead."

- U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt 1901-1909

"Unite the left! Have all progressive parties defeat Stephen Harper's evil Conservatives" is the rallying cry of a coalition of increasingly angry agitators.

But my reply is simple: Unite progressives my posterior!

The reality is that neither the federal Liberal nor Green parties are "left" or "progressive" -- and certainly not a merger match for the New Democratic Party.

And despite calls for lowest common denominator politics to defeat Harper, there's a fundamental problem even bigger than creating a cooperative voting coalition for just one election.

It's that the Anyone But Conservatives movement is based on removing voters' right to choose the party of their own liking.

This coercive and anti-democratic impulse is driven by the deluded desperation of Harper haters.

That's why it will never work.

But it hasn't stopped federal Liberal leadership contender Joyce Murray, the Vancouver-Quadra MP, from promoting the idea last week of joint nominations for just the 2015 election, followed by electoral system reform.

The concept behind it is also flawed, because believing that all social democratic NDP supporters would vote for a Liberal or Green candidate in their riding requires an ideological leap of logic.

Murray herself must be aware that many New Democrat voters wouldn't vote for her own candidacy, based on her past record as a Gordon Campbell cabinet minister responsible for cutting environmental protection in his first term as B.C. premier.

Splinters that splinter

And even if the three parties came to an agreement, it's likely some supporters would rebel and create other parties that matched their perspective. God forbid that the separatist Bloc Quebecois remnants have anything to do with it either.

In the case of the Liberals, we know that many of their voters would do exactly the opposite of the desired effect: they would vote for the Harper Conservatives rather than the NDP or Green candidate they were being asked to endorse.

Some Greens might do the same. After all, their previous national leader Jim Harris came from the Conservatives and current leader Elizabeth May once worked for the Conservative government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Alice Funke of Pundits' Guide has outlined the faulty logic that was highlighted when recent NDP leadership candidate and B.C. MP Nathan Cullen proposed joint nomination meetings where members would "co-operate with progressives across the political spectrum" to choose anti-Conservative candidates.

Despite Cullen's energetic campaign and the promotion of his idea by online activist group Leadnow.ca and others, he finished third and did not receive the mandate he wanted to pursue the concept.

In fact, Leadnow.ca's new efforts to convince the Liberal Party to endorse cooperation as it heads to an April leadership vote has only garnered 17,000 supporters to date.

Adjusting to Justin

As for the Liberals' compatibility in even a temporary electoral coalition, just look at Liberal MP and dauphin Justin Trudeau's most recent pronouncements.

Trudeau supports the Chinese state-owned CNOOC oil company's proposed takeover of Calgary-based oil and gas producer Nexen because it's "good for Canada" -- without addressing the sell out of our resources or the issue of a Communist dictatorship increasingly owning big chunks of our economy.

Trudeau also now says that while he voted against the Conservatives' elimination of the long-gun registry, a Liberal government wouldn't even consider bringing back a valuable tool to prevent gun violence that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police wanted kept in place.

"The long-gun registry, as it was, was a failure and I'm not going to resuscitate that," Trudeau said. "There are better ways of keeping us safe than that registry which is, has been removed."

May's contradictions

Then there's Green Party leader Elizabeth May's constant contradictions on ecological and progressive issues.

How can any self-respecting Green look themselves in the environmental mirror after their calculating candidate in the Victoria by-election last month opposed a plant to treat the 130 million litres of raw sewage dumped into the Juan de Fuca Strait daily?

“Local scientists have cautioned us that the Strait of Juan de Fuca is a unique environment. Its special currents deal with the human waste naturally," Donald Galloway says on his website, adding that the plant is too expensive and doesn't deal with all contaminants.

The Greens were so sensitive to their flip-flop that when local celebrity sewage treatment activist James Skwarok -- who wears a brown costume to look like a giant piece of feces called Mr. Floatie -- showed up at a party event where David Suzuki appeared, Skwarok was flushed from the room.

"I was a bit bummed out," Skwarok told Canadian Press. "I was a bit shocked, actually, that they weren't in favour of Victoria's sewage treatment plan."

"I'm dismayed that so many candidates are against treatment," he said. "We spent the last five, six years carefully planning treatment for Victoria and we have the money now, so it's time to do it. It's 2012. It's not 1850."

(Skwarok, who retired his Mr. Floatie outfit after it appeared a treatment plant would finally be built, calls his new campaign a "second movement.")

Liberal candidate Paul Summerville also ran against the $783 million plant, saying: "There's no net environmental benefit to the plan that's being produced."

And Trudeau backed him up on that dubious deduction.

"I think we need to be worried about what the actual science says instead of what the ideology is," Trudeau told reporters.

Even Conservative candidate Dale Gann reversed himself, despite his own government offering to pay one-third of the costs, leaving only winning NDP candidate Murray Rankin to support a decades overdue decision to stop pumping untreated sewage via a long pipe out to sea -- something our American neighbours are furious about.

So much for the environmental commitment of Liberals and Greens.

Pro rep repelled

And what about the idea of a temporary cooperative coalition to vanquish the Tories and implement a new voting system with some form of proportional representation to ensure Harper's ilk can never again gain a majority?

Electoral system change from our current First Past the Post model has been rejected soundly in every province where a referendum has been held -- British Columbia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island.

(Disclosure: I successfully opposed the Single Transferable Vote proposal in both the 2005 and 2009 provincial election referenda as president of NO BC STV.)

A proposal to reject FPTP was also trounced in a referendum in England in 2011.

So the goal of a "progressive" party cooperation pact to facilitate changing the electoral system is hardly likely to garner national support.

None of this is to say parties cannot cooperate on key issues.

For example, the NDP, Liberals and Greens have all opposed the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal, which is strongly backed by the Conservatives.

And if voters want to make their own decisions in each riding as to which anti-Conservative candidate has the best chance of defeating a sitting MP, go to it -- convince enough people and it will be successful.

We've seen several political organizations advocate, advertise and set up websites to advise voters on exactly that -- albeit the results have been very poor.

But do not let anyone call themselves either progressive or democratic if they are advocating a two-choice election in 2015 -- Conservative or their alternative ABC mix.

What's even worse than another Stephen Harper Conservative government is a country where high-minded elites deprive voters of a full range of political parties in the next election.

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BASI-VIRK: Shocking omissions admitted in BC Supreme Court in Auditor General application, John van Dongen intervention

How did a senior government lawyer make serious errors in sworn evidence aoubt detalis of BC's most scandalous case - the Basi-Virk/BC Rail/BC Legislature Raid - that were only uncovered months later, and just days before final arguments in BC Supreme Court? 

Richard Butler: "I have no explanation for how or why..... other than failure of memory and failure to go back and review the files at the times I made those misstatements."

Independent MLA John van Dongen interviewed by Bill Tieleman outside BC Supreme Court

The Basi-Virk Case has been described in this blog before as an opportunity to enter the Twilight Zone existing between BC politics and the law.

Submitted for your consideration: a senior government lawyer dealing with the most sensitive, explosive and biggest scandal in decades admits he made shockingly inaccurate statements under oath and is forced to cough up a lengthy mea culpa just days before a BC Supreme Court hearing connected to how the BC Liberal government paid the $6 million legal fees of two ministerial assistants who made guilty pleas to corruption charges.

The indemnification of legal fees for David Basi and Bob Virk - the two ex-aides who made a surprise guilty plea after years of professing their innocence - is being investigated by BC's independent Auditor General John Doyle.  

The issue: why did Basi and Virk get their lawyers' bills paid off by the government when they admitted to breach of trust and fraud over leaking confidential documents to lobbyists for one of the bidders in the $1 billion BC Rail privatization in 2003 by ex-Premier Gordon Campbell?  

The guilty, so the rules allegedly go, have to pay their own legal costs.  But then again, we are back in the Twilight Zone, where nothing is as it first appears.

And when it comes to explaining such mysteries, the government has not been cooperating, hence the legal battle where Doyle is asking BC Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman to grant his office access to billing documents the government wants kept private.

Enter one John van Dongen, a former BC Liberal cabinet minister and Solicitor General no less, who became disillusioned with how the Basi-Virk case was handled by his own government and in March 2012 quit the party in part because of it.

The independent MLA, like the Auditor General, wasn't buying the smoke and mirrors game and paid for his own lawyer to seek intervenor status in Doyle's court application to force disclosure of details of the legal bills of not only Basi and Virk but other government employees who also faced charges and had their costs covered.

In fact, van Dongen previously claimed the government was "stonewalling" the Auditor General by fighting disclosure all the way.

And in BC Supreme Court Monday, van Dongen had his suspicions confirmed once again in spades that the Basi-Virk case still has lots of skeletons in its closet.

An affidavit filed by Richard Butler on November 16 was discussed in court because the veteran government lawyer working in the Ministry of Justice was forced to admit a series of substantial errors in his own previous affidavit regarding how Basi and Virk's legal bills were handled.

The embarrassing admission vindicated van Dongen's belief that the Auditor General should be granted full access to all files - something the government is fighting in court.

"It's a very significant development at this stage of the hearing - it confirms why we need an audit," van Dongen told me in an interview at the conclusion of the hearing Monday afternoon.

"The government could have spared themselves a lot of trouble by sharing these documents with the Auditor General in the first place," he said.  "The taxpayers have spent a lot of money here."

Indeed they have.  While van Dongen personally paid for his veteran lawyer Roger McConchie to intervene on his behalf, at least five other lawyers were all attending at taxpayer expense - on both sides of the court case.

But the showstopper wasn't the argument made by Doyle's lawyer Louis Zivot  that alternatives to the full disclosure remedy sought were "unpalatable to the Auditor General" or other dry legal arguments made on either side.

No, it was the affidavit filed by Butler.

"What's significant is that Butler admits misstatement in a very important document at the heart of the case," says van Dongen.  

Indeed.  Butler's 19-page document is filled with legal niceties and the most neutral language possible but ultimately confesses to a major screw up.

"I am surprised by these errors for a number of reasons," Butler's affidavit states, regarding his previous evidence regarding how Basi and Virk's legal bills were reviewed for payment.  

"I have no explanation for how or why, in making the statements referred to in paragraph 15, above, I said the certificates did not have statements of account attached when in fact, they were required to, and did, attach statements of account and other documentation - other than failure of memory and failure to go back and review the files a the times I made those misstatements," Butler writes.

 

None of which is to say Butler has done anything except correct the record on his own admitted mistakes, and rightly so.

But the appearance of such an admission in a case full of unanswered questions can only fuel further the commitment of NDP leader Adrian Dix to launch an inquiry into the entire episode, should he become premier next May.

If so, Dix and the public will owe some gratitude to van Dongen, the Abbotsford-South MLA, who has been a dog with a bone on the Basi-Virk file.

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BC Premier Christy Clark Exiting Highway to Electoral Hell But Adrian Dix & BC NDP Still on Autobahn With Big Lead, New Poll Shows

BC Liberals hope to pass on the right but still miles behind Adrian Dix and NDP, while BC Conservatives jackrabbit start ends in ditch and Greens' eco-hybrid silently follows in race for May 2013 election finish, new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll shows

Adrian Dix - still in commanding lead - Bill Tieleman photo

Bill Tieleman’s 24 Hours/The Tyee column 

Tuesday November 27, 2012 

By Bill Tieleman

"The consequences of our actions are so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed." 

- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Polling provides a political roadmap to all parties but there's no guarantee the streets it shows now will even exist by the May 2013 provincial election.

Nonetheless, the B.C. Liberals appear to have finally exited the highway to electoral hell they have been zooming down for months.

The B.C. New Democrats under leader Adrian Dix are still racing on the political equivalent of the no-speed-limit Autobahn, but have started glancing in their rear view mirror to see if Premier Christy Clark has any chance of catching up.

And the B.C. Conservatives' early jackrabbit start towards opposition party contender status with new leader John Cummins has ended with their vehicle in the ditch, while B.C. Greens' leader Jane Sterk's eco-hybrid silently follows.

Those conclusions are drawn from Angus Reid Public Opinion's latest B.C. poll, which puts Clark’s B.C. Liberals up three points at 29 per cent, the B.C. NDP down two at a still lofty 47 per cent, the B.C. Conservatives fading four to 12 per cent and the Greens up one to nine per cent.

The poll gives Clark a faint hope clause of winning, but with a disapproval rating of 60 per cent versus an approval of just 29 per cent and a momentum score of negative 36 per cent, there's no champagne on ice.

Commitment issues

Dix holds a commanding 48 per cent approval rating against 34 per cent disapproval, a clear lead in every B.C. region and a momentum score of positive seven per cent, but the poll shows he has reasons to be concerned about fading in the final stretch.

Angus Reid pollster Mario Canseco said in an interview with The Tyee that with 21 per cent of respondents saying they don’t see any of the four party leaders as making the best premier and another 27 per cent not yet sure, voters are volatile.

"The fact that we're six months from a campaign and people who say they don't know or none of the above totals 48 per cent -- that's problematic," Canseco says.

But this and previous polls show the NDP with a significant advantage over the struggling Liberals, he added.

"The NDP have premier-in-waiting approval levels for Dix," Canseco said. "There's a level of commitment for an opposition party that we don't see anywhere else in the country. That's what makes it compelling and unique."

Canseco says the NDP must resist the temptation to believe the election is "in the bag" and say nothing about what it would do in government.

"They need to provide a vision consistent with what people expect of you but keep the centrist votes," he said.

A bad connection fixable?

And while Canseco warns that the NDP's challenge to maintain its big lead is still significant, he says the Liberals' situation is daunting.

"The problem the B.C. Liberals have is one of connection. You can't just say, 'We don't want to go back to the 1990s,'" Canseco says. "It's not the way to win the election."

"New voters, younger voters, those from outside B.C. or Canada don't know about when the NDP was in power in the 1990s."

But Canseco also says the Liberals have one big advantage -- incumbency. The Liberals can actually do things while the NDP can only make promises.

"It's a matter of engagement -- when you're in government you can do that," he said.

To add to the NDP worries, the B.C. Liberals have also narrowed the gap in Metro Vancouver, the region with 38 of the province's 85 seats, to nine per cent, with the NDP at 42 per cent the Liberals at 33 per cent, Conservatives at 13 per cent and Greens at 9 per cent plus 3 per cent independent or other.

And Dix only has a one per cent margin over Clark as the leader best suited to deal with the economy -- which the poll says B.C. voters believe is the most important issue facing the province, ranked at 26 per cent versus 17 per cent for health care, 12 per cent for leadership and 10 per cent for the environment.

Lastly, in what could be a funny punch line, the B.C. Liberals hold a solid lead in just one of the large range of demographic statistics used to analyze public opinion -- they are clearly the choice of the "rich."

Those earning over $100,000 a year in household income favour the B.C. Liberals by a 47 per cent to 34 per cent for the NDP.

But Canseco makes a fascinating point: $100,000 plus households make up about 27-28 per cent of the total sample in the poll -- that's not a small category. And of course, two professionals making $51,000 each puts them into that demographic.

Gender gap persists for Clark's Libs

Nonetheless, the B.C. Liberals are in serious trouble, with a massive 24 per cent gender gap with women voters.

What's more, Canseco says, both the NDP and the B.C. Conservatives are equally stealing the B.C. Liberals' former voters.

While the NDP is retaining a huge 89 per cent of their 2009 election voters, the Liberals are only keeping 62 per cent of their supporters, with 16 per cent going to the NDP and 16 per cent to the Conservatives.

So Christy Clark's urgent pleas to restore the "free enterprise coalition" under the B.C. Liberal banner has fallen on deaf ears.

Canseco says the simple math of adding the B.C. Conservatives' votes to the B.C. Liberals to re-elect Clark is faulty.

"It's not at simple as that," Canseco said, making a point that Martyn Brown, former premier Gordon Campbell's chief of staff, has also written about.

In fact, adding the Conservatives' entire current 12 per cent to the Liberals 29 per cent equals 41 per cent to the NDP's 47 per cent. And John Cummins doesn’t plan to close their doors and give up.

Still, the big question facing the B.C. Conservatives isn't a merger with the B.C. Liberals they have already rejected but whether they have bottomed out after a brutal two months of defections, insurrection and bad press.

"You can't even pretend to be the official opposition with all of this happening," Canseco says, referring to the damage done by ex-Liberal cabinet minister John van Dongen's loud departure after a few months as the only B.C. Conservative MLA, followed by other party members quitting the party, some to join the B.C. Liberals.

But Canseco says even a battered B.C. Conservative Party drawing eight per cent of the vote in several northern and interior ridings could mean NDP victories over incumbent B.C. Liberals in close races.

And John Cummins continues to tour the province, going to ridings like Peace River South, where despite its troubles the party has a strongly contested nomination battle this week between two notable candidates.

So while the poll gives measures of both hope and fear to all parties, it's what they do with that road map to correct their course that really matters on May 14, 2013.

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