Election updates!

Election race nearly a dead heat: poll; NDP has narrowed gap to three points despite losing ground on some issues, The Vancouver Sun, Wed 29 Apr 2009. Jonathan Fowlie
(excerpts)

The New Democratic Party has narrowed the gap in the provincial election to just three points despite losing ground on key issues such as the economy, an Angus Reid Strategies poll has found.

Done for CTV, the Angus Reid online poll found the B.C. Liberals have 42 per cent support, while the opposition NDP has 39 per cent.

The Green party remains in third place with 13 per cent, and the B.C. Conservatives and independents each have three per cent support.

The poll of 822 people, conducted April 24-26, has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, 19 times in 20.

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Van Dongen could have kept post, Campbell says; Liberal Leader stands by disgraced former solicitor-general and is prepared to face criticism over his decision, The Globe and Mail, Wed 29 Apr 2009. Justine Hunter (excerpts)

GOLDEN -- Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell said yesterday he is prepared to be judged for his decision to stand by his disgraced former solicitor-general, saying John van Dongen could have kept the post if he felt he could stay on top of the government's top priorities in the crime-fighting arena.

Mr. van Dongen's resignation on Monday over his driving record has provided the Liberal campaign's first major setback.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Campbell defended his judgment about who can stay and who must go from his party.
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Last Friday, Mr. van Dongen revealed he had lost his driver's licence - the result of being caught twice doing more than 40 kilometres an hour over the posted speed limit. He also accrued seven speeding tickets in the four years before he was named solicitor-general.

By contrast, Mr. Campbell's party dumped candidate Joe Cardoso earlier this year because he had once written a letter to the editor in a newspaper that was critical of the Liberal Party Leader.

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B.C.'s economic situation and the Liberal platform, The Vancouver Sun, Wed 29 Apr 2009. Marc Lee

The B.C. Liberal platform features many feel-good photos and proud statements taking credit for the province's recent boom. But reading between the lines, one realizes that, after eight years in power, the Liberals have effectively run out of ideas.

The platform fails to offer any vision for the future. The Liberals made some progress on climate change over the past couple years, but the platform offers nothing new. Meanwhile, the climate action secretariat, once residing in the premier's office, has been relegated to the Ministry of the Environment, which recently had its budget cut.
.... the government enters the election without a plan in place to get B.C. to its legislated 33-per-cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. And there are some glaring contradictions between the climate plan and other parts of the Liberals' platform.

One of those contradictions is the oil and gas industry. Between 2001 and 2006, oil and gas industry emissions surged by far more than the carbon tax will ever reduce come 2020. Recently, Campbell was in the northeast, promising more new investment in oil and gas extraction, which may make it virtually impossible to reach our targets. And it is not like the oil and gas patch is a huge employer -- about 2,200 direct jobs in 2008 -- for all that pollution.

Highway expansion and the $3.4-billion Port Mann superbridge also go against the climate-action grain. .... No jurisdiction in the world has ever built its way out of congestion.

The Liberal platform offers no real vision for the economy either, now that the great boom is over. Unemployment rose rapidly through early 2009, and with housing starts down 70 per cent, the worst is yet to come, as construction workers finish their projects and head to the back of the unemployment line.

The economic collapse is not the fault of the Liberals, but then neither was the boom their creation. B.C.'s economic fortunes rest on what happens outside our borders, in particular in the export markets of the U.S. and Asia, and in Ottawa, through the Bank of Canada and the federal government.

In February's budget, the Liberals offered little in the way of stimulus, mostly re-announcing projects already underway or relying on federal stimulus dollars.
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Bad economic times mean that the small deficit projected in the budget will inevitably turn out to be much larger.

The Liberal platform promises that B.C. will "live within its means," but, faced with a $1-billion to $2-billion deficit, will a new Liberal government pile on more spending cuts and risk making the economic picture worse, or will it accommodate a larger deficit?
What does that mean for the few new promises in the platform, like all-day kindergarten ....

.... during the good times, not all British Columbians were part of the boom. Poverty rates did not drop in any meaningful way, homelessness doubled, and inequality worsened with each passing year.
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