Posted October 4, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: By-Election
I have posted the voter turnout map on the Vancouver-Burrard page. Please note this map is a little misleading, as 27% of the votes in Burrard consisted of “points on a map” rather than areas. 52% of the registered voters in the area actually voted.
Posted October 3, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Economy
From a press release, announcing that the “climate action dividend” will be distributed to low income individuals, we have the following quotation:
In addition to the personal, corporate and small business income tax cuts provided this year, the tax-free B.C. Low Income Climate Action Tax Credit will be sent to more than one million residents. Individuals with incomes of up to $30,000 in 2007 and B.C. families with incomes of up to $35,000 will receive the maximum annual amount of $100 for each adult and $30 for each child in the first year. Single parent families will receive $100 for the first child.
I always wondered why the government has different tiers for income testing between singles and married people.
For example, if I made $25,000 in a year, and got together with somebody else making $25,000 a year, we would collectively get $200 a year from the government for the climate action dividend. However, if we got married, that would vanish as collectively we would be pulling in $50,000 a year.
This logic also applies to other income-tested programs, such as the federal GST rebate.
Most of the financial benefits (in terms of government benefits) through marriage only occur at much later stages of life (e.g. pension income splitting).
Posted October 1, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: By-Election
Premier Gordon Campbell today pulled the trigger on the provincial by-elections. The date will be October 29, 2008. The date was a little earlier than I expected, mainly that the campaign period of the by-election will intersect with both the federal and municipal election campaigns.
Vancouver-Fairview and Vancouver-Burrard were relatively close contests in 2005 - Burrard was settled by a handful of votes when BC Liberal Lorne Mayencourt (currently running in Vancouver Centre federally for the Conservative Party) squeaked out against NDP Tim Stevenson. In Fairview, NDP Gregor Robertson (currently running for Mayor of Vancouver) beat BC Liberal Virginia Greene.
Now, the main candidates for the by-election in both Burrard and Fairview are settled - in Burrard, BC Liberal Arthur Griffiths vs. NDP Spencer Herbert. In Fairview, BC Liberal Maureen MacDiarmid will face off against NDP Jenn McGinn.
Please note I will put candidates’ materials, if they have any, on this site on request. They will be linked to the respective riding pages on the top of this site. Also be warned I will project a winner closer to the election date (after the Federal election).
Various candidates from other parties have announced they will field candidates, but nothing is known yet whether they will formally apply for the nomination. They have up until October 6, 4:30pm to file in their papers.
There are a few complications with the date that I can imagine - one is that the people in these ridings will be voting 3 times within a month - federally, provincially and municipally. So this by-election date is great for political action junkies. Unfortunately for all parties, their support base is likely to be tapped due to the federal election. Yours truly is quite consumed with the federal election and will not be able to analyze it in full depth until after October 14.
The easy prediction is voter turnout will be a lot worse than the 2004’s Surrey-Panorama Ridge by-election 52%. The difficult prediction will be to predict who will win it - can the BC Liberals manage to break tradition and actually have the government party win a seat in a by-election? This has not happened in a long, long time.
Posted September 30, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Scandal
The conflict of interest commissioner clears Rich Coleman.
The NDP will try to claim that the commissioner was somehow partisan in this decision, but it will not stick and this issue will be politically dead with respect to the May 2009 election.
The residual “known unknowns” for the BC Liberals revolve around the special prosecutor investigation of John Les and the ALR rezoning, and any resolution concerning the legislature raids approximately five years ago (which is going on at a snail’s pace).
Another uncontrollable variable will be the state of the economy and the commodity markets (of which BC is vulnerable to economically) but it will be impossible to predict until closer to the election date.
I highly suspect that if the election dates were not fixed there would have been an election called by now. As a humourous note, it would have been amusing if Premier Gordon Campbell said to the Union of the BC Municipalities (UBCM) that “We have lost the confidence of the BC Legislature. I will be going to the Lieutenant Governor and dissolving the legislature”, which is roughly equivalent to what the Prime Minister said before pulled the plug on parliament.
Posted September 26, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: Transportation
Removing the tolls on the Coquihalla Highway is a brilliant political decision, and indeed, a good policy decision - one that should have been made years ago. This decision will have an impact on the Kamloops and Kelowna-area electoral districts.
The Coquihalla Highway (and the Okanagan Connector linking to Kelowna) is a major feat of engineering. It reduces the time of a trip from the Lower Mainland by two hours, opposed to using Highway 3. Anybody driving this road will know it is engineered well (although the maintenance side of the highway has to see some improvement, especially in winter conditions).
This move will reduce the provincial government’s revenues approximately $57 million in yearly revenues, and this is offset by a reduction of $2.3 million in toll administration costs.
The NDP will have no defense to this other than by repeating the years-old news of the government attempting to privatize the highway, but this argument will have no sticking power whatsoever. It will also mitigate arguments that the Sea-to-Sky Highway should have been tolled after its improvements are completed.
The future Port Mann Bridge and the Golden Ears Bridge are currently the only structures that are slated to have tolls enacted on them - The Golden Ears Bridge will be $2.85 per direction assuming you have your car equipped with a transponder (similar to the device used in California toll roads).
Posted September 24, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: News
The government is (correctly, from a political standpoint) using this Federal election cycle to mitigate future negative news.
First is a press release (and details) concerning the partial mitigation of the senior executive pay issue. This forces Carole James and the NDP to use a more abstract and less politically catchy argument of “The pay scale still has a maximum of forty-something percent”. The deputy to the Premier, Jessica Macdonald, is also spending a few after-tax dollars of opportunity cost to prevent her from being a target of the NDP.
Today, there is the offering of an olive branch at the Union of the BC Municipalities (UBCM) meeting, where the province is offering to refund municipalities’ carbon taxes in exchange for the municipalities becoming carbon neutral by 2012.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out during the municipal election cycle - my quick take is that the province imposed a cost on the municipalities (via carbon taxes, of which the “revenue neutral” portion will not touch the local governments), and now the province is saying they will effectively take away the costs (in the form of a grant) as long as they are carbon neutral.
The only way I can see municipalities achieving the objective of carbon neutrality is a combination between operation and capital expenditures, but the bulk of the operational side will presumably by via purchasing carbon credits. Obviously, the municipalities have to model such costs - if it costs more to be carbon neutral than what they’re paying in carbon taxes, then there’s no point in doing this. If it costs less, then they will do it.
There was little detail in the press release and also no numbers associated with the cost to the province or the municipalities, so this one will play out further.
Posted September 21, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: News
I noticed when Colin Hansen was on CKNW today, that he referred to the carbon tax (which I do not recall he ever mentioned by name) as the “pollution tax” or “a tax on pollution”.
This of course, is lifting Stephane Dion’s synonym for the carbon tax.
Posted September 21, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: By-Election
Premier Gordon Campbell confirmed on CKNW that the by-elections will not be called during the federal election. From CKNW:
Premier Gordon Campbell says he won’t call two by-elections in two BC ridings until after the federal election on October 14th.
Campbell says he would have called the by-elections for Vancouver-Fairview and Vancouver-Burrard but decided to hold off once the federal election was announced.
I will guess he will hold off until after the municipal cycle, so probably a December 2008 vote. Just imagine if you’re a resident in one of those ridings - you will be experiencing four elections in less than 7 months.