Carole James and the Carbon Tax

Posted July 30, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: NDP, Polls

It has been a politically quiet week, punctuated by two major events - one being the Sea to Sky Highway being shut down for BC Day long weekend due to a rockslide. The second event is the NDP choosing one of the biggest weekends for people to get in their cars for a holiday to release a survey on the carbon tax.

Carole James and the NDP released some poll results, compiled by Angus Reid, showing public support (and lack thereof) for the carbon tax. Surveyed were 800 people between July 11 to July 13.

The snippet included with the NDP press release included:

{Carole James saying} “Gordon Campbell needs to listen to the public, scrap the gas tax and bring forward climate change solutions that work.”

Earlier today, Carole James spoke to the NDP caucus and supporters where she outlined the NDP’s plan to step up the campaign to axe the gas tax.

I find it odd that they are saying “Axe the gas tax” instead of “Axe the carbon tax”. Presumably this is because they don’t want to bleed their environmental supporters to the Green party.

Legally, there is a Motor Fuel Tax in addition to a Carbon Tax, both with separate rates. Most of the public would identify the Motor Fuel Tax as being the “gas tax”, although it would be interesting to survey people to see if they can distinguish between a “gas tax” and a “carbon tax”.

The survey had four questions.

Question 1: From what you have seen, heard or read about Premier Gordon Campbell’s carbon tax on fuel in British Columbia, do you support or oppose its implementation?

Roughly 60% of the GVRD (which presumably involves the FVRD) oppose the carbon tax, while 70% of the southern interior and 80% of the northern interior oppose it. The strong opposition was greater than the moderate opposition, while the moderate support was greater than the strong support. This and the geographical spread is not all that surprising.

The political ramification is pretty clear - the interior will likely lose BC Liberal support, especially for those voters that think the carbon tax is a sufficient “single issue” issue for them to sway their vote. Whether they’ll plug for the NDP is another question - probably the largest impact will be a loss of voters, or more third-party candidates receiving protest votes.

Question 2: With the government’s $100 climate change dividend, most British Columbians
come out ahead on the tax.

Less than 1/6th of the population supported this, especially in the northern interior.

This would suggest that the $100 climate action dividend will be long forgotten by May 2009. It also suggests that the more the government attempts to remind people that they gave a $100 cheque to offset the carbon tax, the more likely it is the public will backlash.

Question 3: It is unfair that major industrial polluters don’t have to pay the carbon tax, while ordinary consumers do.
Question 4: I trust the Government of B.C. when it says the carbon tax will be revenue neutral.

Both of these questions are horrible and the results are meaningless. Anytime you phrase a question starting with “I trust the Government…”, you know it is designed to get a desired result rather than to obtain public sentiment.

I am also wondering what other questions they asked in the survey that were cropped out - typically when such surveys are commissioned the first or last question they ask is “If there was an election held today, who would you vote for?”.

The NDP need to swing BC Liberal voters into their camp in order to have a viable shot of winning the upcoming election. The other way they have a shot is by demotivating BC Liberal supporters to the voting booth (i.e. not having 2005 BC Liberal supporters vote BC Liberal in 2009) - this is likely their strategy as I generally agree with the anonymous commenter on a previous post - there is economic inconsistency with the NDP’s message.

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BC Film industry going strong

Posted July 24, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Irrelevant and Irreverent

Despite the rise in the Canadian dollar, the film industry in BC continues to thrive - shows like Battlestar Galactica, for example, are shot in BC (mainly in the Lower Mainland) and make a name for themselves world-wide.

I couldn’t help but notice the government’s press release about giving Chris Carter (from X-Files fame) a certificate of recognition to his contribution to the BC film industry. This is very well deserved.

What the press release didn’t mention is that when the X-Files moved out of Vancouver and back to California, that’s when the series began to go downhill.

I wonder if that’s because they moved out of BC.

There is no electoral impact to this government press release other than that somebody in the ministry of Tourism, Sports and the Arts did their research.

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Short term Carbon Tax effects over

Posted July 23, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Economy

There is one powerful axiom of politics, for any democratic political jurisdiction:

Fuel taxes will never be reduced.

No matter how much people complain, gasoline taxes will never be a single issue for a voter to swing to one party over another. As long as this is the case, the axiom above will remain true. By extension, the carbon tax is now in place and will never be reduced - there will simply be too many entrenched interests in the status quo for any government to take down the new taxation wall that has been erected.

Now that the July 1, 2008 carbon tax has taken effect, the attention has shifted away to other topics, such as the Auditor General’s report on tree farm licenses.

Helping matters somewhat for the government is that the price of crude oil over the last week has dropped from $148 per barrel to $128, a full 14% drop. As prices at the pump adjust to reflect this lower pricing, the 2.4 cents seemingly becomes less significant as other issues take the limelight in the public consciousness.

So the short term political effect of the carbon tax is now over - this leaves the question of how much of a long term effect the tax will have on the upcoming campaign. Will the opposition be able to leverage it into a viable issue in May 2009?

Ultimately, the answer will not be whether the NDP or Green party can turn BC Liberals away from the polls - rather, it will be the crude oil futures that will do the job for them. If oil prices are higher in 9 months, the carbon tax will be on people’s minds. If not, then the price of energy will play second fiddle to other pressing matters of the day - possibly job security and the real estate marketplace?

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Gregor Robertson resigned, Capri not running

Posted July 19, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: By-Election

There was no big news item, but I see on the BC Legislature page that Gregor Robertson is no longer listed as MLA for Vancouver-Fairview, effective July 15, 2008 (the date he said he would be resigning).

In a slightly related issue, Vancouver councillor Kim Capri said the following, quoted from a Georgia Straight article:

“I got caught up with all the excitement and the possibility of Liberals taking back Vancouver-Fairview,” she said of having entertained the prospect of going provincial.

Capri related that the turning point came after a strategy session held at her house, where one supporter asked her, “Kim, do you really want this?”

“I woke up in the middle of the night later, and realized that I’ve never really said, ‘Yes, I want it,’” Capri said.

She’s got a good risk-to-reward processor in her brain, or she got good advice (and was able to listen to it). Does this leave the door open for Rick Peterson by default if the BC Liberals can’t find anybody else to run in the riding?

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Rich Coleman - Tree Farm License land removal

Posted July 17, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Scandal

BC Auditor General John Doyle released a rather scathing report (local link) on the removal of approximately 28,000 hectares of private land from tree farm licenses (TFLs) on Vancouver Island. Since this is an area of government that not many people are familiar with, the report does contain a lot of background information on TFLs and the processes surrounding them.

The media has also been stirring the fact that Rich Coleman’s brother apparently was (and still is) an executive at Western Forest Products - the company owning the tree farm licensed land. In fairness to him, the application by WFP was submitted at a time when Coleman’s brother was not part of the company - WFP bought out that firm subsequent to the application submission.

The conclusion by the auditor general was the following, directly quoted from his report:

We concluded that the removal of the private land from TFLs 6, 19 and 25 was approved without sufficient regard for the public interest.

The information provided by the ministry in support of its recommendation to allow the land removal was incomplete. The information reflected a narrow view of the stakeholders possibly affected and of the potential impacts. Also, the recommendation put greater weight on assisting the licensee’s financial restructuring than on other public interests, including the potentially negative impacts on the forest and range and on other stakeholders, but the information included no analysis to support this position. Overall, the recommendation was not clearly supported by ministry analysis to demonstrate how the removal on the terms proposed was in the interests of British Columbia. The Minister was the final check in the process and the statutory decision-maker but, given the importance of the decision, he did not do enough to ensure that due regard was given to the public interest. Meanwhile, the ministry is not adequately monitoring its other land removal decisions to better inform future requests, to assess stakeholder capacity to deal with decision impacts, or to ensure that conditions agreed to by licensees are met.

This leaves a few questions.

1. Was Coleman removed from the Ministry of Forests preemptively to this report?
2. Will Coleman be formally implicated in a conflict of interest ruling?
3. Will any of this resonate with the public at election time?

I don’t know the answer to question 1, but I will guess that 2 will be “no” and would conjecture that the answer for question 3 will be a flat-out “no”. Governments typically accumulate baggage during their reigns, but it is not remotely close to extreme, which is the level it typically takes for the public to vote governments out of office. For the 1996-2001 NDP government, the snapping point where to public said “too much” was the Fast Ferries Fiasco.

This issue brought up by the auditor general is nowhere close in scale to the fast ferries.

I very much doubt that this government will be plagued by the “Coleman Tree Farm License removal” scandal in 10 months, although this data point certainly does not help them.

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Vancouver-Fairview 2005 - BC Liberal vs. NDP

Posted July 17, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: By-Election

This is a map that lists which party won which polling division in 2005. The margin of victory is a deeper colour if it was more overwhelming.

As previously discussed, while the BC Liberals have a lock on the southern and western fringes of the riding, the NDP have a lock on the eastern side, and they marginally won the swing vote in the middle of the riding. It is very close.

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Vancouver-Fairview By-Election

Posted July 16, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: By-Election

In response to BJ’s prior comments, I have generated two charts from the 2005 election results. The map on the left is the BC Liberal vote in percentage. The second map is the voter turnout in percentage - both maps can be clicked on for further detail:

One can easily see two geographical elements - the NDP’s support is very heavy along the Cambie to Main street corridor and the coast of False Creek (except for, oddly enough, the condominiums immediately west of the Cambie Street Bridge). The BC Liberals’ support is concentrated on the southern fringes of the riding and the Granville-Broadway area.

When voter turnout is looked at, it is difficult to grasp whether either party has an advantage of turnout. Indeed, when the math is performed, the BC Liberals have a slight advantage of voter turnout than the NDP do in this riding - their correlation coefficient to voter turnout is 22.2%, while the NDP’s coefficient is 17.7%. This is a fairly weak correlation and should not be considered to be statistically meaningful in any way.

Finally, the question of where the recent developments have sprung up are a consideration - additional density has been added along “Hospital Alley” - 12th Ave and between Oak Street and Cambie. Although the initial pass analysis would suggest that these new migrants into the riding would trend toward BC Liberal, it is not necessarily a given considering the strength of the NDP numbers on the False Creek waterfront - an area where one would instinctively think would be ripe with BC Liberal supporters.

Is this because they voted for the candidate, or are they voting for the party?

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Gregor Robertson resigning - Candidates for by-election

Posted July 15, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: By-Election

NDP MLA Gregor Robertson (Vancouver-Fairview) is scheduled to resign his seat today, necessitating a by-election.

Gordon Campbell will have the ultimate decision on when to hold a by-election - he can hold back as far as 2009 if required, although this is highly unlikely. Both parties are looking for candidates, although we know that the NDP will be required to nominate a female candidate according to their internal policy.

Complicating matters is the municipal election cycle - November 15, 2008.

Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer talks about two potentials for the BC Liberal camp - Rick Peterson and Kim Capri. While little is known about Peterson (other than that he’s “a former hockey player and journalist who runs his own investment firm”), Capri is a city councilor in Vancouver, who would be a high profile candidate if she agreed to be the nominee.

For Capri, it is unlikely that she would accept the nomination. By running the numbers from the 2005 municipal election overlayed onto the Vancouver-Fairview boundaries, the major council candidates would have ranked in the following way - observe that the percentage is the relative rating compared to the top vote-getter in the area and that the candidates marked with a * won seats in council:

100% *STEVENSON, Tim VVN
99% *DEAL, Heather VVN
97% *LOUIE, Raymond P. VVN
96% *CADMAN, David CPE
91% BASS, Fred CPE
87% *CHOW, George VVN
87% HARRISON, Heather VVN
82% *LADNER, Peter NPA
80% ROBERTS, Anne CPE
79% LOUIS, Tim CPE
79% *ANTON, Suzanne NPA
79% WOODSWORTH, Ellen CPE
67% *CAPRI, Kim NPA
64% HARDWICK NYSTEDT, Colleen NPA
63% *BALL, Elizabeth NPA
56% LIVINGSTON, Ann GRN
56% JENKINSON, Valerie NPA
55% THOMPSON, Kathi NPA
54% *LEE, B.C. NPA
50% LEUNG, Ronald NPA
47% MALIHA, Patrick NPA

On a side note, Jim Green beat Sam Sullivan about 60/40 in this area.

You can see that Kim Capri pales in comparison to the more left-of-centre candidates, and thus Capri would face a very difficult challenge unless if she believes that support for the BC Liberal party has increased over the past four years in the type of urban area that Vancouver Fairview consists of (higher density developments).

The NDP clearly have an advantage in this area, although they will have to find somebody credible to run. No word on who this will be, although certainly it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they used the list above as their first pass measure.

It also strikes me likely that the BC Liberal party will end up nominating Peterson if they cannot find another female candidate that has the stature to swing five percent of the riding since they know that Peterson will not be winning in Vancouver-Fairview. Finding a credible candidate is a fairly tall order since the trial by fire involves two walks on the bed of hot coals - first in the by-election and secondly in the general election less than one year later.

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