Unemployment rate steady in April

Posted May 8, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, Economy

Last month, I wrote an article about the increasing unemployment rate, and also to watch out for the May 8th labour force survey.

Statistics BC released their monthly update of the labour force numbers today. Here is a copy.

The take-home message here is that the numbers are almost perfect for neither party to take any sort of “credit” – the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is steady at 7.4%, while the seasonally adjusted employment rate increased from 60.8% to 61.2%, and a mild increase in the participation rate (from 65.7% to 66.0%).

In other words, this month of data is more or less identical to the previous month, which means that it is electorally insignificant. You can be sure that the NDP would be screaming murder if the unemployment rate continued to rise, or the BC Liberal party would claim “We created jobs that the NDP would destroy!” if the unemployment rate decreased. This release gives neither party any ammunition with respect to this.

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Failing to vet the candidates

Posted May 7, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Other Parties, Scandal

BC Conservative candidate for Abbotsford South, Gurcharan Dhaliwal allegedly was convicted of possessing a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking, i.e. drug running.

I am surprised it took this long for one of the minor party candidates to surface as having a track record. My guess is that the BC Liberals held this in the bag as late as possible to try to discredit the BC Conservative Party. My other guess is that the BC Liberals and NDP have dirt on some of the 85 Green candidates (some of whom were hastily nominated to finish the complete provincial slate), but they’ve decided not to bother getting it to the media to reduce exposure to the party.

At this point, the BC Conservative party has one thing alone – their name – that they are riding the coattails of the federal Conservative Party of Canada with. If it wasn’t for this, they would be a complete non-entity.

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Convention Centre springs a leak

Posted April 28, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Liberals, Economy

The biggest costing failure of the government of the past four years has been the downtown Vancouver convention centre – the original budget was $495 million (mysteriously like the projected 2009 BC Budget deficit!), while the actuals have come around $880 million.

The government was probably breathing a sigh of relief when it finally opened to the public in early April – even though the project was massively over budget, it was a done deal, and would be out of the public spotlight during election time.

Unfortunately during a convention of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, a water main leak sprung and the centre had to be evacuated. According to the Province:

Convention-centre general manager Ken Cretney said the damage was limited to water damage and he doesn’t expect costs to be excessive.

“There’s no injuries or permanent damage, just a lot of cleanup,” he said.

Cretney said the leak was not due to shoddy construction. “It can happen anywhere, anytime, new or old buildings.”

Whether “it can happen anywhere, anytime, new or old” could be true. Or it could be not. In terms of public optics, however, the easy inference to make was that there might be something wrong with the construction.

I truly hope this was a one-off incident, but the timing of this has just been very unfortunate for the BC Liberal government, since it was anticipated that the budgetary failure of the Vancouver convention centre would have been a footnote of this campaign.

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Life, death and income taxes

Posted April 28, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Economy

April 30 is the deadline for getting your T1 form into the Canada Revenue Agency. If you do not file income taxes you will pay a penalty of taxes that are otherwise outstanding, so even if you can’t pay up, I highly recommend filing a return (which can always be amended later if you do not have accurate numbers).

Income taxes are mostly a federal item, but the pink sheets in the tax guide are for provincial taxes. I am openly wondering this year whether taxes will be a factor this election – unfortunately most people only have a faint impression how much income tax they pay, and easy to use software makes that number even less transparent.

The threshold of income required to pay taxes in British Columbia has been rapidly increasing, however – you can make an income of approximately $17,400 a year and not pay provincial income tax.

I do not think personal income taxation will make a huge impact this election, but the other taxes (carbon, and corporate taxes) have had much more limelight.

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Swine Flu taking the media spotlight

Posted April 26, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Healthcare, News

It is quite evident that the next media panic will be over the Mexican Swine Flu, and this is very likely to overshadow the provincial campaign.

The last major media-epidemic was SARS, which hit about 8,000 people between November 2002 to July 2003. Currently the numbers are sketchy, and reports coming out of media will be unreliable. The reliability will improve over time.

The BC Government has put out a rare election-time press release confirming that two people in the Lower Mainland have been confirmed with the swine flu.

The Swine Flu wikipedia page is a fairly good resource of information so far.

This will also be a good test to see if government protocols concerning disease management following the SARS outbreak will be working or not.

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Scandal Hits the BC Liberals – John van Dongen

Posted April 25, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, Scandal

This is the second post (previous post here) about the April 24th news items that saw Marc Dalton and John van Dongen get in trouble.

John van Dongen announced on Friday that he had his drivers’ license suspended because of a high number of speeding tickets on his record. As a result, Premier Gordon Campbell reassigned the portfolio of Insurance Corporation of British Columbia and the Office of the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles.

Bringing up van Dongen’s court records, we have the following:

The 1st charge is for excessive speeding; the case was dropped, as the prosecution (police) did not show up to court.
The 2nd charge is for speeding; van Dongen did not show up to court.
The 3rd charge is for speeding; van Dongen did not show up to court.
The 4th charge is for speeding; van Dongen did not show up to court.

Note the fifth record is not the Minister in question (note that Vaughn Palmer was not correct here in saying five tickets). This is a list of court appearances by van Dongen, but what is not displayed is the number of speeding violations that were paid for but not contested in court. If you send money to pay the fine, there will be no court record of the matter.

Ordinarily speeding convictions wouldn’t make the radar of anybody in the public (even the charge of excessive speeding, which is defined as going 41 km/h or over the speed limit), but the political problem for van Dongen is the apparent hypocrisy of implementing and talking about anti-speeding programs when you’re likely the top 1 percent in the province when it comes to being caught speeding. I will take the moment here to disclose that you can see a court record on me for speeding (and the prosecution did not show up, so the case was dismissed).

Almost the entire driving public violates section 146 of the motor vehicle act daily – does anybody out there go over 50km/h in most places in a municipality? You are technically breaking the law even if you are going 51km/h, and the police are well within their rights to write you a ticket for going 51 km/h in a 50 km/h zone – they just have to prove it in court.

This is why court systems exist – charges have to be proven. It is also why, despite Gregor Robertson’s previous experience, that charges that are in question should have to be proven in court – because it is the appropriate check and balance to the powers that the public have entrusted to the police – the police are not always correct.

Preaching against an activity almost everybody does (speeding) is bad enough, but when you take actions that are directly against what you preach is good public behaviour (i.e. everybody should obey speeding legislation), this will turn off a lot of the public and absolutely ruin credibility that you may have on subsequent issues. This is very similar to what happened in the USA when Democratic nominees were discovered to not have fully paid their income taxes – these were people that previously stated or implied that people should always pay their taxes. If the top politicals don’t abide by the legislation they create, why should the public?

One obvious solution is to eliminate the legislation – and removing Section 146 of the motor vehicle act would be a good start.

Politically, this will likely cost van Dongen his cabinet position, assuming the BC Liberals are re-elected. Locally, he is still very likely to keep his seat, but he will probably lose a few voters that will decide not to show up to the polls. Provincially is where most of the damage will be done – this is the second solicitor general in a row that had some adverse event happen to him (the first being John Les, who is under investigation), and as a result, the NDP can take this as a character issue. It may cost the BC Liberals the ability to take in voters that are sensitive to criminal issues.

It is also amazing how these two issues (Dalton and van Dongen) have mostly erased the memories of a horrible last week for the NDP. While it doesn’t appear that these two scandals will affect the inevitable outcome of the election, it may be enough to get more public attention onto the campaign – something that works more in the favour of the NDP than the BC Liberals.

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Scandal hits the BC Liberals – Marc Dalton

Posted April 25, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, Scandal

The BC Liberals’ received their first political broadside from the NDP last Friday, hitting two candidates – Marc Dalton, and John van Dongen. Both revelations came after nominations closed, which is smart political timing. This post will be about Dalton:

Marc Dalton, is the BC Liberal candidate in Maple Ridge-Mission (a swing riding). The following is apparently a copy of the letter, dredged up from 1996:

I’ve been somewhat torn about making a response to your note to Bruce. I value maintaining a good relationship with you and all the staff and don’t really enjoy jumping into a contentious issue.

As a parent of three school-aged children in public schools and as a teacher, I am very much concerned about the motions before the BCTF (B.C. Teachers Federation) presently being petitioned against.

I am not against homosexuals as people, but I do not support their lifestyle choices. I believe homosexuality is a moral issue. Most of us agree on many morals: respect, honesty, kindness. There are also many behaviours and acts that most of us would not condone: rape, robbery, assault, drunken driving, pedophilia, incest and so on.

There are other moral issues that large segments of our society do not see eye to eye: gambling, abortion, adultery, pornography. I believe that homosexuality fits in this category.

I became aware of the motions this weekend when a concerned mother of school children approached me and asked if I would get involved in some small way to see the proposals defeated. She handed me a clipping of the Vancouver Sun and some people to write.

There are many, many people who hold homosexuality to be an improper and high-risk behaviour. Though I oppose violence towards these people as well as towards all people, I am against the BCTF ram-rodding the homosexual motion against the wishes of great numbers of parents (and teachers) in this district and in this province.

Thank you for bearing with me.

NDP MLA Spencer Herbert (Vancouver-West End) went on to say in an NDP press release:

Gordon Campbell said that his party has a vigorous screening process. Either Mr. Dalton chose not to disclose these comments or they are acceptable to Mr. Campbell. If Mr. Dalton hid his homophobia he should be asked to resign. If Mr. Campbell approved the candidacy knowing of these statements he should do the right thing, denounce these comments and fire this candidate.

Herbert’s initial comment is quite powerful – was this factoid known by the BC Liberals in the nomination screening, or was it not revealed by the candidate?

Marc Dalton was not without known baggage, as the Conservative party rejected his nomination in Burnaby-New Westminster for the 2008 election; he had previously run as a candidate in the 2006 federal election in the same riding; he lost to NDP MP Peter Julian by about 11% in that election.

It is likely by the timing of this release that the NDP had held it in “reserve” and decided to use it today as an effort to stem the clear loss in momentum they have been receiving in the media after the CKNW debate. It was a fairly smart decision, as the media concentrated on this and van Dongen’s scandal, effectively derailing the political messaging of the BC Liberals for the day, and possibly the weekend.

In terms of politics, the NDP was smart to exploit something that the federal Conservatives have tried very hard to mitigate – the social conservative component of the party. Dalton was an easy target.

Whether this compromises Dalton’s chances in Maple Ridge-Mission is a good question; certainly the further into the Fraser Valley you are, the more socially conservative the area becomes; however, the question is whether this would get NDP supporters to show up to the poll, or for liberally-minded BC Liberal voters to not show up or even swing their votes in response. In a close swing riding like Maple Ridge-Mission, something like this could make the difference. Provincially, it could also have an impact on socially liberal ridings, such as Vancouver-Fairview. The damage is minimized if there is no future candidates that have statements from the past brought up against them; but if the NDP have a few of these in their political pockets, then it could be trouble for the BC Liberals.

It is not known whether the date of the email (1996) will factor into public sentiment or not.

Later that day, Dalton gave a full apology; the only correct political response.

This also brings up a last point, similar to Ray Lam’s Facebook pictures – anything you’ve written, said, or had recorded in any medium can be pulled up from your past and used against you; a 1996 email is 13 years old, but it still has come back to haunt Marc Dalton.

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Raising the carbon tax

Posted April 21, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Greens, Economy, Environment

The Green Party sent out a press releasing calling for an increase to the carbon tax (Media Release).

Victoria, BC –– The Green Party of BC is calling on British Columbians to support an increased tax shift on green house gas emissions from $10/tonne to $50/tonne.

The $10/tonne (now $15) shift by the BC Liberals is a start, but BC Greens would shift more sooner — starting with $50/tonne,” said Jane Sterk, Leader of the Green Party of BC.

“Since revenues from the tax will be used to reduce payroll and income taxes, most British Columbians who have choosen alternates to burning hydrocarbons have already increased their overall revenues. Along with the GST rebate and lowered personal taxes, some low income, northern and rural dwellers have also seen reduced expenses.”

The press release looks rushed and not researched properly.

The second paragraph states that the carbon tax is levied at $10 per tonne, but then states it is now $15 – it is not. It will be $15 as of July 1, 2009, and $20 as of July 1, 2010, and $25 as of July 1, 2011, and then the last legislated increase is $30 as of July 1, 2012. Presumably this legislation will be extended if the BC Liberals are re-elected.

The third paragraph is badly worded and is plainly incorrect. Revenues from the carbon tax cannot be used to decrease payroll taxes (CPP and EI) mainly because these are federal jurisdiction items. The provincial government cannot directly reduce these payroll taxes. Saying that the carbon tax, from an individual perspective “increases overall revenues” is also incorrect phrasing; “reducing expenses” is proper. Finally, the GST rebate (another federal jurisdiction matter) has nothing to do with the provincial carbon tax.

This isn’t the first time the provincial Green party has mixed provincial and federal jurisdiction matters; in their original platform document, they stated they would accelerate capital cost allowance rates for “green” capital expenditures; and also permanently put in place the oil drilling moratorium – both of which are federal matters.

Politically, calling for a carbon tax increase is not going to win mainstream voters for the Green party; especially since this release does not explain in a concrete fashion (i.e. dollars that are planning on being spent for various initiatives) on how the revenues from such a tax increase would be utilized – there is reference to “Initially money would be directed toward programs in rural and northern communities”, but somehow I doubt those communities will be thrilled about this. The press release also implies that the “revenue neutral” aspect of the carbon tax (i.e. every dollar collected from carbon taxation will no longer be applied to tax reductions elsewhere) will no longer be adhered to.

The impact of a $50/tonne carbon tax, assuming a 10% reduction in consumption of fossil fuels over projected 2009-2010 levels, would be a $1.42 billion dollar per year tax increase over and above the 2009-2010 budgeted amount (of $546 million). A $50/tonne carbon tax would represent a 11.7 cent tax per litre of unleaded gasoline.

Finally, keep in mind the title of the press release was “Green Tax Shifting Reduces Emissions Without Increasing Taxes”, which is completely inconsistent with what the rest of the press release stated since the tax increase would be approximately $1.42 billion, assuming fossil fuel consumption is reduced by 10%.

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