Former Green endorsing BC Liberals

Posted October 19, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Greens

The BC Liberals announced that Chris Bennett, the interim leader of the BC Green Party (between Adriane Carr and Jane Sterk), is joining the party.

This is a fairly interesting signal that the BC Green party clearly has some organizational problems (which one could have inferred by the late financial return filing).

If the BC Green party fails to perform in the 2009 election, then one wonders whether this is actually good or bad for the BC Liberals. Initially one would think positively, but if the Green party were to collapse in BC, would those voters simply stay at home, or would they gravitate further towards the NDP?

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Further analysis of the BC Green Party

Posted July 8, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Greens

David Schreck (former NDP MLA of North Vancouver-Lonsdale) has more detailed analysis of the BC Green Party annual finance report (his July 4, 5 and 7, year 2008 entries - he does not provide hard-links for his entries).

These two paragraphs pretty much say it all:

The Green Party appears to have a brand name that keeps it afloat even though it lacks organization, financing, or the ability to satisfy the Elections Act.

The Ipsos-Reid’s poll conducted between June 5 and June 10, 2008 indicated that the Green Party has 16% support, unchanged from the previous poll. One wonders how the party would do without that magical name.

The only two reactions I have on this is that the national Green Party, having received more than 2% of the popular vote in the last two national elections, is receiving federal funding - approximately $300,000 per quarterly period. The national party’s performance will directly correlate to the provincial party’s fortunes. It’s likely in the national party’s best interests to divert some funding and attention to the BC provincial arm as the Green Party’s support base is strongest in BC more than in any other province.

(An aside; yes, the Green Party candidates in Alberta received more percentage popular vote in the 2006 election than any other province, but this is more of a reflection of a protest vote than bona-fide grassroots support.)

The second observation is that while the Green Party’s balance sheet is not in good shape, receiving $100,000 in contributions in a year is not a trivial activity for a political party to achieve.

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Green Party hands in its financing report

Posted July 8, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Greens

The Green Party was due to hand in its 2007 election financing report at the end of March, 2008, but it applied for an extension (for a $100 charge, something so small that one would think all major parties would choose to exercise this option).

It finally handed in the report last week, a 49 page document audited by Manning Elliott on June 24, 2008.

Opening the document, we have a party that has a poor balance sheet (about negative $29,000 in equity - of which $20,000 is a loan given by a W Crookes before the 2005 election; currently charging 5% interest), collected $108,000 in contributions, and spent $157,000 on various expenses (top three would be staff salaries at $65,000; office supplies and stationary at $25,000; and professional services at $22,000).

It is clear that the Green Party is not being managed well from a financial perspective - they have very few financial reserves available for the upcoming election.

Something I find rather mysterious, however, is that Jane Sterk, leader of the BC Green Party, did not contribute more than the reporting threshold ($250). She was elected leader on October 22, 2007, so one would think that she’d contribute since it is a heavily taxpayer subsidized donation.

Carole James donated $1,500 to the NDP in 2007, while Gordon Campbell donated $1,200 to the BC Liberal party. While the provincial government does not have a cap on how much you can donate to a (provincial) political party, donations above $1,150 is where individuals stop receiving tax credits.

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Jane Sterk - Jane Who?

Posted June 17, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Greens

Since the 2005 election, the Green Party has been very silent on the provincial scene. The last action (or in this case, inaction) they took was not filing in the 2007 election financial return on time.

If you ask anybody from the street who the leader of the provincial Green party is, you will likely not get the correct answer - Jane Sterk. In fact, just a couple months ago, I was struggling to answer the same question - I knew Adriane Carr was the previous leader and I was searching in my mind who replaced her. Wikipedia has a very sparse entry on her.

Missing was the fact that she’s an elected councillor in the village of Esquimalt, getting elected with 2,105 votes, the top number of the six councillors (the sixth place received 1,555 votes). She also ran in the 2004 Federal Election in the Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca (Liberal Keith Martin’s riding) electoral district, receiving a very respectable 9.2% of the vote. Her successor received 5.7% of the vote in the 2006 election, suggesting the Sterk had some magnitude of vote appeal in the local area.

Sterk also ran in the 2005 provincial election in the Esquimalt-Metchosin riding, receiving 10.6% of the popular vote and losing to NDP candidate Maurine Karagianis.

Google did not return that much information on her - as of today, the search returns the following:

… and when you click on the “It works!” first link, you get a server returning an error.

So the last resource of resort, Youtube, came to the rescue. CHEK TV News had a news story on her successful leadership attempt and gave a brief biography on her which revealed far more than what I could have dug up on the internet.

From the video, we learn that she’s 60 years old, moved from Edmonton 11 years ago, has two sons, a husband that is a corporate lawyer, and she teaches commerce at a local university as her day job. From the looks of the video, she apparently has quite a nice house, including a wood-burning oven where she has cooked a thanksgiving turkey (and I bet it would taste quite good as well).

Other than this, the public hardly knows a thing about Jane Sterk. The BC Green party has been silent for the past year.

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Where is the Green Party?

Posted February 23, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Greens

Jane Sterk, new leader of the Green Party, should be getting some media spotlight after this budget which had a huge focus on being environmentally correct. The lack of media spotlight on the Greens is a negative indicator for their electoral fortunes as it suggests that the leadership transition has not been as smooth as it seems. Adriane Carr, previous leader of the Green Party, at least managed to get a few soundbites about how the province was headed toward eternal damnation. But the Green Party today? Where are they?

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