Posted September 7, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Liberals, By-Election
Public Eye reports that Margaret MacDiarmid beat Rick Peterson 179 (60%) to 119 (40%) for the BC Liberal nomination for Vancouver-Fairview.
Presumably if there had not been a federal election, we would be hearing a by-election call shortly, but this will not happen for at least another month and a half.
Posted September 7, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, BC Liberals, By-Election
Arthur Griffiths is applying for the BC Liberal Vancouver-Burrard nomination.
Vancouver-Burrard is going to be split into Vancouver-West End (strongly NDP) and Vancouver-False Creek (Strongly BC Liberal) in the next general election.
Griffiths is running for the 2009 nomination in Vancouver-West End, against David Harper. Vancouver-False Creek (the other half what used to be Vancouver-Burrard) is slated to be Mary McNeil’s seat.
BJ picked up on this far earlier than I did, or the Vancouver Sun.
The question here is - if Arthur Griffiths gets the nomination for Vancouver-Burrard, and wins the seat, is he going to become the shortest term MLA in recent BC history when he tries to get the Vancouver-West End nomination? What if David Harper wins that nomination? Is David Harper going to run for the Vancouver-Burrard by-election? Finally, how much power of incumbency will a winning candidate in the riding have, and who will the NDP nominate in response to this?
There are lots of unanswered questions, all of which have little to do with the outcome of the May 12, 2009 general election, and time will tell.
Both major parties will be spending a lot of money for little gain for the Vancouver-Burrard by-election, other than to prevent the Green party from sitting in MLA in the Legislature for the pre-election winter session.
Posted September 3, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Liberals, By-Election
Sean Holman reports that Saturday, September 6, will be the BC Liberal nomination date for Vancouver-Fairview.
It is likely the Federal election will be on October 14, so it will be interesting to see whether the election date will be between this and the municipal cycle, or whether it will be after the municipal elections.
A logical compromise is to drop to writ just after the November 15 municipal elections, so my new suspected date will be December 8, 2008.
In addition, this date would be after the fall legislative session (assuming it occurs) ends on November 27, 2008.
Posted August 20, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Liberals
In response to my previous article about the BC Liberal Vancouver-West End nomination, David Harper sent me a response via email. He gave me permission to post it, “verbatim”, after I asked him whether I could post it on this site.
Any personal correspondence that comes my way is held private unless explicitly consented to otherwise, and I thank David for replying.
from: Dr. David G. Harper
to: Sacha Peter
date: Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 12:52 PM
subject: BC 2009Hi Sasha.
I saw your blog on the Vancouver West End riding. Thank you for bringing attention to the race for the BC Liberal nomination in the West End.
I thought I’d send a note to clarify a few things.
You are quite correct that I am little known outside of the West End (and the Fraser Valley where I teach and often lecture publicly), which is not atypical for someone new to politics.
My platform was developed after consultation with community members, so it is bottom up rather than top down. I think this is important. The issues are divided into local and provincial and I think this has lead to some of the confusion that you mention. My local platform is about five key issues that West Enders identified as being most important to them. Anyone wanting to represent the West End needs to be familiar with these issues (it might be worth comparing my platform to my opponent’s) . My provincial platform demonstrates how my skills and experience are a good fit for the provincial mandate.
My book has been out of print for many years (the average shelf life is 6 months) and it did make the best-sellers list in Books for Business (the principal Canadian best-seller list) at least three times, the last more than a year after it’s release. At one point my monthly sales were ahead of Warren Buffet. I know my publisher was very pleased with the sales as well. I have authored other business articles, but that is my only business book. Over the years I have also been asked on many occasions to comment on the local biotech scene in Vancouver for the Sun and Globe. I have just completed a two-year project working as the content editor on an e-learning book called “Education for a Digital World” which is published by the Commonwealth of Learning. I am presently working on other books, but they are more about health than business.
My small business is Pacific Bioventures Inc. and it is a private consulting company in the biotech/health sector. Though I do hire other consultants from time to time, this is essentially a one-man operation.
I co-manage the BioWest Biotech Hedge fund, which is a closed private fund that uses alternative investment strategies to focus on investment in the global biotech sector. This venture is not a part of pacific BioVentures Inc. The fund is in the process of closing down as I enter politics.
As for the pet issue, there is an eight-year moratorium on “condo conversions” in the West End so owners cannot “pull units out of the rental market”. And any increased damage deposits and/or pet insurance would compensate for any significant depreciation of property.
Thanks for engaging me in this lively and important debate. I assure you that there is nothing untrue on my Website, but I understand your skepticism about politicians. I hope to play a part in changing that public perception.
And I would happy to give you an autograph any time (but not on a library copy).
Cheers,
DaveDave Harper
Candidate for Nomination
B.C. Liberal Party
Vancouver - West End
www.daveharper.ca
info@daveharper.ca
604.833.8138
Posted August 19, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Liberals
Arthur Griffiths, the previous owner of the Vancouver Canucks, now has a competitor for the BC Liberal nomination in the newly created Vancouver-West End riding.
Dave Harper (no relation to the Prime Minister) has entered the race. According to a CKNW article, about Harper:
Harper says his expertise in health and education is his strength, “I’ve been a health educator for more than 25 years and specialize in health; especially health promotion and aboriginal health and education; especially e-learning and aboriginal post-secondary education. So I’m bringing some professional expertise to the BC Caucus, I think, that will be really valuable.”
Harper says he has the backing of North Vancouver Liberal MLA Dan Jarvis.
My initial thoughts about the Vancouver-West End riding was when I saw Griffiths put in his hat that it would mean a victory for him. When I did the numbers of how Vancouver-Burrard split in that particular area, I realized that he would have a very tough battle - West-End is 48% NDP, 35% BC Liberal using 2005 election results.
Arthur Griffiths has name recognition to anybody that followed the Canucks-Grizzlies saga. After that, he tried being part of the olympic committee, but for whatever reason wasn’t accepted into the group. Presumably he has a rolodex of people that can help him with his nomination, which is why I was rather surprised to see another person getting into this nomination battle.
There is little public information out there on Dave Harper other than what’s on his website - a UCFV (now rebranded UFV) Kinesiology professor. His platform is rather generic (e.g. “I believe we need an integrated and comprehensive plan for economic development in BC.”), save for his thoughts on how he would like to update the residential tenancy act to force landlords to accept small pets. Unfortunately, while this idea is undoubtedly intended to making more housing accessible to those people that have small pets, it is also a great way of encouraging more landlords to pull units out of the rental market as depreciation is faster with a pet around (unless by “small pets” he means goldfish).
The way he’s trying to sell himself (at least from his website) is internally inconsistent. For example, his motto is “Defend the West End”, but he talks a lot about high-speed internet in remote communities and for educational purposes, which seems to be something he has a genuine interest in and has a background to prove it, but he then spends a lot of time talking about other issues that are beyond his career strengths. This is a classic Paul Martin “I can be everything for everybody” approach which isn’t going to work.
I see the line “I am recognized as an industry expert in the biotech sector and I am a best-selling author on the topic and an industry consultant.” Having a generic name like David Harper doesn’t help his cause, but it took me 5 minutes of searching to find out he wrote a book called “Investing in Biotech - How to Profit from the Biopharmaceutical Revolution” which was published well after the peak of the biotech market in the year 2000 - chances are he would have had more sales if the book was written three years back from the 2002 publication date.
There was one reader review on Amazon, which makes the claim of “best-selling” rather dubious - had the book been a major seller, there would have been more reviews on the site (even back in 2002, there would have been many reviewers on Amazon, or even showing up from Google searches). The sentence also implies that he’s written multiple books on the topic, but I could not find any more books that he wrote. The problem with such claims makes me wonder whether the stuff on the rest of the site is true or not - e.g. what small business he actually runs, what “private hedge fund” he runs, etc.
On a side note, the book is available at my library, so I will borrow it since coincidentally biotechnology is a sector that I invest in as well. I doubt, after what I’ve written here, that Harper would give me an autograph.
Posted August 7, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Liberals, By-Election
According to the Public Eye, Dr. Margaret MacDiarmid will be seeking the BC Liberal nomination for Vancouver-Fairview.
As it is painfully obvious that both candidates will be female (the NDP’s candidate by virtue of policy), I would estimate that Dr. MacDiarmid would be the front-runner (vs. Rick Peterson), especially when you have somebody with the stature of Colin Hansen at the announcement.
Posted July 3, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Liberals
I notice that the BC government has been buying four 30-second time slots between 6:00pm to 7:00pm (the Global TV News Hour) with their LiveSmartBC.ca campaign. This is consistent with their strategy four years ago of peppering the television with similar advertising of a “prosperity” nature. This time around, it is of an environmental nature.
The format is showing some environmental horror scenes - pine beetle infestation, forest fires in the Okanagan, flooding in Prince George, etc. Then the ad talks about the 33% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020, new investments, new incentives, and new savings.
Whether people pay credence to such advertisements is questionable, but I do find it very interesting that these advertisements start with negative elements before turning “happy” again - that is a deviation from the all-feel-good ads in the 2005 campaign. They are obviously targeting the green vote. Will it work?
Posted June 28, 2008 by Sacha Peter
Category: BC Liberals
The man is a quote machine. Oppal will be running again in 2009 because:
I’m sticking around because I’m basically unemployable.
Just like a typical politician, lying again!