BC Conservative infighting continues

Posted June 30, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Other Parties

The BC Conservatives sent out a press release stating that due to continued in-fighting, that most of their directors and party leader Wilf Hanni has resigned.

I had previously posted that I had thought these internal squabbles were resolved after they received a court ruling certifying Wilf Hanni and his supporters on the board as the true directors as the BC Conservative party, but this obviously wasn’t completely rectified.

According to the press release, it appears that legal fees, approximately $30,000, is hindering the party. As directors could potentially be liable for such fees, they resigned to likely avoid facing future liability.

The BC Conservative party currently has only one asset – its name is strikingly similar to a federal party that happens to be in government. If it was not for this, the party would be non-existent. If the people that left the party think they can continue in politics as a different name and have a feasible chance of being elected in the legislature, they will be kidding themselves. They need to look at the BC Refederation Party’s results, which had some of the lowest vote counts in the entire province.

At least the ex-directors of the BC Conservative Party can enjoy Canada Day knowing that they likely will not be personally liable for the party’s liabilities.

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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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Two more parties nominate candidates – Communist Party, Your Political Party of BC

Posted April 21, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Other Parties

The Communist Party of BC has filed election papers for two candidates – Zachary Crispin in Kootenay West and Peter Marcus in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant. Both ridings are currently heavily NDP.

James Filippelli has also been nominated as a Your Political Party of BC candidate in Port Moody-Coquitlam.

Unfortunately I cannot find a link to the Communist Party’s website (assuming there is one), but I have linked to Your Political Party above. According to the Communist Party’s Wikipedia page, the party is against the BC-STV system (my guess for the reason: there isn’t enough distribution between the votes and the seats allocated, and that the election results are not centrally planned by the government).

Subsequent note: James Filippelli gave me a phone call, and would like me to clarify to the rest of the readers out there that there is no relationship whatsoever between Your Political Party of BC and the Communist Party of BC. In addition, I have corrected the web link to Your Political Party.

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BC Conservatives release their 2009 election platform

Posted April 21, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Other Parties

The BC Conservatives have released their 2009 election platform (link, local copy).

There isn’t anything “surprising” about their platform – examples include calling for “performance based health care solutions” to stem the increase in health care expenditures (but with no concrete plans on how to do it); opposing the upcoming Recognition and Reconciliation act (which will be a vote-getter off-reserves) and eliminating the carbon tax.

On page 7, they did mention the following about “selling lakes and rivers” –

Selling off our rivers, streams and lakes to long term foreign control is unconscionable. BC Conservative MLAs will protect these resources for the long term benefit of all our citizens. Commercialization opportunities should be provided only through limited time lease agreements rather than outright sales agreements.

It doesn’t look like the BC Conservatives did their research – right now the maximum lease you can get on a river, assuming you pass all other regulatory authority, is 40 years. That said, the province did do a deal with CN Rail in 2003 to “lease off” the majority of BC Rail’s assets and trackage rights, for renewable periods of up to 990 years, which did not constitute a “sale”. However, 40 years is certainly a lot shorter than 990 years.

Page 8 calls for a 1% reduction in PST; assuming spending levels remain the same, this would result in a $730 million tax reduction in the 2009-2010 fiscal year. They also call for “PST tax credits” and investigating harmonizing the PST with the GST, which suggests that the BC Conservatives haven’t learned too much from Ontario’s experience with harmonization so far.

Page 9 calls for the elimination of the property transfer tax which is another $685 million line item for the 2009-2010 year.

Page 13 calls for the recommendation of rejecting BC-STV. I guess they didn’t learn from Adriane Carr’s experience in 2005.

All in all, this document is not going to make or break the party. They do have a huge funding gap with the tax reductions they have proposed (about $2 billion) which they haven’t really addressed – do they plan on running deficits? But for a small fringe party, missing details like this are to be expected.

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Reform Party of BC is still alive

Posted April 16, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Other Parties

Ron Gamble has sent in his nomination papers to Elections BC in North Vancouver-Lonsdale under the BC Reform banner. He ran in the 2005 election, receiving 365 votes (4th place out of 6 candidates, behind Marijuana and DRBC).

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Greens, Conservatives, Refed 2008 vs. 2007 financing

Posted April 7, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Analysis, BC Greens, Other Parties

Here is the financing reports for the BC Green Party, the BC Conservatives and the BC Refed party of 2008 vs. 2007.

The Green Party did some significant belt-tightening (observe the decrease in salaries within the party), but also has managed to increase their donor base. The party will be a continuing factor in future elections, as they will have enough money to support some physical infrastructure and some part time staff. Their numbers in 2008 look considerably better than in 2007, and it makes one wonder how much influence Jane Sterk had on these decisions – if she did, a 39% year-over-year increase in contributions coupled with finding 17% in expenses to cut is surprisingly “conservative” in nature!

The Greens have $28,000 in the bank at the end of 2008 which will not be enough to run a mass advertising campaign, but they will be able to pick a few spots to concentrate. In addition, what they will make up for in cash will be made up for in ’sweat equity’.

The Conservatives and Refed BC’s financial returns are fairly routine – the numbers are still small enough that one or two individual contributors would skew the numbers, but in the Conservatives’ case, they have a 29% increase in political contributions.

Please note the following numbers are approximate due to the transcription errors that occur during reading the filings.  The numbers for the most part are accurate but there will be balancing errors.

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BC Conservative Party resolves internal squabble

Posted February 25, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Other Parties

Readers of this site may remember the cat fight that was going amongst previous (or people that claimed to be) directors vs. the existing directors of the BC Conservative party. This was also somewhat covered by a September 7, 2008 article on the Globe and Mail.

According to a February 16, 2009 press release by the BC Conservatives:

VANCOUVER: BC Conservative Leader Wilf Hanni announced today that the Supreme Court of British Columbia has made a determination on the legal issues that have been hanging over the Party for several months. Madame Justice Brown ruled yesterday that a group claiming to be the Board of Directors after a meeting in August of 2008 are not the Directors. This restores the previously elected Directors to control of the Party.

I could not find a copy of the ruling, but this apparently settles the issue with the legal jurisdiction of the party.

Barring a “Gordon Wilson” moment, the BC Conservative Party is not in a position to win any seats in this election, but they do have a chance of playing a “spoiler” role to the BC Liberals in some close ridings in the province. Currently the party has five candidates that have declared their interest in running.

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BC Marijuana party to run 2 candidates, endorsing Greens

Posted February 12, 2009 by Sacha Peter
Category: Other Parties

In what may have some electoral impact for the Green party, the BC Marijuana party will only run two candidates (in order to maintain its Elections BC party registration), and endorse the Green Party this upcoming election. The BCMP ran 44 candidates in the 2005 election, garnering 11,519 votes (an average of 262 votes per candidate). In 2001, they managed to field a full slate of 79 candidates, which was quite an accomplishment.

Although the 2005 popular vote may not seem like a lot, this is about 7% of the popular vote the Green Party received in the last election; if there is sufficient migration to the Greens it may give them a slight boost to their vote count.

I’m guessing that party leader Marc Emery probably found it too much of a headache to organize a high number of candidates, including processing campaign financing returns, etc.

Offsetting this potential gain for the Green party will be the loss of the ability to gain swing voters that have issues with marijuana. This is likely the reason why Jane Sterk probably declined any formal alliance, and had a tepid response at Emery’s endorsement.

More can be read on the Georgia Straight, and hat tip to Langley Politics for posting about it.

While this will not change any seat results, it is interesting in the sense that the “fourth place” party in 2009 will not be the Marijuana Party; in 2005 it was Democratic Reform BC, but they seem to be very inactive. BC Marijuana placed fifth in 2005.

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