The Gardner Canal, a Pacific Ocean inlet near Kitimat, B.C., planned terminus of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline. What’s in the project for British Columbians? Not much, and they know it. Below: B.C. Premier Christy Clark, Alberta Premier Alison Redford. Premier Alison Redford’s biggest problem with Alberta’s leaky pipeline file
Continue readingTag: Christy Clark
Northern Insight: British Columbia, Potemkin village style
Part of the plan to arrest dwindling BC Liberal support is to announce and re-announce program changes and capital projects, large and small. There is a flurry of proclamations happening now for health care and other projects. Friday, Christy Clark will be in Victoria presiding over introduction of new green
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics blog: leaky pipeline gives slick impression of alberta oil.
Tweet A pipeline leak spews oil into a central Alberta lake (photo from @tedgbauer at https://twitter.com/tedgbauer/status/211154927446278144/photo/1) When word first broke that a leaky pipeline near the central Alberta town of Sundre had poured an estimated 1000 to 3000 barrels of oil into a tributary of the Red Deer River, Premier
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Provincial Matters
Charest stands a better chance running against this guy, than against Pauline Marois and Francois Legault Your Friday morning coast-to-coast link roundup: Atlantic Canada: CRA’s quarterly poll numbers have been released, showing the PCs up by 12 in New Brunswick and the NDP up by just 2 in Nova Scotia. The
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: The Senate Election that Refuses to Die
Three months ago, I wrote a post warning of coming Senate elections here in British Columbia. Now it seems that the private member’s bill providing for such elections, despite Premier Christy Clark’s support, will not be making it through the … Continue reading →
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content for your Sunday reading. – Bruce Johnstone reminds us that much of Stephen Harper’s low-wage, anti-worker agenda has been rather poorly hidden for a long time: Everything from growing trees for farmers to processing immigration applications to inspecting meat to examining evidence in criminal investigations, all of the
Continue readingCalgary Grit: Mulcair Takes on the West
What started out as musings on the health of Ontario’s manufacturing sector has quickly escalated into a full fledged war of words between Tom Mulcair and the western Premiers. It’s an important shift in the dialogue, because going to war with the West is a lot different than going to
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Coleman regulates the ‘independent’ regulator
if we needed more evidence that BC Hydro has become the tool of financial pirates, Rich Coleman provided it Tuesday with news that public hearings scheduled to begin a month from now are cancelled. As Vaughn Palmer writes, “The commission had to approve the rate increase sought by BC Hydro
Continue readingdaveberta.ca - Alberta politics blog: life after dutch disease: thomas mulcair to visit alberta on may 31.
Tweet Thomas Mulcair After weeks of warring words about the economic influence of Western Canadian oilsands development on the crumbling Central Canadian manufacturing sector, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair will visit Alberta on May 31 to meet with business and political leaders. This will be Mr. Mulcair’s first visit to Alberta
Continue readingMontreal Simon: Dr Mulcair and the Dutch Disease
Ever since Thomas Mulcair warned that the Dutch Disease is killing this country, every shabby oil pimp and Con huckster in Canada has been lining up to denounce him. And now we've finally reached the bottom of the dirty oil barrel. Christy Clark, the Conservative Liberal ConLiberal Premier of British
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Demonstrating empty headed desperation
Yesterday, I noticed a small gem in Rod Smelser’s informative twitter stream: “BC Govt Communications & Public Engagement has budget of $26M for spin, Environmental Assessment Office, $9M. Sierra Club: B.C. Budget Risks Water, Environment“ Of course, Liberals spend much more on self promotion by tapping the budgets of individual
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: School employers seek to force BCTF members to volunteer
This is kind of amazing – the BC Public Schools Employers’ Association (the arms-length thing the government created to manage negotiations with the BCTF) is going to the LRB to try to have the withdrawal by teachers from voluntary activities declared illegal. Uhh, what? So the BC government thinks that
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Rebranding – easier than revision
Province columnist Michael Smyth writes the BC Liberal Party — “searching for any way out of its predicament” — believes a new name might be part of the answer to unpopularity and disrespect. Christy Clark is not the first troubled leader who thought rebranding would be simpler than providing principle
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Over To You, Christy Clark
“Under the Enbridge proposal, British Columbia would assume almost all the [Northern Gateway] project’s risk, yet would see only a fraction of the benefits,” said Dix in a release. “By any measure, such a high-risk, low-return approach simply isn’t in B.C.’s interests.” It looks, incidentally, as though the federal government’s
Continue readingNorthern Insight: The car-crash-that-never-ends
Liberals across Canada are being hoist with their own petard, Brian Topp, The Globe and Mail, Apr. 29, 2012 “Meanwhile, the car-crash-that-never-ends that is the premiership of British Columbia’s Christy Clark is now apparently thrashing around to the view that it needs to scrub the Liberal brand off itself, to
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Some positive messaging from Christy Clark in BC – but that name change…
I wrote earlier this week about some lessons I hoped BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark would take from the experience of Alberta PCPremier Alison Redford, who was able to win election and beat back a threat on her right by moving to the centre and appealing to progressive voters. And
Continue readingA BCer in Toronto: Can Christy Clark learn any lessons from Allison Redford?
It’s a staple of punditry to take events in one region and try to connect them to another. And far be it from me to break with tradition. But I think the parallels between Alberta and British Columbia are interesting, and I think there are definitely lessons that Christy Clark
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Toward a certain end
Lights are out on election night My point to radio reporter Shane Woodford in the twitter exchange discussed in an earlier post was that too little attention has been paid to the reasons why public approval of BC Liberals has dropped from a high of 58% in 2001 to 31%
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Premier Photo-Op and friends
The candidates here holding Christy Clark erect represent two of the primary supports relied on by Patrick Kinsella’s creation and her BC Liberals. Dennis Marsden is a former President of the Chamber of Commerce and Laurie Throness represents the right wing fundamentalist segment of the Harper Government – the paradise
Continue readingNorthern Insight: Go away, we have something to hide
Benjamin Alldritt, North Shore News reporter invited by the North Vancouver-Lonsdale Liberal Association to “A North Shore Evening with Premier Christy Clark”, gets disinvited by one of Clark’s minions: “I’m sure you can understand that we don’t want comments made in front of a private audience made public,” said Garfinkel,
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