During the recent provincial election campaign both the NDP and the Green Party made strong commitments to electoral financial reform. Tuesday, the NDP came through with a bill that will go a long way towards creating a level playing field in that regard during provincial elections. The legislation tabled by the NDP will eliminate all…
Category: Green Party
Don’t shoot the messengers
Edward Snowden is a household name — he’s a whistleblower who so profoundly upset the very powerful that he was forced to flee his home country. What we tend to forget is that in almost all bureaucracies and governments, big and small, there’s the need for anyone who sees wrongdoing in her or his workplace…
Hanging by a thread
Wow! What a night it was! And it ain’t over yet! I’ve witnessed many election night roller coasters but nothing quite like last night. I went to sleep last night dreaming of proportional representation, big money out of politics (union and business donations alike), no Kinder Morgan pipeline, no Site C dam, and no Massey…
When orange is the new green
We’re just over halfway through the provincial election campaign and the outcome is more uncertain than any previous election — more uncertain because we are no longer talking about just two parties. Let me explain. Since the collapse in 1972 of the provincial Liberal and Conservative parties in the aftermath of the Dave Barrett NDP…
The power of Green
Will it finally happen? An NDP minority with the Green Party holding the balance of power in BC? Last week the writ was dropped and the provincial election is, finally, formally underway. What makes this election possibly unique in our history is the fact that the NDP and the Liberals are in a statistical dead heat…
Letting the light in for the New Year
As the year has wound down, it’s time to look back on it and forward to 2017. 2016 has seen many dark clouds. The election of Donald Trump was perhaps the darkest one of all. Justin Trudeau appears to have lost his appetite for proportional representation, and climate change is accelerating. No one would blame…
Vancouver-Mount Pleasant voters are a bellwether
Byelections are never easy for whatever party holds power at the time, and Feb. 2 was no exception. The incumbent BC Liberals lost both byelections — Vancouver-Mount Pleasant and Coquitlam-Burke Mountain. The interesting takeaway for me was not the fact that the Liberals lost. I say this in spite of the fact that one of…