The problem is that this is a traditionally conservative riding. Nominating a BCGEU rep for the riding is akin to giving it to the liberals as bad as their candidate might be. The ndp does way to much of this in the north and should consider nominating someone with a less polarizing past if they want to take a riding like that.

I will never vote for this union hack. I hate the Liberals, but I will never vote for a union drone. Their priorities are NEVER for the betterment of anybody but those in their union. The only skills she seems to posses are activism and organizing the choir that is about to sung to.

If the NDP ever wants to be taken seriously they have to shed this image that a party hack with union connections is their best candidates. It is an insult to anybody that has to work for a living.

This person simply reinforces the stereo-type of a NDP drone.

Well, there is an open mind?

No preconcieved pejudiced views there?

Styxxx, do you know this individual personally? If not, Taxed Out! is absolutely correct and you’re spouting nonsense. Even on the level of logic, your attack is lame – of course, the priority of a union leader is to look out for the membership’s welfare; what else are they there for? Are you trying to claim that the company bosses are committed to the welbeing of anybody but the company?
Don’t forget that the benefits and decent wages that unions obtain for their members also benefit non-union workers by setting labour standards.
As for the woman in question, again, what right do you have calling her a “drone”? And for the record, I work for a living and do not in any way find the notion of a union person seeking the nomination for the NDP an insult.
Get real!

This person has only announced her intention to run for the nomination. She hasnt **won** the nomination yet.

Lets wait and see how it shakes out.

It is your response that is “lame”. Both the company “bosses” (whatever that means) and the employees, union or otherwise, should be looking out for the company’s best situation. That is why so many companies and municipalities are bankrupt. Thanks for making my argument. You demonstrated just the kind of attitude that scares the crap out of anyone with a modicum of fiscal responsibility.

“Their priorities are NEVER for the betterment of anybody but those in their union.”

Quit whining and join a union. Pretty simple hey?

Bang on Styxxx. Another “activist” running for the dippers. Just what this province needs.

Dragon, I’ll rush out and join a union right after my labotomy.

Someone has to look after workers rights or the masters would have their way at the expense of society. A union should act as a good balance. If working were really all about employees and companies working together to enrich all, we would live in a communist state. The way our society is right now, unions are a necessity. Here is hoping she can represent the NDPs values, or why allow her to run? Simple.

Unless somebody stands up for Canadian rights we will be learning Mandarin. I personally will opt for Spanish. Hopefully I can retire in 15 years in the sunshine.

Being a union member most of my life and I also support the NDP. But the optics is wrong and union reps have a record of not getting elected. would I vote for Jimmy Pattison if he ran for mla not on your life wouild I vote for him. He is the image of capitalism to me.

We will never get another guy like WAC Bennet he had the vision of lookong at both sides of the picture. He gave us prosperity and BCGEU.
Cheers

Working really IS about BOTH companies and employees working to enrich all, Nao. We ‘produce’ primarily to ‘consume’. Not so someone can have a ‘job’, or some company owners can post ever greater ‘profits’, each sure that those things are the be-all and end-all of everything. When both are really only the results of properly serving the public, or should be.

WAC Bennett had a very unique ability amongst all the Premiers we’ve had in the last half century. He saw that. He didn’t get everything right, but his government did accomplish a lot in the twenty years they were in office. And it wasn’t all so greedily one sided, like it’s been under the BC Liberals. Nor just outright stupidly counter productive, as it was so often under the NDP. WAC Bennett realised the “other guy” has to eat, too

If he’d have stuck a little closer to the original Social Credit ideology near the end of the 1960’s, when it was needed, we might have been able to avoid the inflation that eroded the genuine prosperity he had presided over and in large measure initiated ~ the inflation that finally did his government in, and that which we’ve never really been able to shake since.

Crazy to say anything bad about a man like Wacky Bennett. He truly was larger than real. He built our highways and infrastucture we still enjoy. However I dont think he caused inflation. he may have become a victim of it.

Campbell did do a lot of good things, but he was a bit arragont, thus created his downfall. glen Clark, Zalm was not good for the province. Bennett jr, Harcourt was a so-so leader. Barrette, he got in because of spite to the regime, he could have done a lot more than what he did. He could have yeilded a long term gain for the party, but I think it got squandered away.

I really would have a tough time if Dyck wins, I think he would be worse than Glen Clark. I really don’t think Christy Clarke can pull it off. I doubt she will win her own riding. I can only hope of three way tie, putting us back to the polls by 2015.

W.A.C Bennet the best NDP Premier the Province of BC has ever had.

Started more crown corporations than any other Premier in history. PGE (BC Rail), BC Hydro, BC Ferries, BC Transit, to name a few.

Funded more Provincial infrastructure projects than any other Premier, highways, bridges, dams to name a few.

One other so-called NDP thing he was guilty of was Provincial debt. In the ’72 election two sets of books (Government and Crown Corporations) was an issue of the day and Barrett promised in his campaign that there would only be one set of books for the Province. When Barrett won and took office he kept that promise and combined the two sets of books and the people of BC found out the Province was broke and in debt. Barrett and the people of BC would learn that W.A.C. Bennett had used the Provinces Crown Corporations to fund Government.

Today after 40 years the right claims W.A.C. was a great fiscal Conservative when in reality he was a socially left of center Premier who like many others used slight of hand to hide his fiscal deficiencies.

Susanne, in my humble opinion, you couldn’t be more left if you tried. You are the last person I would vote for, and the last party I would vote for. When you add it up, the NDP have never been “For the Unions” They pay lip service to the unions. You were probably too young to remember that they put us older union folks on the picket lines.So hang on to your day job, woman, you’re gonna need it.
Styxx, your posts are sound logic.
Nao, well, I had a good laugh.

Not so, Taxed Out! WAC Bennett understood business accounting, and used that to the greatest advantage (of all of us)in operating the government while he was in office. He didn’t apply that to the whole government, (one of his few mistakes), but he was clever enough to use it in ALL the Crown corporations and various other financing ‘Authorities’ he created.

Business accounting is based on the rules and conventions of double-entry ‘accrual’ accounting, and shows not only the operating results of the fiscal period expressed in ‘money’, (Profit or Loss), but more importantly whether there has been an increase or decrease in ASSETS or LIABILITIES, and a growth or shrinkage of ‘money’ through a CAPITAL ACCOUNT.

Government accounting is, by contrast, simple single-entry ‘cash’ accounting, where a Budget is supposed to balance. The conception being that it’s supposed to balance through taxation alone ~ the government is not supposed to be increasing debt, but is paying out only what it takes in in taxation in each fiscal period.

This is really a mathematical impossibility, and despite the commonly held conception that it is “fiscally prudent”, is a gross misrepresentation of actual facts.

Since government infrastucture, amongst other things classed as Crown (public) Assets, often has a lifespan extending far beyond the fiscal period it was bought and paid for in, such accounting supposes that a road, say, that might last ten years, has to return the full cost of its construction in the year it was built. Or those funds have to be found elsewhere THAT YEAR through taxation. And when we operate that way, and they are, it’s no bloody wonder we’re TAXED OUT!

Not only that, but EVERY dollar collected in taxation is a dollar that has already appeared in the ‘cost’ of some good or service somewhere in the economy, and the ONLY way that good or service can then be sold at a price that covers its ‘costs’ is if someone, somewhere, BORROWS ANOTHER DOLLAR! The government balances its books by unbalancing everyone else’s, in other words. And we wonder why Canadians are now $ 1.63 in hock, on average, at last reckoning, for every $ 1.00 left them in after tax income.

Another thing about WAC Bennett, and ‘debt’, and the Province being found ‘broke’ when Barrett looked at the books.

BC was DIRECT DEBT FREE seven years after WAC Bennett took office. There were NO BC government bonds left to pay after 1959. They had ALL been retired, and were ceremoniously burned on a barge in Lake Okanagan, (thanks to the hidden efforts of a couple of cops with a box of matches, who did what the flaming arrow WAC shot at the bond pile failed to do. It fell short of the target and landed instead in the lake! Robin Hood he was not!)

What BC had from then on, what funded the ferries, and highways, and hydro projects, and BC Rail, were CONTINGENT LIABILITIES. Contingent on the various ‘Authorities’ that actually borrowed the funds needed NOT being able to make the payments when due. But with proper accounting and good management they WERE always able to make the payments. The debt load they carried was large, that is undeniable, but no debt is collectable UNTIL IT IS DUE! And as and when they were, the funds to make the payments were there. Neither the Province, nor those Crown corporations and other Authorities were EVER ‘broke’ in WAC’s time. Nor, with proper management, (which was notably lacking once Barrett’s NDP took over), would they ever be.

A ‘contingent liability’ is the same as when you co-sign for a loan that is being incurred by your kid to buy his first car. YOU are not on the hook, UNLESS he doesn’t make the payment. You are simply ‘guaranteeing’ his debt, not ‘directly’ incurring debt yourself. And by doing so, BC was able to access the needed funds at an interest rate both attractive to investors, yet lower than what would have been the case had these Assets been privately owned, or, alternately, not isolated from the operations of the government as a whole.

I see George Heyman is running in a Vancouver riding. One would have to wonder if the BCGEU has decided to adopt the same political strategy as the BCTF, which saw the left mobilize to field candidates and take over school boards.

We have all seen this before. NDP promises everything for the unions, then gets in power and backs off the works. Leading to never ending strikes from unions with leaders who are trying to save face, because they have been played.

WACKY Bennet is rolling in his grave.

Taxman, you are an in the closet liberal/conservative, you just don’t know it yet…lol

The truth of the matter is the world was a completely different place when W.A.C. Bennett was in power. The Province was in its infancy of development and the infrastructure had to be built and supported by government funding. It was his insight and liberal philosophy that made him a great man.

And to quote Wacky Bennett on his view of the NDP:
“They couldn’t run a peanut stand.” and based on the NDP political philosophy I believe that is as true today as it was then.

The NDP, and socialists in general, have never understood ‘finance’. That is their great failing, dating right back to old Karl Marx, who could never grasp the economy is ‘creditary’.

And so they continue to make the inane contention that “the poor are poor because the rich are rich”.

The great failing of the BC Liberals and BC Conservatives (so far) is that they can’t show why the NDP’s inane contention is inane. And seem determined to prove it isn’t.

The Howe Street bunch adopted not only the Liberal banner after Rita Johnson, but the Liberal arrogance as well.

Unfortunately this pack of scoundrels needs to be tossed. We are doomed to endure the NDP for at least one term.

Although… it wouldn’t take much of a rockstar personality politician to sweep in and save the Liberals from themselves.Thousands of BCers are sitting around watching Christy stumble from controversy to another, and are thinking: “Really? This is the best the “Anyone but NDP Party” can come up with?”

I mean Alfred E. Neumann could win against Dix.

Because W.A.C said the NDP couldn’t run a peanut stand does not make him any less a socialist than he was!

Just because you call yoursel right wing doesn’t make you so, Bennett’s record is proof of his left of center.

As far as infrastructure, that is a never ending endeavor. The difference is 40 years later ANY government spending is tax money that could have been given back to business in a right wing phylosophy to ecourage investment in order to stimulate the economy, and therefore pay the bills. Only the reality is after 30 years since Reagan and Thatcher we have been in perpetual recession. One only needs to look at Alberta with 40 yars of uninterupted Conservative government (nobody else to blame it on) with an economy based on liquid gold (oil) couldn’t balance he books and had to rob the Heritage fund to help with his fiscal deficiencies. After 40 years in Alberta the proof is prtty clear Conservatism is a failed phylosophy.

He ….I meant Ralph Klein

Hespoke:-“Crazy to say anything bad about a man like Wacky Bennett. He truly was larger than real. He built our highways and infrastucture we still enjoy. However I dont think he caused inflation. he may have become a victim of it. “
——————————————-
He was indeed a victim of it. Which was truly unfortunate, because what came afterwards set us back a long ways from where we once were, and could have been.

By 1972, many of the original core group of Socreds who had an understanding of the ideology behind Social Credit had either retired, been defeated, or died.

The ‘new blood’ that replaced them viewed “Social Credit” as no more than a marketable label-of-convenience to get elected under, and a coalition hold off the NDP. Similar to what we got later, and have now, under a different moniker, and with the same failings.

Instead of being “not a Party of the left, nor of the right, but a genuine middle-of-the-road, grassroots, free-enterprise Movement”, BC Social Credit moved strongly to the ‘right’ in WAC’s last term of office.

And so, at a time when prices were going through the roof, his government tried to contain inflation by limiting wages and salaries alone. When those wages were already increasingly becoming insufficient to meet skyrocketing prices for more and more people.

IF WAC’s government had gone back to the original ‘social credit’ ideology at that time, (they didn’t need it earlier, since, as has been mentioned, the earlier problem was ‘development’ ~ which they very ably provided), they could likely have proposed a solution that would have worked for both business and labour, and put Social Credit in a position from which it might never have been defeated. But by then he was getting old, and no man can lead where others won’t follow.

The difference between the ‘socialism’ of WAC Bennett and that of the NDP was that the government owned entities WAC created were all created after private enterprise had been given every opportunity to do the same things. And either outright wouldn’t, or wouldn’t on terms that would have been acceptable to the general public.

It is on record that WAC badgered the CPR to improve its ferry service to Vancouver Island, and replace those old side loading tubs that took almost as long to get the cars on and off as to make the crossing with modern fore-and aft loading vessels.

The CPR wouldn’t modernise; and the two semi-modern vessels they did have were still only able to load from one end.

Likewise with BC Electric, and before them, Wenner-Gren, and the desire to get new hydro-electric development going on BOTH the Columbia and the Peace. Neither would move. And BC Electric wanted unconscionable increases in electric rates before they’d even consider new dams and transmission lines.

BC Rail, PGE at that time, was a money draining orphan that ran from no place (Squamish) to no where (Quesnel) that EVERY BC government prior to Bennett’s had tried to pawn off on the private sector. Unsuccessfully.

Bennett extended it to Prince George, then down to North Vancouver, then up into the Peace River country and beyond. And it became useful, and capable of turning an operational profit.

None of these things were done with the ideology of ‘socialism’ ~ that things were always better under government than private ownership ~ being the driving reason.

They were done because it was necessary that they done, and private enterprise wouldn’t step up to the plate and do them.

They were done to provide needed SERVICES to the public, in a cost effective manner, and on a sound business basis. And that they did.

Lets not forget that it was Dave Barrett who DOUBLED BC Hydro rates to industry, and robbed our industries of the competitive natural advantage they had through plentiful, low cost, electric power. Lets also not forget that it was Bill Bennett, not WAC, who got the government into financing what WAC had derisively called ‘hot house industries’. Businesses that were created primarily to ‘make jobs’, NOT provide some needed good or service for which there was an actual consumer demand. Business which often failed as soon as the government ‘stimulus’ ended. And we all know the record of what came later. Under BOTH the Liberals and the NDP. And what’s REALLY going to change, next time? Aside from the likelihood of getting rid of one set of increasingly unpleasant personalities, bugger all!

If Union Leaders spent more time actually working and less time finding ways to get out of it, the world would be a better place. Sounds like she will fit in perfectly