What is Bill drinking now to believe that owning a small business is not employment? Get your facts straight Bill, once again your bias is ridiculous! Doherty and his wife Kelly have owned a business for years in this community, certainly not unlike Trent Derrick and his wife. So Bill, you’ve just told everyone in this community and beyond that small business owners are not employed and its not real work, good luck with that…

Well Bill you are obviously pro Liberal and in the camp of Calogheros. The only reason she gave Doherty a good run was because she was riding the Trudeau wave and not because of her strong candidacy. When she and her campaign workers were standing on the corner of Ferry ave and Highway 16 seeking support or the corner of Highway 97 and 16 junction, she barely got a wave let along a honk of the horn. The so called poll that put Derrick ahead of Todd was obviously skewed and indicative of the deceptive and manipulating nature of such.

Nationally the big media players were the real winners as they promoted their chosen one. The honeymoon will be a short one for Justin Trudeau and it won’t take long for Canadians to miss the leadership of Steven Harper. It’s really comical I guess when watching the news last night how the big media players are already making excuses for Justin in regards to the slowing economy. Just days ago the media would press Harper and put him in a bad light and now with the same stroke of a pen protect their chosen one, makes one wonder if they (the big media)have any credibility at all.

You guys never noticed until now that the Citizen has been pro Liberal all election?

More Liberal garbage from 250news.

Bill Phillips predictably is wrong on a number of points in his rant he calls an editorial(?)

Firstly, he fails to mention that prior to becoming a full time Conservative candidate for nomination, Todd Doherty had a very impressive work history that caused “headhunter” employers to seek him out in moves to lure him away from his present employment and come work with them. Todd was instrumental in the Westjet move to Prince George, he was key to the operation of the Prince George Airport as the marketing and communications person, he was then “headhunted” by the new Edmonton International Airport to handle their international marketing program designed to bring airlines form other countries to the new airport, Todd was again “headhunted” by the Canada Winter Games group to head up the revenue generation position and was tremendously successful in achieving some 98% of their goal before being “encouraged” by a well known local politician to leave the Winter Games which turned out to be a blessing because it now left Todd to concentrate full time to winning the nomination AND now the Federal Election.

While Bill Phillips may be heading for the UI office if he lost his job at 250, Todd, as a result of his successes, would certainly be fielding proactive calls from prospective employers looking to hire someone of his qualities.

You see Bill, hard working, successful people breed success, and that is why Todd won the Election, And by contrast, that is why unsuccessful people sit in their little unsuccessful world, and lament with excuses that only serve to identify the reasons why they themselves are not successful.

Poor Bill, get your facts straight.

As Harper said on Monday night, we all live in the best country in the world. Keep it that way!

I think the most interesting local result from Mondays election was that over 5,000 voters switched their votes from Conservative to Liberal in the Cariboo-Prince George riding. Although Clare was a reasonable alternative for Conservatives who couldn’t stomach Harper, he did not get much support. Evidently there are a great number of centrist voters who are perfectly willing to switch their votes to the winning party. Looks good for the Liberals in the next election!

I will give you a few numbers to ponder so that you might have a better understanding what has happened with the vote in the past few elections.

2004:
Con. 19,721
Lib. 8,397
NDP. 11,183
Total:39,301

2006:
Con. 19,624
Lib. 10,509
NDP. 10,129
Total:42,268

2008:
Con. 22,619
Lib. 10,509
NDP. 10,129
Total:37,509

2011:
Con. 24,443
Lib. 2,200
NDP. 13,135
Total:39,778

2015:
Con. 19,418
Lib. 16,822
NDP. 13,806
Total; 50,046.

So you can see that the Conservatives dropped approx. 5000 votes from the 2011 election,. You will also note that the Liberals picked up 14000 from the 2011, but only 6000 from the 2008 election,. /The NDP basically held steady throughout.

So the real question is, where did the additional 5000 votes for the Liberals come from. ??

As you can see from the above the Conservatives and NDP vote remained much the same from 2004 through 2015, with the exception of 2011 when they both had a huge increase. So it appears that this increase was transferred to the Liberals in 2015, however if you look at the numbers a lot of these votes were swing votes throughout.

Above should have read where did the additional 10,000 votes come from?

Where ever they came from these are the votes that will be in play in the next election.

NSF bill doesn’t have a “job” at twofivezero . He’s a freelance writer . Self employed in other words .

I suggest the extra 10M votes for the Liberals came with the Trudeau “red wave” and they successfully lured thousands of younger first time voters.

Conservative and NDP voters will seldom “switch”, preferring to stay home if their party has ticked them off. Sure they may be some “soft” votes in those party’s but never enough that their switch would be very noticeable.

I think the new, first time younger voters are real, and I think that the Conservative and the NDP had better take note and act appropriately.

Trudeau and the national campaign ran a very skilled campaign taking a page out of Obama’s first election and campaigning on “dreams and hope”.

Harper and the national campaign ran on a very conservative theme, talking about “family, law and order, and low taxes”.

So two important factors became evident…. 1. “Dreams and hope” is far more appealing to younger first time voters because that’s what drives younger voters who haven’t yet paid a bunch of taxes, don’t have kids yet, and don’t have big mortgages yet.

2.”Family, law and order, and low taxes are NOT sexy to young first time voters and they will not support a platform with only those elements, and they didn’t. Even Mulclair’s promise of a balanced budget PLUS all the goodies he did not resonate with younger voters enough to lure that vote
to them, because he didn’t have the “hopes and dreams” attached to it.

Like it or not, Trudeau and his national campaign ran a very skilled and effective national campaign…and without a doubt, Trudeau and his national team were about 80% responsible for the successes of local Liberal candidates, and that certainly would apply to the sudden surge of liberal votes in Cariboo-Prince George.

The other day some one wrote . The only ones talking about Proportional Representation are the losers of the election . That’s sort of true . Except the biggest losers , the cons , are getting the msm that they control , to now talk up PR because the damage to the cons would not have been as deep as it was . With PR they would still have had a voice in Ottawa . Now they have nothing but a few minutes during question period and that’s it . The only thing they control now is the temperature in their office . If they even control that .

It’s funny most of you are saying that the Cons held thier voting base during this election. And then try and defend Todd’s hard work for winning the Election. It didn’t matter who the Cons ran they pulled their usual number of votes.

The NDP and their strategic voting push allowed Todd to come up the middle by pulling votes away from Tracy and the liberals. Trent’s campaign pushed that he was the only one able to defeat Harper and the Cons. That fooled alot of voters that were looking to give Harper the boot.

But none of that matters now. They will all start at zero again next election.

Here is hoping Todd can be effective.

I usually enjoy reading Bills articles, but this one is not really journalism. Rather an opinion, that should be in the opinion section, written by someone who is not being paid for it.

It sound more like you calling the folks of Northern BC stupid, and you’re frustrate your candidate didn’t win. I may not always agree with the vote, but once someone is in, it is time to support them.

The EI comment is uncalled for and really low and untrue.

We have a strong community and we have weathered some really rough economic times, including a population size, which has not really changed for over 30 years. Yes, I know it has grown slightly.

In four years from now we will see if Todd is a good representative. I suspect he will be, but at least I will wait and see.

I hope I can see some real journalism from Bill in the future. He has the ability but he did not demonstrate it today.

I think it’s tough after such a long and divisive election campaign to step away from partisan emotions but it’s time. Todd is our MP. His job is to represent everyone in the riding and our job is to help him do that. Give him a chance to find his feet and reach out to him once he’s set up. Our Region needs a voice in Ottawa and staying in our “camps” won’t help us to get it. Let’s work together and bring good things to Cariboo-PG. Todd did not get into this because he wanted to hurt us, I believe he wants to do his best for the Region.

Thanks for that Tracy!!! You are in the best position to do that and you did it. That shows class of which we have very little here.

For the life of me I do not understand what Phillips was trying to do. He went too far into malicious gossip. As he said, Todd did not have an OBVIOUS plan B and then built on that shaky foundation on the assumption he did not have one. That took it that step into malicious gossip for which there is no place.

Pretty words Tracy . Let’s all keep those words in mind when the government of Canada has to deal with the Harper government majority in the senate . you’ll need them.

Next Phillips states: “the two strongest candidates (Calogheros and independent Sheldon Clare) weren’t the frontrunners. Go figure.”

We need some agreement here what a strong candidate is. That definition changes with each election. In this case there was a nation-wide rally against Harper – not the party as much as the party leader. That was obvious from the start. So, if one was with one of the two significant opposition parties – Liberals and NDP – one had strength right there. Without that, one would need a Nathan Cullen quality intellect, charisma and caring in order to win. He proved that he had those characteristics which gave him the strength to overcome mere party affiliation to win his riding over a decade ago. In 2011 he got more than 50% of the vote and in 2015 he got 51% of the vote.

Given that, I really cannot figure why anyone would think Clare was a strong candidate. As with many, he came with his own baggage associated with the NFA and the infighting going on there. I suspect his support from NFA members may not have been all that strong. Obviously there was not a flood of disenchanted Conservative voters who voted for him. Instead, voters did what was the talk prior to the election – vote strategically. What is strategical to one person, may not be strategic to another.

Obviously the number of signs that cluttered the streets had no direct relationship to the number of votes cast. In fact, I often wonder if Trent overdid it. That itself would make for an interesting paper by a political science major.

Palopu, your numbers do not add up for the 2008 election. You used the same figures for the libs and NDP in the 2006 and 2008 election. Very unlikely that happened.

As a result, the questions you ask yourself really cannot be answered until we can correct the errors in the base data you present.

We will never know where the votes for the Liberals came from. I can suggest the following two for exploration purposes not necessarily in the order of importance.

1. Disenchantment by traditional conservative voters
2. More people coming out to vote (at least from the figures that you present which do have errors) because they wanted to change government

todd got in because these voters Did not pay attention……and they are in the same league as the Cons….Bigots ,mysiginists,liars ,thieves,cheaters…Fear & hatemongers.
JT has lots of work to do,it may take him 10yrs to sort out the mess these Cons left behind….Best is yet to come when JT gets the books…PPP !!

The defeated cons have started up a movement ” The Republic of Western Canada ” on face book . Already a thousand members in 24 hours .

ataloss, you showed up for the champagne, your green turds got 1 seat, now please go away. you are off the charts stupid.

“Pretty words Tracy . Let’s all keep those words in mind when the government of Canada has to deal with the Harper government majority in the senate . you’ll need them.”

Harper’s broken-promise-gift of not appointing senators to the senate (believe me, I won’t !!!) keeps on giving! The micro managing of everything is still paying off!

I am awaiting the Duffy trial to resume!

I bet that Duffy beats the wrap and is back in the senate covered in Tory bus tracks .

Ataloss wrote: “The defeated cons have started up a movement “The Republic of Western Canada”.

What many people seem to not know or conveniently forget is that not only does Quebec harbor separatist thought, Alberta has as well since they found black gold, especially of the tar sands variety.

In a letter to the National Post in 2000, Harper wrote:

“If Ottawa giveth, then Ottawa can taketh away… This is one more reason why Westerners, but Albertans in particular, need to think hard about their future in this country.

After sober reflection, Albertans should decide that it is time to seek a new relationship with Canada…. It is time to look at Quebec and to learn. What Albertans should take from this example is to become ‘maitres chez nous.'”

Let us wait to see what Harper will do now. He has resigned very quickly and will retain his seat. He may yet switch roles to become more of a wing nut. Or he may quietly fade away.

gopg2015. I see you caught the error in the numbers. I wondered if someone would. If I feel up to it to-morrow I may redo it all, but in any event the 2008 Number should read Con 22,619, Lib 4,309 NDP 10,579, Total 37,507.

Prince George. I am waiting for Liberal Senator Mac Harb’s trial to commence. It was delayed because of the Duffy trial, but should now go forward. He scooped much more than Duffy, and therefore it should be a more interesting trial. Be sure to tune in.