James and Horgan Collect Northern Issues
Carole James and John Horgan held session in PG – photo 250News
Prince George, B.C.- Provincial NDP leader, John Horgan, and Carole James have been visiting communities not represented by the NDP in the Provincial Legislature to gather local issues.
The two held meetings in Prince George with a number of groups, then had a public session last night.
Only 15 turned out to the public meeting at the Coast Inn of the North and Horgan says that’s not because the public doesn’t have issues to share “That’s a direct result of bad advertising on our part. We didn’t get the word out, we came late and we told people without a lot of advance notice.”
While both say they have been hearing messages about the need for “balance” Horgan says the other main issue is about affordability. “These constant increases in fees, nickel and diming people to death, when their wages have stayed flat for the last decade, that’s a problem, and it’s not sustainable.” While housing affordability in the lower mainland is an issue, Horgan says health care premiums are also a concern ” MSP premiums is an irritant for many people and when I talk to public institutions like school boards, health authorities, they’ve got to pay those costs and they’re not getting any increase in their administrative budgets to do so, so that means they’re pulling away patient care in the hospital sector or classroom resources in the education system.”
The issues brought up by those who attended the public session included, child care, and Site C. Concerns were expressed about the possibility of temporary foreign workers landing jobs on the mega project. There were also comments about whether or not the dam needs to be built at all.
When it comes to childcare, Carole James added that in Quebec, providing childcare helped drive the economy as women were able to go back to work without the burden of high cost child care.
With the next Provincial election just a little over a year away,(May 9th, 2017) Horgan is very optimistic there will be a new government leading B.C., and he plans to be at the helm. Horgan understands his party will have to shatter some of the myths about the NDP and will have to diversify its membership “I was a big, big fan of Mike Harcourt when he was Premier, and he had an enormously large tent. There were Red Tories, there were Federal Liberals, there were Greens at that time because the Greens didn’t exist at that time in the form they do today, and I believe if we are going to defeat the corporate government we have today, and have had for 16 years, we need the biggest tent we can find and understand we need balance in everything we do in life, that means protecting the environment, that means creating jobs with the natural resources we have at our disposal. If you’re into that , I am too, but it’s got to be about balance and that, I think, is a winning formula.”
Carole James says ‘balance’ is the message she’s been hearing from people in the communities they have visited “It’s about an economy that provides good quality jobs that lets people stay in their communities, provides the supports people need to be able to be out working to keep the economy going, It provides the basic services like health care, like education and that’s the important piece we are out talking about.”
Comments
I didn’t show up becasue Carole James was there. Seriously, lose the baggage from your past and you might be considered a viable alternative. People are sick of the same old, same old.
Where’s Vince Scully or Mr Dix?
They showed up late and with little warning… and they want to be taken seriously with an election on the horizon?
Try that tactic in a job interview and you’ll remain unemployed.
The NDP has a bad name as it is. IF I were inclined to vote for them, this incident would not have impressed me. Myself, I am not an NDP’er.
The statement that Horgan is a big fan of Mike Harcourt when he was Premier should be enough to turn most people away from voting NDP.
Harcourt has the best records of reducing debt to GDP in the past 30 years.
Glen Clark is what made the NDP drop in poularity, and the Liberals have just added to the debt despite their reputation of being fiscally responsible.
Balance alright! It would mean for the NDP to abandon its old and worn out mantra that corporations are the root cause of all the evil in this world. That won’t happen any day soon.
Countries all over the world are luring corporations and corporate investments to their shores with all kinds of financial and tax advantages, in order to provide jobs to raise the living standard of their often very poor people.
That reality is ignored by some who simply want to get elected to enjoy the pay and perks that come with political office.
You bet balance alright, but it’s not the NDP that needs to abandon its principles and ways. How about the Liberals get out of the bed they have been laying in with the Conservatives and Reformers for the last 16 years!!!
Its been so long, most of us don’t know what a Liberal stands for anymore.
I see the usual SoCred dogs are out in force. Woof!Woof!
I will vote for any party next election just to get rid of this triple delete government. Time for some accountability!
You can have a big tent to bring all the interests together but without the working class all you have is those with their own agenda and fail to identify with those that drive the economy and their basic needs, jobs and ability to provide for family and enjoy the little things in life. You cant be everything to everyone but can improve the life of others by first supporting workers that make it all happen.
I’m frustrated with our choices. I do not want to vote for Clark in the next election, but Horgan doesn’t have my support either.
What happened to a middle of the road party? Because middle of the road is typically the a Liberal party, and middle of the road Christy is not.
The Green Party is in the middle .
In the middle of what?
The Green Party is in the middle of the political spectrum as opposed to the so called liberals on the far right and the NDP on the wishy washy would be left if convinent .
Citizens of BC are between a rock and hard place. The rock being the Liberals, and the hard place being the NDP. What we have is two terrible choices. It makes one want to throw up.
There is a saying that if you are between a rock and hard place you should get a hammer and smash the rock. How can we do this.??
The Liberal coalition is a self serving party that has no real concerns about the people of BC, and are basically in the pocket of big business. The NDP on the other hand are run by the Unions, and bring nothing to the table. All the NDP can do is to continue to give the impression that they will do something for the people of the Province, however we all know that they will increase taxes to pay for it, and it wont just be tax increases to business or corporations.
Look at the statement made by Horgan about the MSP Premiums that are paid for by the health authorities or the school boards. His concern is that these boards are not getting more money from the Government to pay these premiums. In other words our taxes should go up to pay for MSP premiums for Government workers, even though most of us have to pay our own premiums. Hmmmmm. Anything wrong with this picture??
Perhaps the Government Employee’s could at least pay for half of their MSP premiums. This would be a partial solution.
We need a bunch of Independents to run in the next election. If we could elect 10 Independents it might be enough to form a coalition Government and put pressure on both parties to grow up and govern with respect and fiscal responsibility.
“most of us have to pay our own premiums”
Can you please show me the data you relied on to make such a statement.
I do not know the answer, but I would expect anyone interested in backing such a statement to report on whether MSP is typically paid for those who have union contracts and those who are excluded staff.
Food service workers may not have MSP paid.
No matter, whoever gets the msp paid receives a taxable benefit. It is, in fact, an income. If it were to be removed from the compensation package, the employee should be compensate by an equal raise.
The trouble with MSP, is employer’s, whether private or public, agree to pay it for the employee. So, it’s a taxable benefit. In a sense, the employee is paying it. However, when MSP premiums are raised, the employer is bound to pay a wage increase without any ability to negotiate. If the employer instead had said to the employee, I will pay you an extra $1,000.00 a year, take care of your own MSP, then if MSP went up to $1,200.00, it would be the employee’s problem, but it’s not, it’s the employers. So, school boards, and other public entities, are contractually obligated to pay an increase without a corresponding funding injection – so, money for education, goes into MSP indirectly if the funding model isn’t changed. In this I agree with Horgan.
From my point of view the issue is not how the MSP is being paid. The issue is that we have to pay MSP in the first place. BC is the only province which requires a partial payment, such as the msp, for health services. It is a regressive tax.
Health care isn’t free. Somebody has to pay for it, and the miniscule portion represented by MSP premiums serves to remind us.
Other provinces used to have premiums as well, but they did away with them as a means of buying votes. When political parties promise to give you something during elections, it isn’t because they care about you, it’s just a matter of buying your vote with your own money. And it works. That’s why governments are so deeply in debt.
Did anyone say health care was free? I certainly did not.
In fact, nothing is free in this world, whether it is a 50% off coupon, or a free ride on a bus due to an air advisory, etc.
The best way to describe something that people might call free is to refer to them as benefits. All benefits are paid for in one way or another.
Using you logic, is paying for a municipal bus fare a reminder that the cost of public transportation is not entirely paid for. Ask that question of people and you might be lucky to get more than 50% correct answers. How about post secondary tuitions?
Unlike those, universal health care is a federal law. The intent is that everyone has equal access covered by general taxation (not free) not by individuals in whole nor in part.
What some people may not know is that people who are in financial need can apply to get either long term or short term exemption from paying MSP.
That actually makes it worse in my opinion since those who know about that can access it, those who do not know about it may also access it, but they cannot because they do not know about it.
That creates an inequity due to the process.
There is no possibility of a third “middle” party forming before the next BC election. What we can hope for is something similar to what happened in the two PG ridings in the last federal election. The Liberals actually broke with the Conservative / Reformers and voted for Liberal Candidates in a big way.
If this happened provincially, we might just get a minority government (at this point who cares who it is), this would assure accountability and compromise between the political right and left. After all, any legislation and government decisions would be up the middle, requiring support from the other party(s). One can only hope and dream, I suppose.
In the PG ridings it really did not matter whether anyone broke from the Conservatives or NDP or any other party. Because of that, I would not say that they broke in a big way.
It is obvious that in PG the right is still dominates the center, the left and the various splinter parties and independents. In the north riding they are still the clear majority.
Let us see what the next 3+ years gives us. If it is what I hope it will be, it might move people a bit more to the center/left.
gopg2015.
Recent article from CKNW Vancouver’s news dated January 07, shows that 800,000 British Columbians pay their MSP directly without a subsidy or without their employee’s paying for it.
In any event it is mostly Government employee’s and some private employee’s that get their premiums paid. It matters little if you have to show it as income because if you show say $1500.00 as additional income you only pay roughly 25/30% on $1500.00 which would be $450.00 significantly less than $1500.00.
Make no mistake about it, these Government employee’s have the best of the best, and it wouldn’t hurt for them to back off and pay some of their costs themselves,.
Of course you would want them compensated for paying their own premiums by giving them a raise to cover the cost. That is the crux of my argument. Between the Government and all its employee’s we are getting the Royal Shaft.
800,000 is something like 17% of the BC population. Every single person in BC is assessed for MSP payments whether as an individual or a family. A single individual in a family might pay fro the entire family. If two adults work in a family I think that most will get MSP paid by the member of the family who is working for a company that covers MSP payments.
Thank you for that number.
Let us see what people now may have to say when they find out that only 17% of people in BC pay MSP at the full rate.
Even if more detail will show that the 800,000 includes families, it is still less than 50% since the average family size is around 2.5
A contract is a contract, whether written or with a handshake. You remove something, you have to get something in return. That is how the world works.
If you want to fire someone for that, then it is against the employment standards act and compensation has to be given for wrongful dismissal.
If you have to lay off someone for a $350 or so difference, then your business is in deep chit anyway and it is high time the employee started to look for opportunities elsewhere.
Remember, annual raises are typically flexible, so an MSP benefit is quickly recovered if it has not already been covered in past performance reviews and lifted compensation.
What you are suggesting, when adapted to the real world is pie-in-the-sky thinking that may make you feel good, but does nothing much else.
“These constant increases in fees, nickel and diming people to death, when their wages have stayed flat for the last decade, that’s a problem, and it’s not sustainable.”
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And neither is the high level of government spending that results from people like you buying our votes with our own money.
A democracy will only survive until the people realize they have the power to vote themselves largess from the public treasury. Thereafter they will vote for the party that promises to give them the most, with the result that unsustainable spending levels will eventually bankrupt the government, leading to its collapse and the end of democracy.
Look at the debt/spending levels of western governments. We are on the cusp of that collapse now, and the voters just keep demanding ever more.
I’ll go you one further. What we do now, is we vote for whoever will give us the most, and they fund it by borrowing, and hope to kick the problem down the road for someone else to solve. Government has a 4 year objective, which is why we see so many bad decisions.
Hip replacements are a good example. If the government gives N.H. $2 million, and a basic hip which lasts say 10 years cost $5,000.00 and a premium hip that costs $7,000.00 lasts a life time, they will divide 2 million by 5,000.00 and do 400 hip replacements, even though, they will have to redo many of them again, in 10 years. They would be better to do the few better replacements, from a long term point of view, but NH works on five year budget cycles, and the right decision is more than 5 years away.
Where do you get the variable costs from based on the kind of device used?
From the American Assoc. of Hip and Knee Surgeons come these words:
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A more accurate way to think about longevity is via the annual failure rates.
Most current data suggests that both hip and knee replacements have an annual failure rate between 0.5-1.0%. This means that if you have your total joint replaced today, you have a 90-95% chance that your joint will last 10 years, and a 80-85% that it will last 20 years.
With improvements in technology, these numbers may improve.
Despite such improvements it is important to maintain long-term follow-up with your surgeon to assure your replacement is functioning appropriately.
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There is no suggestion that there a cheaper prosthetics which might not last as long. There is a whole range of other criteria which will determine the failure rate.
I forgot to add that if BC actually does what you suggest, the failure rate in BC would show up to be significantly higher than those regions of Canada and the USA which would not have such a differentiation.
Do you have such a stat to back up your conjecture?
There is an interesting article in this week’s Maclean’s:
“We’re safer, richer, healthier—and more miserable—than ever before. What new research reveals about happiness. And how to find it.”
The aftermath of the “me” generation. And, of course, if government wants to get elected, they have to address the “me” generation philosophy.
You talking about Trudeau and his followers?
Happiness, is kicking the Liberals and NDP in the butt.
We need a new procedure for politicians, called a head replacement.
For those politicians who do not live up to their election promises we would replace their heads, with a head that clearly understands the need for honesty, integrity, and fiscal responsibility in politics.
You don’t need to vote NDP, just see what is happening in Alberta.
I see a lot of people from Alberta looking for work.
Hire BC first.
LOL, you can’t possibly blame the Alberta NDP. Let’s keep in mind their economy crumbled because of oil prices, which are global factors. Alberta’s policy has no bearing on oil prices. And they were rocked so hard because the 50 years of Conservative govn’t had them relying pretty much only on oil. They didn’t put in the effort to diversify their economy.
I love when people love to blame the Alberta NDP. They just showed up to this mess. It was brewing long before Notley was in power. To believe otherwise is simply choosing to be naive and ignoring the facts.
function also on how they are managing the situation. they are not doing anything other than tell them to go to BC to find a job.
A big problem with Alberta’s oil is they cannot get the oil out to a world market, it is land locked. NGO’s fight a pipeline to the west coast, Quebec which only exists because of the wests equalization payments, then the moron Obama blocking keystone while they start exporting oil themselves.
Since Alberta’s only major customer for oil is the US, the oil is undervalued, missing out of billions.
Pipelines are a bit of an issues, but they’re still moving crude via rail.
The largest issue aren’t people against pipelines, its the $30/barrel that is an issue. Big contrast to the $150/barrel before the crash
pgjohn, you can’t possibly be defending the Alberta NDP, haha!
While Notley and her crew aren’t responsible for the global drop in oil prices, they certainly haven’t done a single thing to help the situation in Alberta. Nothing! Nada! Zip Zero! Zilch! Diddly squat!
But, you go ahead and you defend them, ok?
When it comes to childcare, Carole James added that in Quebec, providing childcare helped drive the economy as women were able to go back to work without the burden of high cost child care.
I’m not surprised that Carole forgot to mention that Quebec’s universal daycare program is funded in large part by Western Canada’s contributions to our national Equalization program!
They also have very low post-secondary tuition fees, once again thanks to western equalization payments!
No western oil pipelines to eastern Canada, but keep sending your money to the east!
Horgan states: “These constant increases in fees, nickel and diming people to death, when their wages have stayed flat for the last decade, that’s a problem, and it’s not sustainable.”
Hey John, perhaps we could freeze all public sector wages at current levels, and I include ICBC and BC Hydro in this group! After all, I don’t think that these groups saw their wages stay flat for the last decade.
A wage freeze might help ease the price and tax increases that never seem to end!
Actually Hydro’s pay rates play catch up to what is offered in the private sector. Hydro pays what it pays to retain employees.
Thumbs down, well ask a lineman about my comment.
seamutt, obviously you missed the reports that came out a while back that showed the absolutely excessive compensation packages at BC Hydro!
Rediculous. If they are the official opposition then why are they not standing up for BC’s fiscal sovereignty from the federal encroachment of the Treduea government.
In the last week alone Christie Clark has come out as a campion of a federal carbon tax Trudeau is floating. Petronas was caught off guard by this development and has indicated with out clarity by the end of March they will kill all their BC LNG developments. Natural resources is a provincial issue for taxation under the constitution and the Feds have no right butting into this for federal revenue.
Essentially they have together killed the LNG potential and the $26billion Petronas was going to invest in BC so that the Feds could blackmail for a cut using Trudeaus new ‘climate change’ initiatives. This is worse than the national energy program of Trudeaus father as it directly taps into a provincial resource lie a tick even though it has nothing to do with the rest of the country and is contrary to our constitution. Problem is Petronas is burning money in a dropping ,arrest and they aren’t going to wait around for a constitutional challenge…. Especially when we have a dumb premier that backs the initiative.
If we are going to have a carbon tax on our LNG exports it should be a provincial carbon tax and equal to what we all pay to heat our homes IMO. Legally sound in regards to our constitution and trade deals.
IMO the biggest change we need for a free enterprise economy is a reclassification of incorporation and what it means for taxation. We need tax cuts for the middle class and we need to stop the practice of privatized profits with socialized risk through incorporation of high risk to the public enterises.
Increase the corporate tax rate above that of personal taxation for individuals and small businesses. If it’s about ethical profits then don’t hide behind incorporation with all the tax cuts one can use incorporating and the protection from public liability it entails. Classify incorporation for tax rates. A dangerous industrial activity should pay a higher tax rate than a grocery store chain so that user pays when it comes the clean up costs from contamination to the public good arise.
Incentivize the idea of big profit takers doing so as individuals so as to add transparency to the renumeration of what individuals make and the real levels of foreign ownership in our economy. Bring the profit takers out into the open so we all have a level playing field and a true free enterprise economy rather than continuing down the monopoly capitalism route of hidden capital operating behind closed doors influencing our politics through corporations rather than from citizens.
We need to make moves to protect free enterprise from corporations or we will all soon be begger surfs of a corpocracy.
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