I would agree that a free enterprise party representing small business, right of center fiscal conservatives, with a limited agenda of specific concerns at a party level, and acting as the support side for the BCSTV electoral change would likely not win the election outright... or even the official opposition for that matter (the 604)... but I would bet such a hypothetical free enterprise party could be the power broker in a minority legislature that keeps BC politics to the center and focused on the economic needs of individuals and small business, rather than the greed agenda's of corporations and public sector unions.

Time will tell.

.
Let me get this straight, Ben ...

You say this so-called Free Enterpriser group led by G. Campbell -- the ones who gave away the massive Tree Farm Licences, BC Rail, and who crippled BC Hydro, starved or harrassed troubled children, families, the elders, the disabled -- you say those Free Enterprisers

would not "hold their noses and vote" for Carole James' party -- i.e., the New Democrats ... who brought us Medicare, the Agricultural Land Reserve, the ICBC and made it work, Question Period in the Legislature, and Hansard

but they would (you say) vote for any old "splinter party" as long as it's of the rightwing giveaway persuasion?

Sigh. That's what I thought you said. But it doesn't make sense, is all.

.

BC Mary, I'm not sure where Ben mentioned Free Enterprise. That was something I was mentioning in the vein of the old socred or reform BC parties that stood for free enterprise. I share your opinion that the BC liberals have never represented the free enterprise vote. I don't share your opinion that free enterprise is the same as corporate capitalism.

Makes sense that the BC liberals came to power by having the right leaning reform party banned from the election, and that a left wing party (greens) would take votes from the ndp, so it kind of makes sense that it would be a right leaning party, or more accurately a populist party, that would take votes from the BC liberals if one was hypothesizing how the BC liberals would lose power?

As an ndp supporter (BC Mary), I think it would be more constructive to support a populist party that takes votes from the BC liberals, rather than claim a bias conspiracy when a commentator points out the obvious weakness of your opponent? Who's side are you working for anyways? lol

Gordon Campbell is NOT and NEVER WAS a "free-enterpriser", BC Mary, he is a "global capitalist". And there is a WORLD of difference.

True "free-enterprise" posits that it is CONSUMERS who give the orders, through voting where, and on what, they will buy with their money. PRODUCERS either obey those orders, or they're out of business.

I don't consider myself to be a 'right-winger', but I certainly think true "free-enterprise" is to be much preferred over the traditional 'socialism' that the NDP seems to be slowly, but progressively moving away from, ('cause it just doesn't work.)

In their original kind of 'socialism' they posited an all-powerful bureaucracy that gives orders to PRODUCERS as to what will be produced, and just how much CONSUMERS will be allowed to have of it.

In other words, you have NO 'freedom of choice'. You're to take what you're given, and like it. That's little different from what Gordo's "global capitalism" offers, except instead of the "all-powerful bureaucracy" we now have an "all powerful clique" that rules through moving, and removing, a nation's 'money'itself. Over which CONSUMERS, in every nation, no longer have any control.

We may get a more popular splinter 'right-wing' or even 'middle-of-the-road' Party, but unless its underlying POLICY is different from that of the BC Liberals AND the NDP, which NONE of those that have been started so far have been, I don't see where it would make any difference whatsoever. Even if STV were adopted, it would be just the 'same-old, same-old' politics.

Wasn't it the NDP itself that disenchanted British Columbians en masse during two terms of mismanagement, scandals and various misadventures of financial and social engineering?

Obviously that was noticed by the electorate; how else could the NDP have been reduced in a democratic election (voice of the people) to only two (2) MLAs in the Legislature?

Had they run the province in an astute, even handed and fair manner they would not have been turfed out on their backsides in a land slide victory!

It was ideology vs. reality and ideology won (and lost).

How convenient it is for the undying supporters to cite some real NDP accomplishments but to totally refuse to acknowledge anything of their doing that turned out to be a dud.

The BC Liberals have had setbacks and have made some poor decisions, but there have been quite a few successes as well.

Politics require that one keeps silent about one and boasts about the other one, all depending which side one is on.

I believe in "true girts" but not in the Campbel mainia that we have today. This guy is as for right as he can go. For all the good he has done he has all but destroyed our social fabric.

Many have forgotten that the NDP tookm over government when the Asian Flue arrived there was literaly no hope of them becoming a give away government.And all this talk of scandal and mismanagement is just so much talk. Some of the mismanagement of the current government has already been mentioned but the list is endless.

I can only hope that the liberals will be re-elected so that they will beable to face the music when the bills come in for the olympics. Should the NDP be elected I truly feel sorry for them as they will be stuck with the debt.

Cheers

C'mon, Bridge, that old NDP-apologist statement about the 'asian flu' cauing all of their problems is weak.

The rest of the country boomed in the 90's while BC lagged behind. The NDP were about scandal, financial mismanagement and social engineering as diplomat correctly pointed out above.

I would never claim that the Liberals are perfect by a long shot, but the thought of the NDP getting the reigns back is a scary one to be sure.

I'm in a slightly different situation. I live in the Bulkley Valley and am "supposed" to be represented by the NDP. However, Robin Austin (our MLA) does not answer emails or return phone calls.

You might not have heard, but Terrace, BC does not have a single mill operating anymore. That's right, ZERO. I have contacted our MLA (and our MP, who also happens to be NDP) about courting the federal government in bringing a Canadian Armed forces presence to the area. It just makes sense, since Terrace is between two ports, Prince Rupert and Kitimat. As it is if anyone wants to get basic training they have to go all the way down to the lower mainland. Heaven help us if we had to actually bring troops up here to defend either port. There are a lot of people who like like to see a Canadian Armed Forces presence up here, but of course our do nothing MLA and MP can't be bothered to reply to email, or pursue something which would actually bring families to the northwest, which would be a stark contrast to the constant sight of moving trucks leaving the area.

What I'm trying to say is, it doesn't matter who you vote for in rural BC, you're not getting any representation until the next election, if you're lucky.

There is a bit of truth in all the above posts!
My guts tell me that the NDP certianly will NOT win, but regardless,we need to send a message to the Campbell crew and to Campbell himself.
I do think the Liberals WILL get beat up at the polls pretty badly,particularly here in the north,and they can thank Gordon Campbell for that.
His boys are seen as puppets without an opinion that wasn't given to them by Gordon, and it has hurt them all.
There WILL be a lot of people gunning for him and rightly so.
They need to do much better in the public relations department,and the party should consider a new leader ASAP, if the Liberals are to survive over the long term.
Campbell has become a huge liability.
This guy isn't just disliked...he is hated and that is only going to get worse.
He has become a lame duck.
He bought his party loyalty with a couple of nice fat raises at our expense, and his disregard for everything beyond Hope is disgusting!
A few face changes in cabinet wouldn't hurt either...George Abbott,Wally Oppal,Van Dongen,Coleman and Falcon,oh hell...change them all and start over!
They have all pissed so many people off with their arrogance and disrespect to the voters that I doubt they can be effective any longer without creating even more animosity.
And they also need to clean up some of the outstanding issues like the Basi/Virk farce and the B.C.legislature raid/B.C.Rail issue itself.
There is no doubt the Liberals are working very hard to somehow make this all go away without the truth being known!
The people of B.C. have a right to know what the hell the real story is and what they are hiding.
And that's just for starters!
The only way the NDP will EVER become a real contender is with a very charismatic and smart leader, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Sorry Carole, but you are just not cutting it!
They have shot themselves in the foot too many times over the years,which they are very good at!
But hey...at the rate Campbell and the Liberals are pissing people off,anything can happen between now and election time!
It will also be interesting to see what freebees and buyoffs that Campbell hands out before we go to the polls next year, and rest assured,he WILL try and buy back those he has pissed off!
Good luck with that!

I'm not hung up on party lines. I really disliked Glen Clark's approach to running the province. I didn't think that there could be anyone worse, but I believe Gordon Campbell is a terrible premier ..... worse than Clark. I hope that he gets fired at the next election.

"there have been quite a few successes as well."

Diplomat, try and name some of the successes that Gordo has had during his reign. And I wish you would stop calling him a liberal.

He increased my MSP fees, Increased pharmacare from a $25.00 deductable to $250.00. We lost our dental plan. He is using scads of tax dollars for the olympics and the rav line. The only positive things he has done is provided oppertunities for a few jobs and makes his freinds richer.

Now cheer up and give me the good news of his accomplishments.

Cheers

Half the reason the NDP look so bad is the mainstream press is against them. I'm not a fan of the NDP but if you dig around outside the mainstream media, the liberals are every bit as bad if not worse. So many scandals and scams have come and gone, and the corporate media just doesn't touch it. This party is giving away the wealth of this province. We need a centre right party.
As olympic construction winds down and the real estate bubble bursts, jobs in the 604 will start to disappear.
A massive slowdown is coming and no party can save us, left or right because........govsux.

I think you're right govsux and so is Bridge.
There does seem to be a reluctance with the media to dig into the Liberal crap that has been going on behind the scenes.
It's nothing new, but it is a bit of a mystery.
The Basi/Virk case is only one area the media does not seem to want to go to,and I do have to wonder why?
If there has been anything that they should have run with,it's that little gem.
So who got to who?
They did the same when Campbell was nailed for drunk driving in Hawaii.
The media coverage was weak at best and had it been anyone else,there would have been a public hanging!
Vanderzalm and Harcourt got both barrels,and so did Bill Bennett Jr.over the Herb Doman share sale tipoff.
They dropped the ball on the John Les and Gary Colins resignations,the I.C.B.C.rebuild scam,B.C.Rail,even the fat raises that Campbell helped himself and the carbon tax/money grab.
Notice Carole Taylor hardly even rated a blip when she resigned?
That's just for starters.
They also don't seem to want to touch anything to do with B.C.healthcare issues and the Liberal handling of the Pine Beetle/forestry issue in Northern B.C.either.
Everything is allowed to fade to black after a few blurbs on an inside page and no real digging done.
What is the media afraid of,or maybe it is WHO are they afraid of?
When the Campbell government set out to destroy Glen Clarke,the media was all over it!
I am no Glen Clarke fan,but he did not deserve the asassination the Campbell goverment handed him, and it only showed the extent that the Liberals will go to intimidate and control.
Somehow I think what goes around,will come around, and the Campbell gang may be about to find that out.
And for sure the aftermath of 2010 will tell some real tales!
The average joe's sense of right and wrong may not be quite as easily bought as the B.C.Liberals appear to think it is.
I would like to think that the people of B.C.do have some principals and there IS a line that political power does not cross!

The Campbell fortress? The Campbell club?
It behooves me to witness the strangest of things going basically unnoticed.

The opposition party is neither opposing or putting forth much that means anything to anyone.

The media is a totally different animal than it has been for decades and why is this. I am not asking for the tenacious personal witch hunting which it used to be famous for, but it would be good to know if they are in fact awake.

There is no doubt that the Campbell government is a tight dictatorship and our MLAs seem to do nothing which goes against the leader. This is perhaps what worries me more than anything as what exactly is going on in the backrooms of this government? When everything which we see seems to cause our MLAs to loose their voice and bow to the great leader, what are they allowing behind the scenes?

Corporations are running the show and nothing that they want isn't given to them no matter what it means to the future of people's livelyhoods or the survival of an entire community. Several of them in fact.

What happened to all the environmental organisations as they too are unbelievably quiet these days? Forestry has never been farther off the rails environmentally and nobody makes a mention of it. The laws which have been changed would have never been contemplated prior to this government and rightly so. But yet no one says a peep.

We are not in a financial mess thanks to the booming energy revenues of today, but this is a non renewable resource which may see its limits before we know it. Once the land sales have occurred the royalties will continue for only so long from rapidly depleting these fields.
Otherwise our economy is a disaster for the most part despite the favourable prices in mining and enormous land sales for energy.
If the Campbell government didn't have this windfall, we would be so broke, so stagnate and so unemployed that our economy would simply implode.
The biggest problem here is that the government is totally focussed on this temporary windfall while ignoring the rest of the economy.

We don't so much need to change political partys so much as we need to have accountable representation from our MLAs.
These MLAs are who we vote for.

BC style dictatorships such as Glen Clarkes or Campbells are what we need to have changed so that the interests of the people prevail over the power driven choices which work against our interests.

Bridge: "And I wish you would stop calling him a liberal."

He is the leader of the Liberal Party. That's why I call him a Liberal. What do you want me to call him? Give me a hint.

His main accomplishment is that he changed the province from one that had been made officially antagonistic (by the BCNDP) to the federal government of Canada, the western states of the USA and the *evil* of corporations-for-profit to one that is actively engaged again on every level that matters in this world of global competition for investment, progress and business (spell jobs and taxes) opportunities.

Like it or not, that is the world we live in. Many countries are desperately trying to join in and become competitive and benefit from successfully mixing it up in this world.

If you think that it is a good idea that B.C. alone bucks the trend and the established international reality go ahead and sacrifice yourself on the altar of ideology.

I think that a COUNTRY could try to take a different direction, not a PROVINCE all by itself.

Corporations exist to make profits for shareholders and investors. Corporations are not persons who suffer from a vice called greed. A corporation is an impersonal business entity and must make a profit for those who invested in it. Ideally the decisions of the CEO and the board of directors also take into account the interests of the workers and the community.

However, if it comes to the crunch the reasons for the very existence of the corporation usually take priority over other decisions because the survival of the corporation always comes first.

That is the system we have. Private corporations are legal and as long as they operate within the law they should not be attacked continuously as if they were some kind of blight on our landscape.

Either ban them or live/work for them. The old NDP slogans have become somewhat tiresome.

Now, go ahead and shoot me down!

woodchipper said, "The media is a totally different animal than it has been for decades and why is this." and "Corporations are running the show "
The media esp. CanWest Global is a media corporation that is a major donor to the BC Liberals. It makes a lot of money from them. Look at the ads that run in their newspapers, esp. when some bad news about the BC Liberals comes out. The bad news is washed over and we are inundated with "BC is the best place to live" ads. This make lots of money for the press and we the taxpayers pay for it.

Diplomat said, "He is the leader of the Liberal Party. That's why I call him a Liberal. What do you want me to call him? Give me a hint."
No hints and if I told you the answer, my comments would not be published.

Diplomat, I think most people know that corporations are made to make money. The problem with some is they are in business without a moral conscience. Diplomat, you seem to defend these moraly bankrupt corporations. There are many corporations worldwide that operate with a moral code that treats people with dignity and respect. Westjet and West Fraser to name a couple. I don't think its the money that is the evil byproduct its the morality of some who operate in B.C. The answer that they make decisions at any cost to make money is wrong, one ony needs to look at the textile business in third world countries to see why the moral conduct of business must be held in check.

Campbell has lost his way. I can live and agree with the BC rail sale. The province does not need to be in the rail business. Go to war against the public sector unions?, I agree. It was time for some balance. But my big bitch is this carbon tax. They had no mandate for this. If BC wanted this BS we would have voted green. Top it off with the outrageous raises for the top bureaucrats and it spells electoral defeat and a gift for the NDP.

You don't see this kind of political suicide everyday. Well done Gord, you have pissed away the efforts of many in the last decade to get rid of the NDP.

astro: "Diplomat, you seem to defend these morally bankrupt corporations."

Far from it. Ideally they would behave more responsibly. Union pension funds, teachers' pension funds and so forth invest in shares of these morally bankrupt (as you put it) corporations...why? One would think that they of all people would refrain from doing so!

Social democratic governments too borrow vast amounts of money from banking corporations...why? One would think that they would not (by their borrowing and paying compound interest)assist these financial corporations to make ever more extravagant profits year after year from the taxes paid by the ordinary working stiff.

Perhaps one would expect liberal or conservative governments to have no qualms about this transfer of the working man's taxes to corporations. But parties which claim to deplore and condemn corporations because of the profits they make should not have a double standard which enables them to preach one thing and then do the opposite once they are in power.

More and more its the hedge funds that own these corporations shares and not Joe pensioner. Big banking families using fractional banking scams to the extreme to buy shares for a penny on the dollar through hedging contracts that allow them to manipulate the fate of small companies in need of raising liquidity for economic opportunities... manipulated until they are bought out by the very hedge funds that manipulated their stocks with non-existent shares... usually bought out with debt financing from the investment banks for the bank picked winner. Efficiencies of economy cut the occupied company until the removal of its production makes it no longer viable based on the then financial and the consolidation takes place.

The corporate world we operate under has no relation to the text book concept of corporations, and absolutely no relation to true capitalism, because it is the banks and their 'tools' that are determining which companies survive and which ones don't. Even with your RRSP's you have to buy to avoid the slave tax... they are also controlled by the banks fund managers that exercise the morality of your investments with their voting power derived from your capital. There is no accountability for the morality of your capital in the system and that is the way the system was designed for a reason.

We have a monopolistic corporate economy propped up by a handful of parasitic banker families and a banking system flush with currency inflation created at their will to liquefy the target industries for consolidation.

Pat Bell said point blank that he and the liberals were elected first and foremost to deregulate. That was the only mandate that mattered to him once elected.

Deregulation is code word for dismantling checks and balances in the system often put in place to influence values society expects in the realm the guidelines are meant to govern.

Deregulation is when corporations can have their profits subsidized at the citizen and crown expense through cheep foreign labor, lax over seas environmental standards (lowest common denominator), or removal of the civic rights of citizens over their own resources. In this the BC liberals were a huge success crowned with their TILMA legislation championed by the people of the Omenica who clearly needed this piece of corporate candy brought in by their elected representative John Rustad.

Eagleone, can't argue with anything you are saying about the monolithic monopolistic system which operates according to the golden rule: Those who have the gold rule.

They also decide where the investments get invested and where de-investment may take place.

Some brave souls think that they can almost singlehandedly take on this global corporate multi headed monster!

The consequences are never very pretty! Money has no conscience. That's a fact of the globally interconnected world we live in.

Morning All!
You all make sense in one way or another and it is nice to see that people are starting to speak up! I have said this before on here and I am going to say it again; No matter who wins in the next election it will turn out the same unless the people somehow take back some of the power from the mere men we put in charge of our province. THE PEOPLE need to be allowed to vote on important issues such as THE OLYMPICS, GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS RAISES AND THE CARBON TAX!! End of story! Their is to much coruption in all levels of government and there always will be because EVERYONE has a price. The closed door habits need to stop, emediately!!!!
Have a nice day all! :}