What is needed is for the people to vote on important issues such as the selling of the railroad, the new proposed pipeline and anything to do with the resources. These resources are THE PEOPLES and it is the people who should get the profits for them. In this day and age with the internet it would cost next to nothing for voting. We need to take back control of government simply because too many Politian's can be bought and are bought. They cannot be trusted with full control. It is like making the fox in charge of the chickens.

It is nice to see journalists like Peter and Dawn who are not afraid to speak up and inform. Thank you so much for that, you are a rarity.

I am bring back up the point that the Big Six funders of this court case should get some heat! Thanks to a former post by Palopu, it was suggested that the Big Six are:

Here is a list of the six people named as proponents of the legal challenge to the HST, they are;

1. John Allan of the Council of Forest Industries
2. Pierre Gratton of the Mining Association of BC
3. Philip Hochstein of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Assoc.
4. Wayne Hoskins of the Western Convenience Stores Association;
5. Jeffery of the Coast Forest Products Assoc.
6. John Winter of the BC Chamber of Commerce.

Campaign records show the organizations behind the petition contributed $162,450.00 to the BC Liberal Party since 2005 and nothing to the NDP.

Are there any surprises here???? I think not.

Yes to recalling MLA's but let push the buttons of these international and huge businesses and let them know that it is our province not theirs!

Boycott direct businesses from the Big Six and Recall MLAs!

It is getting harder and harder to ignore the conspiracy theories about coorperations running the world and governments when a prime example of it is happening right here in BC.

Thanks again Peter and Dawn. Given the publics inexplicable ability to bury its collective head in the sand and allow this to happen to us, you are still trying to get the great uneducated to wake up to what is the greatest raping society has ever seen in the course of history. I like to compare your educated views to many of those who remain blind and in fact accept the truthless drivel the neo-cons feed them every day. We must try and open the eyes of as many individals who remain intellectually dormant in the face of this very real and very dangerous shift of money from everyone into the pockets of "the elites" as you call them. Keep up the good work as every time you wake up a citizen out of their Matrix like slumber with respect to reality, the faster our society can return to the values that we think we aspire towards. I wish everyone could have the good fortune of taking your social policy courses. As I have often said attending one of these courses is much like the Matrix where you can take one pill and return to your blissfull ignorance, (get scared at the truth and drop out)or take the other pill and have your eyes opened to what is really going on. People if you can not do this for yourself at least realize that to remain ignorant now is to doom your children to a life of financial slavery.

**********RECALL THEM ALL!!!!*************

IMO
"It is nice to see journalists like Peter and Dawn who are not afraid to speak up and inform. Thank you so much for that, you are a rarity."

I fail to see how this article is about information AT ALL. The authors have deliberately used sweeping all encompassing language to support a highly speculative opinion with wild accusations. Like the general public has no ownership in the economic crisis. Buying items they couldn't afford.

BECCA
1. John Allan of the Council of Forest Industries
2. Pierre Gratton of the Mining Association of BC
3. Philip Hochstein of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Assoc.
4. Wayne Hoskins of the Western Convenience Stores Association;
5. Jeffery of the Coast Forest Products Assoc.
6. John Winter of the BC Chamber of Commerce.
Boycott direct businesses from the Big Six.

So you are suggesting I boycott all the businesses related to your list. Care to let me know which business I am allowed to frequent? That is a very encompassing list. Where are you going to buy your groceries, cars, gas, heat and where are you going to work?


Do you want some facts to go along with all this speculation? Families will pay LESS tax with the implementation of HST and the tax changes that came with it. The anti-HST campaign was full of lies.

Lie#1 houses will cost 7% more. Inform yourself and you will find many more.

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/news/display.aspx?id=16206

It is so unfortnate that most of those with their heads in the sand only say, well, whats the alternative?

We must provide an alternative. Rather than getting rid of people,(voting people out) Which we seem to do often, we need to select and elect representatives we want in. And people who are willing to listen, represent the people who voted them in and willing to stand up against their party when appropriate. (this is a very unpopular and difficult thing to do the way our current parties operate)

Well I own a small business right here in Prince George and I am a Proponent for the HST. Ive never contributed to any political party, nor have I ever discussed my views with anyone of a political affiliation. Yet the HST became a reality and a benefit to me and all I had to do was vote for the party that I felt would provide solid economical policies in order for me to succeed in my business.

thank you L1510s for proving my point. Are you aware who the Fraser Institute are? They are the paid propaganda department of the neo-conservatives. Anyone who sited them as a reputable source immediately reveals themselves to either be totally ignorant of reality or one of the admittedly large number of individuals who truley do not understand what is going on. our muppet looking financial minister Collins said that companies will immediately reduce the cost of their goods as they reap the rewards of passsing the taxes onto the buyer. The very next day the head of the BC liquor commision told the press that while they will reap a financial reward by not having to pay taxes on their goods they would not be passing the savings onto the customer. one government official immediately coutering the words of the other. Really, I think when it comes to telling lies it was not the repeal the HST coalition, it has been the Campbell government ( After all the lies only a true nincompoop would believe anything that man says) and their mouth piece the Fraser Institute that lacks credibility. Thanks for proving my point about those who need to have their eyes opened.

I operate a small business as well. Last weekend I was doing my month end stuff and I realized I didn't have to do my PST return. I turned off my computer and went outside and played with my kids. Thank you HST.

I really need to stop reading this train wreck of opinions and get some work done.

IMO. Peter and Dawn are not "journalists". This is an opinion piece, not a news story.

Have a good weekend everyone.

REALIST
"Really, I think when it comes to telling lies it was not the repeal the HST coalition, it has been the Campbell government." So you are telling me that they didn't tell any lies. I cited one already.
Lie#2 The poor people will spend a disproportionately larger amount on HST than richer people. False. Basic Food, Shelter and even automotive fuel do not have HST. Poorer people spend a larger % of their income on these items.

As for the Fraser Institute; If you are truly a realist you would realize that an intelligent person gathers information from a variety of sources and both sides of an argument before making a decision. Have you done so?

I'm no fan of team blue but team red has single handedly sodomized British Columbia and Ontario in 2010 using their new favorite strap-on, the HST.

At least Harper has the decency to not smile while he bends you over, and if he does it's obviously fake and likely for a photo op. Iggy on the other hand would happily bend over Canada as well but will somehow manage to maintain a genuine smile throughout the whole ordeal.

Oh Canada :S

BOYCOTT... A good and practical start might be to get a list of the members of your Chamber of Commerce, and contact those members with which you do business, and express your expectation of doing business elsewhere unless the Chamber of Commerce withdraws it's support of the legal action.

In order for a BOYCOTT to be effective, there must be a clear and achievable goal [eg withdraw support of court action]; and there needs to be a way to call off the BOYCOTT once the goal is reached.

Perhaps as member businesses publicly demand that the Chamber of Commerce withdraw support of the court case, the public might be encouraged to again patronize those businesses. Conversely, businesses which do not comply might be subjected to rotating picketing.

Every day is election day when you decide to vote with your wallet.

Posted by: L1510s on August 13 2010 11:14 AM
So you are suggesting I boycott all the businesses related to your list. Care to let me know which business I am allowed to frequent? That is a very encompassing list. Where are you going to buy your groceries, cars, gas, heat and where are you going to work?

Do you want some facts to go along with all this speculation? Families will pay LESS tax with the implementation of HST and the tax changes that came with it. The anti-HST campaign was full of lies.

Lie#1 houses will cost 7% more. Inform yourself and you will find many more.

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/news/display.aspx?id=16206

L1510s, stop with your LIEberal talking points and half truths. your side, the LIEberals of BC have no credibility left to convince a roach that it is worthy of anything.

commission from realtors will indeed increase by 7%, thats a FACT! the fraser institute is a right wing propaganda arm of the conservatives (BC Liberals).

families will pay MORE, FACT!

The HST is as you say Peter and Dawn is a continuation of the biggest financial sting working people have ever seen, with little to no accountability by the business sector or government. The current provincial government should be given a five game penalty for unnecessary roughness to the people of BC. No mention of the HST during the election, giving away BC Rail to the Americans, shutting our schools with no discussion, as in cutting of social service to our most vulnerable citizens, clearly a governemnt who has no intent of listening to the people. More critical debate is needed to awaken the sleeping voters. Keep these articles coming!

If you are a small business owner you have just taken 12% out of the value gap in which you derive your profits from.

Just because this cost is passed on to the customer doesn't mean that it has no effect on the small business.

In take out food for example (Pat Bell listen up) the value gap between the actual cost to deliver the good and the value to the customer to make a purchase of those goods, rather than make a meal at home... is very slim margin. Add 12% cost increase to the finished product and that is 12% that either the business can no longer charge for its services, or it is an increase in cost to the customer that could make the added value of a fast food take out meal beyond what people can afford... and thus the sector withers on a vine and jobs are lost. We have already started to hear of this.

Facts are that 85% of the jobs these days are created in the private sector by small business, and that that vast majority of these are service jobs (ie retail sales) that were exempt from the PST and now have their very small margins cut into by this tax grab.

To a small service business that now pays this additional 7% that is a direct tax on their income. If they had a basic personal exemption of $10,000 of income profits in the personal income tax return then that would not have been taxed... however now that tax is built in at the till and the $700 makes its way out through lost value opportunity paid for by your customers to the tax collector. Double that if you have a spouse... and so on and so forth if you have dependent children.

Money that you as a small business operator earned through your innovation and hard work, and above all your personal financial risk, that was yours to keep prior to HST is now taxed through a third party out of your business reducing the size of the value gap in your potential for profits.

For those small businesses on a small value gap margin they will be hurt the most. Those very small service businesses on a small value gap margin with little for capital investments were the very ones that the PST protected by not taxing a value gap that often is smaller than the PST portion itself.

A debate of the HST prior to its implementation would have discovered this, and in a real democracy the merits of the PST would have been weighed against the GST... if you tax a business out of its value gap, and that business creates lots of jobs, then you have in effect taxed a business into closure and eliminated those jobs from the economic productive capacity in the local economy.

That was the purpose of the PST exemption in industries that the province in its sovereign authority on taxation (which has now been surrendered) at one time felt were worth having around if a PST exemption made their value gap profitable for people to employ themselves... rather than collect government hand outs. That is the very thing the liberals will never discuss even now that they claim to be 'educating the public' on the merits of their new tax policy. That is surely something they wouldn't have wanted to discuss in an election while they were arranging for this to happen as soon as the last votes were cast. The liberals relied on a fraudulent view from the public as to what their election agenda was in order to make this happen, because they could not have done it if they had 'educated' the public as to their taxation shift plans prior to the election.

The service industry as the biggest private sector employer in the province wasn't even given the opportunity to have a voice on the issue and the liberals yet claim to represent the private sector with this new tax policy.

This is an example of transferring the burden of taxation from strong international resource based corporations onto the backs of a free enterprise economy of small service based businesses.

For those small business that are capital intensive it very well could in certain scenario's turn out to be a wash with their end customer paying any taxes with the value gap protected by the remittance of their capital asset investments. But for the vast majority of the service sector that is the bed rock of the local economy where the vast majority of jobs are located... this is a huge tax transfer onto their backs to pay for biger profits of the monopoly multinationals through a diminishing of an already tight value gap on small business service providers.

Its monopoly multinationals and their bankster friends that are at war with the free enterprise economy... and the free enterprise economy is foolish enough to think that their Camber of Commerce is the voice for free enterprise when in fact it is an Orwellian double speak of an organization doing the foot work for the monopolists in the courts against the people who the Chamber claims to represent.

Getting rid of the HST will actually be a stimulus to the provincial economy once that day comes.

BC lost the battle already though IMO when we turned down the BCSTV process. That was a huge win for party politics and the enforcement of the party over local grass roots representation... as well as the ability to have a diversity of opinion represented in our elections and legislature from within even the parties....

Turning down the BCSTV I believe was the signal Gordon Campbell needed to go ahead with the HST... he seen it was easy to sow disunity over good policy and no longer had any form of conceivable accountability to fear if the current status quo was to be the political future in this province.

AIMHO

We will not have a successful return of democracy in BC (assuming we ever had one) will not be possible until citizens decide to vote their true interests instead of being manipulated. There is a vast and lucrative industry engaged in swaying us in our purchases, via advertising, and in voting via pure propaganda in the press (i.e. National Post), television (i.e. Fox "News"), radio (take your pick) and mills that feed these media (i.e. Fraser Institute)
If people would look beyond their short-term interests they could see that governments on all levels are in the pockets of big business. We are called upon to vote for Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum every four years then "our" representatives serve their interests until the next election and similar "choices" are offered us.

Regardless of whether the HST is seen as good or bad for someone, the overriding issue is whether our democracy works.

The HST is only one issue of many that has arrived without any form of public debate and clearly it was pushed out the door without even our finance minister having understood it properly.

There is something very wrong with our system when we the public, expect lies and deception to be just part of the normal processes of government.

Flip flopping from right to left hasn't done anything good for this province and each side is as guilty of dictatorship as the other.

I used to think we had democracy for at least one day, but we really don't even have that when election promises are nothing but lies and deception. Take no comfort in believeing you can fix anything with our existing system on election day.

This is truly a unique opportunity to help fix our system of democracy. It is the best tool ever made available to hold your own MLA accountable to representing you and your riding instead of a dictator/leader that you didn't have any say in having.

I would also say that people have a responsibility, far beyond their own self interests of this one current issue, to help bring an ongoing accountability to their elected officials and restore our democratic system.

I disagree with you about turning down the BCSTV, Eagle. The proponents of that rejected system had a chance to make their case, twice, and twice the proposal came up short of the necessary public support to enact it.

IMO, it would have made a bad situation in regards to the erosion of democracy in BC even worse had we adopted it.

We do not need any more 'back-room deals' between and amongst even more political Parties jockeying for power and priviledge, with none having a clear mandate to govern because ALL essentially represent exactly the same overall POLICY, and only differ in their methods of ADMINISTERING it.

What we do need is a clear and effective "Voter's Veto". Where issues like the HST, introduced and enacted into law clearly in opposition to the expressed wishes of the majority of British Columbians by a government that had promised not to do so, can be subjected to a BINDING Citizen Initiated Referendum enabled along the lines of the current Petition process. Only automatically required if the Petition is verified.

We are not trying to usurp the authority of the Legislature, or to introduce new Laws via a process that doesn't enable them to be properly examined and debated by our MLAs.

And we don't want to have a Referendum on every inane, frivolus issue some interested party thinks they can sell to the public.

Nor do we want 'special interest groups' with mega-buck backing trying to advertise advanatageously to induce the public to vote for their particular agenda, having heard only one side of the story. Theirs. While the other side, for lack of access to the necessary funding, doesn't get heard at all.

But we do need an effective "Voter's Veto". Where the general public can overturn Laws that have been pushed through against the wishes of the majority, and especially where no mandate was sought , or given, for their enactment.

We could build an effective safeguard into such a process. If, as in the case of the HST, the government was absolutely convinced that tax was necessary for it to carry on, and a "Voter's Veto" Referendum overturned it, the government could then call a General Election on that issue. And if returned to office, the Law would stand. What could be fairer than that?

I think we can chew gum and walk at the same time. I think a voters veto is a good idea... I won't argue against that.

But I also think the voting system needs reform too. BCSTV was not perfect by a long stretch, but it was better than what we have today. Sure more voices would have been at the table, but at least when no one has a majority, then policy needs to be discussed on a wider table with more input and thereby safe guarding the public against blind sides like the sale of BC Rail and the HST for example.

Democracy isn't free... sometimes you have to listen to more voices, sometimes you have to try and understand opinions you may never agree with, sometimes there will be petty kick backs in the barter system of government, and other times there will be more financial costs in the administration of it... but the alternative is corruption on a grand scale, no accountability, and intangibles currently protected by the rule of law that one can not even put a figure on.

Obviously for a democracy to work it needs to have checks and balances in the system, and it needs to have a system that enfranchises the citizen. Giving a majority dictatorship to a party with minority support and a leader that was elected by only one riding in the province is not a healthy democracy.

The best government BC ever had was the WAC Bennett socred government. It wasn't the best government because they had any particular ideology, but rather by the way they came into being. It was the Transferable Vote that made the WAC socreds. It was the will of the people in possibly the only real democratic election BC ever had.

The Transferable Vote was brought in as it was thought that the conservative and liberals would naturally support each other to stop the socialists. The political pointy heads of the time never imagined that most peoples second choice would be a party that didn't even have official party status. That conservatives would prefer a socred nobody to a liberal, or that a liberal would prefer a nobody socred to a conservative, or that a socialist would also prefer a socred nobody to either a conservative or a liberal. They all knew the other 'mainstream' parties were just as corrupt as they were, but just with a different agenda... just as hostile to the people of BC, just from a different extreme. As the other party candidates were eliminated for having the least votes the socreds came up the middle and stole the election on the merits of being the second choice of enough ballots that they secured a majority of votes in their ridings before any of the other parties could.

The key with the socred Transferable Vote win was that it was a Transferable Ballot that was single riding, and not multiple riding. Each individual riding was represented with a single MLA, its just that MLA had to have a majority of support by all the voters in its riding in order to get elected, and every MLA in that entire legislature was to the MLA an elected MLA with a majority of the vote in their riding. It was the only truly democratic legislature in BC history. It happened because of the Transferable Vote. It didn't create splinter parties at all... in fact it all but eliminated the liberals and conservative from BC politics for nearly four decades and the socreds went on to produce some of the best majority governments in BC history... the real middle class majority took control of the power in the legislature.. the fraudsters sat on the pines in the penalty box.

In a real democracy the representatives should have a majority of support whether it be to lead the province, or represent a riding. That is impossible in a multi party first past the post system. The socred Transferable Ballot system was simply enacted by the government of the day (liberal) in order to steal an election (that backfired)... and if this voting system could be implemented back then, then it could be just as easily implemented today without a whole lot of change to how our parliamentary democracy works in this province.

For a guy that calls himself socred you sure take a peculiar position... I'm not sure why you would oppose consensus building and the stability of majority elected candidates that represent the mainstream middle class interests in this province... why you would oppose a Transferable Ballot. Claiming it creates multiple parties all with the same policy is a cop out intellectually from a guy who claims to be an intellectual of politics and finance.

I hope that helps... :)

Good post Woodchiper... I also agree the recall is the best tool we've ever had to bring some accountability back into the political parties in BC. Whether people support HST or not is not really the point anymore if it ever was... its whats happening to the mockery made of our democratic decision making process and how democracy is being taken away by back room hidden agenda's and corporations influencing the policy behind the scenes and then using the courts to secure their victories over our democracy.

If we want our democracy back the first thing that needs to happen is to see people support the recall of the liberals for breaking this trust they were granted on false pretext during the last election. That has to be punished somehow in order so that future dictators in BC don't get the idea they can ignore the requirements of informed elections either. We can't rely on Elections BC to protect our vote in this regard. They would rather side with the fraud on our vote then uphold actual votes already cast.

Recall is the immediate answer... and I believe a Transferable Ballot is the middle term solution. A sovereign and democratically elected government where all MLA's have a majority I'm sure will make the right decisions to fix the rest with their actual democratic mandate to govern.

Time will tell.

Eagle, all a Transferable Ballot does is allow you to vote for who you DON'T want in a descending order of preference. You still only get to choose from a list that's been prepared for you, where more likely than not, all the Candidates are trying to represent THEIR Party's 'platform' to you, as one complete entity, rather than asking you for the priviledge of being YOUR 'representative'.

If you closely examine each platform, you'll find it doesn't generally deal with matters of POLICY at all, but rather METHODS of imposing the SAME policy.

Case in point. The BC Liberals wanted a Carbon Tax (first), wheras the NDP wanted a Cap and Trade system (first). Now the BC Liberals have prevailed and we have a Carbon Tax in place, guess who's moving to Cap and Trade?

Do the people of British Columbia, the generally 'silent majority', really want EITHER? ( We're 'silent' because we've been convinced by the actions of ALL the mainstream Parties that it's simply useless for ordinary people to do anything other than "go with the flow" ~ though no one in those Parties will ever tell us just from whence this "flow" originates, or why it must "flow" in the direction it does, only that they, and we, must "go" with it that way. As if pushed along by gravity or some other 'natural law', or something. That "flow" is the POLICY we NEVER are given any say on at election time. We only get to choose by which METHOD it will be imposed upon us. )

Personally, I don't believe most of us wanted either a Cap and Trade or a Carbon Tax, and we certainly don't want BOTH.

Not that we're uncaring or unconscious about the environment, but because most of us can't see how systems that simply cost us more 'money', and cause us to have to do MORE to get that money, with no option whatsoever to do LESS, are ever going to 'save the environment'.

Like the HST, they're simply tax grabs. Transferring more of YOUR 'money', from YOUR hands, and removing YOUR right to spend it as you so choose ~ which generally is in ways far more benign in terms of further environmental degradation than the way it will be spent by any government.

So I don't see just where BCSTV, or a return to the experiment of the early 1950's with the Transferable Ballot will be any improvement whatsoever over the 'Westminster system' we currently have.

To believe that history will repeat itself, and a 'good' government will again be elected ala early day BC Social Credit, simply through changing the election system is to ignore all the other factors which lined up perfectly to produce such a favourable result in 1952. If any of those other factors had been absent, such a result would have been very much different.

One of those "other factors" I'm talking about, Eagle, was the bankrolling of the BC Social Credit "League" in 1952, (it hadn't descended into calling itself a "Party" at that point ~ that came much later), by its Alberta counterpart. Which was then in government there under long-time Premier Ernest C Manning, the later federal Reform Party leader Preston Manning's pappy.

Without that financial support, which came with some strings attached, BC Social Credit would have remained an 'also ran'. Even with the Transferable Ballot. Premier Manning was a pretty crafty fellow, one who we could say took a lesson straight from the Zionist handbook, if one existed ~ how to play both sides of any issue off against one another and come out looking good, and on top, no matter which side prevails.

You are wrong there socred and blinded from taking any real analysis of the Transferable Ballot by the propaganda issued by the parties that oppose it.

A transferable ballot is not a choice from a list that we would not vote for. Any independent can run in a riding bi-election and by no means needs a party to run in a transferable ballot election. Had we had more than one election with that type of ballot we surely would have had a host of independents elected into the legislature representing their riding above any political alliances.

You simply do not understand the process, or choose to misinform if you say "all a Transferable Ballot does is allow you to vote for who you DON'T want in a descending order of preference. You still only get to choose from a list that's been prepared for you,"... that is absolute ballarny.

Its a preferential ballot where you choose who your first choice is and your second choice in the order in which you would prefer to see elected should your first choice not have the general support needed to stay in the running and is dropped off the ballot for the lowest amount of votes. It allows a person to choose with their heart the candidate for their first choice, and a more rational second choice that has better likelihood of actually being elected, and so on and so forth.

For an independent they may not be the first choice of the partisan party ideologues, but may very well be the second choice of the majority and as such get elected without any party help what so ever purely on the chosen preference of the greatest amount of the citizens in that riding representing the first clear majority. There is nothing to say an independent couldn't represent the 'silent majority' on all the issues that you raise. There is nothing to say a party representing the 'silent majority' could not form and run a principled based campaign and come into power as the socred did as the majorities second choice.

You give far far to much credit to the Alberta scoreds and conveniently ignore the fact that the people of BC at the time rejected the politics of the liberals and conservatives that were essentially the same corpocracy bunch, and only through a transferable ballot did the people of BC have the means to depose of them and implement a new political force in this province that would see the hated conservative and liberal parties banished from provincial politics for four plus decades... the greatest four decades of BC history for the working class people of this province.

I don't know why anyone would oppose a consensus candidate elected with a clear majority of the citizens in his single individual riding to represent them in the traditional Westminister system we have always had.

How that could not be an improvement over the current system of minority elected MLA's from vote splitting and electioneering lies is beyond my comprehension unless one has a hidden agenda of their own and fears facing real competition on the local level in individual ridings where each MLA is truly accountable to their ridings and not to their parties for getting elected in each and every election.

Myself, I would run 100% for sure if it was a real democracy with a transferable ballot, because I know then my ideas could be judged on their merits and the silent majority could actually voice their opinion and have it counted. Under the current system an independent like me doesn't stand a hope in hell because the political parties control the nomination process and only party affiliated candidates can win under the current system (under strict party controls)... unless one has an extraordinary amount of campaign finance backing them, which most independents don't have.

We did have more than "one election" with the Transferable Ballot in place, Eagle. There were two. And when WAC Bennett's Socreds got a majority in the second election they contested they very wisely scrapped that utterly stupid voting system and we went back to First-Past-the-Post.

How we elect our MLAs ~ FPP, STV, MMP, Transferable Ballots, or whatever, won't have the slightest bearing on their effectiveness as OUR 'representatives'.

To do that, to force them to become, and remain, what they're supposed to be, we need some kind of 'sanction'. "Recall" is an after-the-fact attempt at that. But it shouldn't have to be "after-the-fact", as a punishment, it should be "before-the-fact", in their properly representing us in the first place.

The "Voter's Veto", along the lines I previously mentioned is one way.

Having "None of the Above" on the bottom of every election ballot, with a place for your "x" beside it and countable as a vote, is another. This puts the onus on those who would 'represent' us to find out what WE want, and agree to try to get it for us, as a condition of our supporting their election.

The people we elect are not, and for the most part never can be, "experts" in determining how to achieve the results we desire. The expertise is in the professional Civil Service ~ those well-paid guys, the genuine 'experts' in actually doing the particular job. Who we replace for non-performance. They're the ones we want 'on tap' ~ not 'on top'.

Those we elect are there to 'demand results' ~ what we do, and do not, want. And, if you think about it, that's a pretty big job in itself.

I notice that socred tends to support the banks and political parties a lot... provides solutions that are five steps away, but opposes one foot after another as well as chewing gum and walking at the same time.

We have a fundamental disagreement and all I can say about it is that you are dreaming if you think you will ever get a government elected under the current system to even think about some of the solutions you suggest. The only way forward is to create the political climate required, and the only way to do that is to have MLA's that know they are now accountable to the majority and not a vote splitting minority... and the only way to do that is to have a system that allows for Joe Public to take their gig away from them through a transferable ballot with good middle class majority policies where people are given a real option for democracy. Otherwise forget it if you think the current FPTP system will produce the results you are looking for.

As for the 'experts' I don't buy it... everyone is an expert of some sort and really all it amounts to is someones opinion... sometimes educated and sometimes tainted with ideological bend. If a politician can't lead then they shouldn't be in politics... politicians should never be led by the bureaucracy or we get the very HST result we are all complaining about. The corpocracy owns the bureaucratic 'experts' more than they own the politicians, and the politicians know it because the politicians put them there in the first place... look at any regulating or planning agency and they are staffed with so called 'experts' of the field with a close connection to the very industries they are supposed to regulate.

Sometimes its good to have a socratic bureaucracy, rather then a bureaucracy that thinks they have all the answers.. or only the 'right answers' for the willing ears.

IMHO