IMO during the past 30 years we have not been blessed with an MLA who had the peoples welfare at heart. One MLA more or less will not change the cities input. A third of nothing is still nothing. Let's get on with the system that just barely failed in referendum last election.

Who's doing this rally?
The Mayor & Council?

The answer is the Province of Northern BC. How do we get it started. The territories were split, we can do it also.

I agree with the idea of a Northern BC Province due to the obvious democratic deficit that results from the disproportionate size of the Lower Mainland to our political system that governs an area larger than France, Italy, and Germany combined.

I used to think we could fix this problem by earmarking Senatorial MLA's representing the regions, but sitting in the legislature as MLA's, that combined in their own deliberations would have a veto power on issues of regional importance. It seemed fair in light of a federal Senate for that purpose and the fact that 50 States to the south of us also have senates for exactly that purpose, but keeping in mind we don't need more politicians.

Both political mainstream parties reject the idea of regional representation with their sole focus on population numbers as the sole determination of representation because they both cater to the Vancouver-Victoria majority in their pursuit of power.

The end result is that the only way Northern BC will ever have the opportunity to determine our own future with our own infrastructure and economic needs will be through an Independent province as Canada's 11th or 12th(Northern Ontario) province. Short of that every year we will become less relevant and more of a resource extraction empire for the benefit of the Lower Mainland whims of the day.

In the meantime the BCSTV is or only hope for any semblance of democratic representation IMO, via cutting out the party power from our elected representatives.

"perhaps it is time for electoral representation to be alloeted based on contribution rather than population"

Good lord .... and loose even more seats to the south????

I agree with Owl. We are always stating that we make a bigger contribution to the Government than other areas, and especially Vancouver, however I have never seen any actual figures. I suspect that the Government collects huge dollars from the Lower Mainland in Income Taxes, Drivers Licenses, Gasoline, Liquor, Gambling, Business Taxes, etc; etc; etc; Plus all the input from various and sundry business that are located there. Not to mention a few huge Universitys etc;etc;

This idea that we make a huge contribution because some lumber companys pay the Government stumpage fee's is a bit of a stretch. Firstly we have to factor in the fact that a lot of the stumpage comes from Mills outside of the Greater Prince George area, and outside of the electoral district of Prince George. So if anything these outlying areas should get the credit for this stumpage not Pr George.

Two or Three representatives for this area will not make a big difference. Seems to me a number of years ago when the population was much higher than it is now, we only had two representatives.

However all is not lost. A the very minimum we will be able to get a Hamburger, Hot Dog, or Juice out of the City, so this will be a little of our tax dollars coming back to us.

The Mayor better hope that he gets a bigger turn out than he did for the Terry Fox cheque presentation on Friday, where a total of 10 people showed up.

PS. I wish the Mayor and Councillors would get as excited about crime in this City as they do about electoral boundries, spending tax dollars, etc; While the law abiding Gun Owners of this City have their guns locked away, and their ammunition locked away, and all their guns registered, the criminal element is driving around town with sawed off shot guns, pistols, rifles, all illegal and unregistered, and we hear nothing from the City. Is not the Mayor the Chief Magistrate, and is not the City responsible for the RCMP. We pay for their service. Shouldnt we be having a rally to get Citizens, Police, and City Hall involved in getting rid of the Criminal Element in this City?

We need representation, but as we have seen in the past all we get are yes-men and yes-women. Take our current situation. Pat Shirley and John are just Campbell puppets. The system is if you speak up for your constituents, you get reprimanded by Gordo. Under our current system, it will make no difference if we have three M.L.A.'s or fifty. Lack of representation is endemic to the system. If we want a change for the better, we need to fix the system instead of yet more band-aids. Society is running out of band-aids.

I'm disappointed that this ralley is not being driven by the 3 MLA's currently representating us. Don't they care? Chester

"Take our current situation. Pat Shirley and John are just Campbell puppets. The system is if you speak up for your constituents, you get reprimanded by Gordo."

Take our previous situation. Lois Boone and Paul Ramsey were just Harcourt/Clarke/Dosangh
puppets. The system was if you spoke for your constituents you got reprimanded by Mike, Glenn or Ujjal.

It wasn't any better then, if one is realistic.

As staed in an earlier post < IMO during the past 30 years we have not been blessed with an MLA who had the peoples welfare at heart. > That covers Socreds, Lieberals, NDP and sundry others Diplomat

I like the idea of a new Northern BC province.

It is easy to determine the representation level that we in the north should have in the current system simply by determining the effect a separation would have on the delta. What would be the economic impact? Maybe there would be no impact, then we should separate for sure to have representation for issues that don't make it to the radar screen with a system focused on the high density rat maze in the delta.


I think separation would be cool. We are well on the way to being an excellent separate province. We have the airport runway, the sea port and the road network. We paid for it all, lets enjoy it.

Well, your comment should be addressed to REALIST, who continuously slams Liberals - conveniently ignoring the fact that this behaviour of politicians has been going on since Adam and Eve were forcefully evicted from Eden.

REALIST states that under our current system the Premier acts in a heavy handed manner and the MLAs are only puppets. I am simply reminding REALIST that under the situations/systems before the present one it wasn't any different.

I agree with you, by the way, that we have had this problem with all the other governments before and will have it just the same in the future.

That is why the B.C. recall legislation is a good thing - except it was written with hurdles set far too high, counting even voters who have since moved away or died as a No vote.

The politicians who decided how it would work knew what they were doing.

You mean the political party hacks knew what they were doing. Just like they know what they are doing with this electoral boundaries commission.

Should have said 'Do you mean' lol...