#BC NDP fail

[auressea]

Where and How do we get new testkits? public health stopped supplying them-all the old ones have expired.

Some recent COVID-19 news

Growing Concern for back to school as data shows rising COVID cases in B.C.

A grassroots group of health professionals are calling for British Columbia to reinstate mask mandates in schools and hospitals to prevent a repeat “tripledemic” of COVID-19, RSV and influenza infections that pushed the province’s hospitals to the brink last fall.

And with data showing rising COVID-19 cases in B.C. and two new viral subvariants on the horizon, Protect Our Province B.C. says the province should act sooner rather than later.

The group is composed of more than a dozen doctors, nurses, researchers, teachers and professionals who advocate for evidence-based pandemic policies.

“We know from last year kids and schools were hit hard and if the goal is to keep kids learning in school we need to do what we can to prevent virus spread this fall,” said Dr. Lyne Filiatrault, a retired emergency room physician in Vancouver and a member of the group.

COVID response confounds SARS expert

As COVID-19 surges globally, a leading infectious disease specialist is confounded by the lack of pandemic mitigation measures in Ontario.

Q: What is your advice for people who want to stay safe this fall?

Dr. Dick Zoutman: “One is to be informed. I do recommend Dr. Tara Moriarty’s website — COVID19resources.ca,” Zoutman said. “We owe her a large debt.”

Second, when the latest COVID-19 vaccine is available, “get it,” he recommended.

Third, “buy N95 respirators and make sure you have plenty and have one with you all the time. And when you go into an indoor public space — be it a hospital, a bank, a grocery store, school — put it on. The best ones are the ones that go around your head, because they’re tighter.”

Fourth, antigen rapid tests must be made widely available. “If you have any symptoms, you need to test and isolate yourself.”

Finally, avoid indoor public places this fall, he said. “I haven’t eaten in a restaurant in almost four years, and I don’t intend to.”

[weirdstrangeandawful]

Everyone’s talking about US politics right now but if you’re in one of three Canadian provinces, it’s an election year for you too and you can do something to stave off the violence going on in the US for a little while. Under no circumstances, vote for anyone associated with Poilievre.

If you're in British Columbia: vote NDP (do not vote BC United)

If you're in New Brunswick: vote liberal (do not vote PC)

If you're in Saskatchewan: vote NDP (do not vote Saskatchewan)

If you are in any province or territory: register to vote now, before you forget whether it is an 'election year' or not. With the CAQ and Ontario PCs in power plus Alberta doing fuck all, the federal government absolutely will move in the same direction as the US. Many provinces have already started fucking over healthcare and LGBTQ+ (trans especially) rights. Please protect everyone's rights and please help save our failing healthcare.

(Non-Canadians, please do reblog. This will absolutely get lost otherwise)

[thearbourist]

The British Columbia NDP Government Fails to Protect Women and Girls.

  The BC NDP hate women and their rights, boundaries, and safety.  They won’t actually say that, but any legislation that is proposed that safeguards females in their province is immediately struck down.  This was the case regarding the Fairness for Women & Girls Sports Act.  The NDP and the media’s framing was unchallenged – no transgender athletes were being banned, just people and children had…

[thegreatgrumbolia]

I think the world might have ended, the apocalypse mayhaps waltzed right on by here; no one really seemed to have noticed.

Some have.

Most people have just been going to work.

There's been a lot of smoke up north, my home province, beset with election fights the war on fire. Only a week to go before the big vote, and on the right sits the last spasms of a dead populist party (a failed Communist plot), and on the left the Alberta NDP.

Thankfully thinks I (Call me Ishmael), Alberta's not as bad as it could be (such being would be to be BC). All we got is a war on fire is all, and the fire's only winning a little bit, havings be we who shot ourselves in the foot most thoroughly; resource management and misclasification of nature, burning born of boring (alls to say Land Back)... its less to say you'd not be ignoble for ignoring it.

I was on my family's front deck, sitting out there in the smoke, doing that now most Albertan of activities (smoking weed). Winters are good, thinks I, staring off into that furthest off most middle of distance, winter's the time to party.

I miss winter.

[raincitygirl76]

I’m not American but signal boosting anyway. And that’s the way it goes in other countries too. Here in Canada, I vote for the politicians I dislike the least, and that’s just the way it is.

Neither Biden nor Harris are exactly inspiring figures. But neither of them has tried to launch a coup, nor have they colluded to ignore the failed coup and let the former guy run again. If it’s a choice between people who want to hang Mike Pence and people who don’t want to bring back hanging, I would go with the second type of people. However lacklustre they are, at least they’re not actively trying to destroy democracy. If I were American, I’d dislike the Democrats the least.

Although despite sharing the USA’s first past the post system, Canada doesn’t have a 2 party system at the federal level, for…reasons. Mostly involving Quebecois separatism, and the federal Liberal Party’s interesting ability to tack right to grab votes from the Conservatives, and tack left to grab votes from the New Democratic Party (social democrats). The federal Liberals have survived in a first past the post system for a very long time by having no unchangeable political beliefs whatsoever.

At the provincial level, certainly in my province, the first past the post system produces a 2 party system. The BC Liberals are right wing (their platform is very different from the federal Liberal platform circa 2023) and the NDP are centre-left. Those are our choices.

right now it’s almost halfway through 2023, and 2024 is an election year in the US. I have started to see a growing proliferation of posts suggesting that there is no difference between the republican and democratic parties–the exact same kind of posts I saw an awful lot of before the last major election here. I am unfollowing folks who post or reblog these sort of posts, as I consider these posts to be fascist propaganda framed as leftist discourse, designed to suppress anti-fascist votes and voters. 

[abpoli]

I work in oil and gas. I saw first hand what sort of shit the PCs pulled. I saw Jason Kenney's federal handiwork as Immigration Minister at work with unqualified TFWs being brought onto sites and blowing up propane cylinders because they all had faked their qualifications and didn't understand anything. I saw hundreds of people lose their jobs because of poor planning from previous governments. I got a front row seat to incredible shitshow that was carbon capture, where the client's engineers were actively talking about what a white elephant carbon capture was, and how it was a giant make work project at the province's expense. I helped build extraction facilities that were slated from the start to funnel our money to the US, extraordinarily blatantly to a Calumet refinery in Montana that was designed solely to profit at the expense of Canadians. I saw the only value-added project at NWR come around because Redford was trying to use it as a Hail Mary to distract people, which, by the way, was notorious as being never really supposed to happen outside of the surveying and being a way for Stelmach's ranching buddies to sell the province their land at a premium over a premium.

And on the commercial side of things, well, I'm well aware of the scramble that's come around because of our failing infrastructure. Amazing what happens when you don't build things where they're needed. Things like new hospitals to serve growing areas, which, I'm sorry to inform you, are not really rural areas. But do end up serving rural areas, when they end up driving to Edmonton or Calgary when they need the sort of services that need to have things like dedicated lab networks, which can only really exist where there is everyone that has to staff all of those primary and supporting services.

There was a huge thing about the previous PC governments, that that was crony capitalism. I'd never vote for anyone out to destroy the people that built this province. Or their kids, whether they're little gay kids that need a GSA for support or ones trying to fund post-secondary that don't deserve to be paid less for their hard work. Or the health care system, which, interestingly enough, is mostly inefficient because of our incredibly overbuilt rural health care network. It's awesome, because everyone deserves the right to be healthy and not have to be med-evaced everywhere. But I know that if I was looking for something to slash to bring down costs, that would be a pretty tempting cherry. Assuming that it's not outright privatized.

The fact of the matter is is that Alberta succeeded in spite of our governments. And we finally have a premier who's not looking to line their own pockets or reward their friends with sweetheart contracts. And you want to go back to that, because you've got rose coloured glasses on. Well, I sincerely hope that you can afford the consequences, because it's gonna fall on every single person who's not a "job creating" business owner. Things like toll roads (which, interestingly enough, will cost the rural Albertan more than me), public-private partnerships that never work out right but end up enriching shareholders out of the taxpayer's pocket, and catering to the charter schools of faith-supremacist groups at the expense of our public school systems.

But yeah, let's act like the Carbon Tax is the big problem. And that if we axe the provincial one, the federal one won't instantly come into play and take all that money out of the province. Because that's the biggest thing about it, that if we don't have a provincial one in place, the federal one comes in, and it's Ottawa that decides where the funds from that one goes. And it sure won't be Alberta, because that's not efficient at buying votes. Dumping it into BC, or the Maritimes, or Quebec... that's bang for your buck at a federal level. Sure, Trudeau might not be leader next election, but he is now. And that's where he'll dump it. Andrew Scheer, on the other hand, talks a big game about dumping it, but he'll almost certainly be seduced by the idea of a giant slush fund that he can try and shore up support in Ontario with. Why kill the golden goose when you can make omelets, after all? And why spend in Alberta, when Alberta has shown that they'll vote for a blue rock even if a Conservative government changes the equalization formula to funnel even more money to Quebec from Alberta (ask Kenney about that one, after all, he was part of the government that drafted that revision and he voted for it personally).

If you're looking for someone to blame for the devastation, then it's probably best that we all take the late Jim Prentice's advice, and look in the mirror. Because he was right, and it was all our faults for electing Don Getty. And letting Ralph Klein blow up a hospital so he could pay for a cardboard sign. And for letting Ed Stelmach have an entire mandate dictated by backroom party hacks. And for letting Alison Redford live her petro-shiekh fantasies on our dime. At least we showed Prentice what happens when you come down from on high without any real answers. But hey, Jason Kenney totally won't be like the rest. It's not like he started out on the payroll of US lobby groups taking pet issue stances for pay. It's not like he sold out Canadians by rubber stamping TFWs and letting big companies do whatever they want, federally. And it's not like he hasn't come out and said that his platform is going to hurt Albertans (to be fair, that was one of his candidates, and he just didn't refute it).

But yeah, the NDP are the problem for trying to deal with 40 years of mismanagement. So let's get rid of someone competent who's stood up for Albertans because they started in the worst case scenario and has been steadily working to bring things back to the best of what this province can be. After all, Rachel Notley won her leadership race fair and square, so obviously she can't be devious enough to drive this province back into being a dumpster fire, since she didn't have a federal MP's job to get paid not to do while rigging a leadership campaign against rivals.

Also, because I forgot:

THE PREMIER OF ALBERTA DOES NOT SET OIL PRICES.

Which, you know, is one huge reason that we've had problems with revenues besides slashing the tax base. And I do mean YUUUUUUUUUUGE, with a Y, because it comes right out of the supply side handbook.

Stolen from Sterling Matan on facebook.

[auressea]

by THE WAY. if you enrolled for membership and paid dues to the BCNDP so that you could vote in the leadership race (cancelled)

you can and you SHOULD email the membership team and demand a refund and withdraw your membership.. I got my $$ back and they've lost money in the party coffers that was generated by Anjali Appadurai

If you weren’t disillusioned with the NDP’s politics, what happened in BC with anjali appadurai should be more than enough proof that the establishment within the NDP is only interested in upholding the status quo. they had a chance to elect a climate activist and they did everything in their power to keep her out of the leadership race.

the NDP has an opportunity to be the better option and instead, time and time again, they choose to ignore it and align themselves more and more with centrism, ending up being only marginally better than the liberal party. this is what I mean when I say that most of the change we need can’t be made within the existing system. our major political parties will resist leftist ideas and leaders even if it means alienating a significant amount of their supporters.

canadians can look down their noses at the two party system in the usa all they want, but what the NDP did to anjali appadurai is exactly what the democrats in the states did to bernie sanders. at the slightest hint of leftist ideology, they ran scared and pushed a status quo candidate with no interest in making meaningful change.

[wolf-skins]

sanbantaikarin replied to your post: i don’t get canadians who give a shit about...

… is. Is that a thing????

very much so. canadians tend to know a lot more about what’s going on in america politically than they do here. my own grandmother said she thinks canada’s politics isn’t really that big of a deal compared to america, and a huge sentiment in canada is this idea that “at least we’re not as bad as america!” which completely dismisses the fact that a) that’s not a high bar to rate oneself against, lbr and b) this is our country!!!! this is what will directly affects us on a day to day basis????? HELLO

some people new to learning about our politics needed to be given comparisons to american candidates (for example, the NDP party to alexandria ocasio-cortez) so they could learn, bc they know more about individuals in american politics than the basics of our own parties. and it’s depressing for this bit, since it’s clearly a failing of our own education system, but the people who don’t mind this are people who i just don’t fucking understand

[toshio-the-starman]

I feel bad for Alberta

So many people want the oil boom days to come back, and they voted for that in the UCP. I feel bad for them because it’s not going to happen. So many Albertans seem hellbent on returning to the past instead of marching forward into the future. Having a UCP government isn’t the magical solution I’m sure some think it will be. Here’s why it’s going to end in tragedy for Alberta:

- The NDP government of BC is still there, and any government in BC isn’t going to want all of the risk and none of the reward for Alberta’s pipelines.

- America is still amidst the shale oil boom, which is a big part of why oil prices are so low and American demand for Canadian oil has dropped.

- governments don’t set oil prices; the Saudis and OPEC do.

- the world (including oil-producing nations) are making meaningful pushes away from the sector as they see the writing on the wall and are moving toward a greener economy and diversifying their economy. The GCC countries are doing this, Norway is doing this, Indonesia is doing this, Nigeria is doing this. The only country that didn’t is Venezuela, and look how that’s turned out for them. Alberta basically just voted for Dutch Disease and the Venezuela syndrome.

- Alberta oil is not ideal oil. The initial booms happened because global industrialization led to increased demand that ‘dirty’ tar sands oil became desirable. Tar sands are difficult and expensive to extract and refine, so people/countries only bought it if they really needed to. Now, with an increasingly global effort to greenify everything and lessen reliance on oil, demand is dropping. In other words, the markets Alberta’s oil sector so desperately want to reach are drying up and turning away from dirty oil if they can avoid it.

So yeah, I feel bad for a lot of Albertans because they voted for a false hope and it’ll crush them when it doesn’t happen, and in their anger and frustration they might turn to something worse. I can honestly see Alberta trying to leave the country in the future when their plans inevitably fail, and they’ll blame it on everyone but themselves, but I sincerely hope it doesn’t happen and Alberta manages to redeem itself in four years.

[auressea]

I hope they're being buried alive in a social media storm on the twits.

The B.C. NDP executive has voted to disqualify Anjali Appadurai from its leadership race, effectively crowning David Eby as the new premier of British Columbia.

Appadurai’s disqualification leaves Eby, the former attorney general and housing minister, as the only eligible candidate to succeed Premier John Horgan, who is due to step down on Dec. 3.

[…]

Before Wednesday’s decision was made, Appadurai said she expected to be tossed out of the race — calling it a sign the party is trying to “control a situation” where she signed up far more supporters than Eby, who has the backing of most NDP cabinet members.

“It was the politics of the campaign — not the process, personnel or tactics — that attracted the number of members that it did,” she wrote in a series of tweets.

“I believe that my campaign has been treated unjustly from the start. I also want to be clear that we have followed the rules, acted with integrity, and tried to make this a contest of ideas.

"It’s in all of our interests — to allow the members to decide the next leader.”

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[kayla1993-world]

Justin Trudeau said the Liberals and New Democrats have agreed to support the minority government through 2025. According to Trudeau, the agreement is a "confidence-and-supply" deal that takes effect today.

Generally, this kind of arrangement involves an opposition party agreeing to support the government on confidence motions and budget or appropriation votes for a designated period, similar to the one the BC NDP struck with the Green Party in 2017.

Rather than focusing on things that the parties disagree on, Trudeau says it is about identifying areas where they can work together, including dental care, climate change, housing and paid sick leave.

PM Trudeau says Canadians gave their MPs a mandate to work together in the 2021 election, where the Liberals failed to win a majority.

The Liberal Party currently holds 159 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons, while the NDP has 25.

[filefolderx]

This op-ed went out to a couple of Alberta papers. In the interests of timeliness, I'm sharing a revised version here.

---

Pipeline Lessons

We all need to step back from the finger-pointing and political posturing in the wake of the Federal Court’s decision to quash approval of the Trans-Mountain Pipeline and reflect on the lessons government, and we who elect them, should now have learned.

The former Harper government wanted pipelines so badly that it eliminated or weakened environmental protections Canadians had previously relied on. The federal Conservatives used budget omnibus bills to strip down the Fisheries Act, Canadian Environmental Protection Act and other laws meant to ensure due environmental diligence for resource projects.

The predictable result was that public interest groups became more determined to stop pipeline projects because they lost faith that they’d be fairly evaluated in the face of such obvious bias. Lesson number one: if citizens don’t trust regulatory processes, expect more aggressive protest action.

The public distrust was exacerbated by the National Energy Board, which has long been stacked with pro-industry staffers. It chose to ignore potential impacts on oceans and endangered species and bulldozed through what should have been a full and respectful consultation process with First Nations. Lesson number two: if regulatory boards aren’t objective, diligent and clearly focused on protecting the public interest, expect the courts to rule against the resulting decisions.

We got here in large part because the Harper Conservatives opted to de-regulate and to stack the approval process in the interest of multinationals, instead of putting the public interest — in environmental protection, fair process and respectful engagement — first. Fortunately Canada has a system of law that protects the public interest when governments fail to do so.

The fault doesn’t all lie with the Conservatives though. The Liberals, have lessons to learn from this fiasco too. Trudeau tried to ingratiate himself with Albertans by merely tweaking the previous government’s flawed process in the race to approve the project. Ironically, he insisted that the decision was based on science and fair process. It was not. The NEB’s shortcuts had ensured that. See lessons one and two.

Then he doubled down and offered to put Canada another $4.5 billion dollars in debt by buying the pipeline! Shareholders are now laughing all the way to the bank. Lesson number three: governments should stick to governing, not gamble our money in the business marketplace.

The only government looking even remotely credible now is the province of BC whose opposition has been partly vindicated - but meantime they are building the Site C dam they approved by an almost identically flawed process.

Meantime, Alberta’s NDP are left wearing unearned blame for federal errors. Fortunately their pipeline cheerleading was accompanied by a Climate Action Strategy that at least offers some hope that Alberta won't be left flailing with nowhere to go. Lesson number four: it’s past time to stop putting all Alberta’s economic eggs into the bitumen basket.

The question now is this: will governments learn their lessons and take the necessary steps to ensure that regulatory boards are no longer captive to industry, that citizens can trust environmental laws and the agencies meant to enforce them, that Aboriginal rights are honoured, and that our economic plan will be based on something more than nostalgia for the 1970s?

We’re reaping the consequences of political cynicism and ineptitude at the federal level. We'd be wise to take a good hard look at the political philosophies of those who want our votes, either federally or provincially, and ask who is most likely to repeat Harper’s and Trudeau’s fatal errors — and who is most likely to ensure Canada profits from these lessons rather than having to learn them all over again.

---

It is so frustrating to be in Alberta, and see how much blame is being heaped squarely on the Alberta NDP, like they aren't trying to work within a system they didn't make. This will cost them any slim chance they had to win the next election, and I'm terrified for the future of LGBTQ youth, reproductive health services, harm reduction strategies, because the conservative population here now has something more palatable to grasp on to than "let the junkies die" or "make it so difficult to get an abortion that they just can't" or "make teachers out queer kids to the parents they are afraid of". I feel so helpless.

[fycanadianpolitics]

He's building a pipeline to keep Notley re-elected to make sure we can go ahead with a federal carbon tax. If they both don't get elected again, the carbon tax won't happen. Its slow ass change but it's what Canada can handle rn. Anything more than this-- a full out traditional ndp stance, if one will -- is a recipe for disaster at the polls whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, idealist millrnials don't make up the entirety of the electorate. Politics isn't as smooth as we'd like it.

lol they’ve both been in power the last two years they could have implemented a federal carbon tax at any point if they wanted to. they’re playing you like a chump.

the liberals are gonna get slaughtered at the polls in bc next election for this. so would the bcndp if they supported the pipeline, supporting the pipeline is political suicide for any left-wing party. it might not hurt the liberals in most of the rest of the country, but supporting the pipeline won’t help them either. they’re not doing this because of any political calculation about what will win elections, they’re doing this because they’re the party of business, and exist to push pro-business policies.

in any case it’s all irrelevant. the pipeline’s never actually gonna carry oil. the bc government’s legal action will fail, indigenous cases may or may not, but imagine standing rock in a major population centre. this thing’s never getting built. trudeau just threw $5-$20 billion dollars down the toilet, depending how much of it they end up building, and you’re camping for him because you think he’s anything other than a stooge of the upper class.

[hurricanehenry]

BC, with the highest carbon tax in the country, confused virtue-signaling with actually doing something. $-Billions collected in carbon taxes and nothing to show for it. Succinctly put J Holgate! SUCCINCTLY PUT J HOLGATE! HOLD THE BLACKFACE - OR IS IT WEE WEE ALL THE WAY HOME -- no no ITS SNC LAVALIN - can I ELBOW YOUR BOOB Reminds me of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans thought they got thru the Hurricane ok, then the canals failed and submerged the city. The canals had been in bad shape for a long time and would have failed at some point. Carbon tax into general revenue instead of carbon reduction, remediation or adaptation. I guess the government of the day (NDP/Green alliance or NDP chose electability over what science told them what was possibly a better choice So you drain naturally occurring lakes and build inadequate dikes and when they inevitably fail and the natural equilibrium is restored you blame climate change. Got it. . levees and dams never vote. drug users on east hastings and the social workers who follow them around, sometimes vote BC has substituted preparedness with virtue signaling. And to think is only cost us $15-Billion in carbon taxes What do we pay the carbon tax for if not to prepare? Every day politicians scream climate change. And instead of fixing anything they jet off to the umpteenth climate extravaganza to hand out our money to corrupt officials. https://www.instagram.com/p/CWj9DeZj0bq/?utm_medium=tumblr

[six-of-ravens]

Okay I've been thinking about this all morning and I think we really have a chance. You see, when our old premier resigned, we didn't do an election to vote for a new premier. Only the conservative party did an election for a new leader, and only members could vote.

Danielle Smith was not the people's choice for premier. And iirc from the news article I read a few weeks ago, she got roughly 82,000 votes, which is like, 1% of our population. A LOT of people don't like her, or at least don't like her various uneducated and cruel statements about health care, cancer in particular, the invasion of Ukraine, etc. So...I think we really have a chance to get the NDP in power again and make some good changes. Or at least fix the stuff the conservatives undid.

EDIT: this is also the same thing that happened the last time the NDP came into power: the conservative leader was forced out bc she used taxpayer money to build herself a luxury condo and fly her bratty* teen daughter and her bratty little friends around in private jets, and the replacement was an absolute douchebag who attempted to belittle and insult The Youth and Their Twitters but failed so badly he became a meme and everyone, out of spite, voted as far left as they could without voting communist. So...we could do it!

*if mommy is using taxpayer money to make you the popular girl at school you and all your hangers-on deserve to be at the very least labelled bratty. I stand by this.

I am enjoying the British politics scandal bc it gives me hope that we could also thoroughly oust our shitty far right leader