BC Election 2013

[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by 4444

Why do we need a government funded stadium? I just don't think it should be in their mandate. Yes they'll never recover the roof cost, but then again bc ferries will never get back the fast ferries money - both sunk costs...

Doesn't bc place lose money every year? Ideally it shouldn't, but that roof has become expensive to upkeep... We should cut our losses - if developers want to develop on it, so be it, the rest of downtown is becoming all residential, it wouldn't be out of place

On day politicians will realize we need businesses downtown, not hipsters living in apartments, but I'm no politician...

Very few stadiums are completely funded by private money; only the most elite sports teams in the world are able to fund stadiums. I'm not saying that sports teams should be subsidized by the taxpayer, but the reality is that they are and it's politically expedient to do so - after all, commoners want their share of bread and circuses.

I think everyone recognizes that we need businesses downtown; in fact there are a number of new office buildings that will be completed over the next 5 years. However, businesses don't come here unless you create the climate. What do you suggest? Lower taxes? (they are already quite low) Subsidies and grants? (politically problematic) Intervention in the housing market so that talent will move here? (Again, politically problematic)

To be fair, I don't know what the answers are either. I think at the end of the day, the government should focus its energies on making sure that smart people don't leave and that we can attract people who actually want to live here and contribute to the economy. How does this translate into tangible policies? That's the million dollar question.

[4444]

Originally Posted by StylinRed

I believe the stadium represents more than just a 'regular old stadium', I believe it represents BC it's apart of our image like Big Ben is for the UK or the Pyramids for Egypt, granted it's not as famous as those or as rich in history but just the same I believe it is as important to BC as the aforementioned to their respective cities/nations. I do not believe that something representing the province and its people should be owned and operated by the Aquilinis et al.
However I can understand how that view isn't or wouldn't be shared.

i just can't see it - big ben has hundreds of years of history to it, pyramids are one of the wonders of the world. BC place is a crap concrete monstrosity (it's not even a nice stadium, let alone world class).

i think to suggest that represents BC is disrespectful to all the other things BC has to offer. Innately, BC is all about it's natural beauty, the local mountains, our coastlines, etc. it's not known for anything man made, Canada is too young for anything like that.

I think suggesting BC place is something that BC residents should be proud of or represented by is mind boggling.

[4444]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

Very few stadiums are completely funded by private money; only the most elite sports teams in the world are able to fund stadiums. I'm not saying that sports teams should be subsidized by the taxpayer, but the reality is that they are and it's politically expedient to do so - after all, commoners want their share of bread and circuses.

I think everyone recognizes that we need businesses downtown; in fact there are a number of new office buildings that will be completed over the next 5 years. However, businesses don't come here unless you create the climate. What do you suggest? Lower taxes? (they are already quite low) Subsidies and grants? (politically problematic) Intervention in the housing market so that talent will move here? (Again, politically problematic)

To be fair, I don't know what the answers are either. I think at the end of the day, the government should focus its energies on making sure that smart people don't leave and that we can attract people who actually want to live here and contribute to the economy. How does this translate into tangible policies? That's the million dollar question.

you're completely right on your first point, but the PARTIAL (very important word, not 100% like here) government funding is returned through taxes generated by stadium (i.e. from the people coming to watch lions, whitecaps, etc).

i'm not going to talk about what I think we should do to improve the business culture downtown, as it is extremely harsh, and would not be popular with the masses... but would need to be done to right the wrongs of decades of poor planning and foresight by local government

[Tapioca]

Originally Posted by 4444

i'm not going to talk about what I think we should do to improve the business culture downtown, as it is extremely harsh, and would not be popular with the masses... but would need to be done to right the wrongs of decades of poor planning and foresight by local government

Why not? The majority of people on RS don't even vote anyway, so what does it matter what the peanut gallery thinks?

[4444]

Originally Posted by Tapioca

Why not? The majority of people on RS don't even vote anyway, so what does it matter what the peanut gallery thinks?

because as i get older, i realize that sometimes i should just keep my opinion to myself.

there are many left wing leaners on this site - they are welcome to their right to lean that way. My views would be a totally right wing view, with little thought towards some of the less fortunate members of vancouver's streets. as such, i don't want to antagonize people, when there's no real need for me to do so - it would start an ugly argument when really i just don't want to argue about my fantasy thoughts of making this city WAY better than it already is (in my eyes), but that will never, ever happen.

[StylinRed]

Originally Posted by 4444

i just can't see it - big ben has hundreds of years of history to it, pyramids are one of the wonders of the world. BC place is a crap concrete monstrosity (it's not even a nice stadium, let alone world class).

i think to suggest that represents BC is disrespectful to all the other things BC has to offer. Innately, BC is all about it's natural beauty, the local mountains, our coastlines, etc. it's not known for anything man made, Canada is too young for anything like that.

I think suggesting BC place is something that BC residents should be proud of or represented by is mind boggling.

everything starts somewhere certainly BC Place doesn't have the esteem as the other structures and monuments do but it has represented BC not only in name but in community and visage for the past Three Decades and it will only continue to do so, it's up to us to develop that reverence
when people think of BC or Vancouver or when they search for it the thing that hits you first is BC Place; it's one of our many monuments certainly a modern one but as you mentioned we're a young nation, modern monuments is all we can really expect

but as I said I can see how that view wouldn't be shared

[BurnoutBinLaden]

I always thought RSers in general leaned centre-right, especially when it comes to fiscal matters (socially they're very much left wing, as is the norm in the Pacific Northwest, but that's besides the issue). Before creating an account, I lurked the forums for about a year and a half. I saw bitching about the HST repeal (it's bad for business, fuck BVZ, etc) and wariness of the BC NDP's economic policies. Even in this thread, balanced budgets have been enthusiastically discussed.

Cars are an expensive hobby, so it would make sense to me that tech savvy auto enthusiasts would be better off than most-or just plain wealthy. And those who are well off are often fiscally conservative, especially when they grow older and have cut their teeth in the real world for a while.

[dinosaur]

Originally Posted by BurnoutBinLaden

Cars are an expensive hobby, so it would make sense to me that tech savvy auto enthusiasts would be better off than most-or just plain wealthy. And those who are well off are often fiscally conservative, especially when they grow older and have cut their teeth in the real world for a while.

I think this is age relevant. I am not sure you would find (in the RS community) a lot of people who own expensive, invested-in, overly modded cars....that also have a mortgage, kids, family, etc....

Although there are always exceptions, most who I have met (RS members) that are more in my age bracket, are not those who invest heavily in their vehicles.

Priorities shift when you age

[Gridlock]

If a concrete oval with a dodgey roof that kind of doesn't work with fake grass inside is your idea of a BC icon, then all the power to you.

To me, no one gave a single shit about that thing until they started talking about renaming it. Can call it "christy clarks crunchy cunt football place" for all I care...but that's just me
Posted via RS Mobile

[gars]

Originally Posted by dinosaur

I think this is age relevant. I am not sure you would find (in the RS community) a lot of people who own expensive, invested-in, overly modded cars....that also have a mortgage, kids, family, etc....

Although there are always exceptions, most who I have met (RS members) that are more in my age bracket, are not those who invest heavily in their vehicles.

Priorities shift when you age

The saying goes "a young conservative has no heart, a old liberal has no brain."

With many exceptions of course - but it's sorta true. I definitely went into University as a left leaning kid, 12 years later, I shifted right.

[7seven]

I lean extremely far to the right, personally, I am a strong believer reducing and/or cutting public spending, social welfare, entitlements, etc.. Reducing the cost of business and taxation on corporations and small businesses, not raising taxes on job creators/high income earners. So I guess I'll be voting for the BC Liberals even though I'm not a fan of Christy Clark. I would vote for the BC Conservatives, but don't think they would have a snowballs chance in hell at making sure the NDP don't win, it will come down to the BC Liberals and NDP again, so I'll have to throw my vote behind the BC Liberals.

[CRS]

Originally Posted by 7seven

I lean extremely far to the right, personally, I am a strong believer reducing and/or cutting public spending, social welfare, entitlements, etc.. Reducing the cost of business and taxation on corporations and small businesses, not raising taxes on job creators/high income earners. So I guess I'll be voting for the BC Liberals even though I'm not a fan of Christy Clark. I would vote for the BC Conservatives, but don't think they would have a snowballs chance in hell at making sure the NDP don't win, it will come down to the BC Liberals and NDP again, so I'll have to throw my vote behind the BC Liberals.

I think you're blurring the lines between provincial and federal elections.

The BC libs for provincial elections are the closest thing to the conservatives whereas for federal elections, the libs are a mid point (closer to left than right) between the NDP and the Conservatives.

[7seven]

Originally Posted by CRS

I think you're blurring the lines between provincial and federal elections.

The BC libs for provincial elections are the closest thing to the conservatives whereas for federal elections, the libs are a mid point (closer to left than right) between the NDP and the Conservatives.

I know that, thats why I said I would vote for the BC Conservatives but they have no chance, so my vote will have to go the the BC Liberals as they are the only shot in preventing the BC NDP from winning, the most far left party.

[CRS]

Originally Posted by 7seven

I know that, thats why I said I would vote for the BC Conservatives but they have no chance, so my vote will have to go the the BC Liberals as they are the only shot in preventing the BC NDP from winning, the most far left party.

Ah, I see. My apologies.

If there was an actual conservative party in BC, I'd consider voting for them as well.

[Mr.HappySilp]

Originally Posted by Gridlock

Dude. Forgive me...but what the hell are you talking about?

Lessons from US and Europe. Here provincially. In a post I made about debt. Adding it together, I think its safe to say that I was talking about not racking up huge amounts of debt to pay for shit!

That most certainly is a lesson that we can learn from anyone in the world, or any point in history.

Let's actually talk debt and deficit here and how numbers add up where. I'm going to equate this to household spending.

If your government is running a deficit, its effectively buying groceries on the credit card(in this case, bonds). You eat them, and they are gone. Annually, that deficit gets added to the debt load, but you can still operate in a balanced, or surplus position and add to the debt, through one time purchases, mostly for capital improvements. So, its like taking on a car loan.

So, I'm not always against taking on debt in times of low interest rates because you can buy things that hopefully in turn produce income(roads, ports, bridges), and even occasionally a little nice thing for the people...the big screen tv(BC Place Roof). You finance that off through bond repayment.

But I am ALWAYS against deficit spending, except in times of severe recession. So I understand that both provincially and federally, we can't keep the programs in place, stay in the black budget wise and do it all on diminished tax income. Get it. In good times, in theory those surpluses can go towards debt repayment.****But my problem is, people are now saying that we don't care about any of that. Gimme gimme gimme...and if you tell me a nice story about how we're going to tax all those nasty rich people to pay for it, we're good! That's like getting a card in the mail that the credit card has a low introductory rate. In our case..it does. It's going to go up. We know that.

I personally would like to stop that process now. I don't want to get to the point where we switch to borrowing to pay for what we borrowed(pay day loans) and get fucked. THAT will hold the province back.

So I'm asking that we stop lying to people and telling them its all ok. It's not. Putting groceries on the credit card is a sign your life is too expensive. Putting social programs on the provincial debt is a sign that you are equally in trouble.

So I ask everyone, using the household terms above, if a friend said any of the above, what would you say? Because I know what I would say, "Yay, its great that you lost your job, and putting groceries on the credit card and your back up plan is to resort to payday loans. Maybe you should be out looking for a new job though. "

****Canada under the fed liberals did a magnificent job of this. Once again, you can sit and always say that they could put more into social programs or whatever, but they ran a surplus budget, and applied a portion back to the federal debt, which was one of the few countries that actually had a decreasing debt. This means when you hit a big ass recession, you can add a bit back to the debt and not be fucking yourself, because you had paid down that debt for the 10 good years previous.

I like to know what happens when BC can't afford to pay the min payment due for thier loans? And what happens if BC goes bankrupt?

[dinosaur]

I am not a fan of strategic voting. I always say, vote for the party you actually believe in. By voting strategically, it encourages a two-parties system.

Yes, this election has been won my the NDP so there is little point is really getting into the nitty-gritty shit but I do think it is worth it, for future elections, for people to vote for who they believe in.

No, the BC Conservatives have no chance in winning this election...but neither do the Liberals. Having higher numbers voting for the BCC will encourage those who strategically voted this time to actually vote for who they want in the next.

Hell, look at the Federal NDP over the last 10 years...there has been a huge upswing with them and i think it is because people think it is OK to vote for them now that others are.

[BurnoutBinLaden]

Originally Posted by dinosaur

I am not a fan of strategic voting. I always say, vote for the party you actually believe in. By voting strategically, it encourages a two-parties system.

Yes, this election has been won my the NDP so there is little point is really getting into the nitty-gritty shit but I do think it is worth it, for future elections, for people to vote for who they believe in.

No, the BC Conservatives have no chance in winning this election...but neither do the Liberals. Having higher numbers voting for the BCC will encourage those who strategically voted this time to actually vote for who they want in the next.

Hell, look at the Federal NDP over the last 10 years...there has been a huge upswing with them and i think it is because people think it is OK to vote for them now that others are.

Strategic voting is an unfortunate side effect of the FPTP system, which as I have said before is a dinosaur (no pun intended)

[godwin]

The fact is BC still has AAA credit rating (that means most ratings and bank places did the calculation that BC can at least pay the minimum due).. BC can go bankrupt.. but when that happens, places like the UK w/ AA+ will go first. I don't think we will need to worry about elections then.

The fact is debt at this point in time is so cheap, it is stupid not to take advantage of it (including paying it off) for the next half a decade or so. With Japan devaluing the yen, it is not going to be expensive any time soon.

Originally Posted by Mr.HappySilp

I like to know what happens when BC can't afford to pay the min payment due for thier loans? And what happens if BC goes bankrupt?

[BurnoutBinLaden]

Dix says NDP will try to sell BC Place to cover PAVCO debt

[Lomac]

Wait... so the NDP was slamming the Liberals for contemplating selling government assets in order to help the deficit, but then turn around and state that they're thinking of dumping BC Place and the Convention Centre?

[Mr.HappySilp]

LOL did Dix said he is not going sell BC assest like the Liberals did? So I guess he cna't even keep it straight as to what he said earlier.

Can't really trust him since he is already breaking his own promise before being elected.

[BurnoutBinLaden]

Originally Posted by Lomac

Wait... so the NDP was slamming the Liberals for contemplating selling government assets in order to help the deficit, but then turn around and state that they're thinking of dumping BC Place and the Convention Centre?

For the record, these are the government assets to be sold off in the 2013 budget:

Properties currently for sale or where sales agreements are in process:
• a vacant lot on Watkiss Way near Victoria;
• a large surplus parcel on Tranquille Road in Kamloops;
• a surplus parcel at Mission Memorial Hospital;
• two large vacant lots in Surrey on 192nd Street;
• a former elementary school in Surrey;
• a large vacant lot in Burnaby;
• a former health-care facility in Vancouver’s Grandview-Woodlands neighbourhood;
• a vacant lot in Lions Bay;
• a former school board office in Surrey; and
• a vacant lot on Keith Road in North Vancouver.

Other properties to be put for sale:
• the Pearson-Dogwood health-care redevelopment;
• North Saanich Middle School;
• a six-hectare vacant lot in the Panorama neighbourhood in Surrey;
• a parking lot near the legislature in Victoria; and
• a seven-hectare site north of Kelowna that was being tentatively held for the new correctional facility.

Source: B.C. Liberal government assailed over its plans to use real-estate asset sales to balance the budget | Politics and Policy | Business in Vancouver

[Gridlock]

B.C. Green Party pitches 'guaranteed livable income' - British Columbia - CBC News

Greens contribute to their spending plans.

The B.C. Green Party is pledging to introduce a "guaranteed livable income" aimed at eliminating poverty if elected in May.

“We can eliminate poverty, but the only way we can do that is through a guaranteed livable income,” party leader Jane Sterk said today in Victoria.

B.C. Green Party Leader Jane Sterk says poverty is a societal issue, not an individual one. (CBC)
“When Green MLAs are elected, we will either introduce a bill or support a bill from the government to explore through an expert commission, an expert panel, how we could implement a guaranteed livable income in British Columbia — a made-in-B.C. guaranteed livable income.

"We know that at the moment there is a lot of cost in sustaining people in poverty. Those costs are borne in the number of ministries that a family has to navigate, in the number of programs that the government offers.”

Sterk said it’s time to rethink how the province approaches social services, and focus on moving people out of the cycle of poverty.

BC VOTES 2013The latest from the campaign
“We need to stop just tweaking our social services and to start really addressing the issue that people are most concerned about, which is the amount of poverty that we have in British Columbia,” she said.

“We know that families and individuals in British Columbia who are caught in the cycle of poverty have really no hope in exiting that cycle and certainly tweaking the system that we have now with small amounts of money is not going to solve the problem.”

Sterk called on the province to reduce the number of ministries and bureaucrats, which she says could leave enough money to fund the guaranteed livable income.

She said the provincial government should focus on funding childcare and housing for low-income families, as well as providing parenting classes and skills training.

“Right now we spend an awful lot of money keeping people in the system, keeping people in the poverty cycle — $1 million a day on the Downtown Eastside is spent in the poverty industry, with no appreciable positive effect on the people of the Downtown Eastside,” she said.

B.C. VOTES 2013How do your views fit into B.C.'s political landscape?
“We spend $40,000 a year keeping a child in government care, and many of those children are removed from families who live in poverty … and that’s often the result of the stress of living in poverty.”

Sterk said the party would use Statistics Canada’s low-income threshold, which varies depending on the size of the family and the community, and ensure no family lives below that line.

“We don’t see things like poverty as a societal thing. We see them as individual. And it’s very easy for us to point to an individual and say, ‘I would never end up there’ or, ‘You got there because of your own decisions’ rather than understanding that poverty is multi-generational … and it is really a societal issue,” she said.

“I think we’re at a cusp where we’re recognizing that things aren’t working and that we do need to change our mind and do things differently.”

You can do a lot of things in a controlled setting, that you can't in a real world, province wide situation.

If you could stop all immigration, from within Canada and outside...then you can say, "we have 50,000 people to feed." If you could have revenues that never fluctuated, then you can say, "we will feed 50,000 people with 50 million a year" Unfortunately, we have neither.

Anyone that wants to add an expense...any expense, will find a way to make it happen. Spending the money isn't the hard part...you just say yes. But when you hit a recession, or an economic collapse, or what have you, then you are now responsible for excess spending-and your budget problems compound.

[BurnoutBinLaden]

The BC Greens...the party that made a brouhaha about smart meters and wi-fi in schools?

[godwin]

Like Communism, a lot of things work in theory, but it is always the details that screw things up. eg Drugs dealers etc.

Giving people in poverty money directly into a trust fund type situation will cut out a lot of bureaucracy, but then a few well paid jobs will be out of work and complain (relatively well paid, eg Social Work, Mental Health Nurses etc).

I think there is always a weird assumption in all these utopian writing make is that they assume people are smart.. but honestly the majority of people are not. IQ test is self selecting and there are plenty of proof well BC's cash crop really messes that up.

For a welfare state, we just need to look at this piece of work in England.

Originally Posted by Gridlock

B.C. Green Party pitches 'guaranteed livable income' - British Columbia - CBC News

Greens contribute to their spending plans.



You can do a lot of things in a controlled setting, that you can't in a real world, province wide situation.

If you could stop all immigration, from within Canada and outside...then you can say, "we have 50,000 people to feed." If you could have revenues that never fluctuated, then you can say, "we will feed 50,000 people with 50 million a year" Unfortunately, we have neither.

Anyone that wants to add an expense...any expense, will find a way to make it happen. Spending the money isn't the hard part...you just say yes. But when you hit a recession, or an economic collapse, or what have you, then you are now responsible for excess spending-and your budget problems compound.