03.09.2017 11:54 AM

Are the BC NDP full of crap?

Yeah, sort of, they are.

They’ve gone bananas about the fact that Elections BC is asking the governing party about fundraising stuff. What they’re not telling anyone is that they’re being asked, too.

And John Horgan’s crew aren’t enthusiastic about anyone probing BC NDP fundraising practices. There’s a history, you see.


Look, no one I know loves to do political fundraising. But, until the media agree to give political parties free ad space, political parties have no choice but to fundraise. And, to put a fine point on it, there’s nothing illegitimate about political fundraising. It happens in every democracy. It happens in every political party.

As the sterling examples of Ross Perot and Pete DuPont always remind us, however, you don’t win elections with money. You win ’em with great leaders, great teams, great ideas. That’s why the BC Liberals are doing well on the fundraising front, I think: Christy Clark’s got the hottest economy in Canada, people like her, and she’s competitive. So BC voters are expressing support in the polls, and with their chequebooks, too.

Politics ain’t free. Modern political campaigns, of every stripe, demand that political parties develop deep grass-roots networks, to communicate with voters, to develop and learn from voter data, to use social media tools to its advantage, and so on. Advertising, too – lots of it. That’s what any party’s fundraising is used for. In some campaigns, 90 per cent of fundraising goes to ads in the media (the selfsame media crying “scandal,” I note without ironic comment).

I’m out here in the Centre of the Universe, and I haven’t been to BC in a long while. But, if I were, I’d say this to Clark’s BC Libs: you shouldn’t take any ethics lessons from the party that skimmed hundreds of thousands of dollars from charities over a 20-year period. You shouldn’t take any civics lessons from the BC NDP, which operated lotteries and bingo games with the proceeds going to them, not to local charities.

I was there when it all went down: the BC NDP was, in my experience, the most corrupt political party I’d ever seen. Ripping off charities to fill their coffers?  Seriously?

That’s a scandal. Was then, still is now.

5 Comments

  1. ms says:

    The bc libs are much much worse, if you go back as far as Gordon campbell there is plenty and further back BC rail scandal and then there was the whole Vanderzalm era. But just off the top of my head, the hydro crap and site c dam, LNG, the lies and corruption around campaigns and donations. Education oh yes there is much the BC libs have done, and I have no idea why you would want to champion them they arent like the fed liberals. They are much more aligned with the harperites.
    anyhow here is one set of scandals but boy, there are hundreds to chose from and the NDP arent as bad as clarke ….but the problem with the BC NDP is leadership.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/sarah-miller2/top-9-scandals-christy-clark-liberals_b_7658002.html
    and another great read is Laila Yuile
    https://lailayuile.com/100-reasons-the-bc-liberals-must-go/

  2. dave constable says:

    BC Government ads have been more frequent of late, and the BC Liberal attack ads are now on tv. They’re still debating the budget in the leg, though, I think. The election is May 9th. In BC we have the NDP, and those against the NDP, so I guess you qualify as being a member of the old social credit/conservative/liberal anti NDP coalition. With a little help from friends you did well last time, although your premier had to run again in a safer seat to get in to the legislature.
    For me ,the $4 million the NDP has for the election will be stressed versus the $12 million the BC Liberals have stashed away, money gathered especially from their cash for access programmes. They might even have some extra for the BC Green Party.

    Premier Harcourt had nothing to do with the Stupich family scam 1960 to 1980 or so in Nanaimo. But, our BC media tarred him and his family with this crime, so he resigned. I was in the NDP most those years, but for sure, we in my area never got anything from the rake off. It is, though, politically astute by anti NDP to smear the entire BC NDP with what was done in Nanaimo that 20 or so years to circa 1980. Stupich was in court, and pleaded guilty sometime in the late 1990’s.
    I hope you and your BC Libs have something more to run on than this. To help you out, maybe you should look at Laila Yuile’s list of reasons to throw out the BC Libs after 16 years of their version of free enterprise.

  3. PJH says:

    I’ll agree that Christy Clark and her team have done a good job managing the economy……but LNG projects and offshore billions flooding the real estate market havent hurt either. She has adhered to your cardinal rule of success in politics…..”undersell and overperform”….until now, the gov’t was hardly mentioned in the press, with no scandals to speak of….a pretty good record for her gov’t, methinks……

    Where the gov’t is failing is in the field of health care. A friend of mine’s mother in law was recently in hospital for a rather lengthy stay. The conditions were deplorable….filthy floors, patients left unattended, no assistance at meal times, and a staff that was doing the best they could, though woefully understaffed and overworked.
    I could not believe it, as I worked in that very same hospital years before, where we were known as being tops in patient care, cleanliness, and with a staff that had the time to look after patients properly. It shocked me to hear things had deteriorated so badly.

    This is not an isolated case…..we recently heard about a senior in Eagle Ridge Hospital in Port Moody just a few days ago….The poor lady was left in a makeshift bed in the lobby for 36 hours, with limited food and water.

    These kinds of things are happening in hospitals all over BC. I know provincial govt’s across Canada are struggling with increasing health care costs…..but rather than getting rid of the Medical Services Plan premiums, perhaps the BC Liberals should funnel the billion dollars that they say will go into the pockets of citizens back into the woefully underfunded hospitals.

    I just thought you might like to know that while the BC Liberals paint a rosy picture, it ain’t all sunshine, lollipops and unicorns out here in in Lotusland…..

    Btw, did you know the CN tower was the exact centre of the universe?…….

  4. Gyor says:

    Taking from Charities, who did the BC NDP think they we’re, Justin Trudeau?

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