Tag: Christy Clark

The leader is staking his political future on a byelection in Burnaby South, an extremely diverse riding where nearly 55 per cent of residents were born outside Canada. Singh said he learned to say, “Hello, how are you?” in about 40 languages because when he was young, someone unexpected greeted him in Punjabi and he appreciated it as a sign of respect. She contrasted herself, the “only” Chinese candidate, with Singh, who she described as “of Indian descent.” Wang held a tearful news conference a day after dropping out, in which she said a volunteer wrote the post and it’s common in Chinese culture to mention someone’s ethnicity. “There are over 100 languages spoken in Burnaby South. Wang’s post was not at all in that spirit, as she didn’t mention the needs of the community or the issues within it, said Julian. Wang said the party did not have a strategy to capture Chinese-Canadian voters. There were less than five per cent who said their main motivator for choosing a candidate is ethnicity,” he said. Puri said he believed it would be easier for a white politician to win in the riding, even though it is nearly 40 per cent ethnically Chinese. Puri noted the last municipal election in Vancouver ended with a nearly all-white council despite the diversity of its residents. But it’s easier for a person of colour to fail because the scrutiny is that much harder on them.”

British Columbia’s opposition to Kinder Morgan sparks uproar Province advised last year that obstruction was "unlawful" British Columbia Premier John Horgan, who has vowed to use every possible means to thwart a Kinder Morgan Inc. pipeline expansion, was told by legal advisers last year before taking power that blocking the project would be against the law. Stopping Project "Unlawful" Horgan’s Environment Minister George Heyman said in a debate in the provincial legislature this week that during the transition of power before the new government took office in July, "it became clear, through listening to legal advice, that we did not have the authority to stop a project that had been approved by the federal government within its jurisdiction." Wild West Politics Canada’s Pacific Coast province has long had a reputation as a political Wild West where anything goes. Until December, political parties could accept virtually unlimited donations from unions, businesses and foreign entities -- including Kinder Morgan, which contributed at least C$33,000 to Clark’s Liberal Party, according to one tally of donor records. politics, has yet to publicly acknowledge that one of his central campaign pledges is legally untenable. His government is propped up by the Green Party, and one of the alliance’s central tenets is to stop the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Horgan told the legislature this week that he stands by his campaign pledges: "We’re living up to those commitments by using the courts to make our argument that we believe that the risks are too great to proceed with this project." "Since the change in government in June 2017, that government has been clear and public in its intention to use ’every tool in the toolbox’ to stop the project," the company said in a statement. After Horgan’s government proposed the bitumen restrictions in January, Alberta hit back with a short-lived ban on B.C. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has threatened to cut off oil exports to B.C.

Heritage House Publishing, 352 pages In this age of short attention spans, it is easy to forget what a momentous day it was that unfolded on June 29, 2017 to give British Columbia its first NDP premier in 16 years. It was drama of the highest order. Yet it might soon have faded from memory had it not been for two legislative reporters with a ringside seat for every twist and turn. Rob Shaw of the Vancouver Sun and Richard Zussman, then of CBC, felt these historic happenings deserved a closer look. (Mr. Zussman is now with Global News, after being fired by the CBC for allegedly breaching its guidelines with his work on this book.) The result, produced in an astonishingly short time, is their book, A Matter of Confidence, and it’s a winner – a well-written, compelling and fast-paced narrative that does ample justice to the unprecedented circumstances that yielded such a seismic shift in B.C.’s political landscape. Thanks to a wealth of interviews with key participants, whose memories, and scars, were still fresh, the authors puncture the secrecy of the backrooms, allowing us to listen in on closed-door discussions by players from all three parties that went on before, during and after an election campaign, which ended with the upstart Greens holding the balance of power. I enjoyed discovering, too, that then-Liberal health minister Terry Lake lobbied heavily for a payroll tax to help cover his government’s promised elimination of health-care premiums. His view was nixed by Clark. premier.)