Political Sign Wars

The Provincial Election here in British Columbia is in full swing. Lawn signs are popping up. including a big one at the end of our driveway. Ours says "Claire Travina, NDP" (New Democratic Party). NDP signs are seriously outnumbered by the signs of the only real opposition, the Liberals. In this part of Canada the Liberals represent the far right. We also have a Conservative candidate but he will come in a distant third or forth (we also have a Green). Here in BC, all the "Conservatives" vote "Liberal". A bit of an identity crisis.

I noticed the Liberal signs as we were coming into town a few days ago. Their sign budget appears to be substantial but they obviously do not have enough people volunteering to sport one of their signs because most of them are in front of empty lots.

The Liberals will lose here, Claire will hang onto the riding. The polls say they will lose the Province as well as the people have not forgiven them for an outright lie they told during the last election. They swore they would not combine our Provincial Sales Tax with the Federal Sales Tax but as soon as they were elected this is exactly what they did. Public backlash and outrage caused the Premier to resign and there was a referendum to get rid of the new tax which passed overwhelmingly. The problem was, it took the government under it's new leader Christie Clark two years to change the tax system back to where it was before they messed with it. She in fact waited until the month before the election to do it, grabbing all the tax revenue she could and hoping the electorate would be thankful enough to give her another four years.

Christie Clark, the current Liberal Premier is a cutesy, chatty, former radio talk show host who reminds me a lot of Sarah Palin. Several years ago under a former Liberal Government our Provincially owned railway, BC Rail was sold under very suspicious circumstances. Government offices were raided, truckloads of computers and documents seized and ministerial assistants were arrested. Allegations of accepting bribes were made and the former husband of the present Premier was working for the eventual buyer. Nothing much came of it as the Courts were not anxious to embarrass the Liberals but everybody in BC could smell a big skunk when it came to the sale of the railway for millions less than it was estimated to be worth.

The leader of the New Democratic Party is Adrian Dix. An old friend of ours and a very intelligent, capable young man. He is the horse we are supporting. We were both way more active in the NDP in past years. Norma managed dozens of NDP campaigns all over Canada over the years and I worked full time on many elections, taking care of the finances. We were both on the policy making committees of the party, donating thousands of hour over the years.

Now we are backing out of the campaigns, leaving it for the younger folks. It is a gruelling job, putting in 14 - 16 hour days before locking up the campaign headquarters at midnight or later. It is a seven day a week job where you are constantly trying to convince volunteers that the win is worth the effort you are asking of them. Now what we do is support them, vote for them and write a cheque to the campaign. We are getting old!