awesome! now is the time for the bcndp to renew itself and lay the progressive vision that british columbians have an appetite for. so exciting! 

I wonder what kind of jobs the BCNDP will get for British Columbians. They are against forestry, mining (prosperity mine), tourism (jumbo resort), energy (oilsands pipeline and site C dam). Basically all the industries that built BC. 

Further proof of the necessity for Carole James to have stepped down. Once Gordon Campbell did, the NDP fell below the Liberals in every poll. Clearly, the NDP's one-time advantage was an anti-Campell vote. It was not a pro-James vote.

Now that she has left, the NDP has a chance to get it right. They need a leader as concerned about creating wealth as about spending it. In a resource economy like ours, this means powerful leadership in developing the energy, agricultural, mining, forestry, fishery, tourism and arts sectors.

Above all, this means protecting public ownership of the high ground, BC Hydro most essentially. The Liberals killed BC Rail, and are trying to do the same to BC Hydro.

The NDP's next leader needs to stand -- powerfully -- for the public option. Otherwise, why bother having a party on the left? Talking about school lunches just isn't good enough when the province is being sold down the river.

We expect more of the NDP. 

I think the LIbERals are under attack from within. Their cavalier handeling of the so called "lease of BC Rail, Run of River etc. will haunt them in this next election. There is a good possibility the FIBERALS may not even be the government when the next election is called if the recall is successful.

Wouldn't that be nice! 

This leaves 4 weeks for people to join or renew their memberships with the BCNDP so that they can be eligible to vote for their choice of who our new leader will be.
 

Here are the New Democratic potential leaders to date who will be permitted to win without bombardment:

John Horgan (Juan de Fuca - Vancouver Island) (Yes)
Leonard Krog (Nanaimo - Vancouver Island) (Yes)
Rob Fleming (Swan Lake - Vancouver Island) (Yes)
Carole James (Victoria James Bay) (Yes)
Harry Lali (Fraser Nicola) (Yes)
Corky Evans (Kootenays) (Yes)
Peter Julian (Burnaby New West) (Yes)
Adrian Dix (Vancouver) (No - Vancouver 2 many Premiers - recycled)
Jenny Kwan (East Vancouver) (Yes-exception to the Vancouver Rule-outstanding achievement) (Hot)
Mike Farnworth (Port Coquitlam) (No) (outstanding political IOU's).

BC Liberals

Moira Stilwell (No) (Vancouver)
Christy Clark (No) (Political IOU's - extraordinary contemptibility)
Mike de Jong (No) (Political IOU's)
George Abbott (Yes) (Salmon Arm)
Kevin Falcon (Yes) (Surrey)

Currently % of British Columbians following either leadership contest is single digits. We will now revert to using Premier Gordon Campbell and BC Liberals in general polling questions until BC Liberals leadership race concludes. 41% - half-wits

Also, we will commence re-releasing a history of our 'greatest hits' involving Gordon Campbell's time as premier going back to 2003 up to conclusion of leadership.

Good luck to eligible candidates.


 

Hope the govt calls a snap election right after the new leader is named. leaving the NDP leaderless would be awesome!!!!!!! 

"lay the progressive vision"?
yeah. right. we've seen that "vision", and it
looks a lot like higher taxes for everyone and higher
wages for the public sector - who already
make twice what the same job in the private
sector pays. the ndp are labor/socialist.
neither is good news for a healthy economy.

the NDP can NOT "get it right".
they know nothing about creating wealth,
they only know how to tax the wealth
creators and reward their public sector
union bosses. NDP "powerful leadership"
means "you do things our way" which
means jobs are gone. we've seen it before.

"public ownership of the high ground"? What
does that mean? Since the NDP have decided
BC Rail and BC Hydro are the centre of
their paranoia campaign, I'll guess that means
BC Hydro. Hydro isn't for sale, but it's interesting
to see the NDP PR department pretend it is.
Where do you fools get this nonsense?

Oh, and the liberals did NOT "kill" BC rail,
it died while the NDP were in power. the only real
scandal is that the NDP didn't sell it when
they were still in power - it involved
too many of those union jobs.

Stand "powerfully" for the public option?
(Wow, you guys are drunk with power
already and you don't even have a leader)
That is always what the NDP do - they ARE
the public sector. Oh, and we've seen the
line about being "sold down the river" before.
It refers to run of the river - an idea the hard
left thought was just great. That is, when they
thought it would involve public sector jobs.

Too bad Hydro was scandalously incompetent
at building any such installation. But then the
truth behind the stories the NDP tell usually
involves incompetence and backroom payoffs. 

Interest in NDP will wane with time so it's in their best interest to choose a leader and build a vision asap. It's unfortunate the previous leader took too long to step down. Plus over the past 6-8 years, NDP provided no exciting vision for BC's future. It was simply 100% focused on sneering at Gordon Campbell. Hope NDP can be a competitive option in the future, but it could be too late. 

For the sake of elimination, I will not be voting NDP no matter who they select and do you not think April is a little late. What are they looking for, of course if a federal election rolls around the NDP could be wipe out at that level! 

I just want to call out welldoneson for being a sad individual.
The era that had the most prosperity for the most people in society (in Canada and the U.S. at least though I suspect there were more) was the postwar era which was quite heavy on a "social democracy" policy or what welldoneson might refer to as "labour/socialist."
Why don't we have zero taxes and drive our clean and shiny Range Rovers on dirt paths?

But what welldoneson's biggest problem is that this individual is a thankless waste of flesh that was cursed to a ponderous and pathetic existence on this Earth, who's only solace is posting the longest comments on Georgia Strait comment boards.
I will pray for you and your kind tonight 

One of the great achievements of the first NDP government, led by Dave Barrett, was the creation of the Agricultural Land Reserve.

The ALR was designed to preserve the agricultural economy of BC, to embed the agricultural sector for all time, and to ensure that we can feed ourselves to the greatest extent nature allows.

At the time, hysterics in Social Credit and among developers screamed 'socialism!' and predicted a land grab. Hysterics like Welldoneson were among them. As it turns out, they were wrong. Everything they said was a pack of lies. Today, the ALR has been adopted in numerous jurisdictions across North America. It has worked.

Without the ALR, we would have lost tens of thousands of acres of arable land to development. Without the ALR, we would have lost tens of thousands of jobs in the agricultural sector. Without the ALR, the Fraser Valley would today look like the San Fernando Valley: the uncontrolled sprawl of Surrey, for ninety miles.

Mindless, rampant development destroys farmland. We cannot afford this. Crazed development, destroying arable land, would have made us forever dependent on foreign food. Unhinged development is a kind of cancer. It proceeds rapidly, and at the end destroys its host.

The NDP will forever be honoured for having the political courage to create the ALR. People like Dave Barrett, Bob Williams, Dave Stupich and Harold Steeves took the high ground, and the long view.

The future of British Columbia demands people of equal courage, able to look beyond the quick buck. The Liberals have proven they are untrustworthy. They promised not to sell BC Rail.

Then, they sold BC Rail. No one trusts these creatures. It's time for the NDP to earn our confidence. Again. 

So one must sign up or renew membership in the BC NDP on or before Jan 16, 2011 - which is 90 clear days before the vote on April 17, 2011. The stark reality is that there will be very few new sign ups or renewals during the holiday season ending January 4, 2011- the first work day of the New Year. So that essentially there is very little time for potential candidates to generate greater public interest in the party and provide citizens an incentive to rejoin or sign on as new members eligible to participate in a one-member-one vote Leadership Convention. IMO, The Party, in the extraordinary circumstance, could have left the door open to joining and participating in the election to 60 clear days before the election - namely Feb 16, 2011 - but by choosing not to or choosing not to pass a special resolution authorizing this - the perception arises, given the brief window of time - that new members are not all that welcome to both join and vote- that the preference by and large is to let the existing membership exercise the vote - whilst marginalizing the window of opportunity for new members to do so. Whilst others are free to disagree, IMO, the 90 day cut-off is not the smartest strategy to facilitate the desired outcome of renewal of membership and finances.  

Who wants to belong to a party where your main role is to "Shut UP'????? 

The "sad individuals" are the folks who credit socialism for [your good idea here]. Socialism has NEVER given "prosperity for the most people", all it does is loot society until the looting gets too blatant, then it gets voted out and leaves the adults to pick up the pieces as best we can. Only those who care about BC are sad at the idea that the NDP might get their mitts on the treasury.

The idea that taxes and collective action are the property of socialism is just so juvenile. As if there would be no roads or taxes without it?
Say what? It's amazing how far lefties will go in their hatred of anyone who tells them where they're wroing. Pretty much puts the lie to their pretenses of "caring more" about people. Just about what I expected. Funny that NDP'ers so often mention prayers; they're usually front and center criticizing religion. They see it as their ideological rival.
As for the length of posts, what's wrong? Jealous?

Williams is a little general, Barrett ran a clown show, Stupich is a proven crook, Steves was the only actual farmer of the barrett bunch. The rest of them were just indulging in their favorite pastime of interfering with people's property. Again we see the odd belief that only socialism can manage land, as if without the ALR there would be no farmland left. How juvenile.

And the Liberals did NOT "promise" not to sell BC rail, nor did they "promise" not to bring in the HST. That's just NDP back-office nonsense, a loaded word used by lefty dupes to bring emotional reaction. Pitiful. And calling the Libs "creatures" tells us more about the NDP than it does about the LIbs. The NDP can never "earn our confidence", they're a lot of ignorant tax and spenders who in the end will just shovel money to their union bosses as usual. Don't do it, BC, don't put these twits in power. 

Ps: I do know the 90 day rule is written into the BC NDP constitution - 

Every sensible person knows the importance of the ALR in preserving farmland. I exclude Welldoneson from that category of persons, of course.

Prior to 1972, and the first NDP government, we were losing between 4000 to 6000 hectares A YEAR. These were agricultural lands being converted to housing, strip malls, and parking lots. SOURCE: British Columbia, Provincial Agricultural Land Commission, Ten Years of Agricultural Land Preservation, (Victoria: The Commission, 1983), 4.

Indeed, in 1966 recommendations for designating more than 50 per cent of the Fraser Valley’s useable land for long-term agriculture were laid out by the Lower Mainland Regional Planning Board, and approved by the provincial government. SOURCE: ibid

This means, of course, that almost 50% of the farmland in the Fraser Valley would have been lost to development. Once farmland is lost, it doesn't come back. A naive view expressed on this board holds that "Again we see the odd belief that only socialism can manage land, as if without the ALR there would be no farmland left. How juvenile."

Alas, that view is contradicted by the facts. BEFORE the ALR, losses of 4000 to 6000 hectares a year. AFTER the ALR? Those losses were cut by nearly 95% in most areas of the province, including the Fraser Valley.

The ALR is, at heart, a profoundly conservative principle. It argues that we are just here awhile. As stewards of creation we must do the best we can to preserve the future of our species, and the great natural systems we require: clean air, clean water, and arable land.

Further proof? Public attitudes changed immensely, and quickly. By the time the Socreds were returned to office, even they didn't dare to destroy the ALR. Their developer pals continued to try to nibble at the edges, but the engine of preservation was in place. This conservative principle has served us well for 40 years now.

The next NDP government needs to take the long view of all development of our natural resources.

Short-term selfishness, though applauded by a backward view, leaves nothing to our kids. And that's just not right.
 

NotWelldone is a little confused.

She wrote, "And the Liberals did NOT "promise" not to sell BC rail".

In its 2001 party platform, the Liberals promised that they would "Not sell or privatize BC Rail." SOURCE: A New Era for British Columbia, BC Liberal Party, 2001, page 9

A year later, the Liberals were still promising not to sell BC Rail. In an Aug. 19, 2002 e-mail to a BC Rail employee, name blanked out, Mr. Campbell couldn't state it more clearly: "I assure you that the government is not looking at the privatization of BC Rail as part of our transportation strategy." SOURCE: Globe and Mail, 10 April 2009

Now, maybe NotWelldone is gullible, or just has more experience breaking promises than most people do. Perhaps NotWelldone is simply on the payroll, and it is in her interest to pretend a promise is not a promise because the Liberals say so.

The rest of us are not so easily duped. 

I prayed for you welldoneson and your ilk and you came back and keep posting long pointless comments on the Georgia Strait website. It's enough to make a person lose their faith.

You win welldoneson, you wrote a lot on this comment board, now you've changed the course of B.C. politics, maybe even the whole body politic.

Well done son 

If the NDP really wanted to expand membership and raise more membership fees, they would open provincial membership up to "left" federal Liberals.

The NDP will continue to lose out on the money and talent of these Liberals, while the BC Liberals can take advantage of the large talent pools from the "right" federal Liberals and Conservatives.

It's also foreseeable that some left or centrist federal Liberals will throw their support behind a perceived moderate candidate in the BC Liberals (like Abbott or Clark) and join the BC Liberals. I don't think anyone with power in the NDP really cares, though. 

That wealth creation is created by the rich is largely myth. The wealthy are investing offshore and finance capital is sitting on there wealth.Whoever becomes NDP leader is going to have to have the courage to do what Right propaganda ,and those who buy into it, deplore. Tax the rich and restore corporate taxation rates.Who on that list can do that?