NDP missing the bus on apprentices

The NDP campaign continues to make things up as they go along, distorting numbers and misrepresenting the facts. This week they hit on a topic very close to our hearts by claiming to support apprenticeship training. At ICBA, we sponsor about 1,600 apprentices and are very familiar with how things work in trades training.

After a bunch of misinformation from Carole James, the BC Liberals clarified the facts:

- There are currently 47,000 registered apprentices in BC, which is nearly three times the number from 2001 when the NDP were in charge of the Province.

- The BC Liberals have increased funding for trades training by 42 per cent since 2001. The NDP voted against every increase.

- The BC Liberals created the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) so that skilled workers can have their credentials recognized in other provinces and can work freely in BC or Alberta. Carole James and the NDP voted against the agreement and continue to oppose breaking down barriers that restrict skilled workers.

-The BC Liberals introduced the $90-million BC Training Tax Credit to help employers and apprentices cover the cost of their training. The NDP voted against this program.

In their election platform, the BC Liberals promise to double the BC Training Tax Credit program, whereas the NDP Platform only commits to strike a task force, without providing any tangible support for apprentices.

We have said repeatedly that in the current economic situation many construction workers who had put off education because of the previous boom in jobs are now turning their attention to training and upgrading skills. In fact, we called for governments to bring in more incentives for retraining to help workers improve their future hiring prospects and productivity by going back to school. Good to know the Liberals understand this.

Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.

Jaynie Clark and her NDP family secrets

Current Position: NDP candidate in Burnaby-Lougheed.

Past Positions: One of four Directors at the BCGEU.

Family Connections: Another one of Carole James’ star union recruits, Clark works closely with her fellow BCGEU Director and NDP President Jeff Fox. She is part of the record number of union-connected candidates that Carole James has brought onto her team.

Family Secrets: Clark managed the campaign of federal NDP candidate Bill Siksay and is a staunch supporter of Jack Layton.

Bill Routley and his NDP family secrets

Current Position: NDP candidate in Cowichan Valley

Past Positions: President of IWA local 1-80.

Family Connections: One of the best connected union bosses in BC, Routley has been a major supporter of NDP MP Jean Crowder, MLA’s Leonard Krog, John Horgan and Doug Routley.

Family Secrets: For one, Bill Routley is not related to MLA Doug Routley, who is running for the NDP in Nanaimo-North Cowichan. On the NDP profile page, a full of seven of his ten accomplishments are union related. So much for the “new NDP.”

Mable Elmore and her NDP family secrets

Current Position: NDP candidate in Vancouver-Kensington

Past Positions: Elmore got her start as a Federation of Labour Regional Political Coordinator during Jim Sinclair's term as president. She is also an activist in CAW local 111, and an active member of stopwar.ca

Family Connections: Elmore is a proud member of the NDP’s “Socialist Caucus,” a group of people who think that the rest of the NDP are not socialist enough. 24 hrs columnist and NDP activist Bill Tieleman is one her biggest fans.

Family Secrets: Why does Elmore have the shortest “official biography” of any candidate on the NDP website? There is nothing about this or this.

Kathy Corrigan and her NDP family secrets

Current Position: NDP candidate in Burnaby-Deer Lake

Past Positions: Burnaby School Trustee, Researcher for CUPE specializing in “privatization.”

Family Connections: Where to begin? Corrigan is a member of the “first family” of Burnaby. She is married to Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan. She is close to federal NDP MP Bill Siksay. She is tight with the local trade union movement.

Family Secrets: The Corrigan family remained huge supporters of Glen Clark until the very end. She is an outspoken supporter of the NDP “women candidates only” policy.

Jim Sinclair and his NDP family secrets

Current Position: President, BC Federation of Labour

Past Positions: President, BC Federation of Labour. Appointed to BC Hydro Board by NDP government in 1990s.

Family Connections: Sinclair has made the BC Federation of Labour a safe haven for ex-NDP staff members in search of work. He has hired former Glen Clark communications director Geoff Meggs and former Premier’s Office senior staff person Jessie Uppal.

Family Secrets: Controversial anti-Zionist NDP candidate Mable Elmore got her start as a Federation of Labour Regional Political Coordinator during Sinclair’s term as president.

Harry Bains and his NDP family secrets

Current Position: Running for re-election as NDP MLA Surrey-Newton

Past Positions: President, IWA Local 217.

Family Connections: Bains is a long-time labour leader who was a star recruit for Carole James in 2005. He was a huge supporter of Glen Clark's leadership in 1995. The Vancouver Sun's legislative columnist, Vaughn Palmer, described his nomination this way in 2005:

"The lone candidate for the NDP nomination is Harry Bains, a longtime trade union official and vice-president of one of the big locals of IWA Canada So there's one comment on the success of James effort to "modernize" the NDP relationship with organized labour."

Family Secrets: Bains landed former Premier's office senior official and BC Federation of Labour Communications Director Jessie Uppal as his campaign manager in 2005.

Maurine Karagianis and her NDP family secrets

Current Position: Running for re-election as NDP MLA for Esquimalt

Past Positions: President, Political Staff for NDP government’s in the 1990’s. Esquimalt City Councillor.

Family Connections: Karagianis is part of the Carole James inner circle and is close allies with John Horgan, Adrian Dix and the rest of the former Glen Clark Team.

Family Secrets: Karagianis was a senior aid to Moe Sihota and learned her “tax and spend” and “divide and conquer” politics from the master.

Carole James fails CBC reality check on carbon tax

CBC Radio is running an election feature called Reality Check, where they try to verify things politicians say on the campaign trail. Last Friday, they skewered Carole James’ claim that the carbon tax wasn’t doing anything to reduce carbon emissions.

In fact, James said that carbon emissions increased last year by four per cent. In a stinging rebuke, CBC proved her wrong, and gave her a very bad rating for her dishonesty.

They checked her sources, and found them to be measuring the wrong things. And they checked with Environment Canada, which measures the right things, but found that reports tracking Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Canada are always behind by about 18 months, so numbers are not yet available to show if emissions have gone down.

CBC’s conclusion?

“What did we find when we looked under the microscope? The NDP claim that emissions have gone up four percent since July 2008 is mostly false.”

Told you so. James is making it up as she goes along, desperately shilling for rural votes. And now she’s been outed, again, for her dishonesty.

Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.

What IS the NDP's candidate screening process?

With another NDP candidate being ridiculed by media this week, we were going to write a blog entry about the very poor choices the NDP is making in selecting candidates that it thinks should run our economy in troubled times. We were going to make pithy comments and ridicule them, but why should we, when the media and Carole James herself are already doing it for us?

James is quoted in a CBC story yesterday saying the controversy of disgraced candidate Ray Lam’s racy Facebook photos forcing his resignation as a candidate in Vancouver False Creek reflects “the reality of the new media.” She goes on to add:

“It will be interesting to watch politics over the next 10 to 15 years when you have an entire generation of young people who grew up with their lives public on Facebook.”

Boy, can’t wait to see what kinds of photos other NDP candidates will show us! Imagine, going into politics and having their whole lives made public. These are the kind of people who would have their hands on the levers of power in a $35 billion operation. Really confidence-inspiring, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, saving us from having to come up with commentary about this whole thing is The Province’s respected columnist, Michael Smyth. His story yesterday, headlined “Big holes in NDP's candidate-screening process; Latest in party's parade of wingnuts for elected office,” added up Lam’s Facebook faux pas with Mable Elmore’s anti-Zionist comments, and throws in some federal NDP candidates predicaments to conclude that the NDP don’t know how to screen candidates.

“The NDP promised to do better. Instead, it seems "why stop there" has become the theme song of the NDP's wingnuts-for-office parade…”A lack of judgment," NDP Leader Carole James explained yesterday, Gee, do ya think?”

But the best line Smyth’s newspaper article – and really, we couldn’t have made up this stuff better ourselves:

“But it's worse than that for the NDP: This kind of pattern can plant serious doubts in the minds of people wondering if the party and its candidates are fit to run the province.”

Do we even need to say it? Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.

Jeff Fox and his NDP Family Secrets

Current Position: President, BC NDP, Director of organizing and field services, BCGEU.

Past Positions: Fox is a long time union activists who was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Carole James leadership campaign. Fox helped James land the BCGEU endorsement.

Family Connections: Very close to former James Chief of Staff David Perry and well connected within the union movement.

Family Secrets: NDP Provincial Secretary Laura Nichols daughter, Erin Sikora,works for Fox at the BCGEU. He is also not shy about throwing his weight around with independent minded NDP grassroots activists.

Mary O'Donoghue and her NDP Family Secrets

Current Position: Appointed Executive Director of Caucus by Carole James.

Past Positions: Director of NDP Caucus Research, Executive Director of NDP Caucus.

Family Connections: There are few friends tighter than O’Donoghue, John Horgan and Ian Reid. These three were among the most influential staff members of the NDP governments in the 1990s. Following the NDP’s defeat in 2001, the three close friends took their severances and formed a company together. While the private sector seemed exciting when the NDP had only two seats, the prospect of returning to the NDP and gaining a regular, taxpayer-funded paycheque was just too hard to resist. John Horgan became the NDP MLA for Juan de Fuca, Ian Reid worked his way up to becoming Carole James’ Chief of Staff and O’Donoghue is running the caucus again.

Family Secrets: The secret we all want to know is this – by what criteria did three architects of the NDP decade of decline qualify to become trusted advisors to Carole James? Fool me once, shame on you…

Leonard Krog and his NDP Family Secrets

Current Position: Running for election as NDP MLA for Nanaimo

Past Positions: NDP MLA for Parksville-Qualicum. Provincial NDP leadership candidate in 2003 (lost to Carole James).

Family Connections: Krog is one of those old style NDP members who received the support of Adrian Dix, Moe Sihota and Dave Barrett when he ran for the leadership of the party. His campaign was a coming together of former Glen Clark supporters.

Family Secrets: Leonard has one heck of a temper and will not hesitate to use it on environmentalists and seniors.

Do the NDP agree with their apologist?

Bill Tieleman, a left-wing journalist and commentator in favour of all things NDP, was on CKNW on Easter Monday saying that if a business is only barely profitable, then it shouldn’t be in business at all.

A caller to the radio show made the point that raising the minimum wage would cost jobs for many small businesses and significantly hurt profitability in this unstable economic climate. Host Bill Good agreed with the caller. But Bill Tieleman spoke up and firmly stuck his foot in his mouth, saying:

“Why do we support businesses that are marginally, minimally profitable in the first place? If you are that marginal then maybe you shouldn’t be in business.”

After a commercial break Tieleman went on to dig his hole by saying:

“When you’re paying all minimum wage, odds are the state is subsidizing that business with medicare premiums, benefit relief. If you cannot survive without state intervention then maybe you shouldn’t be in business.”

Gee, so if you’re suffering during these tough economic times and not staying profitable, you should just go out of business. Wonder if the Canadian Auto Workers would agree with that, given that Tieleman’s logic would certainly shut down all the North American auto manufacturers.

Think Carole James would agree?

Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.

Why has NDP abandoned young and green voters?

This article was written by Philip Hochstein and was published on the Georgia Straight's website http://www.straight.com/article-214215/philip-hochstein-why-has-ndp-abandoned-young-and-green-voters

In the aftermath of the launch of the “new” NDP platform, it is hard not to feel a bit sorry for Carole James.

While progressive government leaders throughout the world, including Barack Obama in the United States and Gordon Campbell right here in British Columbia, have articulated exciting visions of how we can build our economies and societies on environmentally sustainable platforms that our children will be proud of, James was once again forced to dust off the decades-old big-labour playbook and try to sell it as something fresh.

For a brief time early in her leadership, James made some noises about trying to wrest control of the NDP from its big union bankers. But like others before her, she quickly learned that those who pay the piper call the tunes.

Raising taxes on small businesses. Raising the minimum wage. Giving public unions the power to shut down the province. If it weren’t really the 2009 NDP campaign platform, it would read like bad historical fiction.

Most young voters today are no more likely to identify with a shop steward than they are with Richard Nixon. In the private sector, where there is choice, union market share has dropped to around 18 percent as young workers opt for careers in industries that value innovation and environmental sustainability.

There can be no more damning evidence that the NDP has all but abandoned its green and youth voters in favour of the labour agenda than its opposition to green energy projects.

Heralded by President Obama, and embraced throughout Europe, the development of a renewable energy industry is clearly the social, economic, and environmental opportunity of our generation.

Yet, James and the NDP have come out staunchly in opposition to green energy projects. And why? Because the public unions don’t want any energy, green or otherwise, developed in B.C. unless it is under their control.

While there is no doubt that, on the green energy issue, big labour has shown Carole James and B.C. voters who is really in charge of the NDP, one wonders whether this will end up being a hollow and shortsighted victory.

The green and youth voters that the NDP once competed for are going to find it difficult to draw a connection between their values and an NDP that has chosen its big-labour past over their future.

Philip Hochstein is president of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association, which represents family-owned construction businesses across British Columbia.

NDP sells out environmentalists for politics, labour movement

Now that the election is officially under way and the NDP has released their platform, it’s hilarious watching them try to skate out of the fact that their environmental policies are so wrong that former friends in the environmental movement are dissing the NDP from every corner.

First Tzeporah Berman, one of the most respected environmentalists in this country, let alone this province, said the NDP were off their rockers denouncing green power production. Then John Horgan of the NDP tried to deny that his party would kill all run-of-river power projects, in one of the funniest radio flip flops ever.

And now a whole group of major BC environmentalists, including the prestigious David Suzuki Foundation, get together to say that eliminating the carbon tax was a daft idea. Oh, and did you read the report from Mark Jaccard of SFU who says the NDP’s climate change policies would exempt about 65 per cent of BC’s emissions, and would cause company closings and the loss of 30,000 direct and 60,000 indirect jobs.

Media and blogger coverage of this has been everywhere. But perhaps our favourite article was from the Globe and Mail’s Gary Mason, who called the NDP’s policies “shortsighted,” “uninspiring,” “wrongheaded” and “dangerous.” As Mason says:

“So what if it was a position fundamentally at odds with the views held by a vast swath of their supporters? Or that it made a mockery of the NDP's core values?

Was this the best the New Democrats could do to distinguish themselves from the provincial Liberals? …it might gain the NDP a few votes in the north, they will come at a terrible cost elsewhere.”

Why are the NDP against environmentalists? Because their public union backers don’t want any energy, green or otherwise, developed in BC unless it is under their control. So they chose labour over green and over youth who see the future in environmentalism.

Carole James and the NDP. Wrong party, wrong leader, wrong time.

Comparing the abysmal record of the NDP to now....Part 4

Investment and jobs are most important to an economically vibrant province. The final years of NDP government showed just how abysmal they were at managing our provincial affairs.

click the chart for full size

It’s simple – BC outperformed the rest of Canada under the Liberals and our province failed miserably when the NDP was in power.

Carol James and the NDP. Wrong party, Wrong leader, Wrong time.

Bruce Ralston and his NDP Family Secrets

NDP MLA

Current Position: Running for reelection as NDP MLA, Surrey Walley, Appointed Finance critic by Carole James.

Past Positions: Party President, BC NDP.

Family Connections: Ralston is one Finance critic and potential Minister of Finance that the union movement can get behind. Not only has he worked in the union movement himself, but his spouse, Miriam Sobrino, is a senior staff person for a major public sector union. Ralston has never been shy about exploiting his union connections and recently was caught begging for paper clips from his union friends.

Family Secrets: Ralston was an impassioned defender of Glen Clark and the NDP during the 1990s. He was the point person in defending the party during the dark days of the Bingogate scandal and didn’t publicly disagree with a single Glen Clark initiative. And now Carole James thinks that he would make a great Finance Minister under a “new” NDP government

Sue Hammell and her NDP family secrets

NDP MLA

Current Position: Running for re-election as NDP MLA, Surrey Green Timbers. Appointed NDP Community Services critic by Carole James.

Past Positions: Was Minister of Women’s Equality in NDP governments.

Family Connections: Married to long-time NDP Director of Organization John Pollard, who best known for being impatient in ferry lineups. Sue was a senior organizer for Glen Clark’s leadership.

Family Secrets: Rumours persist that Hammell has set a record for hiring, firing and resignations of constituency assistants during a four year period (2005-2009). What is most interesting is that there were no grievances officially filed by the BCGEU who represents the NDP caucus staff.

To see more NDP family profiles click here.

Harry Lali and his NDP family secrets

NDP MLA

Current Position: Running for re-election as NDP MLA, Yale-Lillooet

Past Positions: Minister of Transportation under Premier Glen Clark

Family Connections: Perhaps the fiercest Clark defender in the 1990’s, Lali is closely associated with the NDP’s left wing and has close, ongoing relationships with Adrian Dix, CUPE President Barry O’Neill and Moe Sihota.

Family Secrets: Lali was a senior economic minister in the Clark government and can take his share of blame for the BC economy falling from first to worst.

John Horgan and his NDP family secrets

NDP MLA

Current Position: Running for reelection as NDP MLA, Juan de Fuca. Appointed NDP Energy Critic by Carole James.

Past Positions: Chief of Staff to NDP Premier Dan Miller, political staff for Premier Glen Clark, Ministerial Assistant to Minister of Employment and Investment Glen Clark

Family Connections: Following a low profile career on Parliament Hill working for one-term NDP MP Lynn Hunter, Horgan reached his full potential under Glen Clark. His friendship with Adrian Dix and Ian Waddell helped Horgan play a senior role in the Clark government. As British Columbians were breathing a sigh of relief following the defeat of the NDP, Horgan took his large taxpayer-funded severance package and got busy in the “private sector.” Horgan partnered with current Carole James Chief of Staff Ian Reid and Ian’s current second in command Mary O’Donaghue to form the consulting firm Ideaworks.

Family Secrets: Where to begin? Horgan was one of the most influential staff members during the 1990s. Fast ferries, fudge-it budgets, job losses… Horgan was there the whole time. We think Horgan’s role in the decade of decline has been underappreciated.

Dawn Black and her NDP family secrets

Current Position: NDP star Candidate for New Westminster

Past Positions: Director of Vancouver Cabinet Offices during Glen Clark government. NDP MP on Jack Layton’s and Audrey McLaughlin’s team..

Family Connections: Dawn is also very connected within the NDP. She was an enthusiastic supporter of both Audrey McLaughlin and Glen Clark during their leadership campaigns. Her son David is a senior official in COPE378 and a long time executive member for Jack Layton’s NDP. David is married to NOW Communications senior account manager Maya Russell. Remember how much money NOW Communications made from government work in the nineties?

Family Secrets: Remember the fast ferries? Record private sector job loss? The fair wage policy? Jobs for Timber? These were all Cabinet Decisions. Dawn was the director of the Vancouver Cabinet Offices. And now she is back as part of the Carole James team.

To see more NDP family members go to http://www.votesmartbc.com/node/100

VoteSmart launches 2nd Phase - All in the Family

This morning we unveiled the second phase of our VoteSmart BC campaign at a press conference in Vancouver. The campaign will feature television, radio and internet advertising (along with a continued social media presence) linking the current NDP to the 1990s NDP that hurt small family-owned businesses throughout the province.

Check out the new television ad that will start airing tomorrow

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArYVu3qnRDE