B.C. Politics Thread

[Gurn]

^ I'd say by 'diesel/electric' they are meaning -diesel powered generators, that will supply electricity to the 'electric' motors.

Odds are they will be built off shore, as Vancouver shipyard is busy will the military and Coast guard build program.

 

What could have been  decades  worth of work,  for shipwrights and others.

Feds, Province, and Ferries might well have been able to start 100's to 1,000s of apprenticeships, creating well paid jobs; had they just got together and properly timed these various builds.

[King Heffy]

2 hours ago, Gurn said:

^ I'd say by 'diesel/electric' they are meaning -diesel powered generators, that will supply electricity to the 'electric' motors.

Odds are they will be built off shore, as Vancouver shipyard is busy will the military and Coast guard build program.

 

What could have been  decades  worth of work,  for shipwrights and others.

Feds, Province, and Ferries might well have been able to start 100's to 1,000s of apprenticeships, creating well paid jobs; had they just got together and properly timed these various builds.

Would also have made maintenance easier when you have people available who built them.

[4petesake]

 

Interesting article from the Times Colonist saying that rents have begun to drop in 52 key neighbourhoods after the NDPs changes to the short term rental rules went into effect in May.

 

Rent in B.C. communities declined after short-term vacation home rules were implemented, report finds

Renters will end up paying $600-million a year less once the province’s regulations fully kick in, author estimates

Frances Bula, The Globe and Mail about 5 hours ago

 

https://www.timescolonist.com/real-estate/rent-in-bc-communities-declined-after-short-term-vacation-home-rules-were-implemented-report-finds-9532750

 

[aGENT]

30 minutes ago, 4petesake said:

 

Interesting article from the Times Colonist saying that rents have begun to drop in 52 key neighbourhoods after the NDPs changes to the short term rental rules went into effect in May.

 

Rent in B.C. communities declined after short-term vacation home rules were implemented, report finds

Renters will end up paying $600-million a year less once the province’s regulations fully kick in, author estimates

Frances Bula, The Globe and Mail about 5 hours ago

 

https://www.timescolonist.com/real-estate/rent-in-bc-communities-declined-after-short-term-vacation-home-rules-were-implemented-report-finds-9532750

 

 

Funny, I keep hearing they're not doing anything/enough...

[The Arrogant Worms]

B.C. election now a coin toss between NDP and Conservatives, polling reveals

BC United's self-destruction has created a two-party race ahead of the Oct. 19 vote, according to Research Co.

 

https://www.timescolonist.com/economy-law-politics/bc-election-now-a-coin-toss-between-ndp-and-conservatives-polling-reveals-9532486

[bishopshodan]

1 hour ago, aGENT said:

 

Funny, I keep hearing they're not doing anything/enough...

 

The NDP, both Fed and in BC do stuff.

They even change stuff they do, after trying stuff, if that stuff doesnt work the way they hoped.

I like stuff getting done.

[Ghostsof1915]

Can someone explain to me when BC United shut down, why taxpayers have to pay severance packages for employees, and moving expenses for MLA's? 

Where's the money they raised, did Kevin Falcon just run off with it all? Did it get siphoned into the BC Conservatives? 

[the destroyer of worlds]

2 hours ago, Ghostsof1915 said:

Can someone explain to me when BC United shut down, why taxpayers have to pay severance packages for employees, and moving expenses for MLA's? 

Where's the money they raised, did Kevin Falcon just run off with it all? Did it get siphoned into the BC Conservatives? 

There were BC United MLAs who didn't even know the party was ending.   

 

So much for fiscal responsibility and stuff.

[Boudrias]

The election likely comes down to who has the best ground game. One would expect that the NDP should have. How many independant BC United will run and will that pull enough support away from BC Cons. That could be enough for a NDP win. 

 

What is laughable is the unemployed BC United (Liberals) candidates taking a shot after Rustad said no thanks. The NDP back peddling on their platform of the past 5 years as they read the polls. Is this campaign ran with no debate over the First Nations veto over land use and industrial development. Our regional district will not issue a building permit on private property without a First Nations OK. This process is a nod to reconciliation which in principal I can agree with but the latitude for misuse is wide. If I have title to a property that I want to build a house on and First Nations want it they could force a sale or prevent development. The limits and objectives have to be discussed by BC politicians in this election. 

 

BC should become the energy gateway to SE Asia. It would provide massive tax revenue. Government spending has to be funded. What limits will there be to ensuring projects can be built. Where do the parties stand on this?   

[Bob Long]

8 minutes ago, Boudrias said:

The election likely comes down to who has the best ground game. One would expect that the NDP should have. How many independant BC United will run and will that pull enough support away from BC Cons. That could be enough for a NDP win. 

 

What is laughable is the unemployed BC United (Liberals) candidates taking a shot after Rustad said no thanks. The NDP back peddling on their platform of the past 5 years as they read the polls. Is this campaign ran with no debate over the First Nations veto over land use and industrial development. Our regional district will not issue a building permit on private property without a First Nations OK. This process is a nod to reconciliation which in principal I can agree with but the latitude for misuse is wide. If I have title to a property that I want to build a house on and First Nations want it they could force a sale or prevent development. The limits and objectives have to be discussed by BC politicians in this election. 

 

BC should become the energy gateway to SE Asia. It would provide massive tax revenue. Government spending has to be funded. What limits will there be to ensuring projects can be built. Where do the parties stand on this?   

 

It's still Ebys election to lose, with the BCC having a harder time gaining more ground imo. 

 

I doubt that we will see a debate with any substance but I guess we'll see. Even if people believe the land use issues are well intended, the bungling of the implementation has to be fixed for everyone's sake. Maybe losing a few seats will be the thing. 

 

Eby with a one or two seat majority might be the best possible outcome as it would reign in the silly stuff and force a much more middle of the road approach.

 

[Coconuts]

On 9/16/2024 at 5:03 PM, Optimist Prime said:

Again I have to agree with almost all of this post. I just don't think free range homeless addicts is any kind of solution at all. Zip. It simply spreads the infection, if you will, to others. I am not saying I am right, when it comes to feels I am 'emotionally dysregulated' as I suffer from operational stress injuries myself. Many other vets are themselves homeless and addicts too. It is a rough situation, but one that we don't need to foster out in public on the streets and doorways of restaurants and in parking lots across the street from grade schools and middle schools.  I know I also suffer from a skewed perspective from what I have witnessed globally first hand. We pretend life is precious here in our generally safe communities, present topic notwithstanding, but on a global level life is cheaper than anyone would guess, sad to say. I don't expect the hard core opioid addicts who have been living rough for a dozen years to ever fully become integrated, productive souls again, I think that ship has sailed. What I do expect is that they are not available to infect others in our streets. I readily admit that I am jaded in that regard. I would not choose to use a kit to save someone overdosing. I don't believe in it, but not from being a callous ass hat, I just believe that whatever demons that person is escaping from, maybe bringing them back to face them again is the bad option. It is for me like waterboarding someone at GITMO for 12 years. Drown them, revive them, drown them, revive them, drown them, revive them. That is torture. I feel like reviving the same person 12 times is akin to torture, just let their poor soul go, they are already gone, all you have to do is not revive them to be waterboarded again. 
I know my opinion on that is in the extreme minority, but wanted to share it for perspective. 

 

Thing is, there is no magic bullet to addressing issues like homelessness and addiction. I also think terminology is important, because labels can be used to dehumanize individuals, addict is such a term; terminology is strange though, because some folks will use the word addict to describe themselves while some won't. Ultimately, these are still humans, people with families, likely friends, and other connections. I think it's important to keep that in mind. 

 

The free range bit too, I question whether one can ever really visibly remove homelessness and addiction from the streets entirely. It's hard, because in your case I can tell that it probably comes from a place of frustration. We all have our lenses. My best friend works as a janitor for school district 68, his view of homelessness and addiction is different than mine because his experiences are different. He's had to clean up needles around schools, he's questioned his safety during months when darkness comes sooner. It's a tricky thing, our experiences influence our views to some degree.

 

Again, terminology, I don't view those on the streets as an infection of sorts, I view them as individuals who need help, as individuals who've probably experienced a fair amount of trauma. It's not uncommon for addiction and mental health stuff to intersect, but it's also pretty common for individuals who struggle with substance misuse to have a trauma factor as well. Living on the street, even as someone who doesn't use, can be incredibly traumatic. 

 

You've said you may be in the minority, this may be true, you're probably right about it coming from a place of being jaded. But hey, people are complicated. Again, for me it comes back to these individuals being people, and believing that if lives can be saved they probably should be. Addiction is complex, escaping homelessness and addiction are challenging things to do, especially when experiencing both of them. Trauma is complex. I understand that these individuals affect the environments they spend time in, I get why folks become frustrated, but I think it's too easy to gloss over their humanity as well. 

 

When I worked at the depot I'd routinely talk to the truck drivers who came to pick things up, I remember one guy going on and on about how he wishes it was legal to simply go out and shoot homeless people, to shoot addicts. I didn't bother arguing with him, it wouldn't have been productive, but for me this highlighted how some folks view these individuals. I do think that solutions need to be humane, and despite the costs of both time and money, I do think saving people is worthwhile. Some people do get clean, but even those who don't manage to get to that point deserve a chance to live their lives imo.

[The Lock]

5 hours ago, Boudrias said:

The election likely comes down to who has the best ground game. One would expect that the NDP should have. How many independant BC United will run and will that pull enough support away from BC Cons. That could be enough for a NDP win. 

 

What is laughable is the unemployed BC United (Liberals) candidates taking a shot after Rustad said no thanks. The NDP back peddling on their platform of the past 5 years as they read the polls. Is this campaign ran with no debate over the First Nations veto over land use and industrial development. Our regional district will not issue a building permit on private property without a First Nations OK. This process is a nod to reconciliation which in principal I can agree with but the latitude for misuse is wide. If I have title to a property that I want to build a house on and First Nations want it they could force a sale or prevent development. The limits and objectives have to be discussed by BC politicians in this election. 

 

BC should become the energy gateway to SE Asia. It would provide massive tax revenue. Government spending has to be funded. What limits will there be to ensuring projects can be built. Where do the parties stand on this?   

 

I'm in a riding full of a lot of right wing voters and one thing I've noticed is there's a lot of people hesitant about the BC Cons, and we're talking people who are generally conservative.

 

It's a shame in a way that Kevin Falcon turned out to sound and act like such a sleazebag. I feel like they could have chosen almost anyone else and it wouldn't have felt as much like voting for a used car salesman. And then the same guy jumps ship to the Conservatives and disbands the BC United as a result. If there's anyone who shouldn't be elected this coming election, it's him imo.

 

So now you have a lot of people who just don't know who they're voting for because the NDP and Conservatives are arguably more farther apart than the federal Liberals and Conservatives even.

[RupertKBD]

20 hours ago, bishopshodan said:

 

The NDP, both Fed and in BC do stuff.

They even change stuff they do, after trying stuff, if that stuff doesnt work the way they hoped.

I like stuff getting done.

 

...and Jag came close to beating the stuffing out of a Leafs fan....

[NewbieCanuckFan]

4 minutes ago, RupertKBD said:

 

...and Jag came close to beating the stuffing out of a Leafs fan....

It often has the opposite effect (attempt to bully candidates with these 'in your face' tactics).  Castro Junior was well on his way to the EI office the previous election (with him just stumbling along) when "Freedumb Convoy" types (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58472456).  All it did was to add a 'lifeline' to the failing Liberal campaign.

[Optimist Prime]

1 hour ago, Coconuts said:

 

Thing is, there is no magic bullet to addressing issues like homelessness and addiction. I also think terminology is important, because labels can be used to dehumanize individuals, addict is such a term; terminology is strange though, because some folks will use the word addict to describe themselves while some won't. Ultimately, these are still humans, people with families, likely friends, and other connections. I think it's important to keep that in mind. 

 

The free range bit too, I question whether one can ever really visibly remove homelessness and addiction from the streets entirely. It's hard, because in your case I can tell that it probably comes from a place of frustration. We all have our lenses. My best friend works as a janitor for school district 68, his view of homelessness and addiction is different than mine because his experiences are different. He's had to clean up needles around schools, he's questioned his safety during months when darkness comes sooner. It's a tricky thing, our experiences influence our views to some degree.

 

Again, terminology, I don't view those on the streets as an infection of sorts, I view them as individuals who need help, as individuals who've probably experienced a fair amount of trauma. It's not uncommon for addiction and mental health stuff to intersect, but it's also pretty common for individuals who struggle with substance misuse to have a trauma factor as well. Living on the street, even as someone who doesn't use, can be incredibly traumatic. 

 

You've said you may be in the minority, this may be true, you're probably right about it coming from a place of being jaded. But hey, people are complicated. Again, for me it comes back to these individuals being people, and believing that if lives can be saved they probably should be. Addiction is complex, escaping homelessness and addiction are challenging things to do, especially when experiencing both of them. Trauma is complex. I understand that these individuals affect the environments they spend time in, I get why folks become frustrated, but I think it's too easy to gloss over their humanity as well. 

 

When I worked at the depot I'd routinely talk to the truck drivers who came to pick things up, I remember one guy going on and on about how he wishes it was legal to simply go out and shoot homeless people, to shoot addicts. I didn't bother arguing with him, it wouldn't have been productive, but for me this highlighted how some folks view these individuals. I do think that solutions need to be humane, and despite the costs of both time and money, I do think saving people is worthwhile. Some people do get clean, but even those who don't manage to get to that point deserve a chance to live their lives imo.

Ones perspective is something that is certainly shaped by ones life experiences. A nice friend of mine who has not left the Cowichan Valley in 51 years aside from a school trip when she was younger and maybe a trip to Seattle a few years ago; she sees the person inside the addict and tries hard to help, she has been robbed three times and assaulted once by a perv grabbing a feel and once by a homeless woman trying to steal her purse, in all those cases she was trying to connect with the humanity inside the homeless addict, often with sandwiches to give them. Her life experience informed her perspective the way yours sounds to have informed yours. 
Again I am not sure I am right, but I have spent countless hours trying to come up with 'solves' and put my brain to work on the problem. My life experiences are much different from the average, I know this to be true. I was on a vacation from my work in the middle east and my wife few over to join me for a trip to the Pyramids and some museums in Cairo. We bussed from Israel and after some cool moments on the bus ride. Like seeing a small village in the desert which only got electricity for a world cup soccer prelim game they hosted..every shanty in the village had every kind of light you could imagine all plugged in at once, they were certainly new to the concept: it was a village of patio lanterns, Xmas lights and every kind of plugged in dazzler you can name, hahaha like a festival of electrical light. Another cool spectacle was approaching the Suez Canal from the east, heading towards Cairo, we saw a 'mirage' on the distant horizon of a sail boat merrily sailing across the desert, hahaha...as we got nearer and nearer we realized it was the Suez. Those were cool experiences, even if just from an uncomfortable bus seat. However as we entered Cairo, specifically at the city of the dead zone..a massive and hundreds of years old cemetery, if not thousands... the poor people in Cairo who have relatives with mausoleums in the graveyard, simply live in their ancestors mausoleum, and have for in some cases generations just lived there as their family owns that 'building' in the cemetery. So one of these poor homeless buggers was running across the highway and our bus smoked him doing highway speeds. His body flew up higher than the roof of the bus and thudded to the pavement behind us head first, clearly dead, and my wife gasped in shock and started crying. By nature of my work we happened to have a body guard with us for the 4 day excursion to Egypt and he was sitting one seat in front of us. He turned around and tried to comfort her by saying "it is okay, they come to collect the body after dark when the traffic is quiet". She cried the rest of the way to the hotel because in getting up a little and turning to tell us that, the gun under his long leather coat stuck out and she didn't know he was armed until then. She had a rough vacation, the first night we were up on the Golan Heights and there was some incurssion of the 'no mans land' between Quenetra and En Zewan where we were staying. the IDF shelled the border for most of the time we were trying to sleep, which led to our trailer shaking about every 12 minutes, and wave after wave of tears from my incredibly worried wife. Her previous out of Canada experience was our honeymoon to Mexico, so it was eye opening for her on several levels. We were down in Metula before the Cairo Trip and after that first night, which is on the border with Lebanon and we visited the 'good fence' which is a technical marvel wherein if someone touches the fence, as one would to climb over it or go through it, the IDF sees on a sensor exactly where to dispatch the troops to within minutes. I was highly impressed. However about that time some gun shots rang out from the lebanon side which is also a built up village with streets and houses..like the Metula side. As we rushed to a barrier of a three sides concrete shelter to protect from the shots, a few minutes later 2 war wagons full of IDF troops rolled through the gate there and in very short order engaged some, i am guessing, Hezbollah troops. So there was a fire fight about two blocks from us, and more tears from my wife. Before we even finished up and got back in our truck to move on to our next point of interest on the vacation ..heading to the beach i think in Haifa.. the two war wagons full of IDF troops rolled back through the gate, i guess they were successful and the gunshots were gone again. Maybe 40 minutes all together in time.

So my best friend and life partner experienced very quickly what I had seen over and over and over again already in my career. On a global scale, life really isn't that precious. It is kind of cheap. I had diplo to move between Israel and Syria, one of only four people at the time. On one trip to the embassy in Damascus my vehicle happend by an accident. A local businessman had hit a boy and killed him with his Mercedes. The local magistrate had pronounced him guilty there on the side of the road and he was already being stoned to death by the villagers when we drove by. We managed to get him in the truck and drove him to the UN base on the Syrian side for his own protection. He later made amends by paying the father of the boy 10 times the customary amount for hitting a girl child with your car. It wasn't that much. I want to say about 300 american dollars, if translated from Syrian Pounds. 

This is all a very long winded way to say that by the time someone is homeless in downtown Duncan bent in half whacked out of their minds with opioids and possibly about to OD, they have already substantially reduced the value of their own lives. It isn't me dehumanizing them, they already did that. I don't wish them dead at all, i want them to be helped and saved from themselves and so I fully support in every way forced rehab in a secure facility that incidentally also has the positive effect of removing them from the city block they are destroying along with their own lives. I also think that using a narcan kit on a guy who has overdosed a dozen times is just torture. If they have already gone, have the decency to leave them gone. Reviving them to OD again is exactly the same as waterboarding them in GITMO and should be illegal. If you revive an ODing addict then you have a duty of care in my books to prevent them from doing drugs again. Forced rehab in a secure facility for a year does that, and lets not wait till they OD. lets just make it illegal to be high on opioids in public and the sentence being a year in a facility. Maybe they relapse, maybe they don't but a year sober will give them time to get through issues, while saving the community from their homeless addicted selves at the same time. 
/end rant.

[The Arrogant Worms]

B.C. short-term rental restrictions reducing rents, saving tenants millions: study

That study looked at municipal restrictions, but the report says a new provincial regulation could carry similar savings across the province.

 

https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/bc-short-term-rental-restrictions-reducing-rents-saving-tenants-millions-study-9539900

[Bob Long]

15 minutes ago, The Arrogant Worms said:

B.C. short-term rental restrictions reducing rents, saving tenants millions: study

That study looked at municipal restrictions, but the report says a new provincial regulation could carry similar savings across the province.

 

https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/bc-short-term-rental-restrictions-reducing-rents-saving-tenants-millions-study-9539900

 

It's nice of the Times Colonist to briefly discuss Sims work in between congratulating Eby catching up