[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

I do feel that there were many poor decisions made. Off the top of my head:
1) The way the HST was implemented.
2) Throwing support for the the arts sector into chaos.
3) Building Gateway highway infrastructure with a willful disregard for the effects this will have on land use decisions south of the Fraser and not coupling it with transit.
4) Reorganising Translink and taking away meaningful local control from the region.
5) Refusing to direct any portion of the carbon tax to public transportation.
6) Failure to build low income and supportive housing throughout the region and in quantity.
7) The $6 training wage and a frozen $8 minimum wage.
.......

1) Agreed.
2) In a recession, you have to prioritize. I don't think that Campbell slashed arts spending without looking at other areas like health and seeing what the needs are.
3) I'm mixed on Gateway. We do need some road infrastructure (the GEB is a very fast and reliable way for containers to go from the Pitt Meadows intermodal yard to Hwy1) and the rapidbus intitiatives are appreciated, as with a new toll on the PMB. I only wish that rail transit was hardwired into that mix somehow.
4) Disagree. If we left translink the way it was, it will likely be a bickering hornet's nest of mayors with Derek Corrigan managing to usurp control and with precious little being done.
5) Politically, it would be a very difficult sell outside the lower mainland/victoria to convince ppl to pay carbon tax for transit in southwestern BC, or having a pot of money to spend on tranist initiatives in smaller centres just b/c we have the money, without doing route/corridor analyses
6) see frances bula's article on Rich Coleman, a linked it on page 1.
7) Agree. It shouldn't be the highest, but it shouldn't be the lowest.

I do not feel that a child born today in BC will have the same opportunities as my generation (Gen Y) to pursue a career of their choice and live comfortably on their income in this province, nor do I feel that my generation has the same opportunities to do these things as my parent's generation.

But that's a common concern throughout the developed world. Is that due to anything that Victoria does, or due to world-wide forces on the economy? You cannot get $20 hr jobs in the mill easily anymore. Can we as a province aim for something new and different?

Obama expressed frustration about the gridlock in Washington. "I have one simple question: How long should we wait? How long should America put its future on hold?" he asked. "You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting."

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/15/the-troubles.html

However I also think that we can see the cost of a policy of too little government spending by looking to our own province and the ranks of impoverished mentally ill people who are costing us more money living on the street, shelters, or squalid SROs than it would take to house and care for them in supportive housing.

Tread carefully. How/where in the GVRD do we do that? How would you define a success? I'm unsure how any govt in Victoria can impact significantly. That's like a certain mayor of a BC city promising to end homelessness by 2015.