Metro Vancouver Transportation & Transit Plebiscite

[WarrenC12]

Basically the province wants the mayors to increase property taxes, and isn't giving any other realistic option for funding. Everybody knows any vote on taxation will never pass.

[Gordon]

So the legislation is not worth the paper on which it is written.

The premier is misleading the people when she says she wants to solve Translink's funding issues

[GlassCity]

The shitty thing is that I'd bet the majority of the public sees these actions as a positive thing, and will be glad to vote her back in in 2017.

[Spork]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

The shitty thing is that I'd bet the majority of the public sees these actions as a positive thing, and will be glad to vote her back in in 2017.

I'm not so sure about that. The story on Global News last night seemed highly critical, so it sounds like they are starting to turn on her. Everybody knows that Global News is code for Populist Sensationalism News in Vancouver. When the populist news channel has turned against the populist premier, I truly believe that the tide has turned.

[WarrenC12]

If you recall, the media and all the pollsters were predicting an NDP win right up to election night last time.

Hell, even Harper looks like he's going to get back in after all of this BS.

Old white people vote in droves. We tend to get the government they want.

[Metro-One]

The BC NDP screwed themselves at the last moment by going just a little too far environmental (an anti-industrial) and scared away a large amount of their middle class working base.

The did it to themselves.

I knew more than a few people who were going to vote NDP and supported their anti-northern gateway pipeline position, but then voted liberal at the last moment when it became clear that the NDP were potentially anti-everything / anything oil and gas (and resource extraction).

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

The BC NDP screwed themselves at the last moment by going just a little too far environmental (an anti-industrial) and scared away a large amount of their middle class working base.

The did it to themselves.

Well, I agree with this and couldn't support them last time around.

My point was that a mid-term random polling of the electorate means nothing in predicting the results of the next election.

Frankly the NDP have done nothing since losing that has convinced me they have a chance either.

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

The BC NDP screwed themselves at the last moment by going just a little too far environmental (an anti-industrial) and scared away a large amount of their middle class working base.

The did it to themselves.

I knew more than a few people who were going to vote NDP and supported their anti-northern gateway pipeline position, but then voted liberal at the last moment when it became clear that the NDP were potentially anti-everything / anything oil and gas (and resource extraction).

The NDP Provincial and Federal parties would need to divorce themselves from each other before they'd ever get elected again IMO. The topic about who's party is the worse poison comes up all the time. For each potentially good thing a party promises, there're parties core principles undermining it.

The BC NDP seems to be "oppose everything that those in power do", which is strongly boneheaded. Remember this? Completely losing the green vote. Now that the BC Liberals are going ahead with the LNG (which is "greener" than oil, but it seems exporting makes it hardly better than oil) the NDP could oppose that for environmental reasons. But site C? Better tread carefully, as that can be a repeat of the Columbia River treaty. Where usable agricultural land was destroyed and the power benefits was sold for a pittance to the US. If land is destroyed then the benefits better substantially benefit everyone in the province, not just one industry.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Kisai

The NDP Provincial and Federal parties would need to divorce themselves from each other before they'd ever get elected again IMO. The topic about who's party is the worse poison comes up all the time. For each potentially good thing a party promises, there're parties core principles undermining it.

The BC NDP seems to be "oppose everything that those in power do", which is strongly boneheaded. Remember this? Completely losing the green vote. Now that the BC Liberals are going ahead with the LNG (which is "greener" than oil, but it seems exporting makes it hardly better than oil) the NDP could oppose that for environmental reasons. But site C? Better tread carefully, as that can be a repeat of the Columbia River treaty. Where usable agricultural land was destroyed and the power benefits was sold for a pittance to the US. If land is destroyed then the benefits better substantially benefit everyone in the province, not just one industry.

I'm pretty sure the Columbia River Treaty works the other way around. BC makes money directly off the sale of Electricity at the US dams. This is to pay us back for the water we store in BC that those dams use to generate power. They also paid us directly to help build our dams, which were not required to have power houses. But we put powerhouses on some of them, so the US basically subsidized our electrical system for a generation.

Maybe if you were to figure out the value of timber and farm lands lost, and how much the use of those lands would contribute to GDP, we might come out losers in the CRT. But at the time we were a pretty broke province, and having the Americans basically kick start BC Hydro has paid off in many ways.

Now, I, like I'm sure many other people, at the 11th hour didn't vote for the NDP because Dix was basically Glen Clark 2.0. Hell, he was his chief of staff and was responsible for working on the fast ferries and trying to cover up all of Glen Clark's fuck ups (for which he was fired in an attempt to save the NDP).

That said, I don't think there is anything inherent anti-business about the NDP. Their problem is they try to buy the electorate by dramatically expanding the provincial payroll, which puts tax pressure on business but businesses don't benefit as there is not much in the way of infrastructure spending. Taxing businesses is great when you want to then build infrastructure that gets people to work and products to market.

As proof, the NDP didn't do anything for or against the lumber industry when in power. There was huge environmental pressure on logging, but they didn't do much environmentally. They added a few parks, but stumpage fees remained pretty low. Which in turn lead to continued complaints from the US producers. Which didn't help the BC timber industry. So they basically mismanaged it by hardly doing anything because they were worried about potential backlashses in places that voted NDP (Glen Clark loved voters on Vancouver Island for some reason).

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

I'm pretty sure the Columbia River Treaty works the other way around. BC makes money directly off the sale of Electricity at the US dams. This is to pay us back for the water we store in BC that those dams use to generate power. They also paid us directly to help build our dams, which were not required to have power houses. But we put powerhouses on some of them, so the US basically subsidized our electrical system for a generation.

Maybe if you were to figure out the value of timber and farm lands lost, and how much the use of those lands would contribute to GDP, we might come out losers in the CRT. But at the time we were a pretty broke province, and having the Americans basically kick start BC Hydro has paid off in many ways.

Now, I, like I'm sure many other people, at the 11th hour didn't vote for the NDP because Dix was basically Glen Clark 2.0. Hell, he was his chief of staff and was responsible for working on the fast ferries and trying to cover up all of Glen Clark's fuck ups (for which he was fired in an attempt to save the NDP).

That said, I don't think there is anything inherent anti-business about the NDP. Their problem is they try to buy the electorate by dramatically expanding the provincial payroll, which puts tax pressure on business but businesses don't benefit as there is not much in the way of infrastructure spending. Taxing businesses is great when you want to then build infrastructure that gets people to work and products to market.

As proof, the NDP didn't do anything for or against the lumber industry when in power. There was huge environmental pressure on logging, but they didn't do much environmentally. They added a few parks, but stumpage fees remained pretty low. Which in turn lead to continued complaints from the US producers. Which didn't help the BC timber industry. So they basically mismanaged it by hardly doing anything because they were worried about potential backlashses in places that voted NDP (Glen Clark loved voters on Vancouver Island for some reason).

No, I'm pretty sure that the losses over time never made up for the pittance those energy entitlement rights were sold as one lump sum as.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...deal-1.2464531

The thing is, not having the dams at all would have been more expensive over time. It may have flooded one city in Oregon one decade, but could have flooded any of the cities in the US or Canada at any time up till the dams came into existence. Given the current nutso weather patterns, I'm actually glad they exist, since that means less people die in floods.

http://www.desmog.ca/2015/05/28/forg...eed-site-c-dam

On January 17, 1961, Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and United States President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Columbia River Treaty.

It was a landmark agreement that required Canada to build three dams to aid in U.S. flood protection and power generation. In exchange for taking on the impacts of these water storage projects, Canada was paid $64 million for 60 years of flood control benefits.

Canada also received an entitlement to one-half of the estimated additional hydroelectric generation capability at power plants on the Columbia River in the United States made possible by the operation of the dams in Canada.

This power is referred to as the “Canadian Entitlement” and since 2003 it has amounted to at least 1,176 megawatts of capacity and 4,073 gigawatt hours of energy a year.

That just so happens to be nearly identical to the amount of electricity B.C. could create via the controversial $8.8 billion Site C dam — the most expensive public project in B.C. history.

Compared to the 300 million per year the BC Government makes now from it. It's still worth much more than that. That 60 million in 1964 was one lump sum.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Kisai

No, I'm pretty sure that the losses over time never made up for the pittance those energy entitlement rights were sold as one lump sum as.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...deal-1.2464531

The thing is, not having the dams at all would have been more expensive over time. It may have flooded one city in Oregon one decade, but could have flooded any of the cities in the US or Canada at any time up till the dams came into existence. Given the current nutso weather patterns, I'm actually glad they exist, since that means less people die in floods.

http://www.desmog.ca/2015/05/28/forg...eed-site-c-dam



Compared to the 300 million per year the BC Government makes now from it. It's still worth much more than that. That 60 million in 1964 was one lump sum.

We might end up losers, depending on opinion and what we use to calculate our losses.

But contrary to your opinion in your post, we did not sell off power benefits.

We actually benefit, so greatly in the electricity regard, that the US wants to renegotiate what they give us every year. Maybe we could have made just as much money off harvesting the lost lands of timber and agriculture, but that has never actually been investigated, so it is unknown.

So I don't see how you can accuse the NDP of doing something similar to something that never happened. In fact, the NDP and Dave Barrett's 1000 days of Government, actually opposed the Columbia river treaty that was signed by the Socred's Wacky Bennett.

Also, the numbers in the story are a little misleading because there has been a lot of inflation since the 1960's. In fact there was a lot of inflation between when Bennett signed the agreement and Barrett took power denouncing the cost and revealing the province was in significant debt building the dams.

[csbvan]

Because it worked so well the first time:

https://www.biv.com/article/2015/10/...remier-christ/

This government is a disaster.

[BCPhil]

I think it is fair to ask the people if they want such a huge bureaucratic invasion of privacy that road pricing would be. I would rather pay the vehicle levy than carry around a government gps every day.

The main reason the last one didn't work was because the campaign was rushed and I don't think Translink was prepared. I also think a lot of people were able to vote and mailed in their ballots before Translink started getting its message out properly. It would be interesting to see what the results would have been had the referendum been in the referendum section of the civic elections.

I don't think they had enough time to sell the mayors plan, and the vision itself was shortsighted. A lot of people felt the tax was going to exist forever (and possibly increase) to fund only 10 years of construction. They should have done what works in the US, have a long term, 2040 vision, the tax is going to fund, with limits.

[Kisai]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

I think it is fair to ask the people if they want such a huge bureaucratic invasion of privacy that road pricing would be. I would rather pay the vehicle levy than carry around a government gps every day.

The main reason the last one didn't work was because the campaign was rushed and I don't think Translink was prepared. I also think a lot of people were able to vote and mailed in their ballots before Translink started getting its message out properly. It would be interesting to see what the results would have been had the referendum been in the referendum section of the civic elections.

I don't think they had enough time to sell the mayors plan, and the vision itself was shortsighted. A lot of people felt the tax was going to exist forever (and possibly increase) to fund only 10 years of construction. They should have done what works in the US, have a long term, 2040 vision, the tax is going to fund, with limits.

Each time we do this referendum junk, we lose another 2 years, and the prices go up. I agree in principle on why we need the referendum to add a new tax, but I disagree that we should be letting the Mayors decide anything because they are never going to decide on anything and it just kicks the can down the road to the next election cycle, where nothing else gets done. The Mayors have proven time and time again that they can't be trusted to do anything responsible with Translink.

The thing that should be happening is the Mayors pick all the options they individually agree on, and put those all on the referendum (so we don't end up with 20 referendums over the next 50 years.) Then when the referendum comes up, each item is ranked from "most favorable" to "least favorable", whatever is the most favorable to each city, that's the tax they get, but it must be set at a rate that is equitable with what each city sets. So you don't get something amounting to a 20$ per person in Surrey and something 100$ per person in New Westminster.

Eg the city can select the poison, but the province gets to decide how much pain.

Forget this "Mayors 10 year plan" part, because that's already gone and not happening.