kelownabomberfan

How did I know that this would be your response. Look, you can blame NDP losing on "ideological hatred" and put your head in the sand, if that makes you feel better, or you can go out in the world and find out why the NDP isn't very popular. Taxing and spending is not a popular method to stay elected. At some point you have to pay the piper. But the real scary part of the NDP isn't even the taxing or the spending, it's this new environmentalist faction that is just killing you guys.

I think if Notley is interested in political survival, she should drop the NDP moniker and do a center-left alliance with the Alberta Liberal Party of some kind. I realize that this is easier than it sounds, but I'm not the only one saying this. After watching Notley getting booed by members of her own party at the convention two weeks ago when she started talking about building more pipelines, I realized that the NDP is really struggling with its identity right now. The old guard of labour unions and trades is still there, but they are being under-mined by a young, more militant faction of environmentalists, who don't seem to care about jobs or the economy. Case in point - I tuned in on CPAC to the convention and watched Daniel Blaikie make an impassioned plea for union jobs in the Aerospace sector in Winnipeg. He came across as passionate and legitimately concerned about Winnipeg aerospace workers. He wanted the NDP to adopt a policy to protect workers from some unfair legislation. He seemed to be making great head-way, until another delegate from Quebec, some young woman, stood up and implored the party to vote down the resolution that Blaikie was asking for, because these workers worked on airplanes, and airplanes use "fossil fuel". So there you go, if you are in an industry that uses "fossil fuel", there are people in the NDP who honestly believe that you shouldn't be working in it. This faction, lead by Steve Lewis and his brain-damaged son Avi (along with Avi's wife Naomi Klein) are growing stronger every day, and continue to push the Leap Manifesto. That means that Notley is screwed. Her own party hates her province and wants all oil industry jobs killed, as well as all future pipeline projects. If she truly wants to stand up for Albertans, she has to walk away from her own schizophrenic party and fight the good fight via a different party that still believes in jobs and the economy, not insane fairy land concepts that the NDP Leapers want to see.

More on the ruling of the BC Court of Appeals:

Thanks for posting that link Jacquie. All I can say is that the author of that article is being horrible biased and not telling the entire story, not by a long shot. She also mentions the 2014 BC Supreme Court ruling of Justice Griffin. That ruling was over-turned in the BC Court of Appeal, and soundly over-turned. The BCTF and Justice Griffin looked rather foolish, in fact. http://globalnews.ca/news/1971504/b-c-court-of-appeal-rules-in-favour-of-government-over-bctf/

I think it actually would make a huge difference. Blaming NDP failures at the ballot box to just pure ideological hatred is not accepting the real problem, and that is that the NDP policies just don't resonate well with the voters. The BC NDP had the last election here in 2013 in the bag, until their leader Adrian Dix (who also was responsible for the 1998 deal with the BCTF that screwed over taxpayers) said that he would outright kill a $4 billion economic development project, the Kinder Morgan pipeline. He dropped about 20% in the polls the next day. How is that "ideological hatred"? It's just plain stupid is what it is. And the NDP just doesn't get it. You are right about one thing, adhering to a failed ideology no matter what and expecting a different result every election does seem to indicate blindness. Or insanity.

I'm not going to go around the merry-go-round again with Enstrom. Let's just say if he's traded, I'm not going to cry.

what I think people should do is look at the big picture when voting, rather than just one or two issues, or how the government policy affects only their own lives. I had a neighbor once who told me that they voted NDP, purely because they felt that the NDP would give them more welfare than the Liberals. I just hate that mentality, just as I hate the unions always putting millions of dollars and forcing members to work for the NDP, purely for selfish interests which include sweet-heart labour deals, that screw the taxpayers. If its truly about everyone winning, then this myopic approach just doesn't work in the long term. You can't just keep upping labour costs and expect there not to be consequences.

Do you have a link to that story? Because while you say it is from the CKNW website, you are barfing up all of the BCTF's propaganda. If teachers were stripped of bargaining rights, then why did they just bargain a new five year settlement last year? The BCTF was angry because their cosy little deal with their NDP puppets was ripped up, because it never should have been given to them in the first place. And the Supreme Court of BC agrees with that conclusion. You can't hand over the right to determine class size and composition to a union. It's just not right, morally or financially. But the NDP did it anyway. Just brutal.

But Iso, doesn't paying that $1,000 extra every year that you didn't before to a government bureaucracy seem well worth it, as it eases your liberal guilt as you now can say that you are doing something to "fight" climate change? I know here in BC every time I get my natural gas bill and there's an extra $25 tacked on it for carbon taxes, I get a special glow inside of happiness as I know that somewhere, man-made climate change is taking it right in the chops, all thanks to me.

Was that negotiated with the NDP or the Liberals? The NDP were turfed out of office in May 2001, losing 77-2. What a glorious day that was. I honestly don't think those numbers are outrageous, regardless of what party negotiated them, if those are indeed true. What I don't like is the union having the power to determine class size and composition. That's like asking Matt Sheridan to guard your stash of doughnuts.

I am pointing out the absurdity of making a comment about the CRA when I was just pointing out that no one would call me back, even though I was calling their main "Business Opportunities" line. Like, why would no one call me back?

Here in BC last election there was blatant abuse by the unions. They really angered a lot of members with their constant badgering to go and support the NDP and do campaign work.

Uh...Jackie, I don't want to get into a battle with you, but yeah the average class size now, with the union not having the power to hire more teachers anymore, is 20-26. Yup. The 3 students per teacher was an exaggeration. Anyway, it's clear where your loyalties lie, and from this post, it's clear you either don't understand what I am saying, or are deliberately spinning to make your beloved NDP look better. Whatever it is, I don't think its worth going much further with you. Facts are: 1998 - the BC NDP which was in government at the time, gave the BCTF the power to determine class size and composition. This was a ridiculous outrage and a blatant conflict of interest, as it essentially handed the union the right to hire as many teachers as it saw fit. So naturally, they started hiring and running the budget completely out of control. 2001 - BC government comes in and rips up the contract that the BCTF had "bargained" with the BC NDP. 2001 - 2016 - millions of dollars have been spent in legal fees as the BCTF has tried to get this action deemed unconstitutional. They found a judge in BC dumb enough to agree with them, but that judge's ruling was over-turned at the BC Supreme Court level, with the justices actually admonishing the judge for her terrible ruling. Never seen that before. Now the ruling is being appealed to the Canadian Supreme Court. I really hope the BCTF loses. 2017 - all of this legal wrangling may be moot if the BC NDP get in again, as they no doubt will just hand the same power over to the BCTF again. Right now the BC NDP isn't doing well in the polls, as they are opposing all economic development, and so even the union vote is leaving them. I really hope the NDP become the third party in BC, as we need another alternative here.

Not sure why you would do that, or what relevance this comment has, whatsoever, other than to be snarky, but what else is new. Anyway, to each their own. I just found it interesting and sort of sad that no one in the Manitoba government could be bothered to call me back, especially when the reps from the other provinces were quick to respond. Especially with Manitoba having all of those extra redundant employees.

another thing I noticed - in the past few months I've been in contact with business development offices of various provinces. - BC guy returned my call in two hours - Alberta person returned my call in three hours - Saskatchewan guy actually answered the phone - I left three voicemails for the Manitoba contact line, over the course of two weeks. No one ever called me back. Time to get some business friendly people back working in the Manitoba government.

Job one for me would be to determine where all of the current government spending is actually going. Manitoba has been running giant deficits for years. And yet nothing seemed to be getting better on the social services side. So where is all of the money going? It has to be going somewhere. In BC, the new government found there were 8,000 (I am going on memory here) government workers hired by the NDP that were completely unnecessary. So they let them go. I saw a great example of this. My company received a hiring grant from the provincial and federal government, and every month two bureaucrats came to the office and made us sit through a tedious meeting to "discuss" how the $5,000 we received that month had been spent. What a waste. As soon as the Liberals took over, the provincial guy was canned. He was really bitter about it, in the last meeting we had with him, but we said to him "welcome to the real world now". The party was over.

I believe that Manitoba has the highest rate of child poverty, but BC is a close second. I do like how the NDP here in BC scream about this all the time, and yet when it's pointed out that Manitoba has high rates too, it's suddenly a federal responsibility.

No I didn't misread it. The BCTF was given the right to determine class size and composition in 1998. Which is a total conflict of interest. Imagine in the real world, a business hands over all hiring decisions to the union. Suddenly they are hiring tons of guys and the business goes bankrupt, as they can't bear the weight of the extraneous workers. This is what was happening in BC with teachers until the Liberals took away this right, that the BCTF claimed they had "bargained for". Yeah right. Whenever a government union "bargains" with an NDP government, they are bargaining with themselves.

Not gonna lie. I will never, ever, ever, ever vote NDP. Provincially or federally. Just the worst party ever invented in history. So corrupt and stupid. Blech. I wish them nothing but exile to the dustbin of Canadian political history. May you never ever darken Manitoba's political doors ever again.

except that the NDP is a disease. ABNDP - anywhere in Canada.

I still remember 1999 when the NDP won - Pat Martin was on the TV and was going on about how "transition teams" were already at work to move the NDP into power. So happy tonight that "transition teams" are now already at work freeing Manitoba from the NDP enslavement. Next up - a Grey Cup for the Blue!

It's one thing if your union gets you job security. But if there's a whole pile of people that were hired for basically no reason, and now you can't fire them, you are essentially powerless to cut spending. You are stuck. The BC government saw the union hiring thousands of extra teachers without regard to the cost and had to put a stop to it, one way or the other. It's great to have three students per teacher but that's an unsustainable system.

Good to see Argo fans finally getting to enjoy a game-day experience they've been denied so long by those ass-clowns at Rogers.

http://globalnews.ca/news/2449500/mgeu-members-promised-no-layoffs-for-five-years-in-new-contract-offer/

It might just be general NDP ineptitude.