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I have been sitting on this guest post (for no particular reason) from our frequent contributor, William Perry for more than a few days and seeing as it is a look into 2012, I thought it best to get it published sooner rather than later.

As always, I do not necessarily agree or disagree with the ideas expressed by guest posts. I simply post them for the sake of discussion.

Dear Editor: BC Politics has been taken over by kooks 

The Year of the Crazies

It’s that time of year when wags and pundits are supposed to gaze into their crystal ball and declare what the coming year holds. I don’t have a crystal ball. Never claimed to. But I don’t need one to tell you that 2012 is going to be a year of hard, mean politics in a province that is famous for bare-knuckled antics and shameful tactics.

Since the BC Liberals made themselves into a party in 1903, they have achieved much. Not a perfect record by any stretch of the imagination, still have been the power for the last ten years.

In contrast, the NDP, with that left-wing tilt has finally led the party to the logical and inevitable terminus, to the very brink of its own sanity. This year it looks like the grand old socialist party has finally stepped over that brink, and BC has led the parade all the way.

The late William F. Buckley Jr. said he had spent his life separating the kooks from the conservatives. Today, every political party has been taken over by the kooks, driven by the hype and hysteria of the ‘Me’ parties, and the psychotic intransigence of the no-tax pledge and personified by the likes of Adrian Dix and Christy Clark – who represent opposite polls of likeable.

In recent years, BC Liberals have demonstrated their true loyalties, fighting to remove environmental regulations, and those hindrances of economic prosperity. On the other side of the Leg, the NDP call themselves the party of personal freedom, and they show their love by opposing legislation to protect the right of BCers to use obsolete incandescent light bulbs, but they would not amend their own Constitution to empower the right women to take the reins of leadership.

The circus of wannabe premier candidates has been crisscrossing the province in an interminable series of town hall discussions, although they do all the talking, where we have seen the party faithful applaud Adrian Dix’s record vintage 4 o’clock.

The most recent of polls show the current premier/former talk show host leading the field of likeables. In the party preference the NDP is ahead for now. Let me say that again: For Now!

With a tooted victory bringing Federal shipbuilding to BC, Clark’s image will most certainly be deliberated in all regions of the province. Dix being on the anti-HST winning team is yet to yield it’s final approval ratings.

The possibilities are endless to whom will carrying the BC flag in next election’s victory speech, but the prospect has made the New Democrats absolutely giddy. They love the thought of victory so much that they intend to cross the straight by foot. This, of course, will lead to outraged squealing and squirting by aggrieved Liberals, demanding strict party registration in future elections.

Oh, where will it end? Where will it end?

The other political story to watch next year involves the BC Conservative Party and the BC First Party. It is hard to imagine how either can run afoul given the competition: Christy Clark’s mishandling of “fill in the blank”, and Adrian Dix’s dredging [pot kettle black] may prove to be an epic fiasco for both parties.

Will we see the Leg be better behaved and functional in 2012? I personally doubt it.

But, by all means, Stay tuned.

Snooping around the Facebook pages for a few of the NDP leadership hopefuls it is interesting to note that Peggy Nash has 6051 likes, Nathan Cullen has 5485, Brian Topp has 3708, and Thomas Mulcair has 2360. “Paul Dewar for leader of the NDP” has 233 likes whereas his “Paul Dewar, Politician” Facebook page has something like 4000 likes.

What do these numbers indicate…if anything?

I’m back from my meeting with Thomas Mulcair, NDP leadership hopeful. The impression of Mulcair that I received was one of a very well spoken, determined and charismatic politician.

Thomas Mulcair

I asked Mulcair whether the NDP success in Quebec was a result of the voters tiring of the Bloc or if it was an actual embracing of the NDP. Mulcair told me that it was a combination of the two.

He talked about the years of him and Jack Layton traveling and working in Quebec in order to take the NDP message to the people of Quebec who had been voting Bloc.

He jokingly added that they, “Have a got to find a way to make the NDP as popular to the rest of Canada as it is in Quebec.”

When he was asked what it will take for the NDP to form government, he said that the party needs to embrace change, involve youth and to “Do what we did in Quebec.”

He added that the NDP needs to demonstrate to the people of Canada that they are able to provide competent, and capable administration and that the only “special interest group” that the NDP will answer to are the people of Canada.

He also said that the NDP need to work hard in places like New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland-Labrador and PEI. He lamented the fact that the NDP had dropped seats in Manitoba and that there are at least six more seats in BC for the NDP. Mulcair promised to work harder than anyone else in the NDP to form government.

Finally, when asked about Peggy Nash, his leadership rival, Mulcair said that it is not enough to be able to speak a few words of French, the party leader must be able to convince people, in French, to vote for the NDP.

Next NDP leadership candidate for me to meet is Nathan Cullen.

Later today I will be meeting with Thomas Mulcair, federal NDP leadership hopeful. There are a couple of questions I have ready to ask, if I get the opportunity.

The first question I have for Mulcair is, did the recent NDP election success in Quebec have more to do with the collapse of the Bloc or was it an actual embracing of the NDP by the people of Quebec?

The second question I have for Mulcair is, recognizing that politics is a fickle enterprise, to the best of your ability, do you believe that the people of Quebec will continue to support the NDP, or, was the recent election success a one-time success?

And, if I have time for a third question I will ask Mulcair for his prediction for the future of the Liberal Party of Canada.

More later this evening, if I can get my questions to Mulcair.

The following is an unconfirmed quote from Rick Perry, current Governor of Texas and Republican Presidential candidate. The following makes me wonder if Perry needs to review his geography or if he is assuming that Manifest Destiny is fait de accompli.

Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don’t have to buy from a foreign source.
—Gov. Rick Perry

Here I am, out of the country trying to have a vacation away from B.C. politics and B.C. political shenanigans and I see this …

Smart Meters

With teacher negotiations dragging along in BC and the control of professional development being a significant part of those negotiations, it is interesting to sneak a peak at what they are doing in Finland with their education system.

The following is an excerpt from a New York Times article about the Finnish education system;

Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish educator and author, had a simple question for the high school seniors he was speaking to one morning last week in Manhattan: “Who here wants to be a teacher?”

Out of a class of 15, two hands went up — one a little reluctantly.

“In my country, that would be 25 percent of people,” Dr. Sahlberg said. “And,” he added, thrusting his hand in the air with enthusiasm, “it would be more like this.”

In his country, Dr. Sahlberg said later in an interview, teachers typically spend about four hours a day in the classroom, and are paid to spend two hours a week on professional development. At the University of Helsinki, where he teaches, 2,400 people competed last year for 120 slots in the (fully subsidized) master’s program for schoolteachers. “It’s more difficult getting into teacher education than law or medicine,” he said.

Dr. Sahlberg puts high-quality teachers at the heart of Finland’s education success story — which, as it happens, has become a personal success story of sorts, part of an American obsession with all things Finnish when it comes to schools.

Take last week. On Monday, Dr. Sahlberg was the keynote speaker at an education conference in Chicago. On Tuesday, he had to return to Helsinki for an Independence Day party held by Finland’s president — a coveted invitation to an event that much of the country watches on television.

To read the rest of this article have a look here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/education/from-finland-an-intriguing-school-reform-model.html?_r=1&hpw

Is anyone else enjoying the irony of the fact that BCPSEA, the BC government and the Ministry of Education have been pretty much beating up BC teachers over the fact that teachers are not sending out report cards and are instead using all sorts of technology to keep parents informed about how their kids are doing at school?

Why is this ironic? Because the Ministry of Education is promoting their BC Education Plan which involves loads of technology and what they are calling 21st century skills. The same sort of skills that teachers have been using to communicate with their students and the parents of their students.

And yet the government and their bargaining arm, BCPSEA have gone back to the LRB demanding that teachers write on a piece of paper to inform parents about their kid’s progress. I do love irony.

Listening to the call in show on The Current this morning on CBC Radio One was heartbreaking. The show was focused on the issue of poverty and they had Canadians calling in to. Discuss what it was like to live in poverty.

As usual, when we hear these stories we want to reach out to help the individuals who describe the choices they have to make in order to survive their day to day lives. One example, a blind man who chooses to buy dog food for his seeing eye dog rather than buy enough groceries to adequately feed himself.

Our typical response is to call the radio show and try to make a donation to the individuals who have so eloquently shared their experiences. The problem with this type of response is that there are tens of thousands of other people who did not get the chance to describe their experiences with poverty. Who is helping them?

It seems to me that there are systemic problems in our approach to poverty that can not be addressed by opening our wallets to the people who have the opportunity to plead their case. I have no idea what the solution to this situation is. I’m not sure anyone does, but the fact is, we need to make some kind of changes if we really do want to be a caring and compassionate population.

The one thing that jumped out at me after the weekend debate between the NDP leadership hopefuls was a tweet sent out during the French language portion of the debate.

Paul Dewar

That tweet commented that Paul Dewar, one of the NDP leadership front-runners, spoke French with a heavy accent.

Excuse me? Would anyone EVER dream of saying that Jack Webster or Jean Chretien spoke English with a heavy accent? Is the fact that people speak with an accent even a relevant part of anyone’s leadership discussion?

So what if Dewar spoke French with an accent. French is clearly not his first language. Bottom-line, He was able to effectively communicate in both of Canada’s official languages. And that is what counts.