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Premier Christy Clark’s government has brought back a campaign-spending law that was previously struck down as unconstitutional, saying it has made changes to address the court’s concerns.

The immediate response of most people who appreciate democracy and free speech is to challenge in court this truly anti-democratic legislation.

However, my advice is that rather than fighting the new “Gag Law”, opponents of the ridiculously anti-democratic law should get creative and work within or better yet, work around the rules that the government has created to stifle public debate and dialogue.

How to do that, you ask? Well read on…

Integrity BC, a non-partisan voice championing accountability and integrity in BC politics, has recently informed me that it is shockingly simple to start and keep a political party alive in British Columbia. How easy? Well, in B.C. a political party can be registered with the signature of only “two principal officers of the party”.

Not surprisingly, B.C. has, count them, 27 political parties, the most parties of any province in Canada.

IntegrityBC contrasted that number with the requirements in Alberta and Ontario. In Alberta the registration of a political party requires signatures from 0.3 per cent of the eligible number of electors in the last general election or roughly 7,000. In Ontario, it requires 1,000 signatures from eligible voters.

So rather than spend countless dollars and energy re-fighting this ridiculously anti-democratic legislation, the opponents of the legislation should simply start their own political party and spend to their hearts content in an effort to advance their issues.

Further to this news are the minimal standards for a party to remain in good standing with Elections BC. Rules surrounding the automatic deregistration of a party are far tougher in other provinces.

In Ontario, a party leader must attest annually in writing that the “fundamental purpose of the political party is to participate in public affairs by endorsing candidates and supporting their election” and the Chief Electoral Officer retains the right to deregister a party if – in his opinion – it fails “to participate in public affairs in accordance with its Statement of Fundamental Purpose.”

In Alberta, a party will be deregistered if it does not endorse a single candidate in a general election.

Yet, according to B.C.’s Election Act, a political party will only be deregistered if it fails to run at least two candidates in a general election and in the election preceding it. In 2009, six parties failed to run a single candidate in the general election nor a candidate in the three byelections since.

With the public financing of political parties in B.C. through tax credits of up to $500 per donor and the tax exempt status of political parties, it’s entirely conceivable under B.C.’s rules regarding party deregistration and the provinces fixed election dates that a political party could issue tax receipts for over eight years without ever running a candidate before being deregistered.

IntegrityBC noted that this is not an academic argument when two of the six parties that failed to run a candidate in 2009 – the B.C. Patriot party and the Advocational International Democratic party – reported over $5.8 million in assets in 2010.

So, rather than fighting this ridiculous law, work within it to promote your issues. Use these rules against the ones who wrote it.

The following is from our contributor, William Perry

“Dear Editor: Letter: Long Distant [Political] Relationships

Keeping a relationship alive across the miles is no easy task. Maintaining a healthy relationship when their just not into you is almost impossible.

A few years ago, I accused my gal Carole of cheating on me. She admitted there was another guy, full of life, nice hair, very frisky. He was Dutch! I admit we had only known one position – her in front. When the Dutch guy came along she talked about her being on top. Where did that come from?!?

Then along came Adrian. He was exotic, but familiar; well connected, yet independent; serious, but flexible. And although he had been with Glen, It was love at first sight.

Less than a year later I feel somethings wrong. His attentions have turned toward another – a BEATCH named ‘Ambition’. He also seems to be in a constant state of balagan [agitation], and I know that infighting is thinly cloaked with promises. 

I am starting to think it’s me.

Now I’m considering another long-distance relationship, which may be strained by cultural gaps.

Christy, a rose among thorns, is traveled, compromising, accepting of my need of a middle position. It is her second go-round in a relationship, but I don’t care.

Some, however, worry that Christy’s obligations shackled to her work will end up depriving me of effective guidance, and her very own aura of something big and beautiful, tolerant and pristine may not manifest.

I’m getting older, and with few domestic candidates left, the tall order compels me to choose between, familiarity with Christy’s openness to work it out, or Adrian who I don’t, in honesty, really feel connected to.

“The question is trickier than you think. “

What is the name of those new jets the Harper Conservatives are purchasing? Are they the same as the F-35s as described in the following article?

The United States is making a gigantic investment in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, billed by its advocates as the next — by their count the fifth — generation of air-to-air and air-to-ground combat aircraft. Claimed to be near invisible to radar and able to dominate any future battlefield, the F-35 will replace most of the air-combat aircraft in the inventories of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and at least nine foreign allies, and it will be in those inventories for the next 55 years. It’s no secret, however, that the program — the most expensive in American history — is a calamity.

To read the rest of this very interesting article, visit the Foreign Policy.

George Abbott, Minister of Education

This blog post has had a correction made to it. I have been informed that Susan Lambert has never refused to meet with the Minister of Education. 

Today, while talking with Stephen Quinn on  CBC Radio One, George Abbott, BC’s Minister of Education, issued a personal invitation to Susan Lambert (president of the BCTF) to sit down and discuss the government’s intentions, on a without prejudice basis;

“At numerous points over the past several months, I have offered to sit down with [BCTF President] Susan [Lambert] on a without-prejudice basis—she and her team and I and my team—to take the time to walk through all of the things that we are aiming to achieve with respect to evaluation, professional development, hiring, all of those,and many other issues around class size and composition. On each occasion, she has declined to sit down with me.

There are plenty of opportunities for her and for the leadership of the TF to explore those issues, either with me or certainly they can explore them with the mediator, Dr Charles Jago, on a without-prejudice basis as well, but again they appear resolute in not exploring any of those opportunities.” 

[Quinn asks, “What would Ms. Lambert and the BCTF have to gain by sitting down and talking to you right now?”]

“Well, the first thing they could gain would be an understanding of what it is we want to achieve, rather than filling in their vacuum around understanding with all of the assumptions about nefarious goals by the government. They clearly do not understand where we’re wanting to go there, and on every occasion I’ve been rebuffed when I’ve made the offer that I’d love to clarify those issues with them, because, again, we’re not inventing any new here: What we want to get is some consistency across the province in those areas, rather than having sixty different versions of all those things, which I think is inappropriate in a provincial system.”

Correction here; I previously claimed that Susan Lambert has refused to meet with the minister. Apparently this is not true. According to the BCTF Lambert has never refused to meet with the minister. Additionally, I have been informed that if George Abbott was serious about meeting with Susan Lambert he would write a letter to her, not issue an invite over the CBC.  I stand corrected.

Stephen Covey, author of the classic book on success states that one of the first rules of highly successful people is the ability to first seek to understand and then to seek to be understood. It appears that George Abbott is willing to help Lambert understand the goals the ministry of education is working towards.

It remains to be seen if Susan Lambert and the rest of the TF table officers will accept this latest olive branch.

To listen to the Stephen Quinn – George Abbott interview in its entirety, visit the CBC Radio One website.

Yesterday Joe Trasolini and the B.C. NDP won the Port Moody-Coquitlam by-election. This is a seat that was once held by Christy Clark herself. I caught up to Trasolini at his (very loud) victory celebration late yesterday evening. Here is a snippet of my conversation with Trasolini;

As well as Trasolini winning the Port Moody-Coquitlam, NDP candidate Gwen O’Mahony quite convincingly won the former B.C. Liberal stronghold of Chilliwack-Hope.

Perhaps the big loser in these by-elections was John Cummins and the B.C. Conservatives who finished in third place in both ridings.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post on the B.C. Conservative’s lack of interest in a merger with the B.C. Liberals. In todays Vancouver Sun Vaughn Palmer discusses the same issue with Phil Hochstein.

Phil Hochstein

Hochstein is more interested in seeing a right-wing merger than he is in waiting for the B.C. Liberals to completely crash and flame out.  On the other hand, John Cummins, the B.C. Conservative leader seems to be more than willingly to patiently wait to form government. It appears that he is actually willing to allow four or even eight years of an NDP government before he makes his move to form goverment.

Not the news that Phil Hochstein wants to hear.

While the chatter about a merger between the federal NDP and the Liberal Party of Canada is heating up again, it has become more than evident that the BC Conservatives are taking an entirely different approach to the “splitting the right-wing vote” in BC.

The leader of the BC Conservatives, John Cummins, seems more interested in helping the BC Liberals along their path to utter and complete destruction than he does in wooing any of the sitting B.C. Liberal MLAs.

It is appearing more and more likely that the BC Liberal “brand” is going to go the way of the old Socred brand; complete and total collapse. Once that happens, John Cummins will no longer have to worry about “splitting” the right-wing vote. The BC Conservative party will be the only viable choice for those inclined to vote against the New Democrats.

I can’t help but wonder if B.C. Liberal MLA Harry Bloy’s slow motion career train wreck is a preview of what Premier Christy Clark is going to experience.

To see the video of Harry Bloy doing his Kony 2012 meltdown imitation visit the CBC website.

Harry Bloy, the only B.C. Liberal MLA to endorse Christy Clark’s leadership bid has had a troubled relationship with his responsibilities in government. Bloy was dropped from the B.C. Liberal cabinet after a less than stellar performance in the ministry of social development (the Community Living debacle).

Bloy was then demoted to a cabinet position as minister of state for multiculturalism, a junior role with a low profile. He has since resigned from that cabinet position after it was revealed that he had leaked an email from The Province paper to a third party.

Now Premier Christy Clark is admitting that Bloy’s bizarre rant was “completely offside.” Yep.

There is a new, alternative source of news available online, The Federationist; this is definitely not your mainstream news source. However, they do publish interesting news. Today I found a posting about the impact that raw log exports have on the BC economy. Here is an excerpt from that posting:

BC’s steadily-rising levels of raw-log exports are contributing to forest-industry job loss in a number of ways.

The impact of log exports on jobs has contributed to the loss of over 35,000 forest-sector jobs since 2001. Over that  same period raw-log exports of nearly doubled, from 2.9 cubic meters to over 5.5 million.

Log exports kill jobs by eliminating manufacturing opportunities. Some 16 percent of all the logs exported in 2011  were high-value Douglas fir logs, the kinds that were supposed to support a new generation of BC sawmills like  Western Forest Products New Westminister sawmill. The mill was specifically designed to handle smaller-dimension  second-growth Douglas fir, yet it closed in 2007.

To read more about the raw log export issue visit The Federationist.

An interesting blog a friend sent to me today, Clusterfuck Nation by James Howard Kunstler. The following is an excerpt from that blog;

Is there a Baby Boomer so dim in this land of rackets and swindles who thinks that he or she will escape the wrath of the Millennials rising? The developing story is so obvious that only an academic economist could fail to notice. Here’s how it will go: some months from now, as the financial unwind worsens, and the mirage of gainful employment shimmers away to nothing, and the technocrats of Europe meet nervously by some Swiss lakeside (and are seen glumly shaking their heads), and Romney and Obama try to out-do each other peddling miracle cures for the tanking national self-esteem – a dangerous meme will go forth across the internet, and this meme will say: Millennials, renounce your college loans and set yourselves free!

Thoughts? To read more of Clusterfuck Nation, Visit http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/04/strange-jubilee-1.html

Let me knowwhat you think of it.Pretty radical ideas.