Canadian Politics Today

I guess I am looking at this and wondering how BC is better off with a stalled legislature.

I know Clark is supposed to do the right thing and step aside, according to the NDP/GP, but really I think the GP should have done the right thing and formed a minority government with the LP since together they would have a proper majority with a speaker taken from their ranks.

My take away here, as a guy who let his wife talk him into voting for the LP due to the local candidate but who was thinking of voting Green because I hate Clark, is that I no longer can trust the GP to do what makes sense: join with whichever party will take you to 44+ seats and allow for a speaker (so, have at least 45 seats).

Yes, this means compromise.

Instead, we have a GP that may have been swayed by an electorate who do not know of the difficulties of administering a legislature and committees without a clear majority.

What this means to me is that not only will I never vote for the NDP, but I will now no longer even consider the GP.

We saw the vote for the LP go down from 45% in the 2013 election to 40% this election.  I wonder how much of that is disgruntled (with Clark) LP supporters?

If so, it may be good to see the NDP/GP muddle through for a period of time as a reminder to these people that there is a reason to vote LP even if we do not like the leader - because the other side can't do basic math and we are not even discussing the deficit budgets yet.

The other take away for me is how much Andrew Weaver reminds me of Harper.

I hated Harper for his cold political calculations at the expense of good policy - cut the GST, bring in boutique tax credits, bring in the UCCB rather than boost the existing CTB system, that sort of thing.

For Weaver, it is going to be with his environmental policy where he often was taking reasonable positions but now will clearly move further into what people think the GP is supposed to be: some kind of left wing environmental policy shift without regard to staking out some middle ground like what Trudeau has tried to achieve with Notley and Clark.

For example, Weaver on oil sands: http://www.nature.com/news/canadian-oil-sands-defusing-the-carbon-bomb-1.10110 

But that was then and this, opportunity, is now.