[quote=“hoshq”]
It is interesting that the online budgets only go back as far as when the Liberals took over.
I figured that’s what it was though.[/quote]
Yes, it is very interesting. That’s why I wanted you to consider the source.
The liberals are using the same kind of tactics as the Bush people used in the November US election: Misinformation and claiming that everything has never been better.
For example, you quoted Belsey saying “I brought the college… I built the cruise ship dock… I got us the port deal.” when the local politician mostly involved in the port deal was Cullen ( he was even given applause by Federal Minister Emerson (a liberal!) on CBC radio Friday morning-Belsey wasn’t even mentionned).
And weren’t the college and the cruise dock planned before Belsey came into the picture? The work here was done by other people and he took the credit for it.
If you care about integrity, your choice should be someone else than Belsey.
So take your lecture about borrowing money to Bill Belsey the clown, not to me, thanks.[/quote]
According to that article, the debt under the NDP went from $17 billion to $33 billion, an increase of 94%, and under the Liberals from $33 billion to $38 billion, an increase of 15%.
So which party should be more shameful about the debt?
[quote=“hoshq”]
It is interesting that the online budgets only go back as far as when the Liberals took over. I figured that’s what it was though.[/quote]
Ive been using web.archive.org and going over the liberals website for the last 4 yrs and comparing it to today.
In fact you can use the archive.org site to look at all sorts of old provincial gov’t info as far back as '96. Ive found some NDP budget highlights from '98.
Liberals use sneaky stuff. After they were elected, my wife was on a Liberal email list. She used my email address so for a while I got mails from some liberal insider about websites that use online polls and directing people to those polls, telling them how to vote and to vote as many times as they could.
The first couple of times I got this I would contact the websites in question and tell them what was going on. One fellow replied that he knew something fishy was going on and redesigned his polling software.
Eventually I stopped recieving the mails about polls.
Voice of BC was one of the websites and the fellow in question sending them was Barry.Howat@bcliberals.com
Ive still got a few of them around. They go back to March 2002.
There are so many clowns in politics, and amazingly enough, a lot of clows like Bill Belsey get re-elected. And seriously, if he does get re-elected, I will be wondering about what the hell the people are smoking.
The BCLiberals are only looking to keep the money in their pockets, not to invest anything for the good of the province. Bunch of jackasses. Maybe not all, but most of them are…look at all the mess they’ve done, and most people I know are pissed off about it. I know I am.
Man, this has become an Liberal bashing ground. I wonder why so many people are so bitter about a government and its local MLA? Anyone care to answer this one?
Perhaps it because there’s now a whole circus. We elected Nettleton, and he ended up being such a clown we ended up worse off.
An Independent Liberal with neo-con values who touted an NDP policy and ended up an outsider.
It was pretty well inevitable that tuition had to increase in this province. I’ve seen a few colleges around the province, and frankly, they pretty well all look like crap. It’s pretty difficult to keep high traffic facilities like a post-secondary institute with the miniscule amount of tuition that they were able to charge a few years back. Even today, some facilities are still crap, even after gaining back some money with the recent tuition increases. BCIT had a building pretty much blow up last year. It’s still not fixed, and probably won’t be for a while. The building I’m in is pretty much unworkable conditions. Our classrooms have no ventilation to speak of. The roof is in constant repair. Classrooms are being renovated as we’re in them. And you know what it’s going to take to fix all this shit? Money. Money that still isn’t there today, and most definately wouldn’t be there without the current tuition increases. So, as a student, does it suck that tuition increaed? Of course. But the way I see it is, since I’m already stuck in a 25 degree classroom for 6 hours a day, without the extra $166400 that was charged in tuition today as compared to before the freeze, it could only get worse.
Tuition pays a very small portion of the operating costs of university and colleges. A large majority of the funding is from direct government spending.
So, the BC Liberals cut their direct funding, and let the institutions take the blame for raising the tuition.
It wasn’t inevitable.
I’m not sure what the proportion of tuition to government funding is… perhaps somebody can look it up. But the question that’s being asked in many jurisdictions is that if the government is already paying 85% (or whatever the figure may be) of the cost of running an institution, why not pay all of it?
Edit: good example at UBC’s site: total budget is $1,133,553. Tuition paid for $200,502. That means tuition pays for 17% of the operating costs of the university. So, let’s say the government cuts a part of its grant. Gotta make up the slack somewhere. And guess who gets the blame, even though it was the government who cut the funding?
The assumption that you’ve made is a common one, though: tuition pays for post-secondary education. It doesn’t. It pays a very small portion of it.
Im not much of a politics type of guy… I hate it… No matter who we vote for us on the northen communitys lose. As for liberals… I dunno im not a belsey fan… I voted for NDP in the federal election cause i agree with MiG, BC is better off with the NDP running the show… I belive our town is at the ultimate low… I do like the fact we got a Container port and it will be HUGE and i thank the GVT for that… But i dunno… the way i look at it… no matter who we vote for we lose, I like Gary Coons i like what he stands for and whatnot… But honestly i dont think the gvt cares and will listen to him, i think he would do a good job and the best that he could for us… He’s been here threw thick and thin… and He was the best math teacher. i dunno i just belive he is great for the job. I WANT mY COONS SIGN!
I don’t because the politicians are trying to take credit for work that was done by others. Belsey prancing around saying things like " I brought you the port". What a lack of integrity. The people that brought the port to Prince Rupert are Krusel and his crew of the Port Corporation. They’re the one to thank. They did all the work. Do you think the local MLA, whoever it would have been, could have worked against such a project? Not! So Belsey didn’t have a choice to support this but don’t kid yourself, of all the elected officials from the area, Nathan Cullen is the one that did a lot of work right from when he was elected. He recognized the benefits of this projects immediately. Belsey didn’t, he was too smitten by the oil and gas agenda.
Anyone else remember the CBC show (“Town Hall” maybe) that came to PR and was broadcasted across the country? I remember Joy Thorkelson making quite a passionate speech for the container port while liberals supporters were pushing the oil and gas project. Guess what came first? And Belsey goes around saying he brought the port to Prince Rupert!!!
Ive been thinking about the container port here. There was an article in the daily about CN and marketing to China/Japan etc to get traffic to come here and such.
Is it an automatic case of build it and they will come? Or now do the companies (Maher, CN etc) now have to go out and push the port facilities to get the container traffic here?
This is Maher’s only west coast facility as far as I can tell from their site. Are they going to have to fight for traffic to come here? Everyone says that Vancouver is overflowing with long waits for containers to be offloaded from ships or loaded onto rail cars.
Once its built, is it for sure we will get enough container traffic?
Well, the CN will be the ones putting the port in, so I am sure they will use it, especially with the amount of change they are putting into the project.
At the risk of sounding cliche… “If you build it, they will come.”