End of week one

So the election campaign is now well underway. It has been fairly quiet in our riding so far but expect things to pick up quickly now.

One of the major reasons for the quiet was no doubt the tragic death of Liberal candidate Andrew Mak, who suffered a heart attack last weekend. My sincerest condolences to his family, I hope that the election was not a contributing factor but anyone who has been involved with an election campaign knows how stressful it can be.

This week the Liberals named their replacement candidate, Haida Lane.

It was an interesting week on all fronts particularly with regard to the NDP. Although Carole James called for a carbon tax just a couple of years ago, her and local NDP MLA Shane Simpson have gone on the attack against the Liberals with their 'Axe the Tax' campaign. The ironic thing is that while the NDP are calling for 'Cap-and-Trade' instead, they actually voted against the Western Climate Initiative, a cap-and-trade system, just a couple of months ago. There was a lot of controversy when several environmental organisations came out in support of the Liberals as a result of this and a key party supporter quit the NDP.

For me it is quite disappointing. I have never been a supporter of the BC NDP but saw the environment as one of their strong points up until the last couple of years. Under the leadership of Carole James they have stooped to the lowest of lows and are now siding with 'Climate Change Deniers' (the Conservative Party of BC) and the federal Conservative Party, who were 'Climate Change Deniers' until recently but are now better described as 'Climate Change Ignorers'.

The fact of the matter is that we need a carbon tax and cap-and-trade. In the big picture these are all just small steps and we need many small steps to get where we are going. The NDP seemed to understand this just a couple of years ago but have now completely abandoned their principles to pander to reactionaries who are not willing to change their own habits for the benefit of future generations. How can we ask industry to pay all the costs of greenhouse gas emissions if we are not willing to pay our own fair share?

There were plenty of areas where the NDP could have successfully attacked the Liberals over the environment. Their record has been downright terrible in many respects. But they chose to focus on the one area which might win them some rural votes in a pathetic attempt to win an election which is unwinnable due to the fact that their leader is even more unpopular than Gordon Campbell. No one may have heard of Jane Sterk, but at least the more they hear about her the more they like her!

Really the important point of all this is that our legislature is completely dysfunctional. We need to elect Green Party members to bring balance to our government. The Green Party has been standing by the same principles for more than 25 years, and we will stand by the same principles when we elect MLA's. Right now our legislature is controlled by the reactionary segment of our population, instead of the majority view. When you go to vote on May 12th (and please do - this is possibly the most important election in our history) remember this. When BC-STV is successfully passed, many of these problems will be resolved. But the 2013 election is four years away. And the way it is looking now it will be another 4 years of Liberal arrogance and NDP whining.

The only option for change we have for this upcoming government is to bring Green MLA's into the legislature under the current system.

This is not possible without your support. Please help out however you can - whether you can come out every night for the next three weeks and help the cause, or simply tell ten friends who live in the riding - your support is appreciated.

Campaign kickoff!

So the 2009 BC provincial election is officially underway as of today.

I am excited to be running a zero waste sign campaign! This is the result of several months hard work on my part - at first I envisioned a great cost savings too. I re-used material that was given to me from our municipal campaign.

It was a lot of hard work moving so much material around, disassembling the signs from their wooden frames, cleaning the signs to prepare them for screenprinting and bringing them all in. This was especially complicated by a move which required me to move all the hundreds of board of coroplast and framing materials.

But the hard work all paid off today when I picked up the large size signs and dropped the rest of the material off for the small size which will be ready tomorrow. If you know anyone in the riding who would be willing to take a signs please have them contact me at sign@ryanconroy.ca, especially if they are on a major street but we have signs for everyone.