Looming Provincial Election...

I think that during campaign times, the party faithful must be willing and capable of forgiving the party establishment for going soft on specific issues or for overly moderating their image. The 6 months before an election (in our fixed election system) are lost expectedly to pandering and unprincipled policy positions. However, good policy in the other three and a half years should more than make up for the relatively short period of pandering. We don't live in a perfect world, and we shouldn't expect perfection and completely principled stands from our elected officials - even when they're generally right on the issues.

Of course - I'm speaking of BC Premier Gordon Campbell. Premier Campbell is probably the best Premier in the entire country at the moment. 25% across-the-board tax cuts upon his election, the slow but steady removal of a $4 billion dollar deficit, the cutting of corporate taxes, the cutting of so many useless regulations and red-tape - and the list goes on. BC leads Canada in job creation and BC is just BC. We're naturally blessed with an amazing environment - BC is beautiful... which is something that I never truly came to appreciate until I visited Toronto a couple of times. Oh - and they also secured the 2010 Olympics! So yeah - the BC Liberals are pretty good.

Also, just for the non-BC readers who aren't completely familiar with the BC party system. We have three main parties in BC. The Liberals - which are made up of federal conservatives and probably half of the federal liberals (right-leaning liberals or just liberals who wanted to join a party that was on its way to getting elected), then we have the NDP, which is made up of federal NDPers and probably half of the more left-leaning federal liberals and lastly, we have the Green Party which captures anywhere from 12 - 15% of the vote. Basically, I like to believe that they're a diversion created by the Canadian chapter of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy in an effort to fool our province's left wing into long periods of (relatively) conservative rule. I can't see why they have such a large base of support. It's shocking - considering that they all equally hate Gordon Campbell and the NDP itself is pretty left-wing on its own.

I bring up the idea of forgiving the party in the face of an election campaign because a lot of pretty sad rhetoric has been flowing from the BC liberals in recent weeks in an effort to moderate their image. Yesterday's throne speech was awful.

They introduced a throne speech that promised to establish programs to ensure that British Columbians eat their "fruits and vegetables". What a ridiculous and hollow promise - but I'll accept it, if it keeps NDP rule away for good.