Former BC Environment Minister Joyce Murray retained Vancouver Quadra for Stephane Dion and the Liberals by a few votes over Conservative Deborah Meredith. Make it 15 years and counting for the Conservatives failing to an elect an MP in the City of Vancouver. For those of you scoring at home, and as the handbills which keep showing up around the neighbourhood me, David Emerson wasn't elected as a Tory.
NDP candidate Rebecca Coad finished third with 15%, which is a damned good result given that Quadra is where the most old money outside of Shaughnessy and the British Properties lives, Coad isn't exactly a star candidate, and the Georgia Strait stabbed the NDP campaign in the back by endorsing Dan Grice of the Green Party over Coad. The Strait's rationale? "the federal NDP has refused to promote a carbon tax. In this one respect, its climate-change policy is more regressive than that of one MLA for the area, Premier Gordon Campbell." Obviously, the editorial board at the Strait mistakes greenwashed Alberta-style vote buying intellectual fraud for sound environmental policy. Funny, New Democrats didn't have a carbon tax in their platform when the party won endorsements from Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, and former Greens like Stuart Parker and Joan Russow defected. I guess for a magazine growing ever more reliant on full-page condo ads, it follows that they would kneecap a party that believes in social justice AND protecting the environment, as opposed to Elizabeth May's band of Happy-go-Lucky Organic Libertarians.
As for publicizing Coad's refusal to do a cover photo with Grice, and citing it as some of the rationale to deny her an endorsement, this page can only think of one remedy for the Straight's editorial board exercise in petty vindictiveness. She won't do a patronizing 'cute kids of the wacky left' photo op...WAAAAAHHH!!! Suck it up: In case anyone hasn't noticed, real New Democrats aren't interested in photo-ops with Greens as the media continues to lump both parties in the 'left' category, without considering many Greens' outright contempt for organized labour or the social safety net. Also, Coad isn't obligated to regard herself as 'young people in politics' simply because the Straight says so. The Jib-Jab style front page of last week's edition with a caricature of Coad shrugging only adds insult to insult. The next time the Straight bitches about the government trying to unfairly tax them out of existence, remind me not to pay attention.
1 comment:
Good call!
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