Best wishes for a great year ahead in 2013

To friends old and new, wherever you are, Happy New Year!

Thank you again for joining me on this journey through-out this past year.  It's hard to believe, and at times I find it amazing, but I am now 3 years in to this adventure with the Conservative Thoughts blog.

From me to you, sincerest best wishes for a great year ahead in 2013.

Alan Forseth 
Kamloops, BC

Merry Christmas my friends

The Word Became Flesh

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1: 1 - 5)

Merry Christmas ... may the peace of God be with you during this joyous time of year!

Thank you for joining me on another year of  Conservative Thoughts.  This will be my last post for 2012.  See you next year!

Whatever Kevin (Krueger) thinks, many are INDEED concerned with the downgrade ... and much has been written about it by mainstream media

Kamloops South Thompson BC Liberal MLA Kevin Krueger

For some reason, my friend Kevin Krueger (and Kamloops South Thompson BC Liberal MLA) keeps insisting that all is well with the provinces finances, that they have a handle on the annual and ongoing budget deficits ... and that we should have no concerns about the doubling of debt.

I ... and many others ... would beg to differ.

Kevin on the other hand has gone so far as to say, and I quote:
The BC Conservatives have never done a positive thing for B.C. I have yet to see an apology from John Cummins for the lie he published about BC's Triple A credit rating; we still have it; it is the highest rating in the world, and our interest rates are COMPLETELY UNAFFECTED by Moody's debt warning. All the BCC's have ever accomplished is to elect NDP MLA's.

For starters I MUST remind Kevin that the BC Conservative Party has really only come back to the forefront of BC politics in the past 2 years -- so we have actually played NO role in NDP MLA's being elected.

Those reading Kevin's comments may or may not agree with him -- its up to you. That said, BC Conservative Party leader John Cummins was quite clear in his thoughts on the downgrade of BC's credit rating by Moody's:

“Shocking” was the response last evening from John Cummins, leader of the BC Conservatives, as Moody’s Investor Service downgraded British Columbia’s credit rating to Aaa negative.  “BC’s debt is rapidly rising, even as our economic growth is dramatically slowing.  Meanwhile, the BC Liberals are spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on feel-good, pre-election advertising in the hope they can mask British Columbia’s deteriorating fiscal problems.”

The Moody’s down-grade of B.C.’s debt was accompanied by a sober assessment of the province’s economic and fiscal position.

1) The province’s net debt has grown from “roughly” 65 per cent of revenues in 2008, to 82 per cent in the current fiscal year. That number is expected to grow to approximately” 94 per cent by 2014 / 2015.

2) The fiscal deficit for 2012/13 is forecast to grow by at least 50 per cent (from less than $1.0 billion, to nearly $1.5 billion) – or 3.5 per cent of revenues

3) BC’s economic growth is slowing (according to B.C.’s Economic Forecast Council), to an expected 2.1 per cent in 2012, and 2.2 per cent in 2013.

“B.C.’s total debt will double in just over a decade under the BC Liberals from $33.8 billion, to $66.4 billion,” said Cummins.  “Now, as a result of the credit down-grade, our borrowing costs will rise ever higher. Even though the BC Liberals claim to be superb economic and fiscal managers, the evidence clearly proves otherwise.”

Well of course my Liberal friend Kevin wasn't going to see eye-to-eye on that assessment.  His retort was that:

PETER SHARP; I am not running to become the candidate for the BC Conservative Party in Kamloops South Thompson for a lark -- I am running because I believe I can win."

Former Kamloops City Councilor Peter Sharp; now
seeking BC Conservative nomination in Kamloops South

Today we have another guest piece ... this time from Peter Sharp, who is seeking the BC Conservative party nomination for Kamloops South Thompson.

In BC's  39th provincial general election, three and a half years ago, a shockingly large number of registered voters decided not to go to the polls. 

Right here in the Kamloops South Thompson riding there were 40,200 registered voters -- however only 23,400 actually did cast a ballot.   

And across the province?  Well in 2005 the BC Liberals received 807,000 votes ... that fell to 750,000 in the last election held in 2009.  A similar pattern shows for the NDP who received 730,000 in 2005 ... but only 690,000 in 2009.   

Voter apathy continues to grow, and I can see only one reason for that; a increasing belief that government no longer responds to the real needs of its citizens, and that elected officials are only out for themselves.  

Over the past 20 years, British Columbian's have witnessed both NDP and BC Liberal governments mismanaging our finances.  

We need a change!  We need commons sense, integrity and accountability in government.

I support party Leader John Cummins, and  the common sense, people oriented, ideals of the BC Conservative Party.  I also believe that we can once again make our province a place where individuals, and families, can grow and prosper.

It is easier still to allow the emotional argument to compel lawmakers to make an imprudent and fiscally uninformed decision

The BC Liberal government, and the NDP on before it, have lost focus on the need to prioritize the expenditure of dollars to keep government efficient and limited, and instead have simply embraced a progressive ideology that suggests expanding, overreaching and overspending is the proper and fundamental responsibility of government.

This has led to a consistent, steep growth in government, to the detriment of a sustainable provincial budget and British Columbia’s private sector.

It is also too easy for our MLA's to become separated from the “bottom-line” of budget reality and instead become caught up in the dazzling attraction of single projects.  In my experience in the legislature, every project was presented as beneficial and necessary, with a compelling argument for funding.

This made it difficult to say no. 

And because projects presented outside the budget bill are disconnected from the overall fiscal reality, it is easier still to allow the emotional argument to compel lawmakers to make an imprudent and fiscally uninformed decision. These problems have added to the specter of less money in the pockets of British Columbia taxpayers thanks to a proposed gas tax increase in 2013

BC MLA's need to go back to basics and rediscover the benefits of prioritizing government functions and staying focused. 

They also need to reconnect with bottom line budget reality as each new enticing project is passed under their noses. 

And they need to reject the idea that more money has to be stripped from the taxpayers’ pockets to pay for roads. 

Clear common sense thinking will lead legislators down the right road; a road that rejects this muddled-thinking tax increase and transports them back to the prosperous reality of a limited, efficient government.

"There is no shortage of low-paid jobs. It's the well-paying sectors like natural resources, agricultural products, and manufacturing that are declining"

I hope you won't mind the change, in fact I am sure you won't.  In the coming months leading up to the provincial general election next May, I am opening up the Conservative Thoughts blog to my friends who like me are small 'c' conservatives with a social conscience.

 

Scott Anderson, BC Conservative
candidate for Vernon - Monashee

Today I am delighted to present the talk given by Vernon - Monashee BC Conservative candidate Scott Anderson -- this was to party members in Kamloops at a function they held a week and a half ago.

Will Rogers once said that if even 10% of what politicians promised came true, none of us would want to go to Heaven because it would be too much fun here.  What he meant of course is that politicians have a reputation for telling people what they want to hear instead of telling them the truth.

Looking at British Columbian politics today we can see why politicians have such a bad reputations. 

I'm going to use the Northern Gateway pipeline as an example, but I'd like each of you to think of it as representative of something much bigger - the way we do business in this province. 

Christy Clark has been blowing hot and cold about the pipeline depending on which group is making the most noise, and Liberal MLAs have been running around like headless chickens trying to figure out what direction Clark is going in each day.  The latest news is that Clark is refusing to even meet with pipeline officials, but tomorrow she may be having tea with them! 

The NDP, for its part, is against the pipeline but won't come out and say it - instead they are going to bury it in red tape with yet another redundant  "environmental review." As you know, the federal government is conducting a months-long, multimillion dollar environmental review.  But the NDP's second review will ask the same questions, get the same answers, cost millions of our dollars, and it's all just for show because they've already said they're against the pipeline.

What the two parties have in common is that neither one is being upfront with us. 

The BC Conservatives aim to change that way of doing business.  We WILL tell you where we stand.  If everything we know so far holds true, we ARE for the pipeline.  If there truly are 4,100 person-years of direct on-site work, and a total of 35,000 person-years of work throughout the province, then - with the proper environmental controls in place - we would be fools NOT to go ahead with the pipeline. 

Let's talk about economic realities in Canada for a moment.  The Canadian Energy Research Institute estimates that there the oil sands will generate $2.1 trillion in economic benefits over the next 25 years and about 905,000 jobs by 2035.

Here's what Marc Joiner, a partner at Deloitte has to say about the oil sands:

 “The oil sands are going to be the economic engine for the country for the foreseeable future, for the next 25 to 30 years, and it is akin to the impact of building the national railway in the 1880s."

What does this have to do with BC?  Well, there's a catch.  The International Energy Agency recently estimated that the United States would be the world's biggest oil producer by 2017.  Even right now there's an oil supply glut in the US, which is one reason Canadian oil is getting almost $30 less per barrel than world prices for its oil in the US.

That means we need new markets for our oil.  Those new markets are in Asia.  That's reality. 

So let's not kid ourselves - after all is said and done, there will be a pipeline.  If it's not in BC, it'll be in the Yukon, where the Premier has already said he'll support it, or in the northern US.  We can either say yes to the economic benefits or we can let someone else benefit.

I want those benefits to come to BC.

We have to stop saying no to economic growth and start saying yes to carefully managed projects that will bring highly paid, highly skilled jobs back to BC. 

Now what about environmental concerns?  To hear some people talk about it, the Northern Gateway Pipeline is like a giant garden hose just waiting to spew bitumen all over the landscape. 

There are over 700,000 thousand kilometers of pipeline in Canada today, and of them all, the Northern Gateway pipeline has the distinction of being the most modern, most scrutinized, most environmentally regulated pipeline in the history of this nation. 

It has layers of fail-safes built in, including pressure monitoring, isolation valves that shut automatically, and even permanent human monitoring.  The initial application to the National Energy Board is 20,000 pages long and involves over a decade of detailed and exhaustive study covering engineering, and environmental assessments.  There is nothing slipshod or unstudied about this pipeline. 

But as a party that holds the environment as one of its top priorities, even that's not enough.  We will insist on extremely stringent environmental guidelines, and strictly enforce them.

So will the pipeline destroy northern BC?  Is it a disaster just waiting to happen?  Of course not.  If I had a wall map of BC here on the wall, and I took a human hair and stretched it across the map from left to right, that's the physical footprint we're talking about.  That doesn't mean we can thread it between the trees and leave no footprint of any kind, but with careful stewardship we can minimize the damage we cause.

And it's important to understand something else.  All talk of so-called "green jobs" aside, Asia is going to get its oil from somewhere.  If not from here, it will get it from Africa or the Middle East where there are no environmental controls at all.  So people who are concerned about the earth's environment should thank their lucky stars that Canada - with our strict environmental controls - is destined to become one of the world's leading producers of energy.

But just because the Northern Gateway pipeline isn't going to destroy the north, does that mean it's a good idea?

After all, the pipeline is not going to solve all of BC's economic problems by itself.  While it will bring hundreds of jobs to BC, by itself it's no cure for our jobs problem.

But it is a start.  It's a start to the kind of economic develop we need in this province. 

A recent report - Hungercount 2012 by Food Banks Canada, points out that food bank use in BC is up over 23% since 2008.  Much more worrying is the fact that most of that increase is by middle class families - not just the homeless and drug users.

That's not just a jobs problem - that's a social problem.

I was talking to a restaurant owner in Vernon a few days ago and he told me that many of his regular customers would live here and work in Alberta.  He said that started changing about 6 months ago when they began to pick up and move to Alberta. Now he says that about one family a week is moving away.  They're gone and they won't be back.

That was in Vernon, but I know you have the same issues here.  How many here know of people who have moved to Alberta or are planning to in the near future?  And this is not just an abstract to me either.  My own 25 year old son is moving to Alberta after seven years of trying desperately to find a decent paying job here. 

Take a walk around the downtown core and count the empty storefronts.  We have a serious problem here in the Interior.  This province is being hollowed out.  When Premier Clark announced her Jobs Plan last fall unemployment was at 6.7%, but in May it hit 7.4%, and now it's worse.  The lion's share of that unemployment is right here in the Interior.

Food Banks Canada identified the problem:

"There is no shortage of low-paid jobs. It's the well-paying sectors like natural resources, agricultural products, and manufacturing that are declining."

Now, what are the other parties solutions?  Vague references to green jobs and more skills training.  Recently Carol James of the NDP said in an editorial that the NDP's poverty reduction plan involves affordable housing, education, and skills training.  Skills training is important, of course, but it's only part of the answer.

My local Liberal MLA pointed at increasing the minimum wage as a step toward solving the problem. 

Those solutions are not poverty reduction at all - They simply make poverty slightly more bearable. 

That's not the answer.

What's missing from these plans?  Actual high paying jobs.  You can have all the training in the world, but without a job, what good is it?  My daughter wants to be an astronaut.  She's got the grades and the drive and the ambition to do it too.  But she can go to school for 400 years and earn 50 doctorates, but without an astronaut job available, it won't do her a whit of good.

Yes we need education.  Yes we need skills training.  Yes we need to help the poor.  But let's not build our vision around poverty. 

Let's build it around a strong economy and high paying jobs.

The Northern Gateway Project won't save our economy single-handedly, but represent a change in the way we've been looking at our economy.

We have the potential of a great economic future for our kids.  The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development recently pegged Canada among the world’s leading economic lights over the next 50 years - in large part because of our natural resources.

I believe we have to stop looking at resource development as a bad thing and start looking at it as a necessary thing.  Yes there are challenges, but we should start looking at them as challenges to be solved rather than reasons not to try.    That's something we always tell our kids when they say "I can't."  There's a difference between something that's hard to do and something that's impossible.  Let's start to adopt that

It's time to stop saying no to economic growth and start saying yes to carefully managed projects that will bring highly paid, highly skilled jobs back to BC.

We have to stop dreaming of magical jobs conjured up by tax-and-spend parties because they sound great at election time but never seem to appear.  We have to stop strangling development in red tape and alarmist rhetoric.  We have to start thinking outside the box and start moving forward into the 21st century. 

The British Columbia Conservatives are the party of realistic change.  We'll bring integrity back into politics, we'll bring common sense back into politics, and we'll bring economic growth back to BC so our kids don't have to leave the province to find work.  We need to move forward, not backwards, we need to embrace change, not hide from it.

With your help, that's exactly what we're going to do.

Again ... the words of Vernon - Monashee BC Conservative party candidate Scott Anderson.  As always now, the floor is open to you.

Second candidate declares they will seek BC Conservative nomination for Kamloops South Thompson

Today, a second individual stepped forward to announce they will be seeking the BC Conservative Party nomination for Kamloops South Thompson.  Here are the words they spoke this morning, in making that announcement:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to thank you for being here today.  My name is Maria Dobi. 

Maria at her announcement today (Kamloops)

Throughout my adult life I have always kept track of what is happening around me locally, but more so provincially, federally, and around the world. 

I have always had a burden for people -- and especially the less fortunate.  I volunteered working with the homeless and on the board of directors for 5 years in Penticton, BC.  I cared for a number of teens in my home and also worked with teens here in Kamloops.  But my primary work was working with seniors as a care aide/rehab/ and recreation therapy assistant.  Most of those years have been with dementia clients and those with a brain injury. 

This experience has helped me learn to communicate well but more importantly, to Listen.    This has given me the courage to stand up for those that are less fortunate, or vulnerable.  And ... it has grown a passion in me to confront those, who would chose to take advantage of those that are less fortunate.

It has also shown me how much, some whom society writes off, have to offer.  On December 26, 2004, I was working with dementia clients in Salmon Arm, when an earthquake triggered a major tsunami on the Indian Ocean.  These clients were shaken by this event, BUT they also they wanted to do something to help. 

We had a large number of doll kits donated to us, and so it was decided that we would put together the dolls and also purchased some balls.  I then contacted an organization that was able to take their donations to the tsunami area to be distributed. 

Ladies and gentlemen, these individuals, despite any limitations they had, were still able to contribute to society -- even to those on the other side of the world.

This has shown, and taught me, that we need to empower people to do as much as they can for themselves -- and others. 

How does this relate to politics? 

The main responsibility of government is to safeguard the inalienable rights we as individuals have ... the right to life, liberty, property, privacy.  Governments role should also including ensuring we have an environment in which people can thrive by doing for themselves through honest hard work.  In large measure, I believe that comes about by encouraging business and competition in a free enterprise system where business and government are honest, transparent, and accountable.  The result is a society where we as individuals   also assist and support one and other.

We say that we want honest, accountable and transparent government: yet, so many demand the government to give and to control everything.  As a result, we are giving away our freedoms.

We need to only look at history to see that when you give the government the power, which is also known as socialism, it has proven over and over to fail, but even worse than that, to abuse the people. 

More people were killed in the 20^th century -- in times of peace -- than all the wars in history combined.  (John Simpson:  Researcher, Writer and Former Whitehouse staff economist).  The reality is that socialism creates the environment for a dictator to rise.

So you ask how this relates to us here in BC?  We have two parties in BC, one only slightly more so than the other, who believe in a large degree of government intervention.  You need only to read the constitution of the NDP Party who believes “that social economic and political progress in Canada can only be assured by the application of democratic socialist principles to government and the administration of public affairs”. 

I have a passion to stand for the citizens of this province ... and to serve wherever possible. 

I also have a passion to encourage people to stand up, and know that we do not have to make a choice of who to elect, based on fear.

Instead, the people of BC, and right here in Kamloops South Thompson, can place a government in power which will deliver, because it led by the common sense knowledge and direction of the people of BC.

NOT ... the unions bosses and special interest groups of the Liberals and NDP (as we recently read in the Dec 7th, 2012 of the Province).

We can place a government in power that believes the people have the ability to make good choices for themselves and their families.  That realizes we -- you and me standing here today -- actually do have the skills build businesses, to invent, to care for the environment, to care for the sick and elderly, and have the heart to build healthy communities ... and that knows we do not need government interfering in their lives.

So I stand here today to announce my intention to seek the nomination as a candidate for the BC Conservative Party, here in Kamloops South Thompson.

I believe that the BC Conservative Party is the only party that has a vision… a vision for a healthy balance of small government which is honest, accountable, and transparent… and with providing the citizens of this province with the environment to live healthy and productive lives, while still providing the safety net for those that truly need the assistance.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am calling on you to do your part to make democracy work here in BC ... and here in Kamloops South Thompson. 

True Democracy is government for the people and by the people. 

You can take back control of the government by electing the BC Conservatives who desire to give you that power.

Thank you.


Conservative Thoughts from Maria Dobi ... as she makes it official that she wants to represent the people of Kamloops South Thompson.