[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[crazy canuck]

Fyi the BC Liberal party had nothing to do with the Federal Party.

They were just the Social Ctedit party reborn after the Socreds imploded.

[crazy canuck]

BC politics

Apparently the BC Conservative party is polling really well. Does anyone know what they're about?

Mainstreet puts them at 27% for August 30th:
https://qc125.com/cb/sondages.htm

NDP leads with 35%

Local commentators are thinking that it is because of rant confusion caused by the recent name, change of the BC Liberals.

Ironically, they were trying to avoid confusion with the federal party, and now they have caused even more confusion, because nobody knows who the hell BC united is.

Right wing voters who aren't up-to-date on all the name, changes simply see the word conservative in a poll, and say hell yeah, I vote conservative without really thinking about who the right wing party is in BC that can actually went out an election.

I'm not sure why Kevin falcon hasn't been very visible over the last year or so but the pool is a really good indication to BC United that they've got to educate the public about who the right wing party in the province actually is.

[Jacob]

If only they'd rebranded to "BC Common Sense Party"

[crazy canuck]

 


And that joke is a lot of what their branding problem exposes.  If you have some patience, here is some political history in BC to put it all into context.

Social Credit was the dominant force in BC politics under WAC Bennett for decades.  The BC Liberal Party existed and got a few seats.  In those days the BC Liberal Party was the provincial wing of the Federal Liberal Party.  Then in the early 70s the NDP pulled off a shocking win. 

The response from the Socreds was to bring the BC Liberals into the party to form a coalition against the NDP.  There was some kind of power sharing agreement in place because when the Socred coalition went on to win the next election MLAs who had been BC Liberal MLAs were members of the new Socred cabinet.

That coalition held together and continued to dominate BC politics until the early 90s when the NDP won for a second time.  That loss destroyed the Socreds (mainly because of their inept leader, Vander Zalm.  Coincidentally, during that election, there was an attempt by a small town college prof to restart the BC Liberal Party.  He managed to run a slate of candidates.  The effort was more symbolic than anything.  No one, including any of the BC Liberal candidates thought they had a chance to win a seat.

But when the Socreds collapsed a lot protest votes when to those unsuspecting BC Liberal candidates.  And they became the official opposition.  At this point in time the BC LIberals were still closely linked with the Federal Liberals.

But post election there were all the Socred members looking for a home.  The party had collapsed and was in disarray.  And so the Socreds simply all signed up as BC Liberal party members and took over the party, elected a new leader and many new candidates.  The old Socred coalition was reborn.

Throughout all of this the BC Conservative party has had next to no support and has had no purpose.

You might be asking yourself why the coalition didn't just go back using the Socred name.  The answer is they tried that, and lost a legal fight over the rights to the name.  The upshot is there are still some Socreds around who are very bitter about the mass migration away from the party, and they are not giving up the name.

And so here we are, an anti NDP coalition now calling itself BC United with a huge branding problem.

[Jacob]

I wonder if the BC Conservative Party (is it linked to the federal Conservative party?) is going to be immune to the same take-over manoeuvre from BCUP folks if/ when BCUP collapses?

[crazy canuck]

I wonder if the BC Conservative Party (is it linked to the federal Conservative party?) is going to be immune to the same take-over manoeuvre from BCUP folks if/ when BCUP collapses?

The Federal Conservative party has always been careful to distance itself from the provincial party for the practical reason that the vast majority of Federal conservatives belong to the BC coalition party.

If the BCUP collapses (btw I don't think there is any chance of that) I think it very unlikely those members would ever migrate to the BC Conservative party for reasons of the type of people that are in that party.

Migrating to the BC Libs back in the day was easy because that just recreated the coalition of like minded conservatives and liberals (read right of center).  The BC Conservative types don't fit will into that kind of like minded characterization.

[Barrister]

I wonder if the BC Conservative Party (is it linked to the federal Conservative party?) is going to be immune to the same take-over manoeuvre from BCUP folks if/ when BCUP collapses?

Federal Conservative Party is not linked to any provincial parties.  That's why you have, going from west to east, the Yukon Party, BC United, United Conservatives, Sask Party, Manitoba PCs, Ontario PCs, (Quebec is it's own mess) plus the Maritims PCs.

[Grey Fox]

The traditional conservative party in Quebec is now The Conservative Party of Quebec. Altho, all our parties are shades of left.

[HVC]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberals-gst-rental-apartments-1.6966608

Liberals promise to remove GST on new rental properties.

Apparently this was in their 2015 policy plan, but then they dropped it in 2017 saying there were better ways to increase affordability.

So the Liberals are definitely feeling the heat on this issue...

Now they're going after grocery store profiteering. Liberals going in a run to clean up their image.

[Josephus]

Calling a spade a spade, I'd be the first to admit that calling out the grocery stores for profiteering is very....um....populist.

[HVC]

Calling a spade a spade, I'd be the first to admit that calling out the grocery stores for profiteering is very....um....populist.

Canada has a 3.3 2023 inflation rate, but a 8 or 9 percent increase in food costs. That's a bit of a delta. At least that what I read in the article so, you know, proper skepticism and all that.

[viper37]

Calling a spade a spade, I'd be the first to admit that calling out the grocery stores for profiteering is very....um....populist.

Canada has a 3.3 2023 inflation rate, but a 8 or 9 percent increase in food costs. That's a bit of a delta. At least that what I read in the article so, you know, proper skepticism and all that.

But that's still populism.  The grocery prices are dictated by the food chain, not necessarily by greed from the merchants.  Their profit margins did increase a bit, but not threefold.

[crazy canuck]

Calling a spade a spade, I'd be the first to admit that calling out the grocery stores for profiteering is very....um....populist.

Canada has a 3.3 2023 inflation rate, but a 8 or 9 percent increase in food costs. That's a bit of a delta. At least that what I read in the article so, you know, proper skepticism and all that.

Use that healthy skepticism and take a look at how much their supplier costs increased.

Margins in the grocery business are thin at the best of times.  It is a volume business.

[crazy canuck]

Another way to think about is how does comparing price increases of one business to the general rate of inflation tell us anything about the cause of the increase?

This if an area where are political class has entirely failed.  PP likes to blame the carbon tax and government spending as the problem- but the Globe reported over the weekend that the carbon tax accounts for .15 percent in the increase in prices and that government spending as at worst neutral.

The Libs and NDP like to blame greedy profit taking by corporations.  But there is next to no evidence to support the theory that margins have increased.  There is evidence that some sectors saw more volume and grocery stores are a good example of that.

[viper37]

The Libs and NDP like to blame greedy profit taking by corporations.  But there is next to no evidence to support the theory that margins have increased.

Actually, in the case of grocery stores, their profit margins increased by about 1-2% since 2017.