Monday AM Political News...

1) New BC NDP Leader

Yesterday, by a vote of 9,772 (Dix) to 9,095 (Farnworth), Adrian Dix survived 3 rounds of voting to become the new BC New Democrats Leader.  See here (Province) and here (Globe and Mail)

Lots of reviews from political columnists:

a) Mike Smyth of the Province- see here
b) Vaughn Palmer of the Vancouver Sun - see here
c) Gary Mason of the Globe and Mail - see here

See also Alan Forseth's take, from the BC Conservative Party's point of view, here

As you will hear/read in the days ahead - the consensus is an early provincial election, as early as this fall, and in the Twitterverse, some have suggested that because of Dix's election, some NDP MLA's may not seek re-election as a direct result.  It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the months ahead for all of the provincial political parties

One drawback however is burnout among the various volunteers and whether that will play into Christy Clark's decision to launch the Province into an early election.  From a tactical point of view - it would be brilliant to call the election early but from a "on the ground" point of view and in talking with some of my provincial political friends involved, provincial ridings may not be ready to go into an election because of burnout relating to the federal election, but it may not matter at the end of the day because what does matter to political parties is staying in power as long as possible.  Stay tuned as the road to the 40th Provincial General Election will likely get bumpy for all involved

2) HST Debate & Bob Simpson

Last week, Victoria announced its' plans relating to the HST Referendum and public consultation.  See that blog post here

However, this past Saturday, Independent Cariboo-North MLA Bob Simpson called Victoria's announcement nothing more than "interference" in the upcoming HST Referendum for June/July.  While I can see his point, I think it's important that every bit of information (pro/con HST) get out there before people decide either to keep or reject the HST, no matter who provides it and I, for one, look forward to that debate including hearing this week on dates for the "Talking Taxes" forums throughout BC - stay tuned here for that information

3) Federal Election & Young People

In the last little while - Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's campaign has previously got hit pretty hard for ejecting young people out of his campaign rally because of photos on Facebook at a Conservative campaign event in Montreal.  This past week, while Harper was in Vancouver, 17 year old Diamond Isinger got ejected with her friend from a Conservative rally because she was identified as a Federal Liberal supporter.  See the CTV-BC news story here.  As a Conservative supporter - I regret that these actions having been done and I have no problem having others, regardless of what political party they support, come and watch how a real Leader (not Micheal Ignatieff, Jack Layton or Gilles Duceppe) performs.  Anyone who is a real leader, should be man enough to take any question(s) that come their way - no matter who asks it.  I suspect that these sorts of actions will come back to haunt the Conservative campaign, especially if they come within 5 seats of a majority, as suggested in the Globe and Mail yesterday.  His campaign team may very well look back at these two actions and say if we hadn't done this (eject young people from Conservative election rallies), perhaps we very well might have a majority today