+ 1. Bob Rae & Co in Ontario springs to mind....

No she wasn't and if she had good grace she wouldn't try and get back in by making someone who was democratically elected, resign. That's not exactly supporting the will of the people?

but she's still the leader and was front & centre all the campaign, so it's hard to argue that people didn't vote for her too.

+1

I grant there is a certain de facto aspect to that but its not how a parliamenty sytem works. She had a tight race last time so they should have moved her to a safe seat before the election. Having by-election will do nothing but undermine her credibility.

And a total waste of resources and money.

That could be better used to assist the mentally ill; yes?

The TV coverage was amusing, I watched the first few minutes on CBC, "and the NDP are twenty points ahead in the polls..." tuned in a couple of hours later: "the Liberals have won in a landslide." So funny when pundits have to backtrack.

The woman following the election on social media cracked me up, especially when she started bringing up pictures of cupcakes on Instagram.

I wasn't surprised, I saw Adrian Dix on the national news for a few minutes last week, he seemed a bit out of his depth.

I couldn't help thinking of Mr Bean when I saw Adrian Dix on the TV. As they say in the kingdom of the blind.......... Assuming financial issues can be agreed how quickly will the winner change her tune on the pipeline I wonder?

Coastal first nations still opposed.
Still a lot of opposition in BC>

I know it's tempting for Albertans to see this as a referendum on the pipeline(s) - it's not.

You're confident that Christy Clarke and the Liberals will never under any circumstances approve the pipeline?

I really don't know.

What I do know is that the only pro-pipeline party, the BC Conservatives, did really badly in the election. Their support collapsed.

In my riding, for instance, though the Libs got it (barely) if you count the green + NDP vote (NO) it's higher than the Lib vote (maybe). If you look at the map of who won what ridings it's interesting - it shows, by and large, the coast voting against pipelines (NDP) and the interior "maybe" (Liberal). The riding where the pipeline burst in burnaby? Is now an NDP riding.

This is not a done deal, not by a long shot.

I think the NDP ran an appallingly bad campaign. It seems that they believed that the polls gave them an unassailable lead as long as they did not make a major gaff. They labelled their campaign as positive but in reality it was just passive.

All the pundits warned that, although she might be a political lightweight, Clarke was a very effective campaigner. So she was. Every night on the news Clarke was in a hard hat, engaging with workers, a confident smile from ear to ear. Dix was at staged events, often apparently nervous with a “deer caught in the headlights” look. Clarke was allowed to define the campaign with the one issue the Liberals had in their favour: the NDP’s competence as economic managers. For some reason the NDP did not feel it necessary to explain how their platform was costed. I think Dix’s rather vague explanation about taxing banks, corporations and the rich was unconvincing and unsettling.

The NDP also seemed to misread the politics. The NDP has only ever achieved power in BC when the right was split. In the last two or three years the Conservatives had picked up the support of a lot of disaffected Liberals. However, it was plainly obvious that the Conservatives were not a serious political force – riven by internal dissent, with candidates that should not have been allowed out in public by themselves, and with no confidence in their leader. When push came to shove, those on the right looked at the mess of the Conservatives, looked in fear at the NDP, and held their nose and voted for the more centrist Clarke Liberals.

The NDP also failed to shore up their left. They seemed to have ignored the Greens. This allowed them to take just enough votes in ridings the NDP should have won to allow the Liberals in.

For sure, the Liberals ran a negative campaign, but they were allowed to get away with it. The NDP got it wrong from the start and, when they realized this, did too little too late.

I think the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline is a done deal. I also think Clarke will come under tremendous pressure from the feds to approve the Northern Gateway. Under that pressure she will find just enough wiggle room in the five conditions she has imposed.

Even so, there are plenty of people who are confident the Northern Gateway pipeline will never be built.

Kinder Morgan has a right of way from 50 years ago but unfortunately, a lot has changed since then. Like development.

The City of Burnaby is opposed. Can they build a pipeline if the city refuses building permits?