Saanich South - the only race in our region in the provincial election

Saanich South is the only riding in this region where the result on May 12th is in doubt.
This riding has been a close one in most elections for the last generation.

In 2005 this riding was narrowly won by David Cubberly of the NDP, in 2001 Susan Brice won it for the BC Liberals. In the 1996 election Andrew Petter retained it for the NDP by a slim 627 votes over Frank Leonard.

The riding has been changed from last time and the changes are enough to move the 2005 results from an NDP win to a Liberal win. The Tillicum Gorge area is no longer part of the riding and this area is strongly NDP, I should know this as I live in the area.

The Liberals have Robin Adair running for them. He is well known in the business community through his work with the Chamber of Commerce. He is better known among people aged 40 and older as being a respected local news anchor. Robin will carry a lot of political weight in caucus and see him in cabinet before the end of the first term of government. The rumour last year was he that was going to run for mayor of Victoria.

The NDP have local winemaker Lana Popham running for them. Lana is getting well known for her passion for the local community, the environment and local agriculture. She was an inspired choice for the NDP, she is a breath of fresh air that the party needs if it is to really revive itself. I think she should have run for Saanich council as I think she could have done a lot more there and worked towards being mayor. The mayor of Saanich has more real power over issues than a member of the opposition.

Brian Gordon is running for the Greens - well running is a stretch. He seems to be a paper candidate for the party. I have see no evidence of his campaign. Maybe the goal is not to harm Lana Popham's chances?

Doug Christie is on the ballot again for the Western Canada Concept.

Both Robin and Lana are getting local media coverage. Robin had to field some questions about his role with the job placement program and I think handled it well.

Both campaigns are getting to the doors and getting their signs up, though the NDP seem to have the edge on real signs, the ones on private lawns.

How would I call this riding? At this point I see it finishing as follows:

• Robin Adair - 13150
• Lana Popham - 12500
• Brian Gordon - 1800
• Doug Christie - 200

I will post any campaign press releases or such if I get them in my inbox

This is from the Rob Fleming campaign:

ROB FLEMING CAMPAIGN IS FACING A NEW OPPONENT IN VICTORIA-SWAN LAKE

Hi friends,

I just wanted to let you in on an interesting development in this constituency.

The Liberal candidate has disappeared from the campaign, and has been replaced by none other than Gordon Campbell.

After some poor media coverage, the Liberal's "hand-picked" candidate for Victoria-Swan Lake has gone into hiding or has been gagged by the BC Liberals.

Instead, Gordon Campbell has been seen in the region recently, doing the campaigning for him. The corporate-funded Liberal machine is also pumping high-priced tv ads into local televisions.

And who do the local ads profile? Gordon Campbell, not the local candidate.

More than ever, our campaign needs to work hard to ensure Rob Fleming gets re-elected.

I'm sure we're going to see Gordon Campbell back in the region, and I'm sure we're going to see many more slick and expensive Campbell ads on TV.

With less than two weeks left to go, any support you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

Whether it's 30 minutes or 3 hours volunteering, and whether it's five dollars or five hundred dollars, your help will be a major factor in helping get Rob back to the legislature - this time perhaps as a Minister.

Please see our contact info and a great list of fun events below, including a Debate Watching Party and Barbecue on Sunday. Hope to see you there.

Thanks,

Edward May

Campaign Manager

for the Rob Fleming Re-Election Campaign

• Leaders' Debate Watching Party and Barbecue. May 3 at 5pm
• Fired Up for the Final Five - An Evening with Joy MacPhail in Victoria. May 7 at 7pm
• Mainstreeting every Wednesday morning. Meet at the campaign office at 7:15am
• Door knocking blitz every Saturday afternoon. Meet at the campaign office at 2pm
• 
  

Authorized by Jamie Dopp, financial agent 250-598-1524

Phone number: 250-381-8883 | 735 Cloverdale Ave., Victoria, BC

2 BC STV Information Evenings Wednesday

Title:		Information Session
Date:		Wednesday April 29, 2009
Time:		7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Location:		View Royal Community Hall
Street:		251 Island Highway
Notes:		Be informed before voting in the May 12 referendum. Learn about BC-STV and why the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform recommended this to British Columbians. All welcome! Date: Wed, April 29 Time: 7:00 PM Location: View Royal Community Hall, 251 Island Highway Title: Public Info Session-Referendum on Changing our Voting System Date: Wednesday April 29, 2009 Time: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Location: Fairfield New Horizons - 1 - 380 Cook Street, Victoria BC Notes: Be informed before voting in the May 12 referendum on changing our voting system to a proprotional system called "BC-STV". Learn about what the Single Transferable Vote (STV) is and why the Citizen's Assembly recommended this to British Columbians. Vote in a "mock election" to understand how it works. And then don't forget to vote on May 12!

First Ad in Favour of BC STV

Victoria Swan Lake

This is my own riding and it is currently held by New Democrat Rob Fleming. He will be easily re-elected by one of the largest margins of any New Democrat.

My Prediction of the Result:

• Rob Fleming 12 200
• Jesse McClinton - 7100
• David Wright - 3450
• Spoiled Ballots - 500
  
• Bob Savage - 230

The riding has been shifted to the north from the previous elections when the bulk of it was Victoria Hillside. The riding now takes in more of Saanich than Victoria with the new boundary being along Mackenzie from Cedar Hill to the Highway #17 and then taking in all of the Tillicum Gorge and Portage Inlet neighbourhoods.

Demographically the change is effectively a zero sum game with no one getting the advantage. Over the last four years there has been some change in the neighbourhoods. The Tllicum Gorge area has more home owners that are young professionals than in the past because it has been one of the few neighbourhoods that has been affordable for people getting into the market. Short term I do not think this will harm the NDP, but longer term this could signal a change in the area. It also means that new riding has more owners and fewer renters.

Rob Fleming has been one of the top ten NDP MLAs in this last term, but that is more because the NDP caucus was rather weak than Rob Fleming came out of the gate strongly. I expect him to grow into the role and over the next ten years become one of the strongest voices in the opposition. Should the NDP win government in a future election, I see him in cabinet. He may run for the leadership of the NDP once Carole James steps down, but I see a run this time only being a trial for a real run the next time the job opens up. He has time, he is only in his late 30s.

Jesse McClinton is running for the Liberals. He is young guy in a no hope riding for the governing party. He knows this is a chance for him and his team to learn campaigning skills. He has had a chance to learn how to deal with a bad media story - I think he handled the issue well given there was no 'winning' answer. Jesse McClinton is a name I expect to see on the ballot again soon, maybe for city council in 2011, or federally if there is an election sooner rather than later.

For the record, I am voting for him and I have sign up for him.

The Greens are running David Wright. He is an interesting candidate, I think he and I could talk about many things for hours and hours, but I do not see his campaign on the ground. I do not see him really trying to get elected. If he had knocked on my door, or called me, a couple of weeks ago, I might have been presuaded to back him. He is one of two Green candidates I know of in this region that have been involved Scouting, the other being Tom Bradfield in Saanich North and the Islands. The Scouting program and the values of the Greens have some strong overlaps.

There is one more candidate running, Bob Savage for the BC Refederation Party. This is a party of people that feel disempowered and have some suggested ways to things, the biggest being they want a BC constitution and seem to be unaware that we already have one.

Some resources for the campaign in this riding:

• Jonathon Aquino's site about this riding
• Election Prediction Page for Victoria Swan Lake
• Sacha Peter's information on Victoria Swan Lake
• Try BC STV poll for the Capital Region

Election Prediction for Greater Victoria Ridings

Esquimalt Royal Roads

• Marine Karagianis - NDP - 40%
• Jane Sterk - Green - 35%
• Carl Ratsoy - Liberal - 25%

Juan De Fuca

• John Horgan - NDP - 48%
• Jody Twa - Liberal - 41%
• James Powell - Green - 11%

Oak Bay Gordon Head

• Ida Chong - Liberal - 48%
• Jessica Van der Veen - NDP - 40%
• Steven Johns - Green - 12%

Saanich North and the Islands

• Murray Coell - Liberal - 45%
• Gary Holman - NDP - 33%
• Tom Bradfield - Green - 22%

Saanich South

• Robin Adair - Liberal - 47%
• Lana Popham - NDP - 44%
• Brian Gordon - Green - 8%
• Doug Christie - WCC - 1%

Victoria Beacon Hill

• Carole James - NDP - 41%
• Dallas Henault - Liberal - 33%
• Adam Saab - Green - 25%
• Saul Andersen - Ind - 1%

Victoria Swan Lake

• Rob Fleming - NDP - 53%
• Jesse McClinton - Liberal - 31%
• David Wright - Green - 15%
• Bob Savage - Refed - 1%

The net result is that the Liberals gain on seat in this region.

I believe that the only ridings where the result might be in question is in Saanich South and Esquimalt Roayl roads.

Lana Popham might pull off a win despite the party pulling her down, much will come down down to who is voting. Older voters remember Robin Adair as the news anchor locally and have a lot of trust in him. Lana has a very strong following from people that have met her over the last years in relation to your community activism.

Jane Sterk might pull off a surprise win in Esquimalt Royal Roads, but for me to think this is possible I would have to see a much stronger on the ground campaign from her, strength online, and a good preformance on TV.

I do not think that Jody Twa will be able to defeat John Horgan given incumbency and the hard work in the riding from John Horgan.

Saanich North and the Islands has been home of a strong core of a Green vote, but the party campaign in that riding this time is not strong enough to move the party up to second place, let alone win.

I think Carole James will survive the election because Adam Saab and Dallas Henault are both campaigning very hard and neither one will be the 'obvious' choice to vote for to defeat her. I do see a lot of people staying home and a strong shift of people to the Greens.

How the Provincial Candidates are doing on Facebook

Lana Popham has clearly done well this last week and almost doubled her supporters on facebook. He big rise masks the fact that Robin Adair did best among the Liberals in percentage terms.

We have three new entrants in facebook land.

I will be updating this next week.

Victoria Beacon Hill

* Carole James - 1914 +9.4%
* Dallas Henault - 491 +2.7%
* Adam Saab - 153 on fan page and 325 on facebook group +1.9%
* Bob Savage - still nothing online
* Saul Andersen - nothing

Victoria Swan Lake

* Rob Fleming - 522 +8.8%
* Jesse McClinton - 444 +6.5%
* David Wright - still nothing

Oak Bay Gordon Head

* Jessica Van Der Veen - 427 -1.8% in a facebook group 170 on the fan page
* Ida Chong - 142 +9.2%
* John Stevens - 20 - new facebook group

Saanich South

* Lana Popham - 313 +94.4%
* Robin Adair - 160 +19.4%
* Brian Gordon - 117 new fan page

Saanich North and the Islands

* Gary Holman - 42 new fan group
* Tom Bradfield - 30 + 272%
* Murray Coell - still nothing

Esquimalt Royal Roads

* Maurine Karajianis - 426 +1.9%
* Jane Sterk - 178 +36.9%
* Carl Ratsoy - still nothing

Juan de Fuca

* Jody Twa - 278 +0.4% in a facebook group
* John Horgan - 263 +0.4%
* James Powell - still nothing

The top ten in the region:

1. Carole James - 1914
2. Rob Fleming - 522
3. Dallas Henault - 491
4. Jesse McClinton - 417 (+2)
5. Jessica Van Der Veen - 427 (-1)
6. Maurine Karajianis - 426 (-1)
7. Adam Saab - 325
8. Lana Popham - 313 (+2)
9. Jody Twa - 278 (-1)
10. John Horgan - 263 (-1)

Observations on the Election

It is less than three weeks to election day and here are my observations on the election in this region.

There fewer signs on lawns this time around than normally. The NDP seems to be doing the best in getting signs on lawns, but even in my area they are down from last time.

Very few people are interested in the election. There should be more of buzz going on in the papers, on the streets and online. At Vibrant Victoria, a local place to discuss urban development and politics for this region, there is almost no discussion of the election. I ask people about the election and people tell me they are not interested.

I do not get the sense of any local campaign that is taking off and getting the volunteers needed to make a big difference in the outcome.

At this time, given the general disinterest of the public, I believe that no sitting incumbent in this region will lose. I also think that Robin Adair will beat Lana Popham in Saanich South because there is nothing out there to indicate that she has pulled ahead of him in the campaign.

Putting up a Jesse McClinton sign tonight

I remember the federal election and how long signs lasted in my neighbourhood, about two days. I am putting up a sign for Liberal candidate Jesse McClinton tonight, we will see how well it does.

Form Coery Burger Blog from behind the Tweed Curtain

Catherine pointed this out to me thinking it was so me in 1988.

Shamelessly reposting the image here.

The Provincial Election Online Campaign Locally

I thought I would take a look at how the local candidates are doing using the biggest social networking tool out there - Facebook - in their election campaigns. It is a free resource and should be a way for people to get in contact with thousands of people. One Liberal candidate, Donny van Dyk in Skeena, has 1325 supporters. Not bad for someone is a rural riding with a low population.

I will take a look at this again in a week or so.

Here is how the local candidates are doing, unless I note something different, these are fan page numbers:

Victoria Beacon Hill

• Carole James - 1752 She is the leader and should be doing much better than that
• Dallas Henault - 478
• Adam Saab - 153 on fan page and 319 on facebook group
  
• Bob Savage - nothing - BC Refed has no resources and does not seem to know how to use the internet.

Victoria Swan Lake

• Rob Fleming - 480 (my apologies to my MLA, I made a mistake earlier and thought he did not have a page, this is the edited version)
  
• Jesse McClinton - 417
• David Wright - nothing

Oak Bay Gordon Head

• Jessica Van Der Veen - 435 in a facebook group
• Ida Chong - 130
• John Stevens - nothing

Saanich South

• Lana Popham - 161
• Robin Adair - 134
• Brian Gordon - nothing

Saanich North and the Islands

• Tom Bradfield - 11
• Murray Coell - nothing
• Gary Holman - nothing

Esquimalt Royal Roads

• Maurine Karajianis - 418
• Jane Sterk - 130 This is really bad for the Greens, their leader should have at least 10 000 supporters online if they had any sense of how to use the internet to campaign
  
• Carl Ratsoy - nothing

Juan de Fuca

• Jody Twa - 277 in a facebook group
• John Horgan - 262
• James Powell - nothing

I am very surprised that the Greens are doing so badly with the online stuff, they should be working hard in that area because they are more popular with younger voters that are online.

Take Carole James out of the mix, I am also surprised that not a single candidate seems to have more supporters than many people have as friends on Facebook. Clearly they are not going out to get people to join their fan page or their facebook group.

No one seems to get the online campaigning world or take it seriously.

The top ten in the region:

1. Carole James - 1752
2. Rob Fleming - 480
3. Dallas Henault - 478
4. Jessica Van Der Veen - 435
5. Maurine Karajianis - 418
6. Jesse McClinton - 417
7. Adam Saab - 319
   
8. Jody Twa - 277
9. John Horgan - 262
10. Lana Popham - 161

You can see, in relative terms, the NDP is doing well. Jane Sterk does not even break the top ten. Two sitting MLAs do not make the list, Murray Coell and Ida Chong.

Elkington Forest

I was pointed in the direction of this interesting website by Catherine Novak. The idea is to combine eco-forestry with housing and the retention of wilderness values. I find the ideas very interesting. Here is how they describe it:

Living Forest Communities is a community development model that accomplishes two goals. Primarily, we wish to establish and maintain sustainable natural forest ecosystems in perpetuity through land conservation and ecosystem-based forestry. Secondly, we achieve this objective through the creation of attractive, "light-on-the-land" residential hamlets modeled after traditional European towns.

I do not have a lot of time to look into this in full detail, but on the surface it is very interesting. There is no danger of me moving out there because I have made a defacto generational commitment to the house I am living in.

They have a Facebook fan page with some recent photos of the land.

Now I have to get back to work - I need to have the final version of reports on Kwantlen, Chawathil, Union Bar and Boothroyd today.

BC STV - a website where you try it out

Demochoice is once again offering a website where people can try out BC STV. You can vote using the real boundaries and the candidates are the ones running in the antiquated and deficient first past the post system we are still using for some reason.

I still wonder why we are using first past the post for the election this time when it was so soundly defeated last time. The public will was clearly against using the system we are using, but the MLAs were simply too afraid to make a change the public wanted because they are too scared to run in competitive elections. Most of our MLAs will be able to spend the month taking it easy because they know they are getting re-elected. Of course they would not choose to go a system that would remove all the safe seats and make them actually have to campaign.

Proposed Interechange at the Airport

There are numerous locations in this region I would have chosen for a new interchange than at the airport.

• Mackenzie and Hwy #1
• Sayward Road and Hwy #17
• Hwy#1 and Westshore Parkway
• Haliburton and Hwy#17

If the issue is getting people to and from the airport, there are things that are more important to be done first. There needs to be an express bus connections to and from downtown from the airport.

Right now I have three options from getting to the airport

• By car - someone drops me or I park the car there.
• By taxi - a total net cost of about $140 for me to do this.
• By airporter bus - $36 per person, or $180 for my family - the ariporter also means I have to walk about a mile to my house.

None of these options are ideal.

If there was an express bus, it would be a lot cheaper to get to and from the airport and it would mean no need to deal with the hassles of getting a ride out to the airport or having to leave a vehicle there.

The airport is offering $3 000 000 towards the interchange, how much are they offering to improve transit?

Ultimately the airport and the ferry terminal offer this region one of the few candidate routes that make even some sense for running a light rail system.

Jim Legh Blog on Amalgamation

Local lawyer Jim Legh has been interested in getting Greater Victoria amalgamated into fewer than 13 local governments. He has now started a blog to discuss this. Check it out and give him your comments.

Looking at some transit numbers

I am back at the computer again, March Madness is over, all the bodies are buried, the houses are sold, the estates settled, and camping trips done. I can get back to putting my opinion out there into the ether.

I have been looking at some of the data on transit use (from the fall of 2007) and have dug out some interesting data factoids:

• 92 289 passengers board buses on an average weekday - that is just over 46 000 round trips or 15% of the local population.
  
• 85% of us will not get on a bus today.
• 
  
• Five routes carry about half of the passengers in this region - #6, #14, #26, #27/28, and #30/31.
• The routes that go to UVic carry 48% of the passenger traffic in this region
• The six fullest bus routes (most passengers per trip) are #6, #11, #14, #26, #33, and #70. Four of these routes connect to UVic.
• Suburban, Westshore and Peninsula, commuter use of buses to get downtown is roughly equal to traffic on the #14 or #6 routes.
• The #39, Royal Roads - UVic, carries more people now that the #61, Sooke - Downtown. The #39 also has more passengers per trip than the #61.
• About 25% of the Westshore passengers board buses headed to UVic.
  
• From the fall of 2006 to the fall of 2007 transit use increased in the core faster than the Westshore even though in that year the Westshore got 83 more hours or service and the core only 34 hours.

What I take from this is that transit is most strongly used in the core and in some connection with UVic. Any future thoughts about transit planning in this region has to focus on the needs of the people using the existing system first and foremost. The existing users are voting with their pocketbook and should be rewarded with more and better service.

I also take from this that any rail based transit has to use UVic as the starting point for any line as this is the only location that has the demand to be able to justify the high capital costs of a rail based system.