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Premier Christy Clark has announced the B.C. Liberals key staffers as the party transitions to its new role as opposition, the same day that Premier-designate John Horgan named six women who will help fill out his leadership team.

The Liberal appointments include seasoned staffers and communications professionals.

These appointments will support our strong and experienced team of 43 MLAs in the legislature. Together, I believe we will form an extremely effective opposition to hold the NDP-Green alliance to account on behalf of British Columbians, an email signed by Clark, which was sent to Liberal staff and caucus this morning, said.

Clark has appointed Nick Koolsbergen as chief of staff. Koolsbergen most recently served as executive director of communications and research for the Liberal caucus and previously served as director of issues management in the Prime Ministers Office under Stephen Harper.

Jessica Woolford will serve as deputy chief of staff under Koolsbergen. Woolford most recently worked as executive director of corporate priorities at government communications and public engagement. She previously served as chief of staff to Minister Todd Stone and as an adviser to Ministers Mary Polak and Shirley Bond.

Clarks press secretary, Stephen Smart, will move into the role of executive director of communications and issues management for the Liberal caucus. Smart previously worked as a CBC reporter and has 18 years of media experience.

Primrose Carson will serve as executive director of operations and MLA support for the caucus.

Now that our leadership team is in place, in the coming days we will move forward with interviews of those staff who have expressed an interest in continuing to serve British Columbians through the B.C. Liberal Caucus, the email said.

Premier-designate John Horgan also announced today more names in the NDP leadership team lineup.

The six women, many of whom played key roles in Horgans election campaign, will serve in roles ranging from press secretary to the head of a new office dedicated to delivering on the NDP-Green alliance agreement.

After 16 years, we have a lot of work to do to address the problems caused by B.C. Liberal choices. Im confident that the leadership team were building has the energy, drive and commitment to deliver the change we promised British Columbians, Carole James, Victoria-Beacon Hill MLA and transition spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Donna Sanford, senior policy analyst at the climate action secretariat, will move into the role of executive director of the confidence and supply agreement secretariat. The new office will be responsible for delivering on the agreement between the NDP and Green parties, which sets out key priorities like campaign-finance laws and electoral reform.

Sage Aaron will serve as director of communications in the Premiers Office, a promotion from the same role at union MoveUP.

Kate Van Meer-Mass becomes director of operations in the Premiers Office, which will involve tour planning, scheduling and other leadership responsibilities.

Jen Holmwood assumes the role of deputy director of communications in the Premiers Office; Sheena McConnell will serve as Horgans press secretary and Marie Della Mattia will work as special adviser to Horgan. All three held similar roles for Horgan as leader of the opposition.

asmart@timescolonist.com

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NDP, Liberals announce key staff positions - Times Colonist

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order to boost U.S. apprenticeship programs. These training programs convey skills to individuals for specific vocations.

Currently, 505,000 people have apprenticeships through 2,100 programs registered with the government. President Trump has committed to creating 5 million apprenticeships over the next five years.

I get nervous whenever I hear about any government initiative that claims to provide what our economy needs. The last thing we need is a new army of government bureaucrats pretending they are going to forecast what kind of jobs we need and then subsidizing businesses and unions to set up training programs.

But Trumps plan doesnt appear to do that. It establishes a wide berth for firms, or unions, or trade associations to decide on their own what they need to do, meaning those who are actually doing the work and the hiring.

Current data from the labor market screams out that we can do a better job building a workforce fitting what businesses need.

The U.S. Labor Department reported 6 million job openings in April and 5 million hires. So a million jobs are still open.

In April, there were 6.9 million unemployed. Sure, you say, they dont have the skills for those million jobs. But isnt that the point? Isnt this the work we need to do get those who cant find work trained and motivated?

And if we care about our nations future, weve got to look at the deeper social problems leading to pockets of chronic unemployment.

There are 1.7 million long-term unemployed. We have a growing population, disproportionately prime-age men, who have just dropped out of the labor force.

The black unemployment rate has been double the national average for the last half-century and that is roughly where it is today. Black youth ages 16 to 19 have an unemployment rate of 27.3 percent.

So, if I am nervous about government bureaucrats planning out apprenticeship programs, what can government do?

Trump is proposing the federal government put up $200 million to help firms make these apprenticeships happen. Good, but we cant rely on new government spending to be the answer.

The answer is removing barriers. Here are two ways.

For one, consider vocational schools and training as part of education choice.

Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee introduced a bill, the Enhancing Educational Opportunities for All Students Act, in the last Congress that would permit use of funds that the federal government gives to school districts to help low-income children and use it to enable them to be able to attend the school of their choice.

Why should that $14 billion be locked in the public school system? Give a poor child a voucher, or the equivalent, that can be used to go to a vocational school. Businesses could joint venture and help finance and build the programs to train these kids.

So lets dust off and pass the Enhancing Educational Opportunities bill. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is the right person in the right place to help make this happen.

Second, let businesses use the funds they spend on training to count toward salary for purposes of the minimum wage. This would allow a firm to hire a young person and pay below minimum wage but also provide training, the value of which would hike the wage above the minimum. This is a way around the damage that the minimum wage causes and provide a platform for unskilled youth to get trained.

If we use government to make the marketplace more free and flexible, apprenticeships can help build a 21st-century American labor force.

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Apprenticeships can win out over bureaucrats, liberals - MyAJC.com - MyAJC

Two groups of people who had been less than enthused about Trump as our president had two very different reactions to his July 6 speech in Poland.

One group was conservative columnists who had long disliked Trump. Charles Krauthammer, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks and Rich Lowry were relieved at his pledge of backing for NATO; thrilled by his praise of the Poles and their courage; encouraged by his harsh words for Russia and its treatment of Poland, pleased by his defense of the West as a cultural and political unit.

It was good news to them that he should stand for values of enormous importance that were well worth defending by force. Trump's Warsaw speech, in short, meant he was becoming more like a standard Republican president of the Reagan-Bush eras big on values, defense, and the Western alliance.

The other group was liberal critics of Trump. For them, this speech embodied the problems with his presidency. In the 1980s, most Democrats had believed less in the West than in moral equivalence; they showed no interest in Poland or courage in general. Today, as then, they think Republicans lack nuance, finesse, and in most cases intellect and that probably every third word they utter is a dog-whistle code word for race.

"The West is a racial and religious term," wrote Peter Beinart in The Atlantic, saying that "to be considered Western" a country must be white and be Christian and that what links the American and Polish people and government is not democracy (nor their historical conflict with Russia) but their hostility toward Muslims and immigrants. Trump, they maintain, sees himself less as an American president than as the head of white Christian tribe.

To us therefore falls the task of telling the Beinarts and others that the state of Israel Jewish and just barely in Asia is considered "Western" in provenance (and deeply beloved by the right in this country). America is quickly becoming a mixed-race and a cross-ethnic culture. It has already had a black (or a biracial) president and will no doubt have several more.

Let us remind them too that the Democrats' field last year was a portrait in pallor, whereas the Republicans had two sons of immigrants from the island of Cuba and a black millionaire folk-hero-surgeon who is now in the Cabinet. This country's spokeswoman in the United Nations is the tawny-skinned daughter of Indian immigrants, who was born into a non-Christian home.

If this is what white Christian racism looks like, we should have some more of it. It is the Nikki Haleys and Marco Rubios of the world who are the living proof of the GOP's claim that the liberal project, which began in England in 1215 and was institutionalized in America in 1787, finds takers in people of every persuasion, from places all over the globe.

On March 8, 1983, Ronald Reagan uttered the words heard round the world when he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," outraging the Beinarts of the moment to no end. "Anthony Lewis complained that the speech was outrageous' and primitive,'" Steve Hayward tells us. "What is the world to think,' Lewis wrote, when the greatest of powers is led by a man who applies to the most difficult human problem a simplistic theology?'"

Natan Sharansky, in prison in Russia at the time, expressed a different opinion. "The leader of the free world had spoken the truth," he said. In the long run, the world thought so, too.

Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families."

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Trump spoke in Warsaw, and liberals just didn't get it - Washington Examiner

Federal Liberals could take a political hit over the government's decision to settle a lawsuit with Omar Khadr rather than fight it in court even if most Canadians believe the former Guantanamo Bay inmate was owed an apology, a pollster says.

"It's not unreasonable to say this maybe has the potential to be one of the lasting or sticky missteps of this government," Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute told HuffPost Canada Tuesday.

"The broken promise on electoral reform, for example, seems to be something that isn't necessarily haunting the Trudeau Liberals in the same way that this might haunt the Trudeau Liberals."

Kurl says a new poll from her firm suggests Canadians are specifically uncomfortable with the compensation Khadr received, even though the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled in 2010 that his constitutional rights were violated.

While Liberals aren't revealing details of the deal, citing confidentiality, it was widely reported last week that the settlement was $10.5 million.

"This is as much about the money as it is about anything else," she said.

Seventy-one per cent of respondents think the government made the wrong decision and should have fought the lawsuit in court, according to the Angus Reid Institute poll. Twenty-nine per cent support both the apology to Khadr and reported $10.5-million payout.

The survey questionnaire spelled out that Canada's top court already ruled the "Canadian government of the day acted unconstitutionally after Khadr's arrest" in Afghanistan in 2002 and that it was "partly responsible for his continued imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay."

The court found Canadian intelligence officials obtained information from Khadr in 2003 under "oppressive circumstances," including significant sleep deprivation, and that they illegally shared evidence with the United States.

Fully two-third of respondents also told the firm they reject the notion idea that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government had "no choice" but to settle with Khadr, who had filed a $20-million lawsuit against the government.

Tory Leader Andrew Scheer has said he would have fought the case in court on principle and has blasted the deal as "disgusting."

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said at a press conference in Ottawa last week that a settlement was the only sensible course for a case with "virtually no chance of success."

Goodale was also sharply critical of the previous Tory government of Stephen Harper for not advocating for Khadr's return to Canada when he was detained at Guantanamo Bay. Khadr was repatriated in 2012 while the Tories were in government.

It's perhaps not surprising then that 91 per cent of past Tory voters told the Angus Reid Institute they opposed the settlement.

Yet, 61 per cent of past Liberal voters and 64 per cent of NDP supporters also share Scheer's perspective, raising the spectre that some Liberals could pay a political price for the decision.

"It's quite telling to me that it's not just majorities of past Conservative voters who are expressing a level of discomfort with this deal but also really significant numbers of past Liberals and NDPers," Kurl said.

The poll also suggests Canadians have conflicting views of the Toronto-born Khadr, now 30, who was captured after a firefight at a suspected al-Qaida compound. He pleaded guilty before a discredited military commission to throwing a grenade that killed U.S. special forces soldier Chris Speer. He has since recanted and has long said he was tortured during his years in Guantanamo Bay.

Seventy-four per cent of respondents say Khadr was a child soldier and should have always been treated as such. Yet, when asked if Khadr has been treated fairly or unfairly during his saga, 42 per cent said they were unsure, while 34 per cent said he was treated fairly.

A majority of respondents also indicated Khadr was at least owed an apology for his treatment.

Asked to imagine themselves on the government's negotiating committee, 29 per cent of respondents said they would offer both an apology and compensation, while another 25 per cent would offer an apology but no money. Forty-three per cent said they would offer neither.

Kurl also believes outrage over the settlement may be affecting the way Canadians see Khadr, who has publicly renounced violent extremism. He has long said he was pushed into war by his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, who was killed in 2003 as he stayed with al-Qaida operatives.

Shortly after Khadr was granted bail by an Alberta court in May 2015, 55 per cent of respondents told the Angus Reid Institute they thought he remained a potential "radicalized threat now living in Canada." The latest poll suggests 64 per cent of Canadians now feel that way.

"It's not as though Omar Khadr has been doing seen doing anything that would indicate he remains a radicalized threat. If anything, he's kept a very low profile," Kurl said.

"Whatever statements he's made have continued to reflect that he continues to renounce that world view."

The Angus Reid Institute's survey was conducted online between July 7-10 among a representative randomized sample of 1,521 Canadian adults. For comparison purposes, the firm notes a similar poll would carry a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Scheer and other Tories repeatedly refer to Khadr as a self-confessed or "admitted terrorist."

Khadr told The Canadian Press last week he is not a "hardened terrorist" and asked for Canadians to judge him on his actions.

Even though the deal is done, Scheer has pledged that Tories will force debate on the issue once the House of Commons resumes sitting in September, the Calgary Herald reports.

At the G20 summit in Germany over the weekend, Trudeau said the settlement reflected that the Charter of Rights protects all Canadians, "even when it is uncomfortable."

"When the government violates any Canadian's Charter rights, we all end up paying for it," he said.

With files from The Canadian Press, previous files

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Omar Khadr Settlement Could 'Haunt Trudeau Liberals': Angus Reid Institute Pollster - Huffington Post Canada

Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown reads a story to 3-year-old Zoe Wilson and her mother Tanya at the St. Thomas Early Learning Centre, July 11, 2017. (Photo by Miranda Chant, Blackburn News.) By Miranda ChantJuly 11, 2017 1:58pm

Ontario PC Leader Patrick Brown hammered the Liberal government over its handling of funding for intensive therapy for children with autism.

At an election campaign-style stop at the Early Learning Centre in St. Thomas on Tuesday, Brown promised that if he is elected premier next year, he would make autism funding and services a priority. But he did not outline any specifics on how he would achieve that.

Brown also slammed the Wynne government over last years attempt to impose a controversial age limit for Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI) therapy.

Last spring, with 16,000 children with autism waiting for some form of treatment, the Liberals terminated the IBI treatment for those age five and above. IBI therapy is considered an effective and life changing treatment for many children. Thousands of Ontario families have waited for years for IBI treatment. But with one stroke of the pen the Liberals ripped away any hope they had, said Brown.

The Liberals have since backed away from the age limit, introducing a new program for therapy funding in the province. The new autism funding program adds an additional $200-million to the $333-million the province previously committed over a five year period.

Brown claimed the Liberals decision to restore IBI therapy to all ages came only after intense pressure from the Ontario PCs.

We listened and worked with parents, we fought day in and day out and I am very proud that we forced the government to do the right thing, said Brown.

However, Minister of Children and Youth Services Michael Coteau maintains it was the governments work with parents, support workers, and clinicians that led to the change.

Patrick Brown has never done anything for children with autism or their families, said Coteau in a written statement. As an MP in the Harper government, he voted against a national strategy for autism that could have led to more co-ordinated service across the country. Now, he continues to mislead families and cause confusion. While Ontario is making the largest investment in autism services in the country, Patrick Brown is playing politics with families.

A high-speed rail line that would link Toronto, London, and Windsor was among the other topics Brown touched on during his stop Tuesday. While he wouldnt commit to the project if his party forms government next spring, he did cast doubts on the Liberals intentions to move forward with it.

I do think its valuable, I do think it is a worthy goal and under this Liberal government it will never happen, said Brown. They are using it as a re-election tool, they are using it as a photo op not something that they actually have a plan to implement when [Minister of Finance] Charles Sousa introduced their budget he mentioned all of their infrastructure projects for the next 14 or 15 years and this wasnt even mentioned.

In May, Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the province was moving ahead with preliminary designs and a $15-million environmental assessment for high-speed rail. At that time she anticipated the Toronto to London corridor would be completed by 2025, while the London to Windsor line would be ready by 2031.

Brown visited London, Windsor, and Kingsville on Monday as part of a 20 riding tour. Wynne and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath are also making campaign style stops across the province this summer, hoping to win over Ontarians ahead of the June 7, 2018 election.

Reporter Email Miranda Chant

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Brown Hits Liberals On Autism Funding - BlackburnNews.com