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VANCOUVER Voters in British Columbia head to the polls on Tuesday as the Liberals aim to cling to power and the New Democrats try to take it back after 16 years in Opposition.

Experts say the emergence of the Green party for the first time in Canadian provincial politics has injected some defining moments into an otherwise ho-hum campaign.

Green Leader Andrew Weaver was in both debates during the month-long campaign with Liberal Leader Christy Clark and the NDPs John Horgan.

Heres what else experts said about the issues that they think have resonated with voters:

Hamish Telford, political science professor at the University of the Fraser Valley:

We have not had a provincial election in Canada where the Green party has played a strong third-party role. Even with Elizabeth May at the federal level she has not got into all the election debates so the Greens make this a very different election in Canada, and certainly in B.C.

Telford said the Liberals have run a hard and cold campaign by repeating the message of lowering taxes, controlling government spending and growing the economy. Theres no real love in this message.

Overall, the NDP is running a better campaign than they did the last time. John Horgan has been a vigorous campaigner in the sense that hes attacking the Liberal record.

Telford said Weaver has presented himself as a credible alternative to the traditional parties. Thats a big stride for a new party in the system.

Telford said Canadas first Green member of a legislature is aiming to gain at least three more seats to get more resources in the house.

Jeanette Ashe, political science professor at Douglas College in New Westminster, B.C.

B.C. is historically a polarized system and the fact that the Greens have done well makes us consider whether or not we might be moving toward a three-party system, Ashe said.

The consequence of the growing popularity of the Greens is that its pushing the other parties to reconsider their environmental policies.

Ashe said the Greens opposition to the doubling of the Kinder Morgan pipeline from Alberta to B.C., a project supported by the Liberals, forced the New Democrats to state their stance against it. For some prospective voters, their position had been unclear.

All the parties are trying to appear more environmentally progressive, and I think thats just in response to the growing popularity of the Green party. The voters are demanding it.

Ashe said gender diversity is increasingly becoming a big factor for political parties around the world in an effort to represent all constituents. When one party leads the way with a diverse slate, as the federal Liberals did in the 2015 election, a contagion effect leads opponents to react, she said.

The NDP said it has the highest number of female candidates, at 51 per cent.

The Greens said 37 per cent of their candidates are women. We recognize that this is not nearly good enough in terms of gender parity, the party said in a statement. This is an issue all parties face as there are systemic barriers to women running for office. We can and we must do better to support more women running with the Greens.

The Liberal party did not respond to requests for information on the percentage of female candidates on its slate, but a count of its candidates suggests 41 per cent are women.

Michael Prince, political science professor at the University of Victoria:

The televised debate is clearly the single-most important political event in terms of making or breaking reputations or shifting moments. For Andrew Weaver, it was a great night. Greens were treated as a co-equal party. In the past, the Greens have been almost an afterthought.

Hes on the side of the angels in terms of deciding not to take any corporate or union donations in the last year, Prince said of Weaver in a province often described as the Wild West because of its lack of strict rules around accepting donations.

I think Andrew Weaver is morphing from a scientist, an academic, into a political performer or a politician. Their platform has matured over the first two or three elections. Theyre clearly not just playing to the environmental file. Theyve got some good policy ideas on education, health care, and housing.

Richard Johnston, political science professor at the University of British Columbia:

This is an election singularly lacking in defining moments, he said, adding the Greens have steadily gained credibility as a viable alternative to the two traditional parties.

I do have a sense that people are really tired of the premier, and that includes the business community. She doesnt have the credibility that (former Liberal premier) Gordon Campbell did. On the other hand, there isnt anything about the NDP that makes them somehow more credible than they have been over the decades.

If I were a New Democrat Id be pretty damn angry about Andrew Weaver, Johnston said. Weaver gets treated as a progressive, and of course there is much in the Green program that is progressive, but it is a kind of soft progressivism that does not address hard questions of poverty, inequality, the workplace, the redistributive elements of taxation, the stuff that goes to class divisions in society.

Follow @CamilleBains1 on Twitter.

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Liberals, NDP forced to notice emerging Green party in BC election - CityNews

It was around Wednesday afternoon that the left-wing activists at Indivisible realized all their plans for the week were shot. Everything we had scheduled was chucked out the window, said Angel Padilla, the groups co-founder and policy director. And everything was refocused on defending the ACA.

Republicans have scheduled a Thursday vote on their bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Liberal groups are making a late, escalated effort to block it, one that goes heavy on protesting members of Congress where they live and work.

It might be too little, too late. Progressives spent weeks watching Republicans struggle to get the votes for Speaker Paul Ryans American Health Care Act. And while some have been sounding the alarm about the bills chance at passage for more than a week, others had largely moved onto other priorities, thinking the fight over ACA might have already been won.

Along with MoveOn.org, CREDO, and several other progressive advocacy groups, Indivisible helped organize 29 protests scheduled for Thursday at the home offices of Republican House members expected to vote for the bill.

Hundreds of protesters are also expected to flood the Capitol at 12:30 pm when a floor vote on the bill is scheduled for a rally to save the ACA. Meanwhile, activists across the country expect to make more than 100,000 phone calls to House Republicans offices on Thursday alone, according to a tally based on conversations with six different leading progressive organizations.

We are going to make clear that voting to repeal health care for millions of Americans is a career-ending vote, said Ben Wikler, Washington director of MoveOn.org, in an interview. They will hear from us that there will be a massive political price for shredding the health care of millions of people."

When Ryans first stab at replacing Obamacare failed in March, the lions share of the credit went to the resistance movement that had unexpectedly emerged to defend Barack Obamas signature health care law.

Activists and protesters began showing up at town halls and berating Republicans. Obamacares popularity in polling surged. Op-ed pages brimmed with stories of lives the ACA had saved.

As Voxs Sarah Kliff wrote at the time in detailing Obamacares surprising resilience, House Republicans were inundated everywhere they looked by Obamacare defenders:

People who werent even signed up for Obamacare turned out at raucous town hall meetings, suddenly ready to defend a law that has never been very popular. ...

But once the ACA was actually threatened, things changed. Obamacares popularity went up. More states began fighting to expand Medicaid at the exact moment Republicans wanted to end that program. Obamacare supporters showed up to town halls. They proved that delivering on Obamacare repeal would not be nearly as easy as politicians had expected. It has become a program that millions of Americans rely on and that makes it awfully difficult to roll back.

When GOP leaders pulled back from a vote on the AHCA in March, progressive groups celebrated. Democrats took a photo jumping in unison outside of the Capitol. Millions of Americans have embraced progress and do not want to go back, wrote Faiz Shakir, of the ACLU, after House Republicans abandoned their drive to hold a vote.

Meanwhile, Republicans waited and began amending the bill to court more votes.

As the spotlight shifted to new issues, such as North Korea and tax reform, a few big things changed the dynamic of health care reform. Most importantly, an amendment to allow states to opt out of many Obamacare regulations won converts from the conservative Freedom Caucus.

As the bills defenders grew in numbers, its opponents grew quieter.

Every now and then, a report would emerge suggesting Ryan was getting closer to Obamacare repeal, prompting a flare-up of concern on the left. But the unrelenting stream of stories and protests over the ACA has never really come close to resembling its sustained velocity in February and March.

"Everyone went drinking after the first one [AHCA] failed, and I think we got caught flat-footed," said one Democratic Party operative, speaking on the condition of anonymity, in an interview. The grassroots moved on, and then Republicans moved fast Were all now staring at the abyss."

There was a natural reason for the change it didnt look at all likely to outside observers that Ryan could corral his caucus, and its hard to mobilize people to kill a bill that nobody thinks is alive to begin with. But whether the faded pressure was inevitable or not, it created an opening for Republicans to coalesce around a plan.

Other progressives expressed frustration that, after so many false starts, news reporters appeared to grow desensitized to the possibility of a bill ever gaining close to enough momentum to pass. That, in turn, made it harder for advocacy organizations to generate the same kind of passion among their followers.

"MoveOn and many other groups have been operating in Defcon 5 mode for a week. But most Americans, even progressive activists, weren't aware of the danger. And the media environment that our members live in has made it seem like this moment was almost impossible, said Wikler, of MoveOn, pointing to a series of tweets he wrote on April 28 warning Americans to recognize that AHCA was far more likely than most were recognizing.

Wikler added: "We've been working around the clock and spending money hand over fist for the last week to head this off. But it would take all of five minutes to string together a series of quotes about how TrumpCare was dead in major front page and prime-time stories from the biggest news outlets.

But even if some on the left feel caught off-guard, progressives are mobilizing for one big push Thursday morning before Ryans caucus can head to the floor for a vote.

Weve been expecting this for a while and hammering the Republican offices with phone calls for weeks, said Murshed Zaheed, of CREDO. Were going to be bringing that to another decibel level on Thursday.

CREDO is planning to provide what Zaheed calls aerial cover to by flooding congressional Republicans phone lines with tens of thousands of calls. Scott Dworkin, co-founder of the Dems Against Trump political activism group, said he expects his members to lodge 15,000 calls and emails every hour on Thursday about ACA to House Republicans.

Then there are the plans for targeting 29 different Republicans backing AHCA with protests. Two are expected in the home state of Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, a high-profile swing-vote on the bill now expected to back it. There will be five protests against Speaker Ryan throughout different sites in his home state of Wisconsin, including in Appleton, Janesville, Racine, Wausau, and Eau Claire.

Congressional liberals will try to aid the effort. On Thursday, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent out a letter to the rest of the House Democratic caucus reiterating the partys plan to throw up full opposition to TrumpCare for depleting Medicare and driving up premiums for seniors.

Pelosi aide Drew Hammill explained House Democrats battle-plan this way: "Message discipline. Keep it simple. Poll tested. Lethal. Tattoo it to their foreheads.

And progressive advocates are reminding their members that passing it through the House is still just the first step Republicans have to take to making their bill into law.

If they ram it through on Thursday, Murshed said, well target the Senate right away to make sure its dead-on-arrival.

More here:
"We got caught flat-footed": liberals rush to stop a health bill they thought was dead - Vox

Burnabys NDP-affiliated mayor is taking shots at the Liberal Party of B.C. for ads he says are misleading people about councils stance on marijuana sales but the Liberals arent backing down.

In a press release issued Thursday morning, in the final days of the election campaign, Mayor Derek Corrigan criticized Chinese-language ads placed by the Liberals. The ads in question mention two Burnaby city councillors, Anne Kang and James Wang, who are both running for the NDP in this election Kang in Burnaby-Deer Lake and Wang in Vancouver-Langara.

The Chinese-language ad says that Burnaby city councillors, James Wang and Anne Kang, voted for distributing non-medical marijuana in liquor stores before the federal government has legalized marijuana and that this information is taken from Dec. 5, 2016 Burnaby city council meeting minutes, Corrigan said in the release. This is not true.

The minutes read, in part, that the City of Burnaby wants to ensure that should marijuana be legalized, it is distributed in a responsible manner and does not fall into the hands of minors.

The council discussion arose in connection with a motion to support the Responsible Marijuana Retail Alliance of B.C. a joint partnership of the B.C. Government Employees Union and the B.C. Private Liquor Store Association which proposed retail sales of non-medical marijuana should be allowed only in licensed public and private liquor stores.

Councillors voted unanimously in favour of the motion.

Corrigan noted the minutes of the meeting very clearly indicated the discussion took place in anticipation of new legislation from the federal government in the spring of 2017.

It is clear that there is no level to which the current provincial Liberal party will not stoop in its bid for re-election, but the City of Burnaby will not accept this misrepresentation of the facts about Burnaby city council decisions, Corrigan said. It would be a disservice to our citizens to do so.

Corrigan called on the Liberal Party of B.C. to pull the ads and to apologize to Burnaby city council.

The Liberal Party of B.C., however, has no intention of doing so.

We stand by our advertisement. The minutes show the motion to support the sale of non-medical marijuana in government liquor stores was unanimously approved, says a statement emailed by the Liberal communications team.

Andrew Wilkinson, Liberal candidate in Vancouver-Quilchena, told the NOW in an interview that the issue is not about the wording of the ad but about the fact the NDP candidates did come out in support of marijuana sales in liquor stores something he said Liberal leader Christy Clark has opposed but NDP leader John Horgan has supported.

I think the key question is, are they prepared to disagree with their leader? he said. Its incumbent upon the NDP candidates to make clear their position.

He said the advertisement leads directly to the question of where the candidates stand on the issue.

Not mentioned in Corrigans press release which was sent on letterhead from the City of Burnaby, Office of the Mayor is the fact that Burnaby city council is entirely made up of members of the Burnaby Citizens Association, an NDP affiliate.

Mayor Corrigan has a long history of disagreeing with the Liberals on just about anything, Wilkinson said.

The NOW questioned Wilkinson on where the disputed ad had in fact run, but Wilkinson did not have that information. He said he would call back when he tracked it down but, as of deadline, had not returned the call.

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Burnaby mayor picks a fight with BC Liberals - Burnaby Now

Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) / Getty

BY: Charles Fain Lehman May 4, 2017 3:50 pm

The House of Representatives on Thursday voted 217 to 213topass the American Health Care Act, a Republican bill aimed atrepealing Obamacare and replacing it withmore conservative reforms to the country's health care system.

But whileRepublicans rejoiced atthis next step towardsrepeal, manyon the left went on Twitter to lament the impending massacre of thousands, or even millions, of Americans that would result from the AHCA's passage and the potential repeal of Obamacare.

From the halls of Congress, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.)tweeted that after Thursday's vote,the House GOP "will have the death of thousands of [sic] your conscience forever." Murphy subsequently referred to the bill as a "deliberate decision to hurt millions."

The day before the vote, Murphy also insistedthat "thousands will die if this bill becomes law."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) was also certain that "people will die," but did not say quite how many.

Similar reactions came from the likes of former Hillary Clinton staffer Matt Ortega, who said that House Republicans "condemn many to death," and Dar'shun Kendrick, a Democratic Georgia State representative, who brought up Hillary Clinton's emails by comparison.

The left-wing media also foresaw the deaths of Americans resulting from the vote.

"House Republicans vote to sentence millions of Americans to death" wasthe headline from Daily Kos, a liberal political site.

The same responses came from several left-leaning journalists, including one who proposed a new Bud Light slogan: "You've just condemned millions of people to death. How about a nice cold Bud Light?"

Read the original here:
Liberals Foresee Thousandsor Even MillionsDying in Wake of AHCA Passage - Washington Free Beacon

The women of The View tore Ivanka Trump up duringThursdays airing of The View especially the shows more liberal panelists such as Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar.

Trumps latest book, Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, has been panned by progressive critics, includingGoldberg, who labeledit tone deaf and vapid.

While were on the subject of people who just really dont get whats going on in the real world, Ivanka Trumps new book Women Who Work is not working for a lot of women right now, Goldberg said as she kicked off the segment. Some are calling it tone deaf, vapid and in one particularly regrettable passage, she uses a Toni Morrison quote about the devastating impacts of black slavery. To start a chapter called Working Smarter that asks, Are you a slave to your time, or the master of it?

Goldberg offered a heavy sigh before she trailed off, which gaveBehar an opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

Behar asked, Why do they constantly use slave analogies? Slavery was a unique system of oppression. Its like using the Holocaust to describe things. Using it haphazardly like that, its offensive.

Goldberg went sofar as tostate that she didnt believe that Trump realized slavery was a real thing.

I dont think she understands that slavery actually was real.

Co-hostSunny Hostin didnt have many positive things to say about Trump or her book either.

Theres a tone deafness that I think goes on with the Trump family, and Ivanka is proof of that, Hostin said, noting that one passage in Trumps book read nothing is ever handed to you.

Hostin mocked, Except your daddy handed to you millions and millions of dollars so you could start your business.

Conservative co-host Jedediah Bila argued that the book didnt bother her but said that she felt Trump should perhaps stay in her own lane despite having a good story to tell.

The book doesnt bother me, Bila said, but I think she would be better to speak to her own experience acknowledge the fact that she is a privileged person. She is a smart businesswoman. Shes done a lot with her life in that theres a lot of people who are handed a lot of money and they do nothing with it.

Bila continued and defended Trump to the other hosts.

She was handed a lot of money and she did a lot of great stuff with it, she said, and she can speak to her experience, but then people would be able to look at her as a serious person.

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'The View' liberals don't think Ivanka Trump knows what black slavery was - TheBlaze.com