Sunday 22 August 2010

Have heard this song before. It's from an old familiar score.


I’m really really trying to get upset that the BC’s chief electoral officer is refusing to take the 700,000-signature HST petition to the BC Legislature in accordance with the law.


Pundit Bill Tieleman who has been helping the former BC premier Bill Vander Zalm (talk about strange bedfellows…) with a little PR on his blog and on his Facebook page, has a blog heading from Aug 10 that says: Total Recall!  Elections BC verifies success of Fight HST citizens Initiative petition - but won't act because of big business court action!

Oh-kay.  But where do the !!!!!s come in to this?  People are surprised?

Bill Tieleman says the reason the electoral officer won’t submit petition is “because a big business coalition is attempting to take legal action to block the entire [Fight HST] Initiative process - a bogus excuse for refusing to do their duty as required.”

I can see where Bill Vander Zalm might be a teeny bit surprised -- it is a bit flagrant -- but I thought Tieleman would know this type of thing is S.O.P.  (standard operating procedure) when the establishment wants to block those who disagree with them.

Ask any political activist from the Left.  It’s why they all burn out. They slog away year after year, decade after decade, following “the law” -- going through the process of legal dissent -- while governments or their agents, slalom around them and block them at every turn.

A recent example would be David Orchard, who tried valiantly to stop the takeover by the Canadian Alliance Party of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada - the “merger” that produced that rough beast called The Conservative Party of Canada which slouched towards Ottawa and became our federal government soon after.


The Electoral Chief of Canada actually opened his office on a Sunday -- yes a Sunday in Ottawa -- to accept the paperwork for the merger.  And you know all about the signatorial derrings-do that Peter MacKay pulled when he made the deal with David Orchard promising on paper, in writing, no merger in order to become leader of the PC Party then later enabled that merger. 


But the Right, in the person of people like The Zalm and his followers -- because they tend to be the Establishment in everything -- are not accustomed to having their legal initiatives blocked and stymied like people on the Left are.


Speaking of Vander Zalm’s followers, don’t be surprised to find out that that his intention around the Fight HST Campaign was to call forth the undead of the old Socred party and do grassroots (a favourite word of his) organization around the HST issue, with a view to supplanting Right Wing Party #1 (the Liberals) with Right Wing Party #2 in the next provincial election -- a Socred rehash.  Not that the Liberals aren’t that, but this would be a re-branded Socred rehash.


And isn’t the Left playing into the former premier’s hands around the notion of supporting his anti-HST thing because Vander Zalm cares “the people?” Remember when he was Human Resources Minister of this province and told people on welfare to “pick up a shovel?” That’s Mr.  Peeps for you.


Listen to Bill T., bless his heart:

The Recall and Initiative Act is extremely clear - if the petition is verified as having met the threshold, then ‘...  the chief electoral officer must send a copy of the petition and draft Bill to the select standing committee.’ 
Not ‘may’.  Not ‘whenever he or she feels like it’.  Not ‘after business groups take a legal run at the petition’ - the Act says the chief electoral officer "must" - no ifs ands or buts.

This is the same government that tore up legal union contracts in BC, the government that has shown again and again it will do whatever it bloody well pleases.  Law-schmaw.


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Media Release, Friday, March 5, 2004

Why did the Chief Electoral Officer create the Conservative Party of Canada on a Sunday?


There will be a motion in Federal Court in Toronto on Monday, March 8th asking the court to order the Chief Electoral Officer to provide more information from his files concerning the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada.

The Chief Electoral Officer registered the Conservative Party of Canada as a result of a purported merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance on Sunday, December 7th, 2003.  One consequence of the registration was to eliminate the Progressive Conservative Party.

The Honourable Sinclair Stevens, on behalf of a number of "PC Party loyalists," has launched an application to judicially review the Chief Electoral Officer's decision to register the new Conservative Party.

The Notice of Application alleges that there was no proper "merger resolution" as required by the Canada Elections Act.  It further alleges that registering the merger on the day after the vote by the Progressive Conservative Party denied natural justice to those who wished to make representations to the Chief Electoral Officer that he should not accept the purported merger.  

The Notice of Application also alleges that PC Party leader Peter MacKay usurped the role of the Management Committee of the PC Party in selecting the PC Party members to sit on the interim joint council of the new Conservative Party.  The Notice of Application further alleges that the Conservative Party of Canada did not have any structure whatsoever at the time that the Chief Electoral Officer registered it as a political party.

As part of the application for Judicial Review, the applicant requested that the Chief Electoral Officer provide all notes, memoranda, correspondence, emails, voice mails and any other documents concerning the Conservative Party of Canada that he had in his possession.

The Chief Electoral Officer provided some such documents but withheld others on the ground that they were irrelevant to the Chief Electoral Officer's decision.

The documents that were provided show that the initial presentation to the Chief Electoral Officer concerned the creation of a new party, not a merger.  To date no explanation has been given for the changed wording or of how it was arranged that the Chief Electoral Officer received the merger application on a Sunday.  There remain many other mysteries concerning the discussions between the Chief Electoral Officer and those who were pushing the merger.  The applicant submits that further information from the Chief Electoral Officer's files is required in order to properly adjudicate the application for Judicial Review.

The motion for an order that the Chief Electoral Officer be required to produce all the documents will be argued in the Federal Court in Toronto on Monday, March 8th, 2004 beginning at 9:30 a.m.


Court Hearing: 9:30 a.m., March 8, 2004
Federal Court, 8th Floor - Canada Life Building
330 University Avenue, Toronto

-30-

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