Quotes

“A couple of years ago, the timing was as good as it was likely to ever get for the B.C. government to raise the minimum wage.
“Yet as has been their habit for the last eight years -- a time during which the $8-an-hour B.C. minimum wage slipped from the highest to the lowest in the country -- Gordon Campbell and Company didn't do it.”

“How can you tell what the net effect is without looking at the whole picture? They replied it wasn’t part of [PriceWaterhouse Coopers’] mandate from government. Not part of the mandate to give us the complete and total picture. Ninety eight days from now the biggest party in B.C.’s history gets under way. I wonder how much they’ve budgeted for the hangover medication.”

“For eight years, the minimum wage in British Columbia has stayed at $8 an hour. It is time for that to change."

“The Campbell government's actions are resulting in a shift to two-tier health care in B.C.
“People who can pay get fast, effective treatment. The rest of British Columbians wait, suffer and get sicker.”

“Whole constitutions have between drafted in less time [than the new lobbyists' registration bill]. Adding to the insult, the Liberals admit that the revised legislation is, in large measure, an off-the-shelf version of a bill that was tabled in Alberta in 2007.
“No question that the toughened bill clears the way for a crackdown on unregistered lobbying. But given what's gone on under the Liberals, it can readily be called the Closing the Barn Door After the Horse has Escaped Act.“

“The implementation of a 12-per-cent harmonized sales tax in B.C. next summer will cost the tourism industry as many as 5,174 jobs and see visitor spending drop by as much as $545 million annually, according to an analysis of the tax's impact prepared by the Council of Tourism Associations.”

“In the end, the BS Tax will pass, and life in B.C. will go on, albeit with the soiled image of the traditional leaders in our communities left a little more tattered and tarnished, all for the sake of one man's and one party's political neck. Shame.”

“The Campbell government's decision to scoop $10 million in lottery grants in arts-group funding is mean spirited, politically dumb, and disproportionately unfair to rural British Columbia. Putting it as delicately as I can, those cuts are a downright sleazy way to treat an enormously talented and productive group of citizens.”

Quite the contrary. Premier Gordon Campbell promised that despite financial pressures, core services like health would be protected. The authority knew in February cuts were needed; so did the Liberals.
“Only in October did they reveal the reality.”

“I think they've used up a lot of goodwill, and what we're seeing right now is the Liberals raw and exposed. If things keep on going this way, I don't think the future is looking very good for the Liberal Party at all.”