Thoughts on BC Politics and More

Saturday brought interesting results, from all around the province, as polls closed at 8pm on municipal and school board elections. For starters, Saturday’s civic election had numerous notable moments, including in the City of Nanaimo, where former NDP MLA Leonard Krog will soon take over as mayor.   That leaves the provincial riding open, and … it also means BC Premier John Horgan will need to call a by-election.   Given his NDP razor thin majority in the legislature, only due to being propped up by Andrew Weaver’s Green Party, that is not a riding he’ll want to even consider the possibility of losing.   Look for a star candidate to be on the ballot. Newly elected North Cowichan Mayor Al Siebring Also, on Vancouver Island, former North Cowichan city councilor Al Siebring decided to take a run at the Mayors chair which was being held by Jon Lefebure, who had 16 years of public service in the District of North Cowichan.   At the end of vote cou...

On Wednesday December 7th, Peter Fassbender (Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development) released information about on-going, and up-coming, changes it was making to the Community Gaming Program. He stated: “ I want to thank the Office of the Auditor General for completing their thorough performance audit of our Community Gaming Grants program. I am pleased that the audit found government has a suitable framework in place to administer the program, and we recognize that improvements are needed in some key areas. “The report outlines 10 recommendations, including the development of a performance management framework, and to evaluate the approach used in assessing applications. Government accepts all 10 recommendations ." A brief summary, and history, of gaming and gambling in British Columbia reminds us that: up to 1969 public gambling / gaming was illegal in Canada then in the 1970s non-profit organizations were able to generate ...