Frankly Speaking

Langley voters made modern history by voting in a Liberal MP to represent them in one of the two Langley ridings. The last time that any portion of Langley was represented by a Liberal MP in Ottawa was 1953 – before most people were born. The Liberals have had little presence in the area since that time, although in 1968 there was renewed interest in the party when Pierre Trudeau was selected leader, and brought youth and vigour into a party which had been seen as largely the preserve of older men. Shortly after Trudeau was named party leader (and prime minister, as the Liberals were in power as a minority government under Lester Pearson), he called an election. As part of that campaign, he held a major rally at Fort Langley, likely the only time there has been a major political rally involving a Liberal prime minister in Langley’s history. So there is no shortage of irony that under Pierre Trudeau’s son Justin, the Liberals have won 17 seats in B.C. after a similar disp...

Frank Bucholtz photo The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway hosts a wide variety of trains on its line through White Rock, including this special passenger train operated for Dennis and Phyllis Washington and their guests, which travelled through in July 2014. The Washingtons' company, The Washington Group, owns Montana Rail Link, Southern Railway of B.C. and Seaspan International, among other companies. A proposed $700,000 technical study to look into moving the Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks from the White Rock and South Surrey waterfront to a new alignment is an early indicator of how costly this idea is. Municipal politicians are already trying to shift the cost onto their neighbours. Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner says that White Rock should foot a significant portion of the cost, while beleaguered White Rock taxpayers likely think Surrey should pay for all but the consultant’s last cup of coffee. A move could benefit the waterfront residents of both communit...

Frank Bucholtz photo Everyone using a speedboat service to cross Freetown harbour in Sierra Leone, West Africa must use life jackets - including all the crew members. Such a rule makes abundant sense for the many excursion boats in B.C. waters. My former colleague Sandy Macdougall, longtime reporter at the Tri-City News and Maple Ridge News, made an excellent comment on his Facebook page about the terrible tragedy in Tofino yesterday. He said: "Why aren't all passengers on any size whale watching vessel required to wear either a life jacket or a survival suit? Although the Leviathan II had sufficient life jackets on board, it appears that no passenger or crew member was wearing one. It reminds me of the few occasions when I covered drowning victims at Pitt Lake where the boats involved all had life jackets carefully stowed away and which were entirely useless to the victims because there just isn't time to dig them out and put them on properly in a sudden emer...

Surrey and Delta voters chose to go a different direction Monday, with five of the six local ridings now Liberal. Other than Sukh Dhaliwal in Surrey-Newton, who will return to Ottawa as a Liberal MP (he served from 2006-2011), all the MPs elected from the area are new to federal politics. The heavy Liberal representation from this area is a significant change. Most areas of Surrey have not been represented by a Liberal in Ottawa since 1953, while in Delta the most recent Liberal MP was last in office in 1972. What caused this change?   Voters were hungry for it, for a number of reasons. The Conservatives’ governing style turned off many people. Changes to immigration policy, particularly in areas like family reunification, were unpopular with many. The niqab issue was disquieting to recent immigrants. The Liberals ran a positive campaign. Justin Trudeau, who visited Surrey several times, appealed to younger voters. Strategic voting was given a high profile by the media and...

The Liberal wave hit B.C. in a big way, as it did in most parts of Canada. In B.C., the Liberals won in most urban areas, but the extent of their win shows just how urban B.C. has become. For example, Kelowna-Lake Country, a conservative bastion for generations, went Liberal. So did four of the five Surrey seats, Delta, and a seat which straddles Burnaby and North Vancouver. Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge and Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam are also now Liberal. In most of those areas, there has not been a Liberal MP since Louis St. Laurent was prime minister. Four Vancouver seats, one in Richmond, and two other North Shore seats are also Liberal - as is, quite surprisingly, Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon. That may be the most rural seat of the 17 the Liberals won. They still have a chance at an 18th seat- incumbent NDP MP Kennedy Stewart is barely ahead of his Liberal rival Adam Pankratz in Burnaby South, with a number of polls still to be counted, as this is written. The NDP are still powerfu...

This is my last pre-election post, but it's the one I have thought about the longest. It started to germinate when I cleaned out my desk at The Langley Times in June, after 17 years as editor. One of the files I came across was entitled  "Velmagate." Reporters love to attach the suffix "gate" to ongoing issues that have the whiff of political scandal to them. This of course goes back to the granddaddy of all recent political scandals and the likely high water mark in the journalism world - Watergate. There have been plenty of "gates" at The Times and doubtless at almost every other mainstream media outlet in North America. I don't know how Canadians are going to vote on Monday. Like many people, I am guessing that the Liberals will win, but I freely admit that much of that guessing is based on talking heads, who in turn base their opinion and guesses on polls. As I have noted before, polls have been notoriously inaccurate in many recent electi...

Photo by Brian Woudstra Three of the four candidates in Fleetwood-Port Kells spoke at a candidates' forum on Oct. 7 at Northwood United Church. At the microphone is Liberal Ken Hardie. NDP candidate Garry Begg is on the left, with Green Richard Hosein in the centre. As the empty podium indicates, Conservative incumbent Nina Grewal skipped the meeting, as she has did with forums organized by the same two church groups during the 2008 and 2011 election campaigns. Nina Grewal, in her own unique way, has been a trendsetter for some of the Conservative Party's actions in this election campaign. First elected in 2004 in what was then the new riding of Fleetwood-Port Kells, she and her husband Gurmant, who was elected in 2004 in Newton-North Delta, were the first husband and wife team of MPs elected to the House of Commons. Gurmant had first been elected as a Reform MP in 1997 in the Surrey Central riding, which took in the middle third (and most populous) part of the city. By ...

It is quite possible that voters in Surrey and Delta will be taking part in the most competitive elections in many years, for all or most of the six local seats in the House of Commons. That is likely why many came out to vote at advance polls over the weekend. Across Canada, 3.6 million voted at the four-day advance polls – up 71 per cent from the 2011 totals. In Surrey, a number of voting stations had lengthy lineups at times over the weekend. Elections Canada clearly had not expected so many to come and vote early. It seems certain that voter turnout will be up in this election. There are a number of reasons. It has been a lengthy election campaign, the longest in modern Canadian history, so very few people can say they aren’t aware of it. The prime minister has been in office for almost 10 years and, as a result of decisions made over that period, there is clearly a mood for change among many. Strategic voting has been highlighted more than ever, and has been aided by se...

Langley Township Councillor Kim Richter asked me on a Facebook post the following question, in a general discussion of the election polls last week. "What is your take on the 6 new seats in B.C.? Are they all going to go the same way (ie. Conservatives). I have heard (Dianne) Watts is in trouble in Surrey. Is this true?" Here's how I saw the B.C. results on election night shaping up, as of our Oct. 6 discussion. "Can't see Dianne Watts losing. threehundredeight.com seat projections for B.C. seem off-base to me in a number of ridings. Conservatives could lose Fleetwood-Port Kells, will likely lose Van South and possibly at least one each of North Shore and Richmond ridings will go Liberal. New Vancouver-Granville riding seems a pretty even three-way split. Surrey-Newton will also be a close three-way race. The three Coquitlam/Maple Ridge area seats will be interesting. Fin Donnelly (NDP) likely to win in Port Moody-Coquitlam, while Maple Ridge-Pitt...