Frankly Speaking

Justin Trudeau is following in his father's footsteps after Monday's federal election - emerging with a minority government in his second election after the Trudeaumania wave disappeared. Canada emerged very divided from the election on Monday, and the first act of the three national party leaders after the results were in did not bode well for future co-operation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke in Montreal just after Conservative leader Andrew Scheer began to speak in Regina. Scheer took to the stage while NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was winding up his remarks in Burnaby. The Liberals won a minority government, with 157 seats. Most of those seats are concentrated in the Toronto and Montreal areas, and in the Atlantic provinces. They were shut out in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and their B.C. presence is concentrated around Vancouver. They have no B.C. seats outside Metro Vancouver. The Conservatives have 121 seats, including ...

One of the final opportunities to have input into Parliament's approach to legalizing physician-assisted dying in Canada will come on Saturday. Conservative MP Mark Warawa (Langley-Aldergrove) and Liberal MP John Aldag (Cloverdale-Langley City) are co-sponsoring a session where the public can give input on this important issue. I have been asked to moderate this event. It takes place at the Langley Township council chambers (Fraser River presentation room), 20338 65 Avenue, Langley from 10 to 11:30 a.m. on Saturday (Jan. 30). The government has been given an additional four months to come up with legislation on this topic by the Supreme Court of Canada, which threw out the prohibition on the practice in the Carter decision, which came down in February, 2015. Anyone with an interest in this topic would find attending this event very worthwhile.

Frank Bucholtz photo Jose Figueroa and his daughter face a battery of television cameras Wednesday, after he was given freedom from deportation by Canada Border Services Agency. He has been taking refuge at Walnut Grove Lutheran Church for the past two years. Jose Figueroa walked out of Walnut Grove Lutheran Church today (Dec. 23), on his 49th birthday. He is a free man. More than two years after taking sanctuary, the Langley City man, who has been in Canada for 18 years, was finally assured by the federal government that he would not be arrested and deported to his native El Salvador. An earlier decision said he was a member of what Canada once considered a terrorist organization. That organization is now the democratically-elected government of El Salvador. There was a large turnout this afternoon to see him symbolically walk out of the church, then go back inside for some intensive media coverage. The media deserves a lot of credit for the ongoing publicity they have given ...

An interesting discussion on an important topic takes place Saturday in Walnut Grove. The Catholic Women's League of St. Nicholas Church in Langley is hosting a panel discussion on euthanasia - a subject that will soon be before the federal House of Commons. That's because the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in February, in the Carter  decision, that existing rules on assisted suicide are unconstitutional, and gave the government a year to amend the Criminal Code. Thus far, there has been no concrete action - mainly because of a lengthy federal election campaign and a new government taking office this month. I will be moderating this discussion, and am looking forward to hearing from the panelists. A candidates' meeting in the South Surrey-White Rock riding that I moderated in October saw this issue discussed in some detail, and it is a complex subject. Organizers are hoping for a far-reaching, thoughtful discussion. The panelists will be speaking from an anti-euthanas...

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...

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...