Frankly Speaking

Photos (top to bottom) - BC Liberal leader Christy Clark, NDP leader John Horgan, Green leader Andrew Weaver The B.C. election campaign officially starts tomorrow. With fixed election dates being known four years in advance, the unofficial campaign is much longer than the official one. The three parties with chances to elect MLAs have been campaigning in various fashions all this year. Much of the campaigning was done during the spring legislative session, particularly with the budget and the reaction to it. It has also involved advertising from the government, the political parties and numerous special interest groups. The interest in the campaign shown by the public, up until now, has been very muted. Many people are unaware there is an election coming. When informed about the May 9 election (I have witnessed this personally), the response is “when is the next one?” and “I’m too busy to pay attention, get on the voters’ list or do anything else.” As Martyn Brown ...

The past few weeks have been rough ones for the print media business in B.C. – in particular for the staff of The Surrey Leader , most of whom lost their jobs on Friday, and 54 people at Pacific Newspaper Group (publishers of The Vancouver Sun and The Province ), who received layoff notices on March 24. I had wanted to post some thoughts on this situation sooner, but news of the closure of The Leader hit me in the gut. (It was followed a few days later by hernia surgery, which literally involved my gut, so I guess I have a bit of an excuse). I was on staff at The Leader for 14 years, seven as editor, from 1979 to 1993. My direct association with The Leader goes back to the early 1970s, and longtime editor and publisher Stan McKinnon was the person who pointed me towards taking journalism training at Langara College. That opened the door to get into a business that I loved in the 1970s and still love today. I continued to do a weekly column in The Leader right up to the fi...