{"id":9534,"date":"2013-05-18T19:16:57","date_gmt":"2013-05-19T03:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/?p=9534"},"modified":"2013-05-19T08:16:12","modified_gmt":"2013-05-19T16:16:12","slug":"education-the-biggest-loser-in-the-bc-election-negative-politics-hardly-to-blame-bcpoli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/2013\/05\/education-the-biggest-loser-in-the-bc-election-negative-politics-hardly-to-blame-bcpoli\/","title":{"rendered":"Education, the biggest loser in the BC election, negative politics hardly to blame #bcpoli"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BC NDP may have \u2018snatched defeat from the jaws of victory<\/a>\u2019, but education is one of the biggest losers in this week\u2019s election of the fourth consecutive Liberal majority government in the province. In addition to education, the handful of biggest losers in the election includes labour, students, youth, and the increasing volume of people scraping to get by in general.<\/p>\n

With more than a decade of labour disputes over the Liberals\u2019 irresponsible and often careless bargaining practices, the BC Teachers\u2019 Federation is now bracing once again to enter the fray of contract negotiations<\/a>. The past dozen years of degraded labour relations included a range of arbitrations and trips to courts to stave off the Liberals\u2019 intentions of stripping bargaining rights from teachers and alarming erosions of their academic freedom and civil liberties writ large.<\/p>\n

Blind to the stunning turn of election fortunes this week, universities in the province were holding their breath for the NDP\u2019s promises to invest millions in education. Flush in the face, now there is not much more for the Presidents to do but go begging for more or just morph into real estate, as UBC has, and build more, oh yes, and raise tuition. In the backyard of the provincial legislature, the University of Victoria is cutting staff and raising tuition<\/a> once again.<\/p>\n

Actually, most universities in the province, such as UBC, raise tuition 2% annually to build on the students\u2019 backs. Smarting from the trend, students are realizing that they are \u201cpaying significantly more\u201d and \u201cgetting less,\u201d as Melissa Moroz of the Professional Employees Association observed<\/a>. Students are also waking up to the hard facts of the fictitious economy presented to them in low res 3D: the job market for youth is actually the worst in decades and sinking to new lows. Indicators for the summer 2013 summer job market<\/a> point to bleak months ahead while university graduates are left praying and hoping for mere job ads as jobs for University grads become the stuff of the past. Education PhDs, for example, anxiously open the CAUT Bulletin<\/em><\/a> and University Affairs<\/em><\/a> month after month only to find blank columns and a job ad section less than full enough to fold a single paper airplane.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile back on the mainland, students at Capilano University are burning and destroying their artwork in protest<\/a> of impending cuts of entire arts programs. This past year, strikes and other forms of labour action at SFU and UBC marked the sign of the times of universities, over-extended and under-funded, unable or unwilling to pay fair wage increases. Next month begins an arbitration between the Faculty Association of UBC and the University to settle a contract bargaining dispute now in its second year. There isn\u2019t much to bargain for or with, as for the Liberals, the universities\u2019 staff, students, and faculty remain net zero workers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Politics in British Columbia: 14 May election results.<\/p>\n

What happened? With all due respect NDP (and I voted NDP), please quit the laughable fiction suggesting that their negative campaign simply overshadowed our positive campaign–their power out-spun our truth. For sure, the NDP was out-campaigned and badly so. Out-witted and out-strategized would be other ways of describing this. What\u2019s worse than a Liberal? A smug Liberal. But hey, at least we have the Vancouver-Point Grey and Vancouver Fairview ridings, two of the few flies on the windshield of that ostentatious red parade float!<\/p>\n

Visibly fussed the day after the election, the best the NDP could muster up was the simplistic negative v positive excuse. Even some among the left press, such as The Georgia Straight<\/em>, could find nothing to say but to parrot the NDP: \u201cIt\u2019s sad, but negative politics rule\u201d the Straight<\/em> began its \u201cNDP Grapples with Stunning Loss\u201d story<\/a>. NDP candidate George Chow, who went down in defeat in the Vancouver-Langara riding, decried that they lost because \u201cnegativity works.\u201d George Heyman, who displaced the Liberal Minister of Health in the Vancouver-Fairview riding went as far as to mystifyingly say that the Liberals’ \u201cnegative campaign\u201d \u201cturns people off.\u201d One does not have to be a strategy or policy wonk to know that the Liberals hardly ran a negative campaign and those who argue they did appear clueless, or more generously are understandably squeezing sour grapes from what\u2019s left of the BC NDP\u2019s election machinery. A federal NDP MP joined in nonetheless: the Liberals\u2019 victory \u201cshows the power of negative politics,\u201d he said. C\u2019mon now, who are we trying to kid? The ridings that went red and went to the Liberals– nay, all of us–deserve a believable and better explanation from the NDP for what happened on election day.<\/p>\n

What happened? Is not BC a conservative province and the Liberals just as well neoliberals or neocons? Isn’t liberalism and neoliberalism basically the same at this point in time? The glove fits the hand that feeds business, if not business as usual. We know that Canada as a whole has become quite comfortably conservative. In BC, Gordon Campbell brought the Liberals to victory in 2001 and the province took a right turn that obviously sits right with a majority of the people. In this week\u2019s election on 14 May, there were pockets of \u2018vote the bums out\u2019, such as in my riding where we did vote out the Liberals\u2019 very astute strategist and standing Premier Christy Clark. But for the most part, if you lean left toward NDP, election night sadly trended from \u2018vote the bums out\u2019\u00a0to \u2018vote the bums in\u2019.<\/p>\n

Now, as #IdleNoMore confronts #IdleForeverMore, it is going to be an interesting four more years in BC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The BC NDP may have \u2018snatched defeat from the jaws of victory\u2019, but education is one of the biggest losers in this week\u2019s election of the fourth consecutive Liberal majority government in the province. In addition to education, the handful … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1527,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[554,2249,2250,406501,2251,635,524083,2265,642,2266,2270,2272,5038,2273,2275,2276],"tags":[1288941,1288930,2399,1288951,1288953,1288954,1288960,1288961,1288963],"class_list":["post-9534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-freedom","category-accountability","category-advocacy","category-bc-education","category-budgets-funding","category-government","category-idle-no-more","category-organizing","category-politics","category-protests","category-solidarity","category-strikes-labor-disputes","category-student-movement","category-students","category-unions","category-working-conditions","tag-budgets-funding","tag-government","tag-job-cuts","tag-k-12-issues","tag-organizing","tag-protests","tag-strikes-labor-disputes","tag-students","tag-unions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9534"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9537,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9534\/revisions\/9537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/workplace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}