Interesting . . . while I am no fan of Polak, she appears to have been no fan of Christy Clark, of whose ministry she has been quite outspoken in her criticisms. Polak, to her credit, has been a vocal proponent of school board autonomy and has publicly chastised Clark's ministry for micro-managing districts, and for its poor communication skills in blind-siding school boards with major policy and funding announcements on which they consistently refuse to give the boards a 'heads up' before the media is contacted. Given this history it would not surprise me if Clark (and therefore Marissen) harboured some personal animosity toward Polak.

Yah, I'm sure it has nothing to do with Polak's personal jihad against gays and their awful, faggy books.

nuff said about gays,, o.k. fruitcakes..

b.c. liberals rejoice,, we do not have any connections to the fed brothers.that ship is sinking faster then a david anderson leather shoe.

now, repeat after me,MARY HAD ALITTLE LAM,,,,
oh ,well ,,don,t bother.

fiscal conservs ,yes

conserves with a personal agenda no.
nic, cheers.

What is Gordon Campbell's strategy here? When this kind of wacko right-wing Christian heritage-style stuff got out of hand in the federal election, what with Randy White and Cheryl Gallant, Harper's party went down by 20 or 25 points in BC in terms of popularity. That being said, they still won the majority of seats. Gordon Campbell has always said that he needs both the federal conservatives and the federal liberals to keep his coalition together. Why is he poking progressive-minded people (who might otherwise agree with the government) straight in the eye by running such a controversial candidate? Maybe because he sees that he, like Harper, can still win a majority of seats in BC without bothering to appeal to rational, middle-of-the-road voters. Take a look at Gordon's brother Michael Campbell's rants today (or almost any day) in the Vancouver Sun, and you can see their family's real agenda -- they are totally anti-federal Liberal. Why do any of the federal Liberals bother supporting them? It is totally illogical. It must just be that they are willing to sacrifice all of their values to gain power. I guess that's not big news.

Jeez,

1. Mary is a Red Tory who backed pro-gay rights Belinda.

2. Randy White did not lose any of the Canadian Alliance voters that voted for Stockwell Day. The Orcharite PCs didn't vote Conservative, the Joe Clark Red Tory PCs didn't vote Conservative and some old Reformers who would never vote for a Party named "Conservative" with Mulroney back pulling strings again.

3. The Socreds took the brand name away from the Liberals in some ways but the vast majority of the MLAs are connected with the Federal Liberal Party. Most of the token Conservatives are really Red who would be comfortable in the Fed Liberals.

Name all the MLAs with connections to the Reform Party or even the Canadian Alliance.

Pete

I would argue that anyone with any real say in the direction of the BC Liberal Party is a thinly-veiled Conservative. There might be a some federal Liberals in that caucus but they are left out in the cold.

Thinly-veiled? If you don't give specifics, no one has a reference point to determine if you consider half of the old Glen Clark cabinet to be Conservatives and since you're using a capital "C" to refer to a rather light weight version of a "R"ight wing party containing Reformers, Stock SoCons, Harper NeoCons and Belinda Bay St elitist Red Tories, how can your opinion be taken seriously?

Pete

It is a bit strange that Mary supported Belinda, given that Mary catered to the hard right on the gay rights stuff. I couldn't imagine Belinda having such retrograde views.

About 1/3 of the caucus are federal Liberals, about 1/3 are Conservative/Socred/Reform, and the rest of them are just unaligned right-wingers. Some of the key players in the cabinet were federal Liberals at one time (Colin Hansen and Gary Collins come to mind) but they have now bought in lock-stock-and-barrel into the far-right agenda. When you've got far-right Kevin Falcon calling the shots and promoting a far-right candidate in the byelection, it doesn't really matter what the federal affiliations are -- it's the right wing that has control. Mary Polak may be backtracking now to try to appear moderate, but there is no mistaking it -- being against a few gay books because they were "age inappropriate" and spending millions of dollars fighting it in court does not make her moderate. Just change the word "gay" to "Jew", and you see how awful it all really is.

Well Victoria beat me to the punch. The way I see it, the guys calling the shots are Campbell, Martin Brown, Falcon, Coleman and Bond. Pete, I challenge you to show how federal Liberals, other than Collins and maybe Hansen, influence that group of neo-cons who call most of the shots.