As this is the first B.C. election I have paid attention to, I am quite surprised at both the voter turnout as well as the final results.
The predictions for the election were mostly an NDP victory, but instead the Liberals had a majority government. The voter turnout was one of the lowest ever, with only 52 per cent of the eligible voters casting their votes.
I think that more voters should have gone to the polls. If the other 48 per cent turned up, the result could very well be quite different. In several ridings, the NDP and the Liberals were quite close in the vote count, and the other 48 per cent could have tipped the scales between the NDP and the Liberals.
If voters believe someone else is going to vote for them, then there is a problem. This is both an act of laziness as well as a selfishness – depending on others to do their own work.
Voters of all ages should be encouraged to vote, so that they set a good example for future generations. If adults don’t vote, when kids become old enough, they won’t vote either, thinking it doesn’t matter. But it does.
Voters should be encouraged to do what they can, and advertising should be done to encourage people to vote. Democracy is an important part of our government, and if the new generation doesn’t pay attention to these opportunities to exercise democracy, then democracy might be lost.
Alex Chen
A no-brainer for voters
Re: “Ditch the pollsters,” The Leader, May 21.
Ditch the pollsters? The pollsters are the greatest motivating force we have since the former late and great premier of B.C. W.A.C. Bennet warned the B.C. voters that “the socialist hordes are at the gate.”
It worked for me to get out and vote. It obviously worked to get others to vote as well. We did not want a repeat of the 2001 NDP years in power.
While the premier of B.C. Christy Clark was talking about growing the B.C. economy, Adrian Dix of the NDP was talking about growing the public sector, while opposing fracking of natural gas shale in the Peace River area that makes it possible to export this gas, the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain oil pipeline twinning, the Site C hydro dam, and all of the jobs these projects would create.
The voters’ choice was a no-brainer.
Fred Perry, Surrey
Short memories in B.C.
Now that the election has come and gone, I wonder about the memories stirred up by our majority Liberal government, and how long the voters will keep the facts in mind.
It was only 10-11 years ago, in 2002, that then-minister of education Christy Clark authorized the closure of an unprecedented 57 schools throughout the province.
Until her administration, school closures would average five to 10 a year, due to declining enrolment. Her closures were far more sweeping, and were based on Liberal government budget cuts.
The Coast Mountain School District alone lost five schools, including Mountainview Elementary School, newly built to the cost of $3.2 million, and yet never enrolling a student. This was at a time when the Liberal government expanded liquor sales, prompting one official to exclaim, “Why does this government think it’s important to provide access to alcohol within 20 kilometres but it’s okay to make children travel four or five times that far to go to school?”
Yet our voters, forgetting or ignoring this track record, have placed Clark and her Liberal party in a majority government now. We surely don’t seem to remember and learn from history in this province, do we?
Jean Galbraith
Jobs – but at what cost?
The party that just got re-elected in B.C. – and with a strong majority just to make sure the natural resource extraction machine runs full steam ahead – is the most friendly with the federal Conservative government on the topic of placing a growing economy and jobs at the very top of their agenda, with the environment and precious eco-systems at the very bottom.
In other words, a whole lot of shortsightedness is around the corner in regards to a healthy ecosystem and thus a formidably potential threat to a work-capable, healthy populace.
In Big Industry’s universe, life-sustaining ecosystems are once again supposed to take a back seat to extensively increasing massive crude oil and coal extractions and shipping by creating transport corridor nightmares, all for the sake of the almighty dollar.
Really, what part of the no-brainer rhetorical question, time and time again, do so many British Columbians not understand: Is there much good in virtually unhindered resource extraction and creating countless jobs when the planet is deathly contaminated, with its populace getting sicker and dying because of mass industrial and vehicular pollution?
Frank G. Sterle, Jr., White Rock
