When it comes to e-campaigning, many of our local candidates fall short.
A few – the Voice slate, Jonathan Cote, Matthew Laird – are doing a reasonable job of leveraging the web to communicate stance on the issues.
The others who have inadequate web presences or lacking any website at all are doing both their campaigns and New West citizens a disservice.
Mass media can only communicate so much about municipal politics, due to the constraints of the form. The web, on the other hand, has the potential to provide much more detailed …

As reviewed in a previous post, all 17 candidates for Mayor and Council were present at the Oct 21st All Candidates Meeting, hosted by the Queensborough Residents Association. We have heard from the Council hopefuls already. Here I review my impressions on the Mayoral candidates; Wayne Wright (incumbent) and Blair Armitage. Each man had an opening and closing statement and moderator Dean Wells had a number of questions reserved just for the Mayor’s race.
Blair Armitage looks the part. He is a squarely built, senatorial and businesslike and he began his …

I was just reading Pat Tracy’s neat blog From the Editor’s Desk . Her most recent post is about the difficulty in remaining unbiased while relating political events. Or at least being perceived as unbiased. As the editor of the Record and the Burnaby Now, she has to keep on top of those concerns as her papers cover the municipal elections:
And then there’s New Westminster, where The Record has been accused of both being for and against the new civic slate, Voice, which is running a full-throttle campaign.
I have also …

The Queensborough Residents Association hosted what was for some, the opening salvo of the 208 Civic Election Season in New Westminster. With 25 days until voting day, this all candidates night at the Queensborough Community Center was the first of five similar nights where the 2 Mayoral Candidates and 15 prospective city councilors present their views to the public. The night was moderated by QRA President Dean Wells.The roughly 35 citizens who attended the ‘debate’ were treated to a list of questions, some pre-posted and some freshly minted by the …

The New Westminster and District Labour Council has endorsed candidates for council across the region. Here in New West, the NWDLC’s picks are:

Council:

Jonathan Cote
Bill Harper 
Jaimie McEvoy
Lorrie Williams

School Trustee

Michael Ewen
Vivian Garcia
James Janzen
Lori Watt

The NWDLC is an organization representing trade union members locally. It is affiliated with the Canadian Labour Congress. 

Among the issues they advocate for:

• creation of a universal child care system;
• protections against privatization of our public health care system;
• an increase to BC’s minimum wage;
• changes to the Workers Compensation regulations to protect workers who work alone;
• government accountability …

In the last federal election, Canadian voter turnout hit a record low, with just shy of 60% of the population casting a ballot on October 14, 2008. Hearing that over one-third of us chose not to exercise the right to vote is depressing … until you hear that fewer than one-third of us bothered to vote at all in the last round of civic elections in British Columbia in 2005. With 26% voter turnout, New Westminster was only slightly below the B.C. average of 30%.

This is not something to …

It is a great time to start a blog about New Westminster. Not only have we just completed a federal election cycle (where two incumbent New Democrat MPs Peter Julian and Dawn Black were returned to Ottawa to represent their ridings) but a municipal election is at hand as well. Hope for a warm, dry day for Saturday November 14th 15th! That is our day to go to the polls. The City web-page has information here and you can find links to many of the candidates running for Mayor, …