What does it cost the government of BC to operate MSP? Why do we bother having it?
I suggest that the provincial government would save money by getting rid of the MSP system and simply covering all the provincial healthcare costs through general revenues. It costs money to send out bills and collect the money for the public. I fail to see how it would not be more cost effective to not have it all.
There will still be a need for CareCards, as it has to be clear who gets covered in BC by the provicial government. Not everyone in BC using healthcare has their costs paid for by the provincial government.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
For all of Political Junkies out there
The ABC has done in great series about the backrooms of politics in Canbera - sort of an Office of politics. The show is called The Hollowmen. It is funny and stupidly realistic, reminds me of many a minister's office I have walked into in Victoria under five different premiers for three parties.
I have the episodes on my computer here in Victoria if anyone locally is interested in watching it. Email me at bernard@shama.ca
I have the episodes on my computer here in Victoria if anyone locally is interested in watching it. Email me at bernard@shama.ca
Friday, March 27, 2009
Just a bit more depressing news....
I am already unhappy and depressed at the irrational attacks in BC on green power projects, the rising tide of racism among the left, and abandonment of global sound macro-economic policies. Now the Russians have announced that they plan on dramatically militarizing the arctic.
The Russians are looking to access resources in the region, including a lot of oil. 90 000 000 000 barrels is the conservative estimate for the Russian claim area. This would add 150% to the Russian reserves.
What I see the Conservatives and the Liberals doing is dramatically beefing up the Canadian presence in the Arctic. The government has already put things in motion to build a northern deepwater port at Nanasivik, and an army training base at Resolute. Nanasivik is a ghost town at the moment. Resolute is a hamlet of 229 people which was built for arctic soveriegnty purposes in the late 1940s and had Inuit forcibly moved there in the 1960s like was done with Grise Fiord.
The Russian push into the arctic will politically push Canada to go into the arctic. The past attempts to do this in Canada have been expensive and pointless. I am still amazed that the Canadian goverment thought that forcing people to move there was in any way shape or form acceptable. I figure that if you are going to do something like that, start with retired MPs and their families.
The deepwater port at Nanasivik would make the lead zinc deposit there economical. Actually, there are numerous interesting deposits in Nunavut that would be feasible if there was better infrastructure, there is a conference on this in Iqaluit next week.
What depresses me about this is not the resource development, but the responses of government. The government will start to spend even more money in the north. Over the next 20 years we could see a Canadian military presence that included at least one major naval base and then several smaller naval stations. Realistically I see there being a fulltime army presence in the north in the future.
To further improve soveriegnty I can see the government offering financial incentives to have people and businesses to locate in the north. In the 1970's billions were spent by Canada looking for oil in the north. Oil was found, but the cost to develop and transport a generation ago made it uneconomical. With $100 oil and more government support, I can see development of oil going ahead in the Canadian arctic.
The Russians are looking to access resources in the region, including a lot of oil. 90 000 000 000 barrels is the conservative estimate for the Russian claim area. This would add 150% to the Russian reserves.
What I see the Conservatives and the Liberals doing is dramatically beefing up the Canadian presence in the Arctic. The government has already put things in motion to build a northern deepwater port at Nanasivik, and an army training base at Resolute. Nanasivik is a ghost town at the moment. Resolute is a hamlet of 229 people which was built for arctic soveriegnty purposes in the late 1940s and had Inuit forcibly moved there in the 1960s like was done with Grise Fiord.
The Russian push into the arctic will politically push Canada to go into the arctic. The past attempts to do this in Canada have been expensive and pointless. I am still amazed that the Canadian goverment thought that forcing people to move there was in any way shape or form acceptable. I figure that if you are going to do something like that, start with retired MPs and their families.
The deepwater port at Nanasivik would make the lead zinc deposit there economical. Actually, there are numerous interesting deposits in Nunavut that would be feasible if there was better infrastructure, there is a conference on this in Iqaluit next week.
What depresses me about this is not the resource development, but the responses of government. The government will start to spend even more money in the north. Over the next 20 years we could see a Canadian military presence that included at least one major naval base and then several smaller naval stations. Realistically I see there being a fulltime army presence in the north in the future.
To further improve soveriegnty I can see the government offering financial incentives to have people and businesses to locate in the north. In the 1970's billions were spent by Canada looking for oil in the north. Oil was found, but the cost to develop and transport a generation ago made it uneconomical. With $100 oil and more government support, I can see development of oil going ahead in the Canadian arctic.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Thank God I do not live in West Vancouver Capilano
In West Vancouver Capilano there are two candidates running that I admire, in the current voting system I would have a huge problem making the decision who to vote for. Thankfully I am not voting there. On the other hand, the choices in my riding of Victoria Swan Lake are not inspring. Decent enough guys, but not the ones to make a big difference to how things are done.
The sitting Liberal MLA is Ralph Sultan. Ralph is one of the few MLAs in BC that really understands how the economy of BC works. His push for the Highway 37 powerline is very important to all of us in BC. That powerline would open up a lot more areas for green power production.
Running against him is independent David Marley. David is passionate about reforming how we are governed, he is a compassionate conservative. He is also a strong supporter of BC STV.
I expect Ralph to get easily re-elected. BC would be better off if both of them could be elected as MLAs.
The sitting Liberal MLA is Ralph Sultan. Ralph is one of the few MLAs in BC that really understands how the economy of BC works. His push for the Highway 37 powerline is very important to all of us in BC. That powerline would open up a lot more areas for green power production.
Running against him is independent David Marley. David is passionate about reforming how we are governed, he is a compassionate conservative. He is also a strong supporter of BC STV.
I expect Ralph to get easily re-elected. BC would be better off if both of them could be elected as MLAs.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Angus Reid Strategies Poll Results
The Headline result is:
Angus Reid Strategies does a very different polling than other companies. They use people that have self selected to be to be Angus Reid forum panelists. They randomly select 800 people from this set and then adjust their results to reflect the population of BC. This is a new way to do things and is seen with some suspicion by many people in politics, I personally think it is valid if done correctly and I believe that Angus Reid Strategies seeks to be as accurate as possible.
The further breakdowns in the report are very hard for me to work with for a host of reasons.
The poll is clearly good news for the NDP, they are much closer than other polls have show and Campbell is clearly less popular than in the Mustel or Ipsos Reid polls.
If these results were to hold through to election day, it would indicate the Liberals winning 53 - 57 seats and the NDP 28 - 32. Though take those numbers with a grain of salt.
The difference between the Ipsos Reid poll and the Angus Reid Strategies does not mean anyone has a problem with their methodology. The headline results are ballpark within the same range, certainly not dramatically wrong.
So where does this leave us? I am only working with the headline results at the moment because of my issues with how ARS reports their results.
Where do I think we will end up on election day? Now I am really predicting:
So what does this mean for seats? More on that later.
- Liberals - 43%
- NDP - 37%
- Greens - 13%
- Conservatives 4%
- Others - 3%
Angus Reid Strategies does a very different polling than other companies. They use people that have self selected to be to be Angus Reid forum panelists. They randomly select 800 people from this set and then adjust their results to reflect the population of BC. This is a new way to do things and is seen with some suspicion by many people in politics, I personally think it is valid if done correctly and I believe that Angus Reid Strategies seeks to be as accurate as possible.
The further breakdowns in the report are very hard for me to work with for a host of reasons.
- I do not know how many people out of the 800 stated they would not be voting, it should be about 300. This means I do not know what the margin of error is for decided voters in the poll.
- I have no idea how large the regional samples were, so I can not evaluate their relative accuracy.
- They do not provide data on how many people said they were absolutely certain to vote on May 12th. The numbers for the Greens look suspiciously high, they should have the largest drop.
- I do not know what the questions were that they asked
- I would like to see a lot more details on who responded and how they corrected the data. The more correction, the more the error in the results increase. If I could better understand how the data was developed I could do an analysis of it that I have comfort with.
The poll is clearly good news for the NDP, they are much closer than other polls have show and Campbell is clearly less popular than in the Mustel or Ipsos Reid polls.
If these results were to hold through to election day, it would indicate the Liberals winning 53 - 57 seats and the NDP 28 - 32. Though take those numbers with a grain of salt.
The difference between the Ipsos Reid poll and the Angus Reid Strategies does not mean anyone has a problem with their methodology. The headline results are ballpark within the same range, certainly not dramatically wrong.
So where does this leave us? I am only working with the headline results at the moment because of my issues with how ARS reports their results.
- Liberals - 44.5% -1.3% from 2005
- NDP - 36% -5.5% from 2005
- Greens - 14% +4.8% from 2005
- Others - 5.5% +2.0% from
Where do I think we will end up on election day? Now I am really predicting:
- Liberals - 46.2%
- NDP - 39.3%
- Greens - 11.5%
- Conservatives - 2.0% (based on 20 candidates)
- BC Refed - 0.8% (based on 60 candidates)
- Independents - 1.3%
- The rest - 0.5%
So what does this mean for seats? More on that later.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
What a 15 point gap would mean in the BC election
If there really was a 15 point gap between the NDP and the Liberals, which I think the Ipsos Reid poll seems to show, on election day, the NDP would be reduced to about 15 to 19 seats and the Liberals would take 66 to 70 seats.
The Ipsos Reid numbers, Mustel's February numbers, do not indicate anything good for the NDP.
The Ipsos Reid numbers, Mustel's February numbers, do not indicate anything good for the NDP.
More on the Ipsos Poll
Sacha Peter at BC 2009 has more details on the poll. Ipsos Reid has their stuff here.
In looking at the tables, they spoke with 800 voters and 708 were decided voters. There is a significant problem here. Out of 800 people they polled in BC, I would expect about 60-65% of them to be decided voters. They got 88.5% saying they are decided voters. Only about 500 people should have come up as being prepared to vote and the decided voters should have been lower than that.
What this means is that about 200 of the respondents to the poll lied to the pollster as it is clear they will not be voting. That is 1/4 of the respondents to the poll. There is a huge systemic error here and makes the data very hard to work with. Most people will assume people lied answered in the same manner as the those that did not. I think this is an error.
I believe that my early analysis looking at the polling results looking at the very likely voters is much better representation of who will actually vote. Using this as the basis for the vote, things look worse for the NDP, among the people likely to vote, the gap is 14 to 15 points between the NDP and the Liberals.
The data is there to support this as being a realistic reflection of the public from this poll, but when looking at these numbers the margin of error at 95% confidence level is roughly +-4.7%. I come up with 430 very likely supporters in this poll, which I find realistic given voter turn out. Another 70 to 80 respondents are likely to vote but I assume they are the undecided at the moment.
The 708 decided voters makes for a margin of error of +- 3.68 at a 95% confidence level, not the 3.5% as reported, the 3.5% applies to the whole 800. I know this is a small change, but the change does flatten the curve enough to make the overall results 'fuzzier'. The margins of error at the 95% confidence level for regional breakouts:
In the end, the polling is not telling us huge amounts and will mostly be used by people to add a patina of legitimacy to their outrageous predictions for the election. Yes, I mean myself in this as well.
In looking at the tables, they spoke with 800 voters and 708 were decided voters. There is a significant problem here. Out of 800 people they polled in BC, I would expect about 60-65% of them to be decided voters. They got 88.5% saying they are decided voters. Only about 500 people should have come up as being prepared to vote and the decided voters should have been lower than that.
What this means is that about 200 of the respondents to the poll lied to the pollster as it is clear they will not be voting. That is 1/4 of the respondents to the poll. There is a huge systemic error here and makes the data very hard to work with. Most people will assume people lied answered in the same manner as the those that did not. I think this is an error.
I believe that my early analysis looking at the polling results looking at the very likely voters is much better representation of who will actually vote. Using this as the basis for the vote, things look worse for the NDP, among the people likely to vote, the gap is 14 to 15 points between the NDP and the Liberals.
- Liberals - 50%
- NDP - 35%
- Greens - 11.5%
- Others - 3.5%
The data is there to support this as being a realistic reflection of the public from this poll, but when looking at these numbers the margin of error at 95% confidence level is roughly +-4.7%. I come up with 430 very likely supporters in this poll, which I find realistic given voter turn out. Another 70 to 80 respondents are likely to vote but I assume they are the undecided at the moment.
The 708 decided voters makes for a margin of error of +- 3.68 at a 95% confidence level, not the 3.5% as reported, the 3.5% applies to the whole 800. I know this is a small change, but the change does flatten the curve enough to make the overall results 'fuzzier'. The margins of error at the 95% confidence level for regional breakouts:
- Lower Mainland +- 4.65
- Interior +- 7.63 - a VERY flat curve
- Vancouver Island +- 9.90 - a meaningless number for regional break out
In the end, the polling is not telling us huge amounts and will mostly be used by people to add a patina of legitimacy to their outrageous predictions for the election. Yes, I mean myself in this as well.
So the Ipsos Reid Polling Numbers are in
The numbers indicate that there is a large gap between the NDP and the Liberals, large enough to signal a landslide for the Liberals if they hold through to the election. The Ipsos Reid numbers have been consistent for three years now.
I think this gives us a better indication of what the data is saying. The NDP has only secured their core supporters at this time. The Liberals have a commanding lead. Most of the floating voters are not likely to vote.
Looking back on late 2004 and early 2005, the NDP had a higher committed vote than this time and the Liberals lower - the Greens were in the same shallow support as now.
On the basis of the Ipsos Reid numbers, I am broadly sticking with my existing projections for the election, but I will move Vancouver Kensington into a likely Liberal win rather than a toss up as I had been thinking it would be.
I know people are looking for regional break downs, I am not very interested because the data will be too erratic to indicate much at all. At 800 people the margin of error is +- 3.46% at a 95% confidence level. I am actually generally disappointed how few people that look at polls understand the math behind them. The fewer respondents you get, the broader a bell curve you get on the range of values and the less likely the 'reported' value is actually the true one. It would be helpful if the pollsters released the data with several confidence levels, it would give people a better understanding of what the numbers mean. You can do the math yourself.
The margin of error is only relevant to the statistical math going on, it does not account for other errors in the polling through people not being honest in their answer or systemic errors by the pollster. For this poll it is +-4.56% at 99% confidence and +- 2.90% at 90% confidence.
The regional breakouts of an 800 person poll would lead to +- 4.9% at 95% confidence for the whole lower mainland. For Vancouver Island we would have an error of +-8.3% at 95% confidence. What these sort of numbers mean is that any results would have very flat curves and really are no better than hamburger polls in restaurants.
I would like to see some 2000 to 3000 person polls conducted to give us some data with better data and with some real regional numbers to work with.
I am looking forward to the next Mustel poll and see what it can tell us.
- Liberals - 46%
- NDP - 35%
- Greens - 15%
- Others - 4%
- Liberals - 32.2%
- NDP - 21.0%
- Greens - 7.5%
- Others - 1.0% (my own estimate based on past performance)
- Floating voters - 38.7%
I think this gives us a better indication of what the data is saying. The NDP has only secured their core supporters at this time. The Liberals have a commanding lead. Most of the floating voters are not likely to vote.
Looking back on late 2004 and early 2005, the NDP had a higher committed vote than this time and the Liberals lower - the Greens were in the same shallow support as now.
On the basis of the Ipsos Reid numbers, I am broadly sticking with my existing projections for the election, but I will move Vancouver Kensington into a likely Liberal win rather than a toss up as I had been thinking it would be.
I know people are looking for regional break downs, I am not very interested because the data will be too erratic to indicate much at all. At 800 people the margin of error is +- 3.46% at a 95% confidence level. I am actually generally disappointed how few people that look at polls understand the math behind them. The fewer respondents you get, the broader a bell curve you get on the range of values and the less likely the 'reported' value is actually the true one. It would be helpful if the pollsters released the data with several confidence levels, it would give people a better understanding of what the numbers mean. You can do the math yourself.
The margin of error is only relevant to the statistical math going on, it does not account for other errors in the polling through people not being honest in their answer or systemic errors by the pollster. For this poll it is +-4.56% at 99% confidence and +- 2.90% at 90% confidence.
The regional breakouts of an 800 person poll would lead to +- 4.9% at 95% confidence for the whole lower mainland. For Vancouver Island we would have an error of +-8.3% at 95% confidence. What these sort of numbers mean is that any results would have very flat curves and really are no better than hamburger polls in restaurants.
I would like to see some 2000 to 3000 person polls conducted to give us some data with better data and with some real regional numbers to work with.
I am looking forward to the next Mustel poll and see what it can tell us.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Global News Coverage of P3s
I came across this clip through someone on Twitter. Seems Arnie likes BC's approach to P3s.
The report does highlight some important things to know about the P3s that have happened in BC. Specifically the Kicking Horse Bridge was on budget and done 19 months early, the Bennett Bridge in Kelowna was on budget and three and half months early, the Sea to Sky Highway remains on budget and looks to be completed two months early, and the Canada line looks to be two to three months early and on budget.
These results alone point to the type of benefits one looks for in P3s. You want cost containment and delivery on time. There is an ongoing problem globally with large scale capital infrastructure - they tend to be over budget and late. I point again to the work being done by Bent Flyvbjerg in Denmark on this issues. There has been a long term systemic problem with cost and time issues for large capital projects, a P3 is one of the potential tools that can be used to mitigate the systemic problems.
Do we know how much it cost for the company to build the Kicking Horse bridge? No, but we do know what they are being paid. The company may or may not have made money on the project, but that is not our problem.
P3s are also great signals to government as to realistic costs to build something. If government seeks a P3 on a project and no one bids on it, then this is a strong signal saying there is something fundamentally wrong with the project assumptions. The new Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre has borne this out.
It concerns me that the government is not going to build the new Port Mann as a P3. The loss of the private sector sends a strong signal that there are problems with the project.
The report does highlight some important things to know about the P3s that have happened in BC. Specifically the Kicking Horse Bridge was on budget and done 19 months early, the Bennett Bridge in Kelowna was on budget and three and half months early, the Sea to Sky Highway remains on budget and looks to be completed two months early, and the Canada line looks to be two to three months early and on budget.
These results alone point to the type of benefits one looks for in P3s. You want cost containment and delivery on time. There is an ongoing problem globally with large scale capital infrastructure - they tend to be over budget and late. I point again to the work being done by Bent Flyvbjerg in Denmark on this issues. There has been a long term systemic problem with cost and time issues for large capital projects, a P3 is one of the potential tools that can be used to mitigate the systemic problems.
Do we know how much it cost for the company to build the Kicking Horse bridge? No, but we do know what they are being paid. The company may or may not have made money on the project, but that is not our problem.
P3s are also great signals to government as to realistic costs to build something. If government seeks a P3 on a project and no one bids on it, then this is a strong signal saying there is something fundamentally wrong with the project assumptions. The new Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre has borne this out.
It concerns me that the government is not going to build the new Port Mann as a P3. The loss of the private sector sends a strong signal that there are problems with the project.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Waiting on polling numbers
New numbers are supposed to be out tomorrow. They will set the stage for the provincial election campaign. Unless the NDP is in the 40s in the poll, there is effectively no hope left for the NDP to hold the seats they have at the moment. Any number below 40% will mean the loss of a number seats. A gap of 10% or more between the Liberals and the NDP signals a Liberal landslide.
Certainly all the numbers up until now have not been good for the NDP, yes there was a couple of polls late last summer that showed a much narrower gap, but since then it has not been good.
If I am feeling better tomorrow, the flu yet again, I will post a comprehensive analysis of the seats in the province
Certainly all the numbers up until now have not been good for the NDP, yes there was a couple of polls late last summer that showed a much narrower gap, but since then it has not been good.
If I am feeling better tomorrow, the flu yet again, I will post a comprehensive analysis of the seats in the province
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