{"id":8560,"date":"2014-02-05T08:50:02","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T16:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=8560"},"modified":"2014-02-04T10:43:02","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T18:43:02","slug":"politically-speaking-prime-minister-confirms-west-coast-is-best-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2014\/02\/05\/politically-speaking-prime-minister-confirms-west-coast-is-best-coast\/","title":{"rendered":"Politically Speaking<\/em>: Prime Minister confirms west coast is best coast"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you didn\u2019t know, Canada is really big (at least in the literal, geographical sense). On one level, our size and distance from each other keeps us all interesting: west coasters have our Nanaimo Bars and Newfoundlanders their seal-flipper pies. These fun cultural differences don\u2019t generally lead to a lot of regional animosity (although east coasters are almost certainly jealous of North America\u2019s best no-bake dessert).<\/p>\n

When it comes to regional political culture, though, all bets are off. That\u2019s why a policy that the federal government might see as in everyone\u2019s interests can in fact polarize different regions. As former Prime Minister Mackenzie King quipped in 1936, \u201cIf some countries have too much history, we have too much geography.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not much has changed since then. A talk by Stephen Harper was interrupted by two climate change protesters at a Vancouver trade event last month. The activists expressed their disdain for the Conservatives\u2019 climate policy by calmly holding signs on stage with the Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

The activists didn\u2019t faze Harper, however, who calmly chirped, \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be BC without it.\u201d Some took this comment as proof of Harper\u2019s detachment from the nature of politics here in beautiful BC. I would beg to differ.<\/p>\n

In fact, I think he\u2019s right. Without men and women like Shireen Soofi and Sean Devlin as voices for ecological concerns, we wouldn\u2019t be the province responsible for Greenpeace, mass protests to protect our rainforests, or Canada\u2019s first Green MP.<\/p>\n

This green streak, mostly based on the west coast of BC, proves that politics can differ, even within provinces. Most of these phenomena came and continue to come from us pinko do-gooders on \u201cthe Left Coast,\u201d who balance the Conservative power-base in the rest of the province.<\/p>\n

Harper is probably right about one thing: without our active green movement, BC could be the same shade of Tory blue as the rest of Western Canada. BC wouldn\u2019t be BC without a strong environmental movement.<\/p>\n

Without it, we\u2019d look the same as the rest of the West, at least politically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you didn\u2019t know, Canada is really big (at least in the literal, geographical sense). On one level, our size and distance from each other keeps us all interesting: west coasters have our Nanaimo Bars and Newfoundlanders their seal-flipper pies. These fun cultural differences don\u2019t generally lead to a lot of regional animosity (although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-february-5-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8561,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8560\/revisions\/8561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}