Mr. Kennedy?

It's super weekend.

The Kennedy forces and the Dion forces are ready to go.

This weekend delegates across Canada will be selected for the Liberal leadership convention later this year. The eight remaining candidates go into this weekend with varying numbers of automatic delegates and high hopes for being the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

In Burnaby, the likely contenders are Gerard Kennedy, who is backed by the Gurdev Dhillon-controlled Burnaby-New Westminster crowd, and Stéphane Dion, backed by the old guard Martinites that include Billy Cunningham in Burnaby-Douglas. Expect those to ridings to have strong representation for their respective candidates.

The Liberal leadership will play a major role in deciding who is in and who is out in the nomination races across Canada. In Burnaby, the key question will be: does Billy Cunningham enter the race if the Dion forces lose control of the party? We should know early next year.

They just don't

Andrew Stewart gets recognized in The Georgia Straight's Best of Vancouver issue for best "close, but no martini" for his DUI the day before last November's election.

The alt-weekly notes he "came in just 3,710 votes behind Derek Corrigan in the Burnaby mayoral race despite concealing an impaired-driving conviction throughout most of the campaign."

So close, yet so far away. Remember that it's only 26 months till the next municipal election.

Dried up grassroots?

The BC Liberal Convention in Penticton in early November has not yet sold out. Many delegates missed the early bird deadline last week.

At least the BC Liberals should be able to get their entire caucus over to Pentiction since the fall session has been cancelled. Maybe all the MLAs in attendance will supplement the convention mobilization machines of future leadership hopefuls Christy Clark, Rich Coleman, Kevin Falcon, Colin Hansen, and Carole Taylor.

Bloy Oh Bloy, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Comment Fodder

The Burnaby Newsleader reported this week on Burquitlam MLA Harry Bloy's displeasure with a politicized memo sent by a Burnaby Central teacher.

The memo asked for $15 per semester for a shop fee because the Ministry of Education was "decreasing funds." Bloy says funds to Burnaby have gone up while enrollment has declined. That should provide more funding per student.

Bloy adds, "It appears the Burnaby school district is allowing schools to solicit money from students and parents based on inaccurate and misleading information.”

School board chair Ron Burton replied with the standard fodder against Bloy, "It's political rhetoric coming out of him." Expect perhaps for Bloy asking for the district to fire the teacher, everything the Burquitlam MLA said is quite reasonable given that the teacher in question recycled an old memo that was asking for money from a year when education funding was being reduced.

Dion in 60 Seconds

Earlier this week Hedy Fry's Burnaby Mountain appearance had a crowd as sparse as a filed of crosses after one of her Prince George fires.

Next week Stéphane Dion is being trotted out to try and out shine Hedy. The venue will be the same and it is on Monday from noon till two. If Hedy Fry is anything to base your campaign on (probably not), he's booked for 119 minutes longer than necessary.

Just follow the burning crosses

Liberal leadership hopeful Hedy Fry is speaking at Simon Fraser University tomorrow at 2PM in the student union meeting rooms.

Writing about this guy so much, we may as well be Langley Politics

Ryan Warawa, Langley Politics's favourite son, launched Warawa for MP, Burnaby-New West Edition, on Thursday according to the Newsleader.

Kiddie politics and union busting

The Simon Fraser Student Society is in a heated scandal. Several websites (here, here, and here), along with the university newspaper, have been covering the story that began to develop in July when staff were suspended with pay and then some of them were fired because of a non-descript investigation by the student government with possible connections to the Canadian Federation of Students and the university's graduate health plan.

Murky stuff but probably something to keep an eye on... if only for entertainment purposes.

Read with Rick

Man in Motion Rick Hansen is teaching kids how to read, along with Education Minister Shirley Bond. In today's 24 Hours, the paper featured a picture of Hansen, Bond, Burnaby-Willingdon MLA John Nuraney. Unfortunately, the picture is only available online by downloading the PDF version of the paper.