Let's get the preamble right for your listeners who aren't familiar with BC politics:
Before the NDP came to power, the BC Liberal party ran the province for well over a decade. The BC Liberals always called themselves conservative, because they merged with conservatives. They weren't conservative! BC was the pilot for the carbon tax, restorative justice, and harm reduction policies, and that all took place under the BC liberals. Christy Clark lost to NDP at a time when it was found that money laundering inflated the housing market, and her answer was to implement a speculation tax. When John Horgan stepped down for health reasons, Eby ended up as premier without a leadership race. BC became governed by the fringe left, and the BC liberals didn't oppose ANYTHING! That's when Rustad crossed over to the CPBC. Fast forward to the lead up to the 2024 election, after the BC liberals changed their name to BC United, Rustad started saying the quiet things out loud, and the BCU collapsed. A good portion of their sitting MLAs were nominated as candidates for the CPBC. They weren't conservative either. The party was hijacked. There is what appears to be an effort to reject any potential floor-crossers before the next election. Let's not forget that there's also a whole bunch of land title claims from First Nations. The court rulings have put property rights on the ballot. The CPBC is the only party who will reverse DRIPA. They will win the next election no matter who the leader is.
This is a strong summary. One of the interesting pieces is that the BC Liberals explicitly refused to fight on any culture war issues and aggressively ceded this ground to the left. An example would be DRIPA (and associated legislation) that roughly enacted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. It, along with related legislation, has been a disaster and has even thrown private property rights into question. Now in BC, you have not only race-based hiring practices (like at UBC), but also BC public parks that gate access parts of the year based on race as well - among many other issues. It’s wild, and a great example of why you have to fight on cultural issues and can’t be a “board of trade” party or you lose the whole ball game. And I can tell you - there’s billions left on the table in resource development because of decisions like DRIPA.
People on the right keep saying this, but it's just not true.
They were "conservative" ..and they were also "liberal" because as you pointed out, they were a coalition party of different interests whose unifying thing was opposing the NDP. So it had both "liberal" and "conservative" policies because it was both. The carbon tax is a really great illustration of that because it used a conservative approach (pricing and market forces) to address an environmental issue as opposed to a progressive approach like regulation.
You can use an AI as easily as I can to make a list of the things that scream "conservative government". Just ask... you'll see major tax cuts, reductions in the size of government (outside of the Canadian sacred cows of health care & education), both in employee count and spending, red tape reductions, pro-business policies, contracting out within healthcare, essential services legislation to curb the power of public sector unions etc. etc.
That's just a partial list because you can prompt an AI just as easily as me.
The idea that the BC Liberals were just "liberals" just isn't true. They were a coalition party of non-NDP that was full of both conservatives and liberals along with conservative and liberal policies.
I'd tell this story differently. As much as I dislike the simplistic left/right spectrum, I would say Both the BC NDP and BC liberals leaned right of what has been familiar federally. So after Social Credit ceased to be, BCL represented the more conservative side of BC politics, and we saw several elections that were fairly close between them and NDP (even closer in popular vote than seats), yes some not a close. Then BCL rebranded (some say to distinguish themselves from the federal liberals who were sinking in popularity, if so I wonder if the with they had not), then disbanded as the new/renewed BC conservatives took their place. This is where things become less well defined as the BCC sorts it self out, and the characterization as a tension between more and less conservative (or more and less to right of you insist) ends seems on target - from former BCL who did no think of themselves as conservative at all (but done as anyone identifying as "left" to agree with that!), to those even more conservative (or "right") than anyone who has been in power here for at least 30 years (or much more?), with these last now trying to steer their boat. No hijack, just people sharing a tent who want their own tents.
Canada's Achilles Heel is our remarkably weak leadership, in business, culture and politics. All sides of the spectrum. They are more interested in living their lives elsewhere and rent seeking here.
Until the elite culture changes we will have slow and steady decline.
I'm shocked Trump hasn't gone for the jugular and given Canadian Jews "refugee status" yet. With Florida real estate in decline, and Trump being in it for himself first and foremost, it could still happen.
It's a common refrain and struggling countries to blame leadership.
Yes, it's part of the problem. At the same time, the country voted in a government that is overseen some of the worst growth in our modern history, three times. They elected all the exact same ministers with a new leader a 4th.
Canada fundamentally has a culture and spiritual problem. Leadership flows up from that.
Don't apologize it's a good point and a good discussion.
I don't think it's symbiotic, like I get your point and the difference in our view is subtle. I used to think all the "culture war" was nonsense and a distraction to core issues.
About a decade ago I realised I had it completely wrong. Economics, jobs, our way of life is all downstream of culture. Canada achieved its greatness because of culture and is in this mess because of culture.
That's my pitch, our massive leadership problems flow from our even bigger cultural problems. And the fact that more right-leaning Canadians allowed themselves to get pushed out fighting over culture was a massive loss.
Put another way, I think events that seemed silly at the time like the "war on Christmas" were actually signalling something deeply important we missed.
Since the 1940s, the Liberals and Conservatives have formed coalitions against the CCF/NDP. In the 40’s, the formed Liberal/Conservative coalition government.
From the 50’s to the 80’s, the coalition coalesced in Social Credit under WAC Bennett and his son Bill, with a brief NDP interregnum between the two when the coalition blew apart.
The coalition blew apart again when Vander Zalm led the Socreds in a further socially conservative direction than the Liberals and moderate Tories could stomach. The resurgent BC Liberals and new B.C. Reform perpetuated this division for one more election, allowing the NDP to win another election. After two terms of NDP government, the free-enterprise vote came together under the stronger B.C. Liberal banner. They were a very busy friendly, socially liberal government. The longer they were in government, the sleazier they became. They survived for as long as they did because they were not NDP.
Since Christy Clark took down the BC Liberals with her, they never recovered. Two lack-lustre leaders, an ill-advised party name change later, they just ceded the ground to the B.C. Conservatives, who haven’t been a force in the province since the 1940s.
Now, KLF is repeating Vander Zalm’s error in trying to purge everyone to the left of her. As long as she fails to learn the lesson from B.C. political history that it takes a broad Liberal/Conservative coalition to defeat the NDP, the B.C. Tories will slide back to irrelevance.
I appreciate the discussion of guns on ships in this podcast. For almost 80 years, warships have been removing guns to replace them with missiles. That made sense for a long time because the high end threats were the problem. It probably contributed to why Canadian coast guard ships are unarmed. "We're not putting missiles on a coast guard ship, and what are they even going to do with guns anyway?" being the attitude.
The answer was always more than nothing. Guns are useful in a variety of situations, even if you never use them. In the drone era though, guns are back in a big way. Short range air defense using .50 call, 25mm, or even 76mm shells on ships are what you need to defend against drones. Equip them with proper guidance systems, and you can defeat a large number of drones at low cost.
The good news is this is a solved problem in a lot of ways. We don't need to invent anything new, we just need to build it in to our ships and train our sailors to use it effectively. The bad news is... all the reasons in the podcast why this is harder than it should be for Canada.
Thank you for the BC update with Rob Shaw. It’s a mess, super disappointing here.
I volunteered personally, my candidate won (yay) but only lasted 10 months before she left the BC Conservative Party to sit as an Independent last September (after fighting with then leader Rustad), I served in our local Riding Association until recently. This June she fully crossed the floor and joined the NDP - now that one of their slim majority of MLAs died last week, she is the BCNDP’s single majority extra vote (they currently hold 47 of 93 seats). Sigh. It feels traitorous to us volunteers and to our community who I doorknocked and advocated for as a conservative. Icky and embarrassing.
I am incredibly irritated with the whole mess of them - a pox on all their houses.
I didn’t vote for our current leader - it was a ranked ballot, I preferred Caroline Elliot and/or Iain Black as leadership candidates with the greatest likelihood IMO of actually forming government and winning (younger, more charismatic, less ideologically puritan than KLF, big tent of opinions) - but I was super willing to support the will of the people with the new leader going forward. Not so much just right now. Our Riding Association has had no communication since she was elected, just emails for donations. Blech.
Let's get the preamble right for your listeners who aren't familiar with BC politics:
Before the NDP came to power, the BC Liberal party ran the province for well over a decade. The BC Liberals always called themselves conservative, because they merged with conservatives. They weren't conservative! BC was the pilot for the carbon tax, restorative justice, and harm reduction policies, and that all took place under the BC liberals. Christy Clark lost to NDP at a time when it was found that money laundering inflated the housing market, and her answer was to implement a speculation tax. When John Horgan stepped down for health reasons, Eby ended up as premier without a leadership race. BC became governed by the fringe left, and the BC liberals didn't oppose ANYTHING! That's when Rustad crossed over to the CPBC. Fast forward to the lead up to the 2024 election, after the BC liberals changed their name to BC United, Rustad started saying the quiet things out loud, and the BCU collapsed. A good portion of their sitting MLAs were nominated as candidates for the CPBC. They weren't conservative either. The party was hijacked. There is what appears to be an effort to reject any potential floor-crossers before the next election. Let's not forget that there's also a whole bunch of land title claims from First Nations. The court rulings have put property rights on the ballot. The CPBC is the only party who will reverse DRIPA. They will win the next election no matter who the leader is.
This is a strong summary. One of the interesting pieces is that the BC Liberals explicitly refused to fight on any culture war issues and aggressively ceded this ground to the left. An example would be DRIPA (and associated legislation) that roughly enacted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. It, along with related legislation, has been a disaster and has even thrown private property rights into question. Now in BC, you have not only race-based hiring practices (like at UBC), but also BC public parks that gate access parts of the year based on race as well - among many other issues. It’s wild, and a great example of why you have to fight on cultural issues and can’t be a “board of trade” party or you lose the whole ball game. And I can tell you - there’s billions left on the table in resource development because of decisions like DRIPA.
> They [the BC Liberals] weren't conservative!
People on the right keep saying this, but it's just not true.
They were "conservative" ..and they were also "liberal" because as you pointed out, they were a coalition party of different interests whose unifying thing was opposing the NDP. So it had both "liberal" and "conservative" policies because it was both. The carbon tax is a really great illustration of that because it used a conservative approach (pricing and market forces) to address an environmental issue as opposed to a progressive approach like regulation.
You can use an AI as easily as I can to make a list of the things that scream "conservative government". Just ask... you'll see major tax cuts, reductions in the size of government (outside of the Canadian sacred cows of health care & education), both in employee count and spending, red tape reductions, pro-business policies, contracting out within healthcare, essential services legislation to curb the power of public sector unions etc. etc.
That's just a partial list because you can prompt an AI just as easily as me.
The idea that the BC Liberals were just "liberals" just isn't true. They were a coalition party of non-NDP that was full of both conservatives and liberals along with conservative and liberal policies.
I'd tell this story differently. As much as I dislike the simplistic left/right spectrum, I would say Both the BC NDP and BC liberals leaned right of what has been familiar federally. So after Social Credit ceased to be, BCL represented the more conservative side of BC politics, and we saw several elections that were fairly close between them and NDP (even closer in popular vote than seats), yes some not a close. Then BCL rebranded (some say to distinguish themselves from the federal liberals who were sinking in popularity, if so I wonder if the with they had not), then disbanded as the new/renewed BC conservatives took their place. This is where things become less well defined as the BCC sorts it self out, and the characterization as a tension between more and less conservative (or more and less to right of you insist) ends seems on target - from former BCL who did no think of themselves as conservative at all (but done as anyone identifying as "left" to agree with that!), to those even more conservative (or "right") than anyone who has been in power here for at least 30 years (or much more?), with these last now trying to steer their boat. No hijack, just people sharing a tent who want their own tents.
LOL! It's all a bit confusing. No wonder the rest of the country can't follow the story...
Thanks for the preamble. I’m somewhat familiar and this rings true.
Canada's Achilles Heel is our remarkably weak leadership, in business, culture and politics. All sides of the spectrum. They are more interested in living their lives elsewhere and rent seeking here.
Until the elite culture changes we will have slow and steady decline.
I'm shocked Trump hasn't gone for the jugular and given Canadian Jews "refugee status" yet. With Florida real estate in decline, and Trump being in it for himself first and foremost, it could still happen.
It's a common refrain and struggling countries to blame leadership.
Yes, it's part of the problem. At the same time, the country voted in a government that is overseen some of the worst growth in our modern history, three times. They elected all the exact same ministers with a new leader a 4th.
Canada fundamentally has a culture and spiritual problem. Leadership flows up from that.
I never wanted to imply that the public is off scot-free. If that is how my message came across, I apologize.
Indeed, leadership is but a reflection of the people. Our flaky leadership class are excused by the culture and people. Agreed, it's symbiotic.
Don't apologize it's a good point and a good discussion.
I don't think it's symbiotic, like I get your point and the difference in our view is subtle. I used to think all the "culture war" was nonsense and a distraction to core issues.
About a decade ago I realised I had it completely wrong. Economics, jobs, our way of life is all downstream of culture. Canada achieved its greatness because of culture and is in this mess because of culture.
That's my pitch, our massive leadership problems flow from our even bigger cultural problems. And the fact that more right-leaning Canadians allowed themselves to get pushed out fighting over culture was a massive loss.
Put another way, I think events that seemed silly at the time like the "war on Christmas" were actually signalling something deeply important we missed.
BC is actively being more and more bonkers by the minute
I made it 14 min in… tea party north? Really? Apple chewing Pierre?
Since the 1940s, the Liberals and Conservatives have formed coalitions against the CCF/NDP. In the 40’s, the formed Liberal/Conservative coalition government.
From the 50’s to the 80’s, the coalition coalesced in Social Credit under WAC Bennett and his son Bill, with a brief NDP interregnum between the two when the coalition blew apart.
The coalition blew apart again when Vander Zalm led the Socreds in a further socially conservative direction than the Liberals and moderate Tories could stomach. The resurgent BC Liberals and new B.C. Reform perpetuated this division for one more election, allowing the NDP to win another election. After two terms of NDP government, the free-enterprise vote came together under the stronger B.C. Liberal banner. They were a very busy friendly, socially liberal government. The longer they were in government, the sleazier they became. They survived for as long as they did because they were not NDP.
Since Christy Clark took down the BC Liberals with her, they never recovered. Two lack-lustre leaders, an ill-advised party name change later, they just ceded the ground to the B.C. Conservatives, who haven’t been a force in the province since the 1940s.
Now, KLF is repeating Vander Zalm’s error in trying to purge everyone to the left of her. As long as she fails to learn the lesson from B.C. political history that it takes a broad Liberal/Conservative coalition to defeat the NDP, the B.C. Tories will slide back to irrelevance.
I appreciate the discussion of guns on ships in this podcast. For almost 80 years, warships have been removing guns to replace them with missiles. That made sense for a long time because the high end threats were the problem. It probably contributed to why Canadian coast guard ships are unarmed. "We're not putting missiles on a coast guard ship, and what are they even going to do with guns anyway?" being the attitude.
The answer was always more than nothing. Guns are useful in a variety of situations, even if you never use them. In the drone era though, guns are back in a big way. Short range air defense using .50 call, 25mm, or even 76mm shells on ships are what you need to defend against drones. Equip them with proper guidance systems, and you can defeat a large number of drones at low cost.
The good news is this is a solved problem in a lot of ways. We don't need to invent anything new, we just need to build it in to our ships and train our sailors to use it effectively. The bad news is... all the reasons in the podcast why this is harder than it should be for Canada.
Short podcast today. Fifteen minutes with Rob Shaw then nothing worth listening to.
Thank you for the BC update with Rob Shaw. It’s a mess, super disappointing here.
I volunteered personally, my candidate won (yay) but only lasted 10 months before she left the BC Conservative Party to sit as an Independent last September (after fighting with then leader Rustad), I served in our local Riding Association until recently. This June she fully crossed the floor and joined the NDP - now that one of their slim majority of MLAs died last week, she is the BCNDP’s single majority extra vote (they currently hold 47 of 93 seats). Sigh. It feels traitorous to us volunteers and to our community who I doorknocked and advocated for as a conservative. Icky and embarrassing.
I am incredibly irritated with the whole mess of them - a pox on all their houses.
I didn’t vote for our current leader - it was a ranked ballot, I preferred Caroline Elliot and/or Iain Black as leadership candidates with the greatest likelihood IMO of actually forming government and winning (younger, more charismatic, less ideologically puritan than KLF, big tent of opinions) - but I was super willing to support the will of the people with the new leader going forward. Not so much just right now. Our Riding Association has had no communication since she was elected, just emails for donations. Blech.
Good discussion with Jamie on what does the RCN-CCG merger mean. This is overdue.
Is the era of big tent parties over? I think it might be.