I’m going with the hornets nest theory and that Eby with this blatant display of opportunism and cynicism will actually unite and reinvigorate the opposition. He may have underestimated completely the public’s dislike for his politics and that of his party.
Yes, there is a big chance he comes out of this worse off......he already made a major blunder thinking vote splits between CenterBC and BCC would drive up his seat count; and did not anticipate they would re unify immediately and take a run at it. What a blind spot that was. He is in a lot of trouble if BCC can keep its act together, get the nutters to shut their mouths for 30 days, and if the online crowd doesn't get too toxic and embarrassing. Still a lot of variables but the BCC have a very serious shot; especially if they give Rustad a lot of mic time. He was the guy that drove them last time and he still has a lot of appeal to people.
This is going to be interesting: I think David Eby called his snap election a few days too late. If he’d called it before Kerry Lynne Findlay’s resignation, he’d have achieved his goal of campaigning against a fractured opposition. Calling it after Findlay’s resignation presents B.C. voters with a choice of NDP and not-NDP: the B.C. Conservatives can fill an undefined Schrodinger’s Cat undetermined space.
I think not-NDP is going to have a strong appeal: the delegation of powers to First Nations and the threat to property rights are extremely unpopular. Provincial finances are in bad shape, the health care system is a mess straining to provide care, and the condo and construction businesses that have been driving the economy are sputtering.
The real hope for the NDP remains a fractured right of center vote. The hard right has almost no chance of winning power in B.C.: they might be able to elect a handful of MLAs in the southern interior, but are toxic in the urban ridings on the coast that determine who forms government. The B.C. Conservatives were a perpetual worry for the right wing BC Liberals, as they could potentially split the vote in some of those interior ridings that the Liberals needed to win a majority. Now the B.C. Liberals have basically moved to the Conservatives, so the quarks will be whether OneBC becomes the new BC Conservatives, or the provincial equivalent of the People’s Party of Canada.
Anyway, this simplifies my choice of vote at the end of October: it’s time for the NDP to go. Eby seems to understand what needs to be done on a number of fronts, even if that’s been belatedly forced on him by reality. His reluctant concessions on ending drug decriminalization and rescoping reconciliation are stymied by an NDP caucus that still won’t acknowledge reality. However, I could not vote for a party led by Kerry Lynne Findlay: right wing populists can call themselves conservative, but they’re actually every bit as radical as the NDP.
If “non-NDP” is under one credible and professional party that doesn’t have a social conservative itch to scratch, they will defeat the NDP every time.
If conservative and liberal free-enterprisers aren’t feeling the love for the same party, the NDP will get to stay in power.
The political circus is entertaining, but I wonder if it is obscuring a more serious problem: what is B.C.’s economic model now?
Real estate is one of the largest pieces of the provincial economy, with construction tied closely behind it. But you cannot ultimately get rich by selling increasingly expensive houses to one another. Somewhere underneath the economy you have to make things, extract things, invent things, or provide services that people elsewhere want to buy. Seattle has Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing and Costco. Alberta is dangerously dependent on oil and gas, but at least the source of its export wealth is obvious. B.C. used to have forestry. Today it has some good companies and promising sectors, but a couple of apparel brands whose manufacturing happens elsewhere are not going to carry a province.
The Massey Tunnel almost feels like a microcosm of the problem. B.C. had a $3.5-billion bridge scheduled to open in 2022. That was cancelled, replaced with a tunnel now budgeted at $8.5 billion, and the province has since failed to settle the main construction terms with its chosen consortium and had to reset the procurement. Meanwhile the province is running a roughly $14-billion deficit and deferring health and infrastructure projects.
So perhaps the election question is bigger than Eby versus a dysfunctional opposition. After nearly a decade in government, can B.C. still decide what it wants to build, finance it and actually execute it? And underneath that is an even more important question: what is going to generate B.C.’s next 20 years of prosperity if endlessly rising land values aren’t the answer?
BC has enormous potential: LNG, mining, forestry, tourism, finance, technology, Pacific trade. It should be following the paths of other west coast jurisdictions that won the geographic lottery and transitioned from resource producers to word class service economies. It needs to vastly improve infrastructure, especially to open up the Interior. That would entail projects such as building six lane limited access highways to serve all port accesses in the LM, removing at grade rail crossings that feed the ports, vastly expanidng the ports, building the Merritt bypass on 97C, fully dividing the TCH between Kamloops and AB, building the Howse Pass highway, upgrading the entire Sea to Sky to 4 lane divided, a Kelowna bypass and seoxn bridge, Skytrain to UBC. BC needs to further deregulate the housing market to improve affordability and look to opening up Crown land for development. Most of all, it needs to diminish the influence of activist groups, NIMBYs obsessed with real eastste values and public sector unions that stand in the way of prosperity. It was before my time, but the Bennetts seemed to have the correct vision for the province. Bill Bennett built the Coquihalla highway and Skytrain, bailed out Whistler Village and approved Blackcomb, built BC Place, remedisted the Expo lands so they could become today's Yaletown and enacted sweeping legislation to constrain unions and force austerity.
Doug, as far as I am aware, you cannot eat "potential" but, then, I don't live in BC. Perhaps there is a restaurant that serves "potential" or grocery store that sells it.
Yes, BC has potential but it has to get out of it's own doggoned way to get all of those wonderful things you identify working. And, of course, getting those things working is not a fast job; it will take quite a few years to do all the permitting, hearings, procurements, construction actually started, let alone finished and so on.
So, yes, potential is important but the NDP have cratered so much of the BC economy that there will be a large problem in the economy and the society as a whole for quite a while.
Between land rights and a $14B deficit, the NDP comms staff has their work cut out for them. Or maybe it'll just get ignored altogether. I was expecting Chinese foreign interference to be a big topic in the last federal election thanks to the unidentified 12 MPs, and it barely made a blip
Sigh... the Orange Man Bad campaign strategy will likely resonate again with the entitled Boomer and Public Sector classes who remain insulated from the real economy.
You're probably right. It's not that anyone will see Eby equipped to do anything to save them but if they associate the alternative with the bad man... that'll do. However, if someone comes out as a strong anti-trump centrist conservative and half-way competent, they could do better than expected.
I don't think anyone is ever in favour of "opportunistic" elections. Lead with the mandate you're given, or the voters will likely make you suffer the consequences.
I don’t think the cynicism over Eby’s opportunism will be a factor. Voters IMHO nowadays treat all politicians as spineless opportunists. Witness Doug Ford, and the whole TDS epidemic that has turned millions of Canadians into mindless followers of whomever chest pounds the loudest. I strongly suspect Carney will follow Ford and Eby’s example before the end of the year.
Whether Trudeau, Horgan, Ford or now Eby, demanding a mandate when they already had one speaks volumes. Using the cover of Covid or Trump, to distract from poor governance assumes Canadians are stupid. We are not. We are however human, which makes us susceptible to the fear mongers who prey upon human vulnerabilities. Politicians of all stripes have turned politics into a morality play. Many taking pages out of Trump’s playbook. It may thread the needle to electoral victory but the debris field is toxic to national unity. A desperate play to retain power while undermining the trust needed to sustain the very system that brought them into power.
Just when I thought I was getting a handle on BC politics (for the third or fourth time in my adult life) John Rustad, comfortably installed Leader of the Opposition and Premier-in-waiting, started to go loopy and turn into a paranoid autocrat. Once he finally quit I though normalcy returned. Then Findlay shows up, bypasses the normalcy and goes straight into paranoid autocracy. I though her eventual ouster would calm things down but David Eby jumps into the fray with the most transparently selfish election call imaginable. (Theresa May, Doug Ford, Justin Trudeau (2021); hold my beer).
BC politics will always be a bingo* hall, a shady deck-building** theme-park*** of a hot mess.
(*Mike Harcourt, **Glen Clark, ***Bill Vander Zalm, for those of you interested youngsters with too much time on your hands)
Apollo Chung sounds like a very interesting person. I would like to read his full, detailed and complete biography. Who was he working with before he was part of the Alberta Republican Party? Anyone know?
Also, note that Chris Delaney was the leader of BC Unity (not to be confused with BC United) in 2001, which was a merger of what was left of Reform BC and the Socreds.
I thought I had read that the 8 MLAs that went to Centre BC are now back with the BC Conservatives? I also thought I heard Centre BC was also folded into the BC Conservatives? If true, that could be a game changer.
I wonder if Kevin Falcon and BC United are going to run candidates?
I think Eby's fiscal diarrhea is as enervating to the voters as his unintelligible reconciliation handouts, but calling this one is ... difficult.
(I participated in reconciliation activities at the start, but it became something being done to the community, not among the community, with no respect, and lots of stupid name-calling... so now I have to wash my hair. I hope a leader appears someday...)
I was surprised at how badly the NDP did in the last election, when the opposition was still trying to build the party. Eby could be obliterated. I cannot imagine a stronger majority.
It's intriguing to watch the national media's coverage of the political situation in BC. Bemused impartiality. Like they don't have a dog in the fight and have just popped a bowl of popcorn to watch the weirdness unfold. Some didn't really like KLF but now that there is a middle of the road Conservative leader, it's hands off. Pointing out the cynicism of Eby calling the election like he did, but more as a strategic mistake than a disqualifying moral failing. Presenting the possibility of a BC Conservative win as an interestingly ironic outcome and not a change for the worse.
Similar coverage to Ontario elections, but those are presented as far more boring because they are. But the impartiality you should expect from media is there.
Compare with coverage of national elections where there is blood in the water, panic in the newsroom air, and clearly one right answer as to how to vote.
I’m going with the hornets nest theory and that Eby with this blatant display of opportunism and cynicism will actually unite and reinvigorate the opposition. He may have underestimated completely the public’s dislike for his politics and that of his party.
Yes, there is a big chance he comes out of this worse off......he already made a major blunder thinking vote splits between CenterBC and BCC would drive up his seat count; and did not anticipate they would re unify immediately and take a run at it. What a blind spot that was. He is in a lot of trouble if BCC can keep its act together, get the nutters to shut their mouths for 30 days, and if the online crowd doesn't get too toxic and embarrassing. Still a lot of variables but the BCC have a very serious shot; especially if they give Rustad a lot of mic time. He was the guy that drove them last time and he still has a lot of appeal to people.
This is going to be interesting: I think David Eby called his snap election a few days too late. If he’d called it before Kerry Lynne Findlay’s resignation, he’d have achieved his goal of campaigning against a fractured opposition. Calling it after Findlay’s resignation presents B.C. voters with a choice of NDP and not-NDP: the B.C. Conservatives can fill an undefined Schrodinger’s Cat undetermined space.
I think not-NDP is going to have a strong appeal: the delegation of powers to First Nations and the threat to property rights are extremely unpopular. Provincial finances are in bad shape, the health care system is a mess straining to provide care, and the condo and construction businesses that have been driving the economy are sputtering.
The real hope for the NDP remains a fractured right of center vote. The hard right has almost no chance of winning power in B.C.: they might be able to elect a handful of MLAs in the southern interior, but are toxic in the urban ridings on the coast that determine who forms government. The B.C. Conservatives were a perpetual worry for the right wing BC Liberals, as they could potentially split the vote in some of those interior ridings that the Liberals needed to win a majority. Now the B.C. Liberals have basically moved to the Conservatives, so the quarks will be whether OneBC becomes the new BC Conservatives, or the provincial equivalent of the People’s Party of Canada.
Anyway, this simplifies my choice of vote at the end of October: it’s time for the NDP to go. Eby seems to understand what needs to be done on a number of fronts, even if that’s been belatedly forced on him by reality. His reluctant concessions on ending drug decriminalization and rescoping reconciliation are stymied by an NDP caucus that still won’t acknowledge reality. However, I could not vote for a party led by Kerry Lynne Findlay: right wing populists can call themselves conservative, but they’re actually every bit as radical as the NDP.
If “non-NDP” is under one credible and professional party that doesn’t have a social conservative itch to scratch, they will defeat the NDP every time.
If conservative and liberal free-enterprisers aren’t feeling the love for the same party, the NDP will get to stay in power.
The political circus is entertaining, but I wonder if it is obscuring a more serious problem: what is B.C.’s economic model now?
Real estate is one of the largest pieces of the provincial economy, with construction tied closely behind it. But you cannot ultimately get rich by selling increasingly expensive houses to one another. Somewhere underneath the economy you have to make things, extract things, invent things, or provide services that people elsewhere want to buy. Seattle has Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing and Costco. Alberta is dangerously dependent on oil and gas, but at least the source of its export wealth is obvious. B.C. used to have forestry. Today it has some good companies and promising sectors, but a couple of apparel brands whose manufacturing happens elsewhere are not going to carry a province.
The Massey Tunnel almost feels like a microcosm of the problem. B.C. had a $3.5-billion bridge scheduled to open in 2022. That was cancelled, replaced with a tunnel now budgeted at $8.5 billion, and the province has since failed to settle the main construction terms with its chosen consortium and had to reset the procurement. Meanwhile the province is running a roughly $14-billion deficit and deferring health and infrastructure projects.
So perhaps the election question is bigger than Eby versus a dysfunctional opposition. After nearly a decade in government, can B.C. still decide what it wants to build, finance it and actually execute it? And underneath that is an even more important question: what is going to generate B.C.’s next 20 years of prosperity if endlessly rising land values aren’t the answer?
BC has enormous potential: LNG, mining, forestry, tourism, finance, technology, Pacific trade. It should be following the paths of other west coast jurisdictions that won the geographic lottery and transitioned from resource producers to word class service economies. It needs to vastly improve infrastructure, especially to open up the Interior. That would entail projects such as building six lane limited access highways to serve all port accesses in the LM, removing at grade rail crossings that feed the ports, vastly expanidng the ports, building the Merritt bypass on 97C, fully dividing the TCH between Kamloops and AB, building the Howse Pass highway, upgrading the entire Sea to Sky to 4 lane divided, a Kelowna bypass and seoxn bridge, Skytrain to UBC. BC needs to further deregulate the housing market to improve affordability and look to opening up Crown land for development. Most of all, it needs to diminish the influence of activist groups, NIMBYs obsessed with real eastste values and public sector unions that stand in the way of prosperity. It was before my time, but the Bennetts seemed to have the correct vision for the province. Bill Bennett built the Coquihalla highway and Skytrain, bailed out Whistler Village and approved Blackcomb, built BC Place, remedisted the Expo lands so they could become today's Yaletown and enacted sweeping legislation to constrain unions and force austerity.
Doug, as far as I am aware, you cannot eat "potential" but, then, I don't live in BC. Perhaps there is a restaurant that serves "potential" or grocery store that sells it.
Yes, BC has potential but it has to get out of it's own doggoned way to get all of those wonderful things you identify working. And, of course, getting those things working is not a fast job; it will take quite a few years to do all the permitting, hearings, procurements, construction actually started, let alone finished and so on.
So, yes, potential is important but the NDP have cratered so much of the BC economy that there will be a large problem in the economy and the society as a whole for quite a while.
The speed is going to be up to the government of the day. It doesn’t have to take that long. It’s a choice.
Ah, but the natives, the greenies, the ....
Oh, and the lawsuits claiming that "my rights were violated" or some such crap.
Unless and until a whole lot of legislation and legal rulings are changed things will not move quickly.
Between land rights and a $14B deficit, the NDP comms staff has their work cut out for them. Or maybe it'll just get ignored altogether. I was expecting Chinese foreign interference to be a big topic in the last federal election thanks to the unidentified 12 MPs, and it barely made a blip
They may want to ignore it but the Conservatives sure as hell won’t.
I hope the opposition can get their act together in a short period of time and knock this NDP government out of BC.
Sigh... the Orange Man Bad campaign strategy will likely resonate again with the entitled Boomer and Public Sector classes who remain insulated from the real economy.
Eby's not really a player against the bad man. We have our PM for that. He's overplaying a weak hand.
Agreed, but the strategy will likley work. Campaigning on fear almost always works. I suspect the NDP will win a substantial majority.
You're probably right. It's not that anyone will see Eby equipped to do anything to save them but if they associate the alternative with the bad man... that'll do. However, if someone comes out as a strong anti-trump centrist conservative and half-way competent, they could do better than expected.
He’s also the Premier most responsible for putting Canada in the hole that it’s in.
Probably. I wouldn’t describe our overall position as a “hole” but BC is a drag in some key areas where Canada could be performing better.
I don't think anyone is ever in favour of "opportunistic" elections. Lead with the mandate you're given, or the voters will likely make you suffer the consequences.
I don’t think the cynicism over Eby’s opportunism will be a factor. Voters IMHO nowadays treat all politicians as spineless opportunists. Witness Doug Ford, and the whole TDS epidemic that has turned millions of Canadians into mindless followers of whomever chest pounds the loudest. I strongly suspect Carney will follow Ford and Eby’s example before the end of the year.
Whether Trudeau, Horgan, Ford or now Eby, demanding a mandate when they already had one speaks volumes. Using the cover of Covid or Trump, to distract from poor governance assumes Canadians are stupid. We are not. We are however human, which makes us susceptible to the fear mongers who prey upon human vulnerabilities. Politicians of all stripes have turned politics into a morality play. Many taking pages out of Trump’s playbook. It may thread the needle to electoral victory but the debris field is toxic to national unity. A desperate play to retain power while undermining the trust needed to sustain the very system that brought them into power.
This line was great:
"...installed a new team of — to put it charitably — weirdos, malcontents and grifters."
I can only imagine what was the "uncharitable" version in the first draft!
Just when I thought I was getting a handle on BC politics (for the third or fourth time in my adult life) John Rustad, comfortably installed Leader of the Opposition and Premier-in-waiting, started to go loopy and turn into a paranoid autocrat. Once he finally quit I though normalcy returned. Then Findlay shows up, bypasses the normalcy and goes straight into paranoid autocracy. I though her eventual ouster would calm things down but David Eby jumps into the fray with the most transparently selfish election call imaginable. (Theresa May, Doug Ford, Justin Trudeau (2021); hold my beer).
BC politics will always be a bingo* hall, a shady deck-building** theme-park*** of a hot mess.
(*Mike Harcourt, **Glen Clark, ***Bill Vander Zalm, for those of you interested youngsters with too much time on your hands)
Apollo Chung sounds like a very interesting person. I would like to read his full, detailed and complete biography. Who was he working with before he was part of the Alberta Republican Party? Anyone know?
Also, note that Chris Delaney was the leader of BC Unity (not to be confused with BC United) in 2001, which was a merger of what was left of Reform BC and the Socreds.
I thought I had read that the 8 MLAs that went to Centre BC are now back with the BC Conservatives? I also thought I heard Centre BC was also folded into the BC Conservatives? If true, that could be a game changer.
I wonder if Kevin Falcon and BC United are going to run candidates?
All but one of the CentreBC MLAs has returned to the BC Conservatives - Elenore Sturko is sticking with CentreBC.
Mike Bernier stepped aside as CentreBC leader for Peter Milobar, only for Milobar to do a U-turn four days later and return to the BC Conservatives.
Like a dizzy spin on one of Bill Vander Zalm's amusement park rides!
Week 1 of the campaign has barely started!
I think Eby's fiscal diarrhea is as enervating to the voters as his unintelligible reconciliation handouts, but calling this one is ... difficult.
(I participated in reconciliation activities at the start, but it became something being done to the community, not among the community, with no respect, and lots of stupid name-calling... so now I have to wash my hair. I hope a leader appears someday...)
I was surprised at how badly the NDP did in the last election, when the opposition was still trying to build the party. Eby could be obliterated. I cannot imagine a stronger majority.
It's intriguing to watch the national media's coverage of the political situation in BC. Bemused impartiality. Like they don't have a dog in the fight and have just popped a bowl of popcorn to watch the weirdness unfold. Some didn't really like KLF but now that there is a middle of the road Conservative leader, it's hands off. Pointing out the cynicism of Eby calling the election like he did, but more as a strategic mistake than a disqualifying moral failing. Presenting the possibility of a BC Conservative win as an interestingly ironic outcome and not a change for the worse.
Similar coverage to Ontario elections, but those are presented as far more boring because they are. But the impartiality you should expect from media is there.
Compare with coverage of national elections where there is blood in the water, panic in the newsroom air, and clearly one right answer as to how to vote.