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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.