Rob Shaw: Oh look, a Nazi
A beleaguered NDP government offers tough talk against our belligerent neighbour.
By: Rob Shaw
What do Nazis, superfortress bombers, fascism in Europe, and Donald Trump have in common? All somehow managed to feature prominently in British Columbia Premier David Eby’s speech from the throne Tuesday — an address to the legislature so heavy in wartime imagery you would have thought it was 1939.
“We open this first session of British Columbia’s 43rd Parliament at the most consequential time for our province since the Second World War,” read the speech, delivered by the province’s lieutenant governor.
“In the face of an unprecedented and unjustified threat to our economy, British Columbians are joining with all Canadians to fight back.”
Over the course of 18 pages and more than 30 minutes, the Eby government strained the war metaphor to its limits, with Trump’s tariffs and threat of Canadian annexation as the enemy force and the province in the grips of a historic battle. He twice referenced the fight against Nazis and fascism in Europe.
“We’ve come together to support each other and stand up for our country,” read the speech. “We are saying with one united voice: We will never be the 51st state. Not now or ever.”
The concern about American hostility is real and currently gripping Canadians. But there’s little British Columbia can do about it on the floor of its own legislature. Trump does, however, offer up a convenient political villain for the Eby government, which would prefer to throw theatrical haymakers at the American president than deal with the B.C. Conservative party that almost defeated it in the October provincial election.
It’s also yet another reminder of Eby’s attempts to carve out the most hawkish position amongst premiers when it comes to supporting a dollar-for-dollar retaliation to Trump’s tariffs. In doing so, he has even out-muscled Ontario Conservative leader Doug Ford in the middle of an election.
“The number one way we can support British Columbians right now is to be focused and ensure that the Americans know that if they hit us, we'll hit them back, and they'll feel it,” Eby told reporters Tuesday.
Eby was first out of the gate in early January to call the threat of a 25-per-cent American tariff on Canadian goods a “declaration of economic war” on the country.
Since then, he’s played with versions of that statement, but his speech from the throne turned the dial up to 11. It was at times as if someone had entered “write a throne speech about war and the Canadian flag” into ChatGPT.
“When Britain stood alone in Europe against the Nazis, Churchill made a desperate appeal for more military equipment,” read Eby’s speech. “British Columbia answered the call.”
The speech rattled off many of British Columbia’s contributions to the Second World War, including a shipyard in North Vancouver that produced half the Allied cargo ships, and a factory in Richmond that built the fuselages for the B-29 Superfortress bombers.
“Today, we are called on to summon that strength and character one more time,” it read.
All of that, without actually referring to Trump by name.
Eby was unapologetic about the comparisons to the Second World War or even invoking the spectre of the Nazis to get across his point about the scope he envisions for the provincial response.
“Regardless of whether your house is bombed, or whether you’re foreclosed on because you’re fired, makes very little difference to a family,” he told me Tuesday, when I asked if tariffs and war are comparable.
“And this feels to British Columbians and Canadians, and I think rightly so, like an unprovoked attack. We’re facing continual threats to our sovereignty from the President of the United States.”
New polling shows that, by and large, British Columbians are backing Eby’s stance. After almost losing the October election to the B.C. Conservatives, he’s outpacing leader John Rustad in popularity with his fiery rhetoric on Trump.
Rustad is skeptical, saying Eby is using Trump as convenient political cover for racking up the largest deficit in B.C. history, and failing to get a handle on the health care, addiction, crime and cost-of-living problems, which have worsened under seven years of B.C. NDP government.
“David Eby is looking for an enemy,” said Rustad. “He’s looking for an excuse. He wants to be able to blame somebody for his failures.”
It appears to be working. For now, anyway. There was almost nothing new revealed about the government’s agenda in the throne speech. The B.C. NDP are hoping that doesn’t matter, as long as Trump is around.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 17 years covering B.C. politics. He now reports for CHEK News out of Victoria. He’s the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast and YouTube show Political Capital, and the weekly political correspondent for CBC Radio’s All Points West and Radio West programs. You can reach him at rob@robshawnews.com.
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Not much to say about BC politics except that the electorate deserves it.
One thing that’s funny though is trying to figure out who’s the bigger clowns these days - the politicians who suddenly have become completely different people, repudiating the positions they held through multiple elections, OR the voters who believe them.
It’s tragic that the average person lacks the understanding to know that retaliatory tariffs will increase Canadians cost of living and hurt Canada even more than the us tariffs alone. A wise person would let the us hurt themselves with their tariffs rather than also impose pain On Canadians. But it would appear our leaders lack that wisdom and basic economic knowledge.