B.C. Election Part Two

Well the silly season in the campaign has definitely arrived. This morning the blaring headline concerns an exchange between the Liberal and NDP candidates in North Vancouver, both women, about “sexualized” language one used about the other. I have to say from a male point of view the comments in question seem pretty benign but then I am not a woman and I will leave it to others to judge.

We are now just over a week from the election. The one leaders’ debate is tonight and I have my first ever mail in ballot ready to be cast. So, where do I find myself?

In my first blog on the election I criticized Premier Horgan for calling the election and for subsequently trying to justify the unjustifiable defending that decision. Except for the leader of the Green Party who, for abvious reasons as the bride left at the altar, is still smarting from the early call, the campaign has moved on from it. I have friends who remain sufficiently angry about the early call they are going to “park” their votes with the Greens but that wouldn’t work for me.

In that same blog I criticized the NDP for the character attacks on Liberal Leader, Andrew Wilkinson and especially for ads targeting the gay and lesbian community suggesting the election of a Liberal government would lead to the loss of the hard won rights of that community. I did acknowledge there were probably Liberal attack ads I had not yet seen and that probably were equally odious. And right on cue, two days later one arrived in my internet account that, if it wasn’t so appalling, would have been funny. I don’t know whether the Liberal ad machine was trying to resurrect WAC Bennett’s cries from the sixties and early seventies that “the socialist hordes were at the gates” or whether it had just had too much exposure to Donald Trump’s approach to politics but, either way, it doesn’t matter. The ad was full of dire warnings that John Horgan and the NDP were stalking horses for a radical leftist takeover of the province. They were just waiting in the wings. The title of my last blog was “Stop Treating Us Like Children” and boy does that apply in this case too. I replied to the ad saying how distasteful it was but I suspect, other than having me removed from its circulation, it is still circulating around the internet.

So it seems there is plenty of stupid to go around.

I said there are three issues that will affect how I vote: a party’s approach to the chaos that is enveloping and destroying all the downtown Vancouver neighbourhoods and that is coming from the Downtown Eastside; the party’s proposals to fundamentally change Medicare so that reasonable access to services becomes a reality; and the plans each party has for a return to fiscal balance after the pandemic is over.

Not surprisingly, no one has really stepped up to the plate on any of the three although, on the issue of defending Vancouver’s neighbourhoods the Liberals got my attention with their so called “law and order” proposals. But even they didn’t demonstrate an understanding of what was happening to the neighbourhoods and was mostly about funding more police and having psychiatric social workers attend police calls for the sorts of disturbances occurring in the Downtown Eastside. It surprises me the Liberals weren’t more forceful and detailed because they are defending against a strong challenge in their seat of Vancouver False Creek where I live and where communities are right on the front line of the problems (for example, Yaletown). The other two parties? Well, aside from the usual bromides about developing new and creative strategies to end homelessness (where have we heard that before) and to ensure a safe supply of drugs, nothing.

On how and when to enact fundamental changes to Medicare in B.C. , that perennial third rail of Canadian politics, nada. Just the same old game of promising to throw more money at the current system. This really didn’t surprise me in light of the B.C. Supreme Court ruling striking down the challenge to Medicare’s monopoly as enforced by “The Medicare Protection Act”. I said then the court’s decision was a lost opportunity, one that could have forced politicians to roll up their sleeves and finally deal with the structural problems causing the well documented access to care problems in B.C.

And on the issue of how the parties will lead us out of the deep debt and deficits brought on by the pandemic response, really nothing. The Liberals are traditionally seen as the party of fiscal responsibility but their proposal to cancel the PST for a year and then to bring it back for at least another year at 3% blew that claim to smithereens, at least for me. As for the NDP, oh well at least they are behaving according to their playbook although some of their “vote buying” proposals are blatant even by their and the province’s historical standards. A thousand dollar “gift” (remember, it’s our money we are talking about) to almost all British Columbians. A four hundred dollar gift to renters. And all the bafflegab about it being somehow related to the pandemic response brings me back to my cri de coeur: STOP TREATING US LIKE CHILDREN.

So with no definitive positions addressing my most pressing issues, what should I do?

Well, the NDP did provide good, if not spectacular, government for the two years of their mandate before the pandemic hit and since have done an outstanding job guiding us through it. Those two statements are pretty irrefutable.

The Liberals have only been out of office for three years after sixteen in power and, watching them, it seems to me they could use a bit more time on the bench, time to sort out who they are, what they are, and what they are going to represent in the future.

Some, myself included, have had qualms about an NDP government with a majority. For me at least, most of those have been allayed, although I would feel better if their excellent Minister of Finance, Carole James, was able to run again. But, as we all know, she can’t for health reasons.

So in the end I think the NDP deserves to be relected (although it would be a delicious irony if they were re-elected with a minority and needing the support of the Greens who they so easily kicked under the bus at the beginning of the campaign…well, in B.C. elections you never know).

Whatever your views, get out there and vote.

Just sayin

G

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