Full Comment - David Eby is pivoting in panic away from the NDP’s unpopular policies

00:00:00.000 The New Democrats have been in power in British Columbia for the last seven years, and it looked

00:00:06.760 like they could lose power. They've got an election coming on Saturday, and polls now

00:00:11.840 show that the British Columbia New Democrats could in fact hold on, beating back the surging

00:00:16.940 B.C. conservatives. Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. My name's Brian Lilly,

00:00:21.680 your host. And to help us understand what's happening on Canada's left coast, we've reached

00:00:27.880 out today to Vaughn Palmer, the dean of the Press Gallery out in Victoria, and someone

00:00:32.660 who's been writing about this for a long time for Postmedia, Vancouver Sun, and elsewhere.

00:00:37.200 Vaughn, thanks for the time.

00:00:39.120 Well, thanks for asking me, and that dean of the Press Gallery just means I'm the oldest

00:00:43.680 guy in there, still breathing, that's all. 40 years and counting, so there you go.

00:00:49.620 So you've seen a few wacky things in B.C. politics over the last little while. This election,

00:00:55.160 it was wacky before it officially started, with the B.C. liberals having changed to B.C.

00:01:02.000 United, and it looked like they were going to be the party to challenge the NDP. Then they

00:01:09.000 pulled out of the election, but then not completely, and then the conservatives looked like they

00:01:13.800 were going to beat the B.C. NDP, and now it is up and down. Give us a lay of the land of

00:01:20.540 where things are at, because for those of us not in B.C., this is looking a little confusing.

00:01:29.280 Well, the opinion polls at the start of the campaign, the official start of the campaign,

00:01:35.100 showed generally, if you averaged it and took into account the margins of error, suggested

00:01:41.360 we were into a dead heat. That's the way it looked after two weeks. But in the past few days,

00:01:50.780 last week, the third week of the campaign, we had a debate. The opposition, John Rustad,

00:01:59.420 the conservative leader, didn't do all that well. And you're right. Some of the opinion polls suggest

00:02:04.880 that the new Democrats may be building a bit of an advantage and that if you're going to insist on

00:02:11.400 betting, probably you bet on the NDP. But in no sense is it over yet. There have been a couple of

00:02:18.820 opinion polls that continue to suggest the conservatives are ahead. So last week of the

00:02:24.860 campaign, these parties are going to be working very, very hard to close the deal with the electorate.

00:02:31.880 And as I said, it's still, I think, an open question as to who is going to win government

00:02:38.660 or whether we may have a narrow result or even one of those results like we had in 2017,

00:02:47.020 where no party won a majority of seats and the parties had to bargain with a third party or

00:02:54.360 independents in order to be sure they have a majority. In most provinces, Vaughn, there is,

00:02:59.800 you know, different voting patterns. You get regions of the province that vote traditionally

00:03:06.380 one way or the other. There's the urban-rural split, the urban-suburban split. What's it like

00:03:13.400 in British Columbia? Because once upon a time, the BC NDP did quite well outside of Vancouver. Has

00:03:20.700 that changed? Are the conservatives doing well in rural and suburban areas? Is this an urban-suburban

00:03:27.200 split and fight going on? Well, yeah, for simplicity's sake, three regions,

00:03:35.740 city of Vancouver and its suburbs, the north and interior of the province, and Vancouver Island.

00:03:44.480 Vancouver Island has tended to be very strong for the NDP over the years.

00:03:49.060 The north in particular, and a lot of the ridings in the interior, have tended to vote for the

00:03:57.880 center-right alternative, and city of Vancouver is a big battleground, and city of Vancouver has

00:04:03.860 half the seats in the legislature, Vancouver and its suburbs. So, but this time, you know, again,

00:04:12.060 with the closeness of the opinion polls, the fact that news media can't afford the kind of polls that

00:04:19.060 get down to writing by writing, we have to look at where the parties are campaigning to go, oh,

00:04:25.580 they're worried about that one. They're spending their money in that writing. So, and I would say from

00:04:31.000 that, that an awful lot of the province is in play. The New Democrats have been spending more time

00:04:37.820 campaigning on Vancouver Island, which in the past they've tended to take for granted. And clear from

00:04:45.860 the amount of energy and effort being put into the battle in and around Vancouver, particularly big

00:04:51.440 suburbs like Richmond and Surrey, those seats are all in play as well. It's, yeah, it's always

00:04:57.480 fascinating watching where leaders go, you know, where are they spending their time, their effort,

00:05:02.880 their ad dollars, and it can tell you quite a bit. So if the whole province is in play, that makes

00:05:08.640 things a bit more difficult for everyone involved. I understand that there was an attempt by the BCNDP

00:05:16.800 to try and force your elections commission to, to make sure that the, the ballot said BC or British

00:05:28.600 Columbia conservative. Is there a legitimate concern or spillover between Pierre Polyev in the

00:05:38.680 conservatives and John Rustad in the conservatives? Well, you know, this is one of the more, to me,

00:05:45.860 preposterous things that has happened in the middle of the campaign because the New Democrats hired lawyers

00:05:51.960 and went into court and tried to persuade a judge to overrule the independent chief electoral officer

00:05:59.320 of the province in the middle of an election campaign, like as if the chief electoral officer

00:06:04.300 didn't have more important things to do. And the issue they raised was they wanted the ballots to list

00:06:12.420 the conservatives as the BC conservatives. And the reason they wanted to do that was because the

00:06:19.820 New Democrats concluded from their opinion polls that a whole bunch of BC voters were totally confused.

00:06:27.440 They thought that they were voting for Pierre Polyev, who was very popular in BC, and those voters

00:06:33.660 didn't realize that John Rustad wasn't that same political party. The two parties are separate. So that's

00:06:39.300 why they wanted to do it. And there may be, you know, you could say because Polyev is so popular and so

00:06:45.880 prominent nationally. There may be some confusion there. BC United used to argue the same thing. But

00:06:53.780 the idea of forcing the chief electoral officer, when the ballots had already been printed, to cross out

00:07:02.920 conservatives and write in, no, not the Pierre Polyev conservatives. I mean, really, the government

00:07:11.400 is supposed to respect the independent officers of the legislature and to be harassing him and

00:07:17.760 effectively during a campaign with this kind of court action. It tells you a couple of things. One,

00:07:22.880 the New Democrats are worried about the confusion. And two, they've got a staggering amount of money if

00:07:29.280 they can afford lawyers to go into court to fight that kind of thing. I can see that there would be

00:07:34.840 confusion for some people. I think most voters are smart enough to know the difference. But we all have

00:07:40.300 those people in our lives who don't, you know, they pay next to no attention to politics and are

00:07:47.460 outright confused when you talk to them about any issues. So I, but I imagine that's a pretty small

00:07:53.340 percentage. Well, and you know, what is the essence of the confusion? I mean, if you're attracted to

00:08:00.960 Pierre Polyev, one of the issues that's going to get you attracted to him is he's going to get rid of

00:08:05.800 the carbon tax. Well, John Rustad is going to do the same thing. And Polyev is going to get tough

00:08:10.800 on crime. Well, John Rustad is going to do the same thing. I mean, it's not as if these two parties are

00:08:17.200 miles apart. They, it's true, they're separate constitutionally, but the BC conservatives and the

00:08:26.320 federal conservatives have a lot of common ground between them. David Eby is telling us that BC is

00:08:34.740 getting a rotten deal from the federal government. Now that he's in a campaign, although he worked

00:08:39.360 very closely with Justin Trudeau for several years. Well, you know, every time he said that,

00:08:45.840 that Ottawa is not giving us a fair deal, I'm going, well, the federal wing of your party,

00:08:51.020 which is the same party. It's a federated party. Yeah, it's been propping up the Trudeau government.

00:08:59.120 So if you want a better deal out of Trudeau, why don't you call up, you know,

00:09:04.100 Jagmeet Singh, who represents a BC riding and ask him to put some pressure on his partner in power

00:09:11.640 sharing? Because for, you know, I know that Singh has now bailed on that relationship, sort of. But

00:09:17.420 for a long time, the only reason Justin Trudeau was prime minister was because Jagmeet Singh was

00:09:21.280 supporting him. You mentioned that John Rustad says he'll get rid of the carbon tax.

00:09:25.480 Yep. David Eby used to be a big fan, defender, supporter of the carbon tax. And he hasn't said

00:09:33.940 he'll get rid of it. But he does say he'll get rid of it if it goes away federally. Talk to me about

00:09:42.440 all the ways that David Eby and the New Democrats are flip-flopping. I mean, my joke of late has been

00:09:49.200 he is essentially campaigning against himself now. Well, you know, again, we know what their opinion

00:09:57.360 polls have been telling them, because you look at where he's changed his position. So for a long time,

00:10:04.000 David Eby not only raised, BC has its own carbon tax, not the same as the federal one.

00:10:10.360 David Eby raised the carbon tax every April the 1st, because it was a schedule to do that.

00:10:15.720 And these were big increases that we were getting. You know, I'm not a hardship case. But I can tell

00:10:21.900 you, Brian, that my natural gas bill, when I look at it, I'm paying more in carbon tax than I am for

00:10:29.720 the gas. That's like a lot. That's a common story across the country. Yeah. So, you know, but Eby's not

00:10:38.560 only was he raising the carbon tax regularly, but if you ever criticized it, well, that made you a climate

00:10:43.860 change denier. And then on the eve of the election, he came out and said, you know what, this carbon tax,

00:10:48.940 this thing is a is a real burden on British Columbians who are having trouble making ends meet.

00:10:54.180 And we got to change this. And you're right. What he said was, we would like to get rid of the carbon

00:11:00.300 tax on consumers. So home heating at the gas pump would be the two big still wants to hit corporations 0.93

00:11:06.980 with it. And he said, I can only do that if the federal government gives me permission to do that.

00:11:14.840 And so he's going to ask for permission after the election and see whether Trudeau will give him that

00:11:23.300 permission. So that's his proposal. There's a couple of other things that he's. The New Democrats call it

00:11:29.600 pivoting, by the way, don't call it flip flopping. He's going to pivot a long time. The NDP rejected

00:11:37.880 the idea they considered, but rejected the idea of involuntary treatment for the worst cases of drug

00:11:45.100 addiction and mental illness. They thought about it, but they backed away. It's finally come out and

00:11:50.300 said, no, we're going to do that. So he's taken a harder line on crime, public disorder. He's weakened

00:11:58.720 his drive for decriminalization. He's now saying, well, that didn't work very well. And we're not

00:12:03.700 going to stick with stuff that didn't work. So yeah, you can, again, can tell from his opinion,

00:12:09.240 you can tell from what he's doing that the opinion polls that we've seen ourselves are right. The BC

00:12:16.700 public is unhappy with some aspects of what the New Democrats have done. And some British Columbians,

00:12:24.540 a significant number are starting to think time for a change.

00:12:30.020 The involuntary treatment. I mean, anybody that's visited, especially Vancouver's downtown Eastside,

00:12:36.560 just sees how bad things are. And there was an interesting indication of how bad things are when

00:12:46.620 Discovery Channel out of Seattle sent up a crew. And, you know, out here in the East, we think of,

00:12:55.840 you know, Seattle is like, wow, that's America's Vancouver. I know there is a Vancouver in the

00:13:01.080 United States, but, you know, very similar cities. They're out in the West Coast, very progressive

00:13:06.620 politics. People from Seattle are looking at Vancouver and saying, wow, things are really screwed up

00:13:13.560 on the drug front. And they blamed the various policies, including safe supply, all the not-for-profits

00:13:21.240 that are handing out drug paraphernalia and kits. Is the public's mood changing dramatically on that?

00:13:29.540 Because I can tell you, here in Ontario, where we started to go down the road that BC's on,

00:13:36.320 specifically Vancouver, we didn't even get as far down the road as you did. And the public opinion

00:13:43.920 has shifted dramatically on things like having consumption sites everywhere or safe supply being

00:13:51.440 handed out. Yeah. Yeah, no, there's been a significant departure of public support for this. And I think

00:13:59.380 when we went into the whole thing a few years ago, the initial view was nothing else is working,

00:14:04.860 let's give it a try. It has led to, as you suggest, a significant backlash. And I can tell you the

00:14:11.420 Victoria Tourist Bureau won't be happy about me saying this because it's my hometown and I live in

00:14:16.620 Victoria. It's the provincial capital, but Victoria has got its own little downtown east side now.

00:14:22.820 It's Andorra Avenue and it's an incredible, like, you do not want to accidentally drive down this street

00:14:29.540 in Victoria. Fortunately, still confined to a relatively small area. But, and every town in

00:14:36.620 British Columbia has a problem with open drug use, the disorder that grows up around safe injection sites.

00:14:46.440 There's a backlash about, there's a backlash about building social housing projects for the people

00:14:55.780 that live in the tent encampments, the homeless, because you get a level of disorder around them.

00:15:02.320 So, significant backlash against all this. And as I said, the government has acknowledged it to some

00:15:09.520 degree, Brian, because they're changing their policies. But whether they, you know, nevertheless,

00:15:15.220 it's they, it's the NDP that embarked on this course. And it's the NDP that is now having to back

00:15:24.160 away in the face of significant public disorder. And, I mean, one of the things that strikes me about

00:15:34.260 this issue is, you know, we get the experts who come out with the statistics and they say, oh, you know,

00:15:40.200 we're getting results here, there and everywhere. And then some awful story will come along.

00:15:45.220 And it will overwhelm the statistics as the public will go, my God, they attacked some woman

00:15:51.340 wheeling a baby down the street, or some poor guy got his hand cut off.

00:15:56.860 We had the heartbreaking story in Ottawa the other day, parents of a 13-year-old,

00:16:02.960 I believe it was in the interior, you can correct me if I'm wrong. She ended up being addicted to 0.98

00:16:09.960 opioids, ended up living in a homeless encampment and died at 13. And the parents were told there's

00:16:17.940 nothing they could do to, to force her out of the encampment or to, to seek, you know, put her into

00:16:26.340 treatment. Oh, no, you can't do that. Those are the types of stories that will blow away any statistics.

00:16:32.740 But, I mean, I keep, when I write about this issue, I keep looking at the deaths. And I ask,

00:16:39.720 you know, I know, I know the British Columbia Coroner Service, Dr. Henry and others, they keep

00:16:45.500 saying it's all a success. And I ask, why do the overdose deaths increase every year?

00:16:50.420 We've, we've, we've got six or seven still a day dying of drug overdoses. We've got significant

00:16:58.700 disorder that, you know, the downtown east side in Vancouver has been a problem for generations,

00:17:03.880 but we've now actually got little downtown east sides spreading around the province. Nanaimo has one

00:17:10.860 big problem there, Kelowna, Maple Ridge, Victoria. And yeah, the public is just fed up with this,

00:17:19.600 right? If, if you actually had, had good results from the combination of safer supply,

00:17:27.880 which isn't safe, and harm reduction, which isn't reducing harm, and decriminalization,

00:17:34.120 which has effectively legalized open drug use, if you're getting good results from that,

00:17:39.240 I think there might be some public support. The problem the government has, and the advocates have,

00:17:44.660 is that the results are still awful, and people don't feel safe going to their downtown,

00:17:51.820 or living next to one of these facilities. And they're worried that their children, and we're

00:17:58.420 hearing this now, the children are getting the idea, well, you know, the government says this

00:18:02.260 stuff is safer supply. No, it's not safe. We need, they're now talking about changing the name of

00:18:07.880 the safer supply drugs, because they're giving young people the wrong impression that it's okay to take

00:18:13.040 this stuff. We need to take a quick break, Vaughn, but when we come back, I want to ask you about,

00:18:17.660 you know, whether the government's decision, the NDP government's decision on Airbnb is going to hurt

00:18:24.000 them at the polls, especially in tourism regions, and try and get a sense from you about the two

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00:19:47.620 Vaughn, I know several people that own secondary properties, vacation spots in the Okanagan.

00:19:53.500 People from Alberta, people actually, a relative from up in Kamloops has a place in Kelowna.

00:20:01.000 And they stay in them sometimes, but other times rent them out.

00:20:05.220 Now, I understand that there was a legislative change that effectively made it illegal for you to

00:20:10.540 rent these places out on Airbnb unless you were living in them on a regular basis.

00:20:16.860 Is this going to hurt the NDP in areas where tourism is a big thing? Because you've just

00:20:22.480 taken a whole lot of places off the market.

00:20:26.660 Well, it's certainly an issue. I don't know as though it's that big an issue, though. The housing

00:20:32.580 crisis out here and the unavailability of housing and the unaffordability of housing and rental housing,

00:20:40.680 I think, has built a certain level of support for what the government is trying to do. And I don't

00:20:46.840 think those are going to be fatal issues. You're right. There is a bit of a concern from the tourism

00:20:52.760 sector that Airbnb places that were built, purpose built for Airbnb, now can't be run that way and they

00:21:02.200 have to be rented out. There is a bit of a backlash to over the secondary place. So you've got a house,

00:21:09.180 you're living in Victoria or Vancouver, but you've got recreational property somewhere and you have

00:21:13.980 to rent that out or pay an extra tax. I'm not saying that people don't care at all, but I think

00:21:20.740 the overwhelming sense that the housing affordability crisis in BC is enormous and that we haven't made

00:21:29.440 nearly as much progress as we should have, I think that's more the issue out here than some of the

00:21:37.120 stuff they've done around the edges. Getting the housing supply built, getting more housing is

00:21:44.800 much more of a struggle because it's hard to find the workers to build the places, hard to get the

00:21:51.260 projects approved, hard to get private investors to risk the money in the current market and hard to

00:21:58.000 get the stuff built. And that's been a bigger problem for the NDP than a bit of backlash over what

00:22:04.180 they call a vacancy tax or the war on Airbnb. Let me ask you about the housing supply issue then.

00:22:11.160 Obviously, most of the country, but especially Toronto and Vancouver, this has been a major issue

00:22:17.160 for a while. And yet CMHC, you've got every level of government saying they're doing their best,

00:22:23.860 right? Every level of government is seized with this issue, including the federal government, which

00:22:29.860 has the least amount of responsibility for it. But Justin Trudeau is trying to take all the credit.

00:22:35.040 Well, he's getting some of the blame. Is EB getting the blame for it? And walk me through the

00:22:43.960 scenario, because it's not just that you can't find workers to build and it takes too long to approve.

00:22:50.340 Housing starts are down. They're down 20% in Vancouver, according to CMHC, year to year.

00:22:56.620 Well, I think the one issue that EB has going for him on the housing crisis and real and the

00:23:06.060 affordability crisis is pointing out that the national government has been flooding British

00:23:13.420 Columbia with immigrants so that even if we have 40 or 50,000 housing starts in BC, which is a really 1.00

00:23:21.600 good year, it doesn't actually do much more than run in place. So initially, the New Democrats were

00:23:28.880 reluctant to make a big issue out of the immigration numbers. And in fact, they started off boasting that

00:23:35.000 it meant people were coming to British Columbia, the province was well-governed, a province of

00:23:39.420 opportunities. But as it's gradually dawned that the massive influence of immigrants, and they come

00:23:48.760 mostly to BC or Toronto, places like that, is what is driving the demand for not just housing and rental

00:24:01.160 housing, but space in the schools, record numbers of portables, access to a family doctor. The burden on

00:24:11.960 government-supplied services is enormous. So I think you've seen now, they don't boast about the

00:24:21.520 immigration levels anymore. They now use it as an excuse for why they're having trouble keeping up.

00:24:29.080 Odd to hear a progressive party go that route. But it's reality. It is reality.

00:24:36.140 No, it is. And when you have to pay the bills and provide the services, you know, you suddenly start

00:24:42.100 to go, okay, well, what will it take? And this government is running big deficits. So it's not

00:24:47.300 like they're reluctant to go into debt. But they're still also going like we are running as hard as we

00:24:54.520 can, just to keep up with and a good example is the demand for space in the schools, school port.

00:25:00.280 I liked how Pierre Paulyev put this a little while ago when he said he would

00:25:05.760 cap immigration so that it was in line or actually a bit below housing supply. And he pointed out that

00:25:15.080 we're nationally increasing our population by 3% and increasing our housing stock by 1.3 to 1.4%.

00:25:23.860 And he said, this formula isn't being against immigration. It's about math. And you can't

00:25:32.580 increase the population in the middle of a housing crisis and everything else that you just mentioned.

00:25:38.020 You can't increase your population at more than double what the housing stock is increasing by,

00:25:42.820 or you create problems. And, you know, so it's interesting to see how that's playing out in

00:25:49.180 British Columbia. Now, I don't really know either leader. Over the years, I've, you know,

00:25:55.480 covered in a very small way British Columbia politics, you know, Christy Clark, Gordon Campbell,

00:26:02.820 John Oregon as well. But these two leaders are quite new to me. So I look at someone like David

00:26:09.120 Eby's very different leader than Oregon, from my perspective out here. He comes from the more radical

00:26:16.640 side of the NDP, doesn't he? Like, Horgan was a blue-collar, oh, you know, golly gee type guy.

00:26:25.080 Eby's from the activist side. You know, he used to go on panels with Harsha Walia and people like that,

00:26:30.540 who, in my view, most politicians should stay clear from. Tell me about Eby and who he is and how he's

00:26:38.540 governed British Columbia since taking over from Horgan.

00:26:41.040 Well, a very sharp contrast to the Horgan style of government. And, you know, I give you a couple

00:26:50.300 of examples. Horgan was known to delegate. He appointed cabinet ministers, gave them their

00:26:56.420 assignments. And, you know, if they had a crisis, they could come back and see him. And once in a

00:27:01.540 while, he would have to say, you're not doing a very good job. Eby is really not a delegator at all.

00:27:07.680 He runs an extremely centralized premier's office with a platoon of lawyers that is probably larger

00:27:15.100 than the number of lawyers working for some of the major law firms in the provincial capital.

00:27:20.980 And he knows best. David Eby knows best. So it's a very centralized, you're right, activist government.

00:27:28.300 So that's one big difference with Horgan, who had a bit of a populist touch and it served him well,

00:27:34.960 and who was more of a chairman of the board than a premium. The other big difference, and this one

00:27:40.380 fiscally just stands out enormously, John Horgan actually believed in balancing the budget. And he

00:27:46.520 did. In his first year, he paid off a billion dollars in direct debt that he'd inherited from

00:27:52.400 the previous BC Liberal government. And Horgan left, this is an enormous amount, when Horgan left office

00:27:59.240 in November 2022. And when Eby took over, the British Columbia public accounts showed a six

00:28:09.440 billion dollar surplus. Eby spent it, virtually all of it, then brought in a four billion dollar

00:28:19.260 deficit. And that wasn't enough. He increased it to five. And this year, he brought in an eight

00:28:24.960 billion dollar deficit. And that hasn't been enough. And he's increased it to nine. So

00:28:30.280 added up, there's like 20 billion dollars there. So Eby is an enormous spender. He's now saying,

00:28:37.420 oh, one of these days, we're going to balance the budget. But and it's a giant right wing plot

00:28:42.800 to think you should balance the budget over a budget cycle.

00:28:45.540 Well, I mean, you just pointed out that the last new Democrat premier did that. And

00:28:50.040 Roy Romano was famous for balancing budgets in Saskatchewan.

00:28:54.580 Yep. No, it's it can be done. It's, you know, you have to be able to manage. But there's no sign

00:29:01.400 of that all with Eby. So that's Eby. So from the activist wing of the NDP, very centralized,

00:29:07.440 ruthless, you know, and maybe you need to be to be a premier. But you put it all together,

00:29:13.220 he is to the left of Horgan. And I think that's why he's not, you know, I hear from New Democrats

00:29:20.880 every day, if John were still our leader, we wouldn't be worried. You know, unfortunately,

00:29:26.760 Horgan has had a series of cancer scares, and he left office, you know, for for health reasons,

00:29:34.160 really. And he is now Canada's, you know, representative in Germany, but he's,

00:29:40.860 again, had another cancer scare, and he's having to have his health dealt with. So that that's a

00:29:46.640 sad story. But no, David Eby has not performed in the eyes of New Democrats, the way John Horgan

00:29:53.360 did. And yet he's still ahead, according to the polls. Yep. Now, a few months ago, we we had

00:30:03.680 John Gormley on to talk about Saskatchewan politics. And in there, the NDP was starting to threaten

00:30:09.860 to take over from Scott Mullen's Saskatchewan party. But Gormley said, well, when you look at the map

00:30:17.060 and where the writings are, they'd have to be well ahead in order to win, just because of where the

00:30:23.900 seats are. Is that something that happens in in BC politics? I mean, right now, it looks like the NDP

00:30:31.080 is ahead by a couple of points. I know they're very efficient vote in certain areas. But,

00:30:36.360 you know, does Rustad, and we'll talk about what kind of a politician he is in a moment,

00:30:42.360 does he have a shot at winning, even if there looks like they're trailing? You know, is there a

00:30:47.880 silent block that will come out and vote for him? Or is there a way the map works that will favor him

00:30:58.920 come election day? No, I think the map favors the NDP. We had an election 1996, where the New

00:31:08.240 Democrats won a majority with three points fewer in the popular vote than the BC liberals. The NDP

00:31:18.400 vote is distributed more evenly around the province. And it is the political scientists call that

00:31:25.320 efficiency, although you might not associate that word with their fiscal program. But yeah,

00:31:31.140 they have an advantage. The other advantage they have is significant. We have public funding of

00:31:35.640 political parties in BC. But your funding is based on how you did in the last election. You know,

00:31:42.080 it's the number of votes. Well, the conservatives barely existed in the last election. So they're

00:31:46.620 getting no public funding at all, zero. Whereas the NDP is rolling and dough. And we're seeing it

00:31:52.600 every day in the advertising. You know, advertising is expensive. Social media advertising is expensive.

00:31:59.500 TV, radio is expensive. And the NDP is outspending the conservatives. So there's two reasons there

00:32:06.280 why the NDP has an advantage. I would say the other reason you were going to ask me this,

00:32:12.500 you know, the reason the NDP has a bit of an advantage, because there's a big question mark

00:32:17.140 around John Rustad. So tell me about Rustad. Unlikely political leader, just a few months ago,

00:32:26.920 he was kicked out of the BC Liberals, which changed into BC United. Tell me why he was kicked out

00:32:34.340 and how he ended up, well, replacing them. Yeah, so John Rustad has been in the BC legislature for 20

00:32:41.380 years, worked in the forest industry before that. Quite a nice guy, doesn't seem to have much of a mean

00:32:46.580 bone in his body, never seen as a party leader. But two years ago, he got kicked out of the then

00:32:54.480 BC Liberal Caucus by the then leader, Kevin Falcon, who wanted to make an example of someone and show

00:33:01.620 how disciplined he was. So he kicked Rustad out for not being a team player and for making a link to

00:33:09.200 what some people saw as climate denial stuff. Although, again, that's exaggerated. So Rustad's

00:33:15.200 out and is thinking of quitting politics, he says, because he's been at it for 20 years. He doesn't

00:33:21.520 seem to be going anywhere. And then, you know, there's the Conservative Party in British Columbia.

00:33:26.280 It's been sort of idling at the curb for decades. It's not elected and even a member of the legislature

00:33:33.860 since the 1970s and hasn't formed a government on its own since the 1920s.

00:33:41.500 And so they're not very good. The leadership of the Conservative Party becomes available

00:33:45.720 and Rustad steps into it. And he's got enough of a political instinct that he starts picking up on the

00:33:52.940 same issues that Poliev is picking up on. Time for a change. The carbon tax is a burden.

00:34:00.040 Public safety is not happening. Emergency rooms are closing all over the province in spite of the

00:34:07.820 government having government numbers increase the health care budget by 75 percent and hired 45,000

00:34:13.980 health care workers. And you're still getting ER closures. So he he makes a very good use of all

00:34:20.360 that. And he BCE United is just well, they disintegrate. They they basically they were falling

00:34:29.820 flat, right? They they were not. They were not making a dent against the NDP.

00:34:35.480 No. And their leader, Kevin Falcon, who'd been a cabinet minister, had a lot of experience, just

00:34:40.600 didn't seem to connect. And so what we find ourselves in right now is a David Eby and the NDP are

00:34:49.040 fighting for their political lives against the political party that barely existed when Eby took

00:34:57.640 over the leadership of the NDP two years ago. So that's what Rustad has done. But he's unproven

00:35:05.300 and people don't know him all that well. They're learning about him. We had an election debate

00:35:12.620 televised last week and he didn't do all that well. He came across flat, came across unprepared and

00:35:20.060 nervous. Understandable. He even though he's been in politics for 20 years, he's never been in the

00:35:25.680 spotlight the way he's been now. And so that's one of the big unknowns. If you ask people,

00:35:32.760 who do you think would make the best premier? They tend to pick Eby. He is premier. So you can

00:35:39.760 think of him as one. Rustad's numbers trail and he's got to get those numbers up, I think,

00:35:46.760 in the last week of the campaign, because not enough people see him as a potential premier of BC.

00:35:52.640 So Rustad is untested. I get that. Does he also have a problem with some of his candidates causing

00:36:00.460 him problems? There have been a, you know, the NDP's opposition research team has obviously done a good

00:36:05.480 job at bringing up, hey, this candidate said this or did that and caused him some headaches. And if you

00:36:13.300 get enough of those, it makes voters go, hmm, are they ready? Well, to give you, you won't need to

00:36:21.420 know how treacherous politics can be. But the dossier on John Rustad and his troubled candidates

00:36:28.920 runs 200 pages. And it wasn't compiled by the New Democrats. It was compiled by BC United when they

00:36:38.060 were trying to drive Rustad and the conservatives out. So they have these huge taxpayer funded

00:36:44.600 resource resources because they're the opposition. And so they produce 200 pages of damaging stuff on

00:36:52.320 Rustad, things people said, you know, 20 years ago and 10 years ago and all sorts of things.

00:36:57.780 And then when they're wiped out and they shut themselves down, that dossier manages to find

00:37:04.020 itself into the hands of the news media and eventually into the hands of the New Democrats.

00:37:08.960 So that's where the ammunition is coming from. The New Democrats are doing their own research too.

00:37:12.800 But as I said, the 200 pages of damaging stuff was actually compiled by a party that supposedly wanted

00:37:19.860 to keep the NDP out. They just didn't want that the party that kept the NDP out to be somebody else.

00:37:27.460 They wanted it to be that. When we've talked before, you've said to me that when the not NDP party

00:37:34.600 gets its act together, they win. Do you think that they have enough of their act together to win next

00:37:42.320 week? Possibly. But, you know, one of the people that's working with the BC conservatives and with

00:37:50.860 Rustad and trying very hard says to me, you know, you've got to realize we're trying to build a

00:37:57.400 political party at the same time as we're trying to win an election. Like, they don't have the

00:38:02.520 experience you've mentioned. They have a bunch of candidates who've never been exposed to the kind

00:38:08.860 of scrutiny you get from the news media when you're running from office, from your opponents.

00:38:14.380 They're, you know, trying to downplay the involvement of their own candidates in all candidates'

00:38:19.600 meetings because they don't want them to go off message. So it's a challenging thing that they're

00:38:27.000 trying to do here. They've got an opportunity. The polls show that a significant number of British

00:38:34.900 Columbians think the province is on the wrong track and are unhappy with the government's record.

00:38:41.280 But even with that, government has its advantages too. Money, resources, public sector union organizers,

00:38:49.520 of course, are working for the NDP. And they've got a premier who is pretty quick at thinking on his

00:38:55.660 feet. And John Rustad is not good at thinking on his feet. And we saw that in the debate. So

00:39:02.240 I would say still up in the air here. Angus Reid, the granddaddy of opinion polling in Canada,

00:39:09.920 said a while ago, if you're going to bet, bet on the NDP doing it again. But don't bet very much.

00:39:17.740 And maybe that's the best thing you can say. I look, Brian, I had the experience of going through

00:39:24.460 a 2013 election here in British Columbia, where on election night, I was sitting on a TV set,

00:39:30.480 putting the finishing touches on a column congratulating Adrian Dix on winning the election.

00:39:35.500 And then the returns started coming in. And Dix had lost and Christy Clark had won. And I said to the

00:39:41.860 producer on the set, I'm going to have to go and tweak my column. And what I did was blow it out.

00:39:49.620 If I ever been wrong, just ask Premier Adrian Dix.

00:39:51.700 Yeah. I was in Vancouver that night at Christy Clark's election HQ. And the, you know, her team

00:40:01.580 kept coming by and telling me, oh, we've got it. We've got it. No, you don't. No, you don't.

00:40:07.040 So, Saturday will be interesting. It is weird that your election day is on Saturday, but,

00:40:13.040 you know, British Columbia, you guys are different.

00:40:15.440 That's why we love you. So, Vaughn, thanks so much for this. We'll chat again after the election

00:40:21.000 results are known.

00:40:22.400 It's a pleasure. And I will be counting on you to obliterate all traces of this in the event

00:40:26.700 that the Conservatives do pull it out and win. I'll deny absolutely having done it.

00:40:31.020 Thanks so much. Full Comment is a post-media podcast. My name is Brian Lilly, your host.

00:40:37.160 This episode was produced by Andre Pru. Theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive

00:40:42.240 producer. You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, wherever you get

00:40:47.580 your podcasts. Help us out by leaving us a rating, giving us a review, and telling your friends about

00:40:52.940 us. Thanks for listening. Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.

00:41:01.020 Thank you.

Full Comment - October 14, 2024

David Eby is pivoting in panic away from the NDP’s unpopular policies

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