00:04:58That doesn't seem like it was a good plan.
00:05:00You know, NDP prides itself on their caucus research.0.99
00:05:04And if you said something stupid on social media 10 years ago, they've got a clip of that.
00:05:09But they missed the fact that when a film crew was going around the TV station in the interior in Dirksen's riding a few years ago, they stumbled across Lauren Dirksen fighting a forest fire with his neighbors.0.97
00:05:24And, of course, we have the clip and the conservatives took it and turned it into their first attack ad.
00:05:30You know, our leader actually fights for forest fires.
00:05:35The premier just turns them into political grist for the mill.
00:05:38So when things are not going well for you in politics, the trouble shows up in all kinds of ways.
00:05:46This one is just funny as hell to see it actually happen and blow up in the NDP's face.
00:05:53When you and I spoke about two weeks ago, Vaughn, at that point, Carrie Lynn Fenley was still the leader of the B.C. conservatives.
00:06:02And as Les alluded to, they were punching each other's lights out.
00:06:06And that was a tragic comedy playing out before our eyes.
00:06:14You said at the time that the B.C. NDP doesn't have a great record right now and they should be in trouble.
00:06:22And the only reason they're not is because of the B.C. conservatives.
00:06:26Are voters now looking at David Eby's record?
00:06:30I mean, as a reporter put it to him, he seems horribly afraid of running on his own record.
00:06:39But are the deficits, the hospital closures, the drug crisis that you guys have been through with that weird experiment of decriminalizing everything.
00:06:47Is some of that going to come back and bite E.B. now?
00:06:51Well, the initial thing that happened that the New Democrats were gambling on was that the United, the right, wouldn't unite.
00:07:00And in that first news conference on Tuesday, Eby gets the question off the top because a bunch of conservatives overnight came back to the party, the ones who'd left.
00:07:13And suddenly it did look like Eby, whatever else you might say about his record, had managed to unite the right.
00:07:20And, you know, Findlay, when she quit on Sunday
00:07:48and you've asked everybody if they're running and the ministers who aren't running are getting
00:07:52ready to announce it. And they went ahead anyway. But I can tell you that in the last four days,
00:07:58especially with the latest opinion poll that came out yesterday, there's a lot of new Democrats
00:08:03going, how the hell did we get into this thing anyway? And why are we doing this when we had
00:08:07two more years in our mandate and we had a three-seat majority in the legislature,
00:08:11so we didn't need to call an election? Well, is that angering NDP voters less?
00:08:17Are they, you know, saying, look, I'm not going to, you know, give you my donation or I'm not going to show up to campaign or, you know, you'd be going to rally the troops because you still got to fight off the other guys.
00:08:32I don't notice a lot of NDP supporters online who are supporting this concept.
00:08:39The other factors on this thing are that he's landed at right in the middle of a province wide municipal election.
00:08:46Aren't the voting days like three days apart?
00:11:30And so we may be, I guess, you could be overstating this.
00:11:38The way B.C. politics has gone for the past few months, there's going to be 15, 20 major stories breaking over the next four weeks of this campaign.
00:16:38Whereas a few members of the conservative caucus and a few members of the board actually picked Lauren Dorkson and voted for him.
00:16:47Let me ask you both about the latest poll and it's, you know, one poll, Angus Reid, a reputable outfit, though, and based in British Columbia.
00:16:57province-wide they've got the conservatives at 43 percent the ndp at 35 percent greens at 12
00:17:04uh and other at 10 that's an eight-point flip that is a dramatic flip um so let's assume it
00:17:12holds for now voters are fickle uh polls can change campaigns matter it's what i always say
00:17:18but let's set that aside how where do they need to win because i'm looking at the the breakdown
00:17:24And I'm surprised that the Conservatives are ahead in Metro Vancouver, not surprised about the Fraser Valley or the interior, but the NDP is leading in the island and north.
00:17:35Is that, you know, a surprise to you that the Conservatives are ahead in Metro Vancouver and which regions do you need to win to form government if you're on the blue team?
00:17:47Well, yeah, I mean, look, first of all, regional breakdowns are pretty shaky at the moment.
00:17:53And I think they will change. But elections, the last few elections have been very close and they've been decided in a battle over seats in and around Metro Vancouver. So David Eby held on to his majority in 2024 by one seat and he won that seat by 22 votes.
00:18:14So that's Surrey, which is a major, major political battleground.
00:18:19I think that is where the election will be fought out.
00:18:24But there are some areas in the province of concern.
00:18:28The New Democrats are concerned about what might happen to their support on the island.
00:18:33The Green Party is stronger on the island.
00:18:36Environmental issues are bigger on the island.
00:21:05And all of the reasons that you would consider domestically for the NDP government over the last nine years, not a lot of them work in their favor.
00:21:15They've had a horrible row to hoe with, you know, all the pandemics and wildfires and Trump is tough, but they've fallen short on a bunch of those.
00:21:26And that's why I think he is completely preoccupied with Trump right now.
00:21:31He's not going to spend a lot of time trying to defend his record on this.
00:21:35Well, I'd love to hear from both of you about B.C.'s deficit.
00:21:39Because last time I checked, the province of British Columbia had about one-third the population of Ontario, roughly speaking.
00:21:46And your deficit projection is the same size as Ontario's.
00:21:50Now, I happen to think that $13.8 billion for Ontario is too high.
00:21:55But $13.8 billion for British Columbia is astronomical, isn't it?
00:24:04So they set it on a very overhyped kind of expenditure reduction frugality plan.
00:24:13And then they brought in a budget with a deficit that was $3 billion higher than the one before.
00:24:19That budget in February just was dead on arrival because it made no sense that it was an admission that their expenditure management plan was just completely hopeless.
00:24:30And they just don't have the skill set or the mindset or whatever to actually tackle spending the way I think a lot of people now acknowledge it has to be dealt with.
00:24:43Well, you know, from the 1990s, Paul Martin's watershed budget until 2015, at the federal level, you had to be all for balanced budgets. Even you Democrats would run on balancing the budget. Tom Mulcair did. And then this pesky little guy named Trudeau comes along and says, oh, no, we'll run three small deficits.
00:25:04Since then, I've been saying, look, there's no fiscal hawks left. You know, the federal conservatives, you know, they couldn't win votes by promising balanced budgets. Doug Ford abandoned that idea here in Ontario because it doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter until it does.
00:25:25And at a certain point, it becomes unmanageable.
00:25:29And so, Vaughn, you saying that servicing the debt would be the third biggest department, that's gobsmacking.
00:25:37And as I said, Horgan actually, and I talk about balancing budgets and stuff, Horgan actually managed to balance the budget most years.
00:25:53But he had the books back into balance before he left office, and as I said, he left $6 billion behind in the surplus fund, and Eby promptly spent it in about three months.
00:26:04Before we take a break, I'd like a quick comment from both of you on this.
00:26:07John Horgan was a very different kind of New Democrat than David Eby.
00:26:12It is, you know, there's always the Horgan, in my view, was the old school, traditional blue collar type New Democrat, a Roy Romano Democrat or New Democrat.
00:26:23They might call him in Saskatchewan because Romano also believed in balanced budgets.
00:26:27But there's always a fight within the party between that type of member and someone like E.B., who doesn't seem bothered by any of this and isn't focused on the same kind of issues that a John Horgan would.
00:28:01We came out of that gold. We came out of that with a $5 billion surplus, and it's just vanished on all the problems. He spent billions of dollars trying to deal with, but the results in terms of satisfaction and seeing that that money was well spent on a lot of the fronts, they're just not there.
00:28:22Yeah. Horgan, when he died, left behind a memoir that was published. And what he said in the
00:28:29memoir was he said, one of the things I'm proudest of about my government was that I ended the myth
00:28:35that the NDP couldn't manage public finances in British Columbia. I showed we could. Of course,
00:28:43by the time that book is published and Horgan is gone because it was posthumously published,
00:28:49he'd be thrown all that away like Horgan really worked hard he he uh inherited good finances from
00:28:59the previous liberal government but he paid down the direct debt managed spending he saw us through
00:29:07COVID with a deficit yes but he got the books back into balance and he said I'm really proud
00:29:12of the fact that I showed I put an end to that myth the NDP can't manage public finances and
00:29:17his successor is thrown all that away in four years all right we'll talk about uh the who the
00:29:25bc conservative leader is a little bit more when we come back along with the issue that um uh
00:29:32motivates i think an awful lot of homeowners in certain parts of your province as well
00:29:37but before that we've got merch yes it's time for me to uh show for some merch again from hoodies
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00:34:47Like, it's a big change from being just a backbench MLA to, hey, you're party leader.
00:34:53You have to do a news conference every day and go in front of the cameras and convince people across the entire province, not just your district, to vote for you.
00:35:02How's his performance been in the first few days?
00:35:34The liquor is not coming back on our liquor store shelves.
00:35:38And so the whole Donald Trump mega thing kind of loses, runs out of gas day one.
00:35:44And E.B. yesterday in his news conference, he kind of let his guard down for a minute because he's been trying to tell us that this guy Dirksen is just a front for Donald Trump.
00:35:55And at one point, E.B. in the news conference says, you know, people say this guy Dirksen is a nice guy and he is a nice guy.
00:36:02And I went, Jesus, that's an interesting strategy, Premier.
00:36:09So it's going to be pretty hard to demonize the guy.
00:36:12And I think he's running into that problem, which is it's, you know, he's kind of a friendly uncle or maybe a dad that you're looking at, a former rodeo rider, helps his neighbors.
00:36:27I don't think you're going to be able to frame this guy in any kind of negative quantity.
00:38:14Her husband, by the way, Brent Chapman, he has decamped to 1BC.
00:38:19So can they brand this party as radicals, raving lunatics, anything like that?
00:38:26The big challenge for Dirksen between now and voting day, October the 24th, is can he keep himself in charge of the messaging and keep a lid on some of the wild people they have in their backbench?0.98
00:40:35But I think Eby's kind of misconstruing some of the stuff they're saying in terms of the party doesn't have a strong record of being stridently and patriotically opposed to Trump as much as they should or as much as they like.
00:40:58And the other thing, I think Dirksen is starting to address that
00:41:01by calling him a bully four times in about five minutes at his opening launch.
00:41:06And the other thing is that the Conservatives have been criticizing.
00:41:14He's one of the lieutenants in the Canada cause against Trump,
00:41:17maybe the third-ranked lieutenant in what is obviously a federal responsibility.0.71
00:41:22But the conservatives have been criticizing Eby's approach on things like the liquor ban and whatnot, but I think Eby's misconstruing that and turning criticism of his efforts into equating them as a bunch of mega lunatics.
00:41:43And, I mean, they're criticizing him because they're opposition critics.
00:45:46But as Vaughn said, a fixture of the legislators sitting earlier this year was a couple of times a week an opposition member would get up and recite all the hospital closures.
00:46:00And people pay a lot more attention to the fact that that can't get into the emergency ward down the street from where they live than they do on these U.S. workers who are coming up.
00:46:13And I don't know, we're not seeing a lot of result from it.
00:46:16It's a much more of a core issue than the recruitment numbers that the premier is relying on.0.59
00:46:23Now, Dirksen the other day said that if elected premier, he will deal with DRIPA.
00:46:30And immediately, you Democrat strategists online were saying, oh, this is the issue when we've got all these other problems?
00:46:38And I thought, well, if you live in certain parts of Richmond, yeah, if you live in certain areas where court decisions and or government legislation or policy has put the ownership of your home into question, yeah, that's going to be a big issue for you.
00:46:58Is that a big issue province wide or is it rather isolated to, you know, where the Cowichan tribes decision was, for example?
00:47:08You know, the matter is before the courts, and you sort of, when things are before the courts, you kind of get public concern, but they're also waiting to see what the courts do with it.
00:47:19But over the past year, the general public support in B.C. for reconciliation with First Nations has been undermined by a series of court decisions.
00:47:30And it's not surprising that the opposition is saying they're going to fix this legislation.
00:47:36The premier for a time this year said he was going to change this DRIPLE legislation, which essentially it's a law that will change all the laws in British Columbia to reconcile them with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
00:47:55So it affects all kinds of planning and land use issues and also, to some degree, private property.
00:48:02So it's not surprising that if you ask people what their biggest concerns, they're concerned about food prices and cost of living.
00:48:11They're concerned about housing and availability.
00:48:14They're concerned about ER closures, about the fact that their downtowns in a lot of communities in British Columbia have public safety and drug issues.
00:48:25And for a time, David Eby was promising to deal with it, too, but he never did.
00:48:30I remember when it first broke, politicians trying to say, no, no, it's not an issue. And then you had people showing up and saying, well, I was just told I can't get my mortgage renewed. And suddenly it became a big issue for David Eby, for the mayor of Richmond and elsewhere.
00:48:48You know, I remember writing a little while ago in the race for everyone to politicians and courts to move forward on reconciliation.
00:49:00Sometimes they do weird things like the federal government signed an agreement with the Musqueam giving them.
00:49:07The federal agreement says that land and the Cowichan tribes decision belongs to the Musqueam and the court says no, it belongs to the Musqueam.
00:49:13And then you've got a, I'm forgetting the third band that stepped in and said, no, wait, that's ours.
00:51:56No. And when we endorse the U.N. declaration here in B.C., I pointed out that there are more recognized nations in British Columbia than there are members of the U.N.
00:52:07And we see how well that body can function
00:52:37for groceries. He never delivered it. So how you go into an election making any kind of promises
00:52:46with a deficit approaching $14 billion, when your biggest promise last time, $1,000 a household,
00:52:54you never delivered. I don't know how he's going to do that one.
00:52:57A couple hours ago, he took on the development industry, promising a housing, empty condo tax,
00:53:065,000 empty condos in Metro Vancouver, he says they're camping on it, refusing to sell them or lower their prices because the developers want to make money.
00:53:17So there's a new 2% empty condo tax coming if they don't suck it up and sell those properties over a specified period of time.
00:53:27And there's been a few other tax increases too.
00:53:29So anything he comes up with in terms of giveaways during this campaign, there's going to be, almost inevitably, there's going to be some tax increases to cover those costs if those promises even materialize.
00:53:44Let's spend the last few minutes talking about whether at the end of this, let's say, you know, voters in their wisdom decide no party deserves a majority.
00:53:54we had a bunch of members of the bc conservative party leave under carrie lynn finley and then go
00:54:02join center bc and then well they left center bc and went back some of them stayed uh you've got
00:54:09andrew weaver the former green leader who was part of the coalition government with john horgan's
00:54:15ndp he's now running for center bc uh you've got um you know talk of a coalition where we won't run
00:54:24in certain areas could they come together the the you know when you and i were talking a couple of
00:54:30weeks ago van you said when the side that's not the ndp unites they win well they're not quite
00:54:35united at this point but would they seek to cooperate what's it it's an ever-changing
00:54:43landscape where you are but what's it looking like right now i think they're trying to figure
00:54:50out what it means. The Conservatives have access to public funds, a million seven, and a pretty
00:54:59good bank loan too, so they've got money. These other two parties, right of center parties out
00:55:04there, one's 1BC and one's center BC, they didn't run in the last election, so they don't get public
00:55:11funding. So they're struggling. I do think that if the opinion polls start to tighten up,
00:55:19and it is apparent that those parties, those other two parties will be splitting the vote in some
00:55:25ridings, then I think you will get a discussion about a couple of options. The big one would be,
00:55:34all right, we'll let you run a few members in these ridings as long as you don't run everywhere,
00:55:39right? And we won't oppose you. That might lead to a minority government situation.
00:55:45And you may see the New Democrats doing the same thing with the Greens because of a concern their own left-wing environmentalists will defect.