Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Pique n' Your Interest

Prepare to be politicked

The Liberal Party is just weeks away from calling the next provincial election, scheduled to take place on May 17.

Although it’s doubtful that Premier Gordon Campbell’s government will hold onto its legislative empire (all but two seats in the last election, until a byelection gave the NDP a third), it’s fair to assume that they will at least come away with another comfortable majority.

When they were first elected they had three major goals – cutting government waste, balancing the budget, and cutting red tape to encourage more investment in the province. Some lip service was paid to other issues, but from the beginning it was clear that this government is driven by economic zeal. From day one they proclaimed that B.C. was open for business.

You have to hand it to them there. They have balanced the budget and improved the province’s credit rating. Economic growth and employment figures are among the strongest in Canada. They are also making payments on B.C.’s $37 billion debt.

Some of the money they’ve saved has also been channelled back into areas like education, post-secondary education and health care, although you could also argue that they’ve made some drastic cuts in those areas as well.

While I can’t argue against fiscal stability – paying out more than you bring in is madness, whether you’re a ski bum like me or a provincial government – but their approach has been harsh at times.

For example, this government has privatized B.C. Hydro’s and the Medical Services Plan’s billing operations, bringing in U.S. companies to replace government workers. They also attempted to privatize liquor distribution, a cash cow for the province, and environmentalists believe Liberal policies like the proposed Working Forest Legislation and lodges in provincial parks amount to the privatization of public land. There is also widespread concern that ICBC will disappear as motor vehicle insurance becomes privatized.

Hospitals have been closed and provincial ministries have been under such pressure to save money that key staff members have been laid off. For example, the number of park rangers, conservation officers and forestry field workers in the province is at an all-time low, making it harder to protect and maintain those resources. Witness the resurgence in poaching of bald eagles for their beaks and talons.

At the same time as they’ve been tightening belts, the province has also given B.C. residents tax breaks, while doing the politically popular thing by getting rid of photo radar – a proven system for raising money and increasing road safety.

The government is also taking credit for the money raised by oil and gas exploration in the province and pushing to allow off-shore drilling, at a time when the public is split over the issue.

The Liberal Party has also pledged to be good to the environment (despite the fact the word "environment" has been carefully stripped from all government communication). In all fairness they have created several new parks and protected areas (including the South Chilcotin Mountains) while clawing back timber licences to give communities more control over their surrounding forests. They recently started a project to finally capture and neutralize the toxic runoff from the Britannia Beach site.

Still, these achievements can only be viewed cynically. The South Chilcotin Mountains Park was smaller than originally hoped for, and the compromise included opening a sizeable area up for recreation and mining. The park, including the Spruce Lake area, is also on a short list of parks being considered for new privately owned lodges with up to 80 beds.

The tenure clawback is giving communities more say over their outlying resources, but at the same time the government is rapidly approving licences for recreation, power generation and other commercial applications in the same areas without meaningful local consultation or regional planning.

It will be great if the government finally stops Britannia Beach from leaking toxic runoff into Howe Sound, but that project is tied to a large-scale residential development that will increase traffic, increase sewage and have other environmental impacts.

For Whistler, the government has yet to abide by an Olympic bid agreement to provide the resort with financial tools – the means to collect taxes from tourists to pay for the upkeep of our local infrastructure, a burden which currently falls on the back of residents.

When the election rolls around, it’s easy to focus on the economy and the simple metric of whether you are better off now than you were four years ago. It’s in our nature to be self-interested, and by that standard most people would probably say ‘yes’, and vote for the Liberals once again. Fair enough.

But I would also suggest checking the box on the accompanying ballot that says "Yes", indicating that you do support replacing our first-past-the-post political system with the Single Transferable Vote system. Although it’s convoluted and complicated, and some argue that STV won’t achieve true proportional representation, I think the people of B.C. have been poorly served by the traditional party system where the majority party does whatever it wants with little or no opposition.

When B.C. voted the Liberal Party in, they probably liked the idea of jobs, lower taxes, and fiscal responsibility. I doubt many of those voters would also have supported the privatization of public services and land, or closing hospitals in the Interior.

I doubt that even members of the Liberal Party agree to every single party policy without questions or concerns, although they will almost always march in lockstep with the party line to give the appearance of unity. That’s not democracy.

The STV system will lead to more heated debates in the Legislature and in the media, but it’s worth it. Democracy is not a system of rule, it’s a system of compromise, with checks and balances against concentrations of power. And right now the Liberals, with all but three seats, don’t need to compromise for anybody.