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#BCPoli | The Speech from the Throne | Preparation for the October Election

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As of this writing, the British Columbian electorate are 241 days away from our province’s 43rd general election, set to take place on Saturday, October 19th.

Members of the British Columbia Legislature will sit for a total of 37 days in the spring session.


All 41 minutes and 2 seconds of Lieutenant Governor Janet Austin’s Speech from the Throne

The Throne Speech read in the Legislature by Lt. Gov Janet Austin on Tuesday kicks off a 10-week spring legislative session.

On Thursday, the government will unveil their budget, a compressed timeline in 2024 to accommodate a session that’s two weeks shorter than usual, in this the final session of the Legislature before the upcoming October provincial election.

In the Vancouver Sun, Legislative reporter Katie DeRosa writes, “The throne speech did give a hint that the 2024 budget is expected to be heavy on social spending “because leaving people to fend for themselves does not work. It did not work before. And it will not work now. It would mean deep cuts that weaken the services we rely on.”

In her speech — that was drafted in the Premier’s office —  the Lieutenant Governor began her address to British Columbians by emphasizing the actions government is taking, and will continue to take, to boost the number of middle-class homes available across the province.


On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a housing funding announcement with B.C. Premier David Eby, and Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim to expand the province’s B.C. Builds programme, to construct between 8,000 & 10,000 units, on an expedited timeline, over the next 5 years.

Programmes like BC Builds were touted as a way the government is reportedly taking underused land, grant money and low-cost financing to lower the cost of construction. On Tuesday, the federal government announced it would invest $2 billion in additional financing into the programme, on top of the $2 billion announced by the province last week.

Lt. Gov Austin also highlighted expanding infrastructure the province is building to accompany the growing housing supply, including projects that are set to increase the region’s SkyTrain network by 27 per cent. Other priorities outlined in the Throne Speech included public health care, such as the addition of hundreds of new doctors and thousands of new nurses in the province in the last year.

Lt. Gov Austin also referred to the medical school being built at Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus, which will be the first new medical school in Western Canada in more than 50 years. She also alluded to actions the government will continue to take to build on its ten-year cancer plan.

Relieving cost-of-living for British Columbians and leveraging B.C.’s natural resource sector were also mentioned as areas where action will be taken in the upcoming budget, set to be announced Thursday.  The Lt. Gov gave B.C. Hydro as an example, as it attempts to expand B.C.’s electrical grid, and the new E-One Moli facility in Maple Ridge where battery production will be ramping up in the province.


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the E-One Moli manufacturing plant in Maple Ridge to announce a billion-dollar battery cell production plant that will produce up to 135 million batteries each year as part of Canada’s push toward clean technology. (Justine Boulin/CBC)

References were also made to the government’s plan to manage the droughts and wildfires continuing to plague B.C.’s warmer seasons.

“The climate crisis is here, we have seen it all around us these last few years,” Lt. Governor Janet Austin said.

One of the highlights of Tuesday’s kick-off to the upcoming Legislative session were the cries — welcomed by Lt. Gov. Austin, mid-speech — of Azalea, the young daughter of British Columbia’s Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Minister, Bowinn Ma.

The response to the Throne Speech by the Opposition B.C. United Party …

Todd Stone, BC United Member of the Legislature for Kamloops-South Thompson; Official Opposition House Leader; and Shadow Minister for Jobs weighed in with …

John Rustad, B.C. Conservative Party leader (pictured above) had this to say …

“It’s been 16 years of the BC Liberals and now the seventh year of the NDP and we have a crisis in housing, we have an affordability crisis, we have a health crisis, we have a crisis in drugs and crime. The province quite frankly is in crisis.

It’s about time quite frankly that people became the focus of governments rather than what we are seeing, which is ideologies and other types of approaches that have failed every time they have been tried.”

B.C. Green Party leader / Cowichan Valley MLA Sonia Furstenau  had this to say …

All said, the David Eby government — despite the slew of ads from B.C. United that cross our dinnertime news programmes, and desultory commentary from the B.C. Conservatives and B.C. Greens — continue to sit in the catbird seat according to the polls, in what would appear to be a near wipe out vote for the opposition parties.

#BCPoli | Premier David Eby’s 2nd Worst Nightmare Unfolding

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Mario Canseco’s Research Co poll released on January 31, 2024 places the BC NDP in first place

Premier David Eby’s second worst nightmare continues to unfold less than nine months before the 2024 British Columbia provincial election.

David Eby’s worst nightmare, of course, would be a repeat of the 2001 British Columbia election, when voters went to the polls, leaving only two seats from the NDP majority government that held power from 1991 through 2001. From 2001 through 2005, Joy McPhail & Jenny Kwan held the fort for B.C.’s New Democratic Party. Failure on that scale in 2024 would be unimaginably devastating.

In fact, there is a 2001 provincial election scenario that is, at present, unfolding in British Columbia, but it is a redux version of 2001, where the B.C. New Democratic Party has gained the confidence and largesse of British Columbia voters — seeming to give David Eby, and the BC NDP, an overwhelming majority — and where the renamed name B.C. Liberal Party — now inaptly named, B.C. United — look to be wiped out as a political force in our province, as they seem set to retain a mere six seats in the Legislature, in a house where 93 Members of the Legislature will sit.

Below, we’ll get to why the above scenario is Premier Eby’s 2nd worst nightmare.


Sonia Furstenau, Green Party of British Columbia leader, changing ridings before the 2024 election

On the last day of January 2024, Sonia Furstenau announced to the world that she is giving up on British Columbia politics, that she’s frustrated, fed up, worn out, is devastated that British Columbians have failed to support her tenure as leader of the Green Party of B.C.,  her integrity, her hard work and that of her Green Party colleague, Adam Olsen, and that a very centrist British Columbia electorate have thrown their support to a centrist British Columbia New Democratic Party under the leadership of David Eby, and cast her and her Green Party of British Columbia aside, and no longer want her in place to challenge a B.C. NDP government.

Did Sonia Furstenau voice the (fictional) concerns raised above, yesterday?

No. But she might as well have.


Beacon Hill Park, in Victoria

For, you see, Ms. Furstenau announced Wednesday that in the upcoming 2024 provincial election, rather than run again in the very safe Green Party supporting riding of Cowichan Valley, which she has held comfortably since 2016, instead Ms. Furstenau has chosen to devastate her Green Party supporters and the voting electorate in the Cowichan Valley, by announcing that come this autumn, she will run for office in the riding of Victoria-Beacon Hill — perhaps the safest NDP seat in the province — where she will challenge popular incumbent, Grace Lore, the current Minister of Children and Family Development in the David Eby government.

Note should be made that due to redistribution, Ms. Furstenau’s riding was divided in half, statistically giving the B.C. NDP a three-to-one advantage in the new ridings should she decide to run in either of the two new ridings. Pulling out of the political fray in the Cowichan Valley where she believes she cannot win, in favour of certain defeat in Victora-Beacon Hill, to VanRamblings seems to be a Hobson’s choice.

The above said, we wish Ms. Furstenau well in her political “retirement”, because most assuredly she will not win re-election come this Saturday, October 19th.

VanRamblings imagines after clearing her office she will take some time off, vacationing with her husband, perhaps returning in the spring to supply teach in her Cowichan Valley school district, where the administration will be over the moon to have her back in the fold, given the dire shortage of teachers in our province.


Vancouver Island University, entrance to the Cowichan campus administration office

Returning to teaching will also afford Ms. Furstenau to put in the time necessary to raise her pension to 80% of her annual average teachers’ salary of $90,000+ — whether she resumes her teaching career in the Cowichan Valley, or her “new home” in British Columbia’s capital city, where she would be closer to family.


The University of Victoria

Upon retirement at age 65, Ms. Furstenau will live in comfort financially, her home paid off, her teachers’ pension  paying handsomely, supplemented by her Member of the Legislature / leader of the Green Party of BC provincial government pension. In addition, we also expect Vancouver Island University’s Cowichan campus, or should Ms. Furstenau remains in Victoria, the University of Victoria will want to bring her on staff as an instructor, to conduct an evening class or two.

If seeing his current 57-member strong New Democratic Party caucus reduced to two seats, as was the cataclysmic case in 2001, is the nightmare electoral scenario that David Eby fears most (an event unlikely to unfold), as we’ve written previously, securing 80 seats in the Legislature is certainly a nightmare electoral October 19th scenario that our Premier is hoping against hope will not unfold.

Why? As we’ve written previously, and will write again many times in the months to come: with 57 seats in the Legislature, including the Premier’s own Vancouver Point Grey riding seat, British Columbia’s beloved, soon-to-be-a-father for the third time (come June!), the Premier is perfectly content with 57 seats, a comfortable majority, just the right number of seats in the House to portion out Ministers, Parliamentary Secretary and House Speaker jobs,  keep his caucus members busy, keeping them happy, as well, as this “extra work” affords each of the members of the NPD caucus additional salary to their $115,045.93 annual MLA compensation.

Much more than a 57-seat win, and the Premier faces undesired “trouble”, cuz there are no more additional, well-paying jobs for him to give out, leaving the “extra NDP MLAs” largely disenfranchised, and at loose ends with themselves.

Next thing you know, a rump group of B.C. Dippers will hive off from the provincial party to form their own — say, five member, environmentally-minded, opposed to LNG and fracking — B.C. political party, affording them the “extra monies” they heretofore had been denied. Politics, lemme tell ya, it ain’t for the faint of heart.


Kevin Falcon, leader of B.C. United, and decidedly on the right, B.C. Conservative leader, John Rustad

Politically in British Columbia, we seem to be living in a redux period.

In 1991, as “Premier” Rita Johnson — when disgraced Socred Premier Bill Vander Zalm  resigned from office, the party chose Ms. Johnson as their leader, and Premier — championed the Social Credit party during that year’s provincial election, she not only lost government and 47  legislative seats, the Social Credit Party came in a distant third, the Social Credit Party finis / the Socreds dead, far from phoenix-like, after nearly 41 years in power, the party wiped out, and gone forever.

Once the cabal who run this province removed 1991’s Liberal leader, Gordon Wilson — who secured 17 seats for the B.C. Liberals, a revived B.C. Liberal party became the political standard-bearer for our province’s capitalist forces, an all-too-willing Gordon Campbell made leader, who in 2001 went on to become Premier.


Global BC’s Richard Zussman reports on B.C. United leader Kevin Falcon + the Greens’ Sonia Furstenau

Kevin Falcon, once a well-thought-of activist Minister in the Gordon Campbell government, will soon become the undertaker for the B.C. Liberal renamed B.C United Party, as this capitalist, free market party — whatever it’s name — will soon be but a fading memory on the political landscape of British Columbia provincial politics.


British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly

As for B.C. Conservative Party leader, John Rustad, as the far right gains power across the globe — in Canada, that would be federal Conservative Party leader, Pierre “The Destroyer” Poilievre (“Canada is broken. It’s all Justin Trudeau’s fault,”), as well as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, and New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs — steps gingerly into the political vacuum left by a mortally wounded B.C. United Party, Rustad would seem to be on track to become, perhaps, the Leader of Her Majesty’s official loyal Opposition, in the post election, post October next session of the British Columbia Legislature.

Decision 2021 | Day 25 | The 21st Century Belongs to the Conservatives?

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For 9 long years, Canadian politics underwent a tectonic shift that for the longest period of time since Confederation seemingly buried the liberal elites of yesteryear, during the era of Stephen Harper’s reign as Canada’s Prime Minister.

The thesis propounded by conservative Globe and Mail columnist, John Ibbitson, and pollster Darrell Bricker, Global CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs Research, is that  Canada is undergoing a fundamental shift (the eponymous “Big Shift”) that in the 21st century will result in a reformation of Canadian politics, governance, economy and values. The authors argue in their book that the Conservative Party of Canada is the political force best poised to take advantage of this changing landscape, and over the years and in the coming decades will be transformed into what was once the purview of the Liberal Party: the natural governing party of Canada.

Bricker and Ibbitson argue that one of the world’s most consensual countries is becoming polarized, exhibiting stark differences between East and West, cities and suburbs, Canadian born citizens and immigrants. The “winners” — in both politics and business — will be those who can capitalize on these momentous changes.

For almost its entire history, Canada has been run by the political, media and business elites of Toronto, Ottawa and Montréal. For nine long, arduous years, though, these groups lost their power — without most of them realizing their power was on the wane. The Laurentian Consensus, the term John Ibbitson has coined for the dusty liberal elite, had been replaced by a new and powerful coalition based in the West and supported by immigrant voters in Ontario. How did this happen?

So far in the 21st century, though, the Conservatives have governed for only 9 of 21 years. Despite their dispiriting election losses in the 2015 and 2019 federal elections, the Conservative Party has nonetheless continued to remain strong in northern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, in the rural regions of Ontario, and has even shown strength in Québec — but not in the Maritimes.

In his review in The Globe and Mail of John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker’s book, The Big Shift, journalist and academic Christopher Dornan writes …

“The Big Shift, as its title suggests, is one of those books that purports to divine a single, telling fact to explain Canada. If that fact echoes Jacques Parizeau’s infamous 1995 comment about “money and the ethnic vote,” it is not, as Bricker and Ibbitson advance it, a form of bigotry, but a species of determinism: The political values, and therefore voting tendencies, of new arrivals and first-generation Canadians are contingent on their race and region of origin.

Further, this “Big Shift in power to the West and to suburban immigrants” is not only permanent but “will make Canada inexorably a more conservative place.” Resistance is futile. Bad news for progressives, whether they manage to unite or not. They’re on the wrong side of a fundamental and irreversible demographic shift.”

While both of the book’s authors take great pains to stress that they’ve merely set out to document a “seismic shift” in the demographics of Canada, and what it portends for the political, social and economic future of our nation, for most who would read the book and interpret its internal thesis, from the book’s outset through til its end, it would be difficult to ignore the sense of triumphalism evident throughout Ibbitson and Bricker’s polemical treatise, as if somehow the shift to the “new” — and increasingly right wing — Conservative Party is inalterably inevitable.

“It’s one thing for the Conservative Party to chafe and protest  when in opposition,” writes Dornan. “But, if Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s style of government — which might best be described as “undertaken in a spirit of spite” — offers an example of what Canadians might expect from a Conservative government, it is entirely likely that a goodly number of our fellow citizens would find this approach to governance to be untenable, particularly in a country populated by families who came here to escape entrenched antagonisms. If that ever changes, then the Canada we all love — left and right, newcomer or born-and-bred — will be truly at risk.”

When Canadians go to the advance polls to cast a ballot this week, or to their polling station on Election Day, Monday, September 20th, Canadians must vote not just for the Prime Minister and the government of their choice, but for the future of Canada — our most cherished home — and the uniquely Canadian values of fairness, respect, compassion, equality, inclusion, diversity, safety, peace, and for being there for one another, as collectively we seek to create a more sustainably just Canada for everyone. As in every election, there is in 2021 a great deal on the line.