Election 2026. The election that never should have happened. But part of a premier’s prerogatives is to call an election whenever he or she wants, and that is what David Eby has done. He’ll take some flak over it, and he should, because he is clearly just taking advantage of the disarray within the Conservative Party, but that’s the Conservatives’ fault. They should keep their side in good political order so they can contribute to the process of running the province. And it’s a lot better than a system that some dictator controls where elections are meaningless.
It’s even better than the American system where you are locked into a fixed election schedule that has zero flexibility and, as we all know, there can be times, even in a healthy democracy, when an election is a great way to settle an issue. It’s part of what is called the Westminster System and is one of the things we inherited from our English heritage. The Americans think their system is the best, but it isn’t. If freedom to vote is a hallmark of a democracy, the people in one should be able to vote whenever they want.
So here we go, and while the B.C. election campaigns are among the shortest among provinces, it’s still about 28 days. Relatively short, but long enough to wish you could know now who is going to win. And that’s why you have me!
You might want to cut this out, put it on your fridge door so you can find out on Election Day if I’m as smart as I think I am. I’m not even sure. I certainly wouldn’t bet the farm on it. Actually, in this case I might, since it’s not really an election; it’s really just a confirmation of the last one.
The NDP will win again.
Why?
Here’s how it is.
There are really only two major schools of political thought in any jurisdiction. Free enterprise and what I might call social democratic. And thankfully, it’s my impression that both of those two schools are reasonably moderate. I probably have more political interest than most of you, since I was MLA from ’86 to ’91, but when the NDP win on October 24, I’m not going to leave the province. Whatever the NDP does when it forms the next government, it won’t be like what it did after earlier elections.
In case you don’t remember, when the NDP formed its first government in B.C. in 1972, it gave us things like ICBC, which we would have been just as well off without, since all or most of the other provinces do just fine with private car insurance. But all the other governments since then, including Social Credit and Liberal ones, have not dismantled it.
A much worse thing they did in ’74 was to put in the Agricultural Land Reserve. The basic idea was good; it doesn’t make sense at all for any country or province to pave over all the land that grows their food, but the implementation of it was terrible. Almost criminal. And it didn’t have to be that way. What it did was make a lot of people fortunes and other people paupers, all depending on whether their land got stuck in the ALR, which meant you couldn’t subdivide and sell it, versus it being out of the ALR, which meant you could subdivide and sell it, and then at a higher price because a lot of land was now off the market, meaning in the ALR.
But again, subsequent non-NDP governments haven’t changed it, even the one that I was part of. But just so you know how terrible a thing the ALR continues to be, if you lament the price of land today, and wonder how our kids and grandkids are ever going to be able to afford their own piece of British Columbia, you needn’t look any further than the ALR, which the NDP put in in ’74.
But that’s all history now. I think the biggest damage the NDP can do now is to impede industrial development that we need to continue the standard of living that we have today, without driving the provincial debt up even further, which will, one day, come back to haunt us. And the NDP are not the only guilty political parties about debt management. They all do a lousy job at it.
So back to the election results.
There are 93 seats. The NDP might win as many as 60 to 70. So let’s say my prediction is 65 seats. If they win 65, that leaves only 28 for all the other parties. And that’s all they’ll get.
That’s all they’ll get because both political sides, free enterprise and social democrats, are both divided, but free enterprise much more so than the social dems. The NDP splits their side with only the Green Party, and Green is so extreme they’ll never form a government. At least not soon. They are just a thorn in the NDP’s side.
Free enterprise, however, is so fractured that its side will be lucky to get 28 seats. The Conservative Party, which represents the greatest amount of free enterprise party strength, doesn’t only have two thorns in its side; it has two long knives in the form of the Centre BC and OneBC parties. And as long as that side can’t get together, we will have NDP governments.
That was the beauty of Social Credit. It had, thanks to the Bennetts from Kelowna, consolidated the free enterprise vote into one party, and it ran BC for decades. The Liberals wouldn’t join the Conservatives and the Conservatives wouldn’t join the Liberals, but they got along fine in Social Credit. That was how it was for most of the forty years, from ’52 to ’91. Then, in 2001, after ten years of NDP, free enterprise did get together within the Liberal Party under Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark, until 2017. And it’s been all NDP ever since.
But until free enterprise gets together under one banner, we’ll have NDP governments. That’s just how it is. Just like the sun comes up every morning, there’ll be no changing it.
Now, as we go through this election campaign, you might wonder whether or not you should bother voting. Here’s a little story about a guy who didn’t bother to vote, and for whom voting was probably much more important than it might be for you.
Frank Calder was an MLA. He represented the Atlin riding way up in the northwest corner of the province. It’s really way up there. In fact, if you are driving to it, I think you have to get there on a highway through the Yukon.
So there was an election called for May 10, 1979, and Frank was busy campaigning and must have been tired on election day, so he thought he wouldn’t bother to vote for himself. His wife must have thought the same thing, so she didn’t vote either.
He lost.
By one vote.
One of them would have tied it; the other would have won it.
So if you care about who wins this election, you better vote.
Every one counts!
