Here are my main issues:
1) Housing - this is the fundamental thing we need to fix, and the main reason I will likely vote NDP. Rustad and co. have said a few useful things, such as speeding up permitting, but ultimately he has a reactionary Nimby mindset for the most part, as far as I can see. We really can't afford to go backwards on this file.
2) Fiscal - they both seem bad here, I wish we could have Horgan back. Rustad will undoubtedly renege on many of his transportation promises so that might help, but promising a referendum on new taxes is populist nonsense like Christy Clark's stupid Translink referendum.
Whoever gets elected will benefit from falling interest rates, completion of LNG Canada, reduction in population growth and completion of the Site C Dam so the fiscal situation is probably better than it looks.
Also, although I don't like the big deficits, they are probably the reason BC has had the highest wage and GDP growth of any province over the past 5 years. In some sense, the provincial government has been running the counter-cyclical fiscal policy that the federal government should have been doing (like the US did) to counter the Bank of Canada misreading the situation and raising rates too high (thankfully coming down again now).
3)Transportation - Both parties are promising a skytrain extension, and the two being promised are probably the top 2 candidates (UBC and King George to Newton), so that is something. The NDP promises seem more realistic, likely reflecting they have been in government for a while. Rustad's number #1 promise on transit is to do an audit which tells me he prefers political games to funding transit and makes me very nervous. Maybe he would have the political courage to put in some proper operational funding for Translink, but I have more faith in the NDP on this front.
Both parties promising to reduces fares for seniors just makes me shake my head, we need more operational funding, not more demand and less funding, and seniors need more cash directed their way less than any other demographic group. Just brain-dead pandering.
4) Bureaucracy - 'Anglo Cost Disease' is killing us, there is way too much red tape and reviews and veto points and we need to start simplifying things and bringing costs down. This is probably the biggest area where I favour the Conservatives and don't expect NDP to improve at all
5) Competence - This is another big weak point of the Conservatives. Too many of their candidates, including their leader, seem to be gullible right wing types who believe in conspiracy theories, aren't too bright, don't have strong backgrounds in any walk of life and seem likely to make a lot of dumb decisions and lack competence in office. The NDP has been in for a while and has lots of experienced people who know their files. Even if the Conservatives wanted to take action on housing, do they have anyone who could match Ravi Kahlon - probably not.
6) Auto insurance - This didn't need to be on the list, but Rustad's brain dead promise for us to imitate Alberta's great auto insurance model is another dealbreaker for me. Even Scott Moe hasn't been ideological enough to get rid of public insurance, because everybody knows it works better.
7) Climate change / Electricity - Rustad doesn't believe in climate change, wants to slow down the transition to an electric society (which should be BC's strength, much like it is for Norway) and at the same time wants to waste time and resources looking into nuclear which might be sensible in some jurisdictions, but not in this one where our hydro power serves as a huge battery to support wind and solar, and the recent BC hydro call for power rustled up tons of responses, all of which would be cheaper and lower risk of a costly boondoggle than nuclear. Just ignorant, reactionary nonsense on all fronts from the Conservatives on this file.
8) Health Care - Like all Conservative governments, I'm sure the BC crew will starve health care of funding, and then point to the resulting problems as evidence they should privatize things. Every place in Canada is struggling with the combination of aging boomers and surging immigration, but I feel like the NDP has done reasonably well on this file. Covid was handled pretty well, the urgent care centres are good, they have funded new hospitals, and they have turned the corner on the number of family doctors in the province.
9) Crime / Public Order - Right wing folks know that whipping fear up on this issue is one of their surest paths to victory and they control most of the media environment so every election generally sees a crescendo of attention on this. Crime in BC has followed the same pattern as the rest of Canada and even the US (stopped falling in 2013 and began to rise, then spiked during the post pandemic phase (2021-2022), fell in 2023 and is falling further, back to the pre-Covid level, in 2024), suggesting provincial policies probably won't have much influence one way or the other on this front.
I do agree with the right wing view that we need to do more to clean up our cities and prevent visible homelessness and open drug use, but I'm not convinced the Conservatives will step up with the funding and organizational competence and willingness to stand up to the courts and activist groups to actually make a dent in the problem.
Also, repeat offenders need to be locked up for longer (maybe not a 3 strikes law, but how about a 7 strikes law), but that is Federal jurisdiction. Perhaps we will see if PP is willing to take on the activists and courts on this issue if he is elected next PM as seems likely.
Finally, the main driver of homelessness is just the stupidly high cost of housing, which comes back to why that was point #1, and this is at the bottom.
Overall, I get why young people are pissed, the last few years have been a clinic in how to govern for the old and screw over the young - at all levels of government - but I'm not sure if voting Conservative (at least at the provincial level) will really help. The main thing is really housing, and on that front, the Conservatives sound like boomer nimby's most of the time...
Prev
Linear Mode
