The following is a largely AI-generated transcript for Episode 207. Excuse any errors. Want to help make our transcripts better? Let us know if you can help our support us on Patreon.
[00:01:01] Ian Bushfield: Well to kick it off. Sonia’s first in now, Sonia Furstenau is the new leader of the BC greens.
[00:01:20] She won as I think most people largely expected her to, but it was much narrower than most people were predicting.
[00:01:29] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah, it was no surprise that she won, but what’s interesting is that Cam Brewer who we had on a couple of weeks ago surprisingly, we got 41% on the first ballot, uh, to Sonia Fustenau’s 47%. Made a much stronger show.
[00:01:47] And then anyone was really expecting considering this late entry into the room.
[00:01:51] Ian Bushfield: Yeah. On the second ballot, which he managed to force, he pulled in 2100 votes to Sonia Furetenau is 2,400 votes. So she won 53 to 47 percentage. And if he had cleaned up Kim Darwin’s votes, those 500 votes, she got in the first round, he might’ve actually won it, but I think he only managed to take about half of them.
[00:02:12] And Darwin’s votes split down the middle. But I think it’s worth digging into how did Cam Brewer do so well, because as you mentioned, he only announced his candidacy on July 25th, two days before the candidate deadline, which gave him a little over a month to sign up supporters before the voting started.
[00:02:32] Essentially the supporter deadline to sign up was September 2nd. Furstenau announced in January Darwin in March. He doesn’t when we talked to him, he didn’t have a political background, really hadn’t been active in politics and he takes on a sitting MLA, how did he do it, Scott?
[00:02:51] Scott de Lange Boom: I, so I don’t have any great insight into the inner workings of his campaign, but if I was to guess he probably put together a fairly good team for that.
[00:03:01] And in addition to that, I don’t think the BC green party is. Nearly as united as some people think it is, or I guess a better way to phrase that is that the green party has some pretty different visions about what it should be. And Sonia first announced significantly more left orientation than the previous leader hasn’t gone over.
[00:03:30] Uniform,
[00:03:31] Ian Bushfield: there’s kind of two factions within the green party, and that can be viewed in a number of ways, but the most common is the more like ecosocialist the left wing of it. And then there’s a sort of eco capitalist, I guess we could call them or at least eco centrist people who would be at home in the BC liberals at times, maybe at times in the BC NDP, but who think.
[00:03:55] We need a much stronger environmental plan then either of those parties have put forward. Um, like you mentioned, that’s where Andrew Weaver fits pretty well. I don’t think Sonja personnel would qualify as a ecosocialist in the way some of the candidates for the federal greens are running on, but she did run on a more progressive, a more left wing platform with taco the four day week workweek.
[00:04:16] Most notably. I also wonder if first, now didn’t run too much of a kind of. Coast to victory type of campaign, assuming it’s in the bag on the day before the announcement was pull on the day before the announcement was made of who on a, I looked up what the ad spend for the different candidates was on Facebook and Ken brewer had spent $3,700 on Facebook ads to 682 by first, now in three 45 for Darwin, that’s not much money.
[00:04:49] By any of them, frankly, when a single donor can give $1,500 to each of those candidates, given, they all had to do a lot of online outreach. The fact they were not spending much and brewer just managed to spend five, 10 times as much as opponents got his message out there more. Well, he’s got this one side to the sort of establishment, right?
[00:05:09] Scent of the party with kind of, we talked about his support from Andrew Weaver and then he was also willing to. Go for the votes more maybe.
[00:05:20] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. Perhaps. Yeah. I definitely cut that. Yeah, I think you’re right that, sorry, the first I was leading a fairly traditional coastal victory front row campaign, which yeah, she started off far enough ahead that wasn’t going to be an issue in this case.
[00:05:36] Unlike some other recent leadership contenders who missed on an open net, so to speak,
[00:05:42] Ian Bushfield: it is nice to see someone. It is nice to see. Of it is nice to see someone who it gets first place on the first ballot. Get first place on the second ballot. Not dislike come from behind victory every time.
[00:05:55] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. So in that respect, he definitely, I think worked hard to try to reach out to more people than the first snow camp of, Oh, we’re the obvious choice we’re going to try and consolidate around that.
[00:06:07] So I think that helped his performance overall.
[00:06:11] Ian Bushfield: I think he also represented a different strategy of growth for the party. First now represents the party in some ways, as it is with an, a very Vancouver Island riding very sort of Vancouver Island focus camera, or coming from Metro Vancouver, maybe too many people looked like an opportunity to grow the party beyond their kind of.
[00:06:36] Beachhead on Vancouver Island and start to look at seats either in Metro, Vancouver, or perhaps the interior.
[00:06:43] Scott de Lange Boom: It is tough. The obvious spot for them to try and make gains is the South Island. That’s where they’ve done. Metro Vancouver. There just aren’t many races where they’ve even come in second tier one or two in the interior like
[00:06:57] Ian Bushfield: Nelson.
[00:06:58] Scott de Lange Boom: So yeah, it makes it hard to make the case that if Vancouver centered leader who might not be able to win a seat in a general election, Would be the kind of electability candidate. On the other hand, there may be something for kind of that more central Scipio and strategy, given the liberals weakness and.
[00:07:25] If you’re a cam brewer, maybe you have a better chance of picking off disaffected liberals, which there seem to be quite a few of these days who aren’t that happy with the current leadership, then that’s on your first out of trying to fight with the NDP for the progressive vote.
[00:07:41] Ian Bushfield: Yeah. As into what do these results ultimately mean?
[00:07:45] And I think you’re totally right. The. Canberra or direction would be to still try and steal votes from every party. Whereas first and now it’s clear target would be disaffected new Democrats, voters, who perhaps don’t like the position on LMG or haven’t been impressed enough with action on climate change.
[00:08:07] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. Yeah. On the other hand, though, it is, seems to be a lot easier to get disaffected new Democrats than disaffected liberals. Like the liberals will grumble and vote for the liberals. Whereas the NDP VA seems a little less solid. And
[00:08:22] Ian Bushfield: if you believe the polls right now that say the liberals might be bottoming out in the mid twenties to low thirties, there might just not be that many liberal votes to peel off.
[00:08:33] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. So, I mean like temperamentally cut more suited to go against the party, but we’ll see what
[00:08:41] Ian Bushfield: it definitely means is that first, now we’ll be pursuing the platform that she talked about. When we talked to her on the podcast, I think she’d only released one or two bits of her policy, her broader platform, which is still up on our website.
[00:08:54] I believe talks about. Like we said the four day work week more protections for workers, a green industrial strategy, environmental protections, working with first nations, climate change, very typical green stuff in that regard action on food security, inclusiveness, and a real focus on the overdose crisis.
[00:09:13] She talked about decriminalization. I’m assuming along the lines as dr. Bonnie Henry has laid out in the past and additions, well, mental health supports out there. So really trying to find those areas where perhaps the. NDP has been struggling to make gains. I won’t say that they’ve been making mistakes on those files, but those are difficult files and ones where I think there is weakness on the record.
[00:09:40] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. Those are definitely the files where I guess the inherent caution that comes from governing and it was maybe put them offside with their activist base in a lot of ways, which yeah, there’s mean some opportunity there.
[00:09:55] Ian Bushfield: It might also mean the NDP needs to bulk needs to build up their left flank, to protect from feeling having too many votes peeled off in that direction.
[00:10:06] Whereas if cam brewer had one, it might be a more, Oh, we’re just fighting to liberal parties. So we can just be the competent ones who are in government. So you don’t want to change governments in the middle of a pandemic kind of situation.
[00:10:22] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah, it is funny how the local situation here is mirroring kind of the federal alignment of parties, et cetera.
[00:10:30] Now, the BC NDP is where the federal liberals are being pulled out from the left with the green saying, Oh, you’re not going far enough on a bunch of stuff.
[00:10:39] Ian Bushfield: Well, we’ll have to see how first Snell manages to capture. The public attention and how she does, if we do end up in an election in the next few days, weeks, or at latest next year.
[00:10:56] Scott de Lange Boom: Oh, that sounds like a good spot to move on to our second segment. A $1.5 billion election platform. So today the BC government put out their stronger BC recovery plan, which. Isn’t so much a recovery plan as an election platform in the guise of our government policy. So reading through the document, it lays out a bunch of their actions to address the Toby situation.
[00:11:29] Both in the past and going forward. And the document itself spent at least as much time talking about how great a job they’ve done up to this point. All the things that they’ve, the policies they put in place using very much kind of the DP friendly frame and throughout the whole thing. The whole thing really reads more like an election platform than a typical government press announcement or report.
[00:11:59] Ian Bushfield: I think it is worth acknowledging that. This, this policy booklet, this announcement does flow directly from the spending approved by the whole legislature. Unanimously back in that special session in March, where they said here is the money we’re going to throw at the pandemic. And at the bottom of it was one and a half billion dollars to be allocated later for recovery and people went.
[00:12:26] What does that mean? And the NDP said, we’ll tell you later, and this is them telling us. So in that sense, it is just government spending that has been approved by the legislature and it’s funding that will roll out regardless of. Whether we go into an election as, as the premier described, it’s gone from the hands of the politicians to the bureaucrats to already start rolling out many of these policies.
[00:12:53] Scott de Lange Boom: On the other hand, that does make the NDPs push for an unnecessary election, even more crass and nakedly opportunistic. Because this was money that got set aside when all the parties pulled together, they didn’t, they weren’t playing politics back in March. And they all came together to actually address the crisis and get stuff done.
[00:13:19] And now the NDP is taking the Goodwill. That’s emerged out of that from the, and the pull and bump that’s come from that and are using that as it. What’s fairly, obviously going to be the jumping off point for an election that they didn’t have to call, but are trying to use the opportunity to their advantage.
[00:13:39] Ian Bushfield: It’s worth digging into. What’s actually new in this document, in this announcement, because I think that hints that either. There will be other stuff coming. If there is a platform coming forward, or at least they referenced budget 21, 2021 we’ll have additional measures because there’s, I think a lot actually missing from here in terms of direct help for individuals.
[00:14:06] So there’s four focus areas of stronger BC, better healthcare, getting people back to work, helping BC businesses, hiring, grow, and stronger communities. The health care stuff has largely been previously announced in the last couple of weeks, there was a big announcement about hiring 7,000 new healthcare workers and 600 contact tracers and this new hospital at home program as part of the way to help, to handle the second wave that we find ourselves in.
[00:14:33] Scott de Lange Boom: And that’s actually pretty common throughout. This is there’s a lot of stuff that isn’t so much new. It’s just being re-enact. To inflate
[00:14:41] Ian Bushfield: the number. Yeah. Similarly, I don’t think there was much in getting people back to work that I saw that was new. There was some additional money for existing priority priorities like childcare and clean BC, some short term work and training funds.
[00:14:56] Uh, the stronger community stuff at the end was also largely re announcements of the billion dollars of safe, restart money for transit, the funding for schools. It’s in the helping businesses hire and grow that. I think there were some new measures announced chief among them being this $300 million small and medium business recovery grant, which is a hiring subsidy to encourage businesses that had to either lay off people or haven’t been able to hire.
[00:15:26] Basically if you’re small, medium business, nonprofit charity has hired anyone in the last few months, the BC government wants to give you money. Or if you plan to hire someone by the end of the year, I believe you might be able to get this money as well. Which on top of the federal wage subsidy fee feels like a pretty good way to make sure we are getting people in jobs.
[00:15:48] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah, it’s go a fair ways. At least on the marginal jobs companies still aren’t going to make hire, so they don’t see a longterm potential for it, but it definitely helps on the margin by lowering the costs. Upfront and hiring is not cheap.
[00:16:06] Ian Bushfield: Yeah. Similar. Yeah. The government’s adding a 15% tax credit on new payroll.
[00:16:11] So again, really trying to spur that additional hiring and there’ll be a temporary PST rebate for certain machinery and equipment for those businesses that we’re considering delaying expansions, anyone who’ve lived through the HST fights will know this is the key thing that. Was like the best reason for adopting the HST is then businesses wouldn’t be paying sales tax on the stuff they need to do business.
[00:16:40] And it’s just the end consumer who would pay the sales tax.
[00:16:43] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah, well, it almost pushing for just to reintroduce the HST. You put 10, I’m guessing as high as they are in the polls. They’re not really going to want to open that can of worms,
[00:16:52] Ian Bushfield: rumors, and grumblings that Jason Kenney might do a PST in Alberta, but.
[00:16:58] Now maybe that’s an only Nixon can go to China type situation. The other new announcement in this was a hundred million dollars for the tourism industry and a tourism task force. I think the industry had wanted a significantly larger amount of money than that, but given how much longer Covitz going to be around, I don’t know.
[00:17:18] I don’t know what you can do for the tourism industry. Like we keep extending the border closure. So we won’t have American tourists. We don’t really want to encourage people from other provinces to be traveling here. And we still want to limit a certain amount of travel within the province
[00:17:35] Scott de Lange Boom: and fundamentally 5 million British Colombians.
[00:17:39] Just aren’t enough to keep the entire profits as tourism industry doing for any length of time. That’s even assuming everyone has the money to do a bunch of tourism stuff in the middle of a recession. So best case scenarios, if you’re really just trying to keep the industry on life support for a couple of years.
[00:18:01] Ian Bushfield: And it’s really tough, anyone I know who’s involved in tourism or entertainment has had a really tough go. Some people who are entertainers are starting to find work again and things are starting to warm up as some. Physically distanced shows are starting to come around and people are figuring out how to take their shows online, but it’s nowhere near the same as it was.
[00:18:25] So those are really tough industries. And I don’t, there’s not enough in here to support them, which is where I was hoping to see more on the, like, how are we supporting people who can’t go right back to the jobs they were in. And there’s a bit about retraining. Or training for new jobs, but not at the scale that it would take to shift entire industries.
[00:18:50] And that’s where I’m almost wondering if additional money will be coming either, maybe from the federal throne speech or from a platform to come.
[00:19:01] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah, they have $20 million for short term skills training for in demand jobs, which there has to be a lot of in demand jobs that are really working be 20 million.
[00:19:12] Isn’t a huge amount, same thing with the 10 million different, sorry, half million they have for health and human services, targeted training, just not a huge amount overall.
[00:19:26] Ian Bushfield: So like the health care stuff is a good. Chunk of this and that is important. And I get why that was. And they did say that was announced early just to reassure people that as cases were going up, there was an effort being made to make sure we could handle it with additional health care workers and a plan there.
[00:19:47] Like I said, the hiring subsidies seem like they’re targeted.
[00:19:52] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. That’s $300 million injection into the small business centers. Bad thing all would probably help, but that’s relative to the scale of the problem. Everything in here just isn’t all that big,
[00:20:06] Ian Bushfield: but I guess we have to wait till budget 2021, because one thing a minister James referenced was that this is between budget spending, right?
[00:20:16] This is extraordinary spending and isn’t the end of it. There will be more coming. And that budget will either be delivered under this current government or under a, either larger NDP caucus or maybe they’ll blow there. Maybe it’ll be a huge mistake and maybe it will be the Andrew Wilkinson budget or the Sanya personnel budget, or some other combination of them.
[00:20:41] But maybe let’s get into go for it.
[00:20:45] Scott de Lange Boom: I think it was, I want to say mistake because they’re right behind pulse, but definitely think riskier than the NDPs, assuming, because I have heard nobody that isn’t. Deeply enmeshed in NDP party politics. I don’t really like strong supporters, like active people who work for the party show any kind of interest in an election at all.
[00:21:09] And I crassly opportunistic. Everyone can see that there’s no real way around. That narrative and John, it’d be tough to tell people that you can’t do a whole bunch of things you want to do. We’re barely keeping the school situation going. We’re getting record levels of new COVID cases. But they’re the real important thing right now is we have an election to strengthen John Horgan’s position for
[00:21:42] the
[00:21:42] Ian Bushfield: net street.
[00:21:42] I think one of the things that must, I don’t disagree with any of that, but I think one of the things that must be going through the minds of the people closest to the premier and those making these decisions, or who are set to make these decisions is that. Those concerns will definitely be voiced and loud for a week or two.
[00:22:06] But the question is, will they persist through the entire election or will we all get over it in two or three weeks? And then start focusing on the actual debate of who’s gonna win and there’ll be some begrudging. I’m sure, but may I assume, I think the hope within the government must be that people will get over it.
[00:22:27] Just accept it’s happening. Vote in advance, vote by mail, do whatever they can to do it safely. And we’ll go that
[00:22:35] Scott de Lange Boom: way. On the other hand, on the other hand, though, It’s a case where, you know, up until now, they think NDP has done a pretty good job of not seeming particularly partisan or the grand chess masters who are just making moves for purely PR opportunities.
[00:22:57] That political reasons, even when they have genuinely done a good job of casting it in broader. Positive framing that British Colombians have responded between negatively to positively too. And doing something really bad, like this risks, upsetting that general feeling and resetting where British Columbians feel about ha.
[00:23:28] John Horgan and the NDP government.
[00:23:30] Ian Bushfield: So I guess the question ultimately becomes, is this a case of 1975, where Dave Barrett hauls a snap election, hoping to secure a second NDP majority. And it backfires as he’d pissed off enough union supporters that they didn’t turn out and. The social credit wins a narrow victory over them in the ultimate raw vote, but manages to knock the NDP out for several decades, or is this more like John crunchy and in 2000 who calls an election a year or two early?
[00:24:05] This was even before a fixed election dates. So there was an election in 1997 federally. And so he didn’t have to have one until 2002. But he called one in 2000 because the Canadian Alliance I think had just formed and he’s like in mock Stockwell day till the end of time and easily cruised through to another majority, or even we’ll mention it in quick takes the case of Blaine hangs, Blaine, Higgs, and the new Brunswick election, where they just managed to secure another majority.
[00:24:39] And it’s a bit too early to tell.
[00:24:41] Scott de Lange Boom: I used to really tell you, you never really know when you drop the rent for these I, another go to example would be the election that Theresa May called to try and shore up an existing majority government and only to get feeding back to minority and derail her whole approach yet
[00:25:04] Ian Bushfield: that one’s really notable because Jeremy Corbyn’s labor started.
[00:25:07] Very far back in the polls and surged in that campaign,
[00:25:13] Scott de Lange Boom: unlikeable fairly unpopular. You’re the opposite.
[00:25:16] Ian Bushfield: I was going to say he’s a different politician than Andrew Wilkinson, but actually when you put it that way, they might be ideologically very different, but
[00:25:26] Scott de Lange Boom: yeah, mentally, maybe not as much. Yeah. Any early election, his arrest and particularly one during periods of.
[00:25:37] National issue, societal stress, whether it’s Brexit or COVID-19, things can go off the rails pretty quick. So it’s a higher risk play then I think the. Movers and shakers in Victoria, think it is. And more to the point, like it’s putting aside all the political calculus aspect of it. It just may be not a good idea.
[00:26:02] In general, today we had a record new number of cases. A month from now the hundred and 60 a day we’re having right now, it could be well over a thousand exponential growth. Doesn’t really care about your partisan considerations and what were one or two super spreader events away from that. And it’s just the case where.
[00:26:26] With everything else going on, maybe pulling all the ministers away from their portfolios to mostly focus on campaigning. Just isn’t the wisest move purely from a governance point of view.
[00:26:42] Ian Bushfield: So the caretaker convention we’ll make sure. Things proceed forward in LA, just in largely the same way. But I think the opposition will actually get a little bit more or input just in case they win, then they need to be briefed on things.
[00:26:56] So I’m a little less worried about how government functions during, but I think one thing
[00:27:02] Scott de Lange Boom: it’s not so much the. Whether or not, you have a civil service students. It’s having leadership take their eye off the ball and the caretaker conventions fine. But there is no real substitute for having every smart person in Victoria focused on dealing with the current crisis, rather than trying to flip seats in.
[00:27:29] The suburbs
[00:27:30] Ian Bushfield: doctor after doctor Bonnie had, we’ll definitely still be focused on the pandemic. So that gives me at least some hope there. But one thing that is worth pointing out is the argument is that the NDP need a majority to get through what they want. But I have not seen that. Born out so far, unless they’re coming forward with a platform that is significantly more ambitious than what they’ve been acting on and may, but
[00:28:03] Scott de Lange Boom: even if they pull something more ambitious, that’s.
[00:28:06] You’re going to be the case where they’ll probably get a bunch of green support unless the, um, the ambitious thing is we’re drawn to have not just one major LNG project, but 20 later they’re going to get green votes for it. So why call it now? That really seems like a rationalization that the NDP pundits are telling themselves.
[00:28:27] Ian Bushfield: Let’s look a little bit at the substance of the smoke. Like how do we know that this isn’t just a bunch of smoke that’s needless and beyond what people have told me off the record, the fact is we’ve now had. I think two more ministers in the last two days announced they’re not seeking reelection. In addition to Shane Simpson, I believe it was last week.
[00:28:51] Doug Donaldson earlier, Scott Frazier earlier, Carol James, much more previously due to health concerns. But this week, Michelle Mongol and Judy Darcy said they are not seeking reelection. So that’s five cabinet ministers who aren’t in it. I don’t think there are any non cabinet members. Ministers of the NDP who aren’t running again.
[00:29:13] But in addition to that, the NDP is on full candidate nomination. I’ve been trying to track all of the who’s running where, and as far as I can tell, the NDP is the only party, really running race, nomination races. The liberals are starting to appoint some candidates, and I’ve not heard anything about the greens other than they are looking for good candidates.
[00:29:35] They have a similar, become a candidate for us page that the BC liberals have had for awhile. Some of the most prominent races that have heated up in the last week, Oak Bay Gordon head, which is Andrew Weaver’s, current writing, Marie Rankin, former federal and NDP, MP, and justice critic announced that he wants to run there.
[00:29:55] He’s going to be challenging Oak Bay, counselor, Michelle Kirby, for that. Nomination.
[00:30:00] Scott de Lange Boom: That was actually a bit of a surprise for me. I was under the impression that Marie arranging was done with
[00:30:06] Ian Bushfield: politics. Yeah. I don’t know what convinced him to seek the nomination. He has come up a couple times in BC politics being appointed to various task force commission type things from the government, but
[00:30:21] Scott de Lange Boom: yeah, and he was also appointed by the federal government to oversee a intelligence oversight.
[00:30:28] Structure. I’m not quite sure what institution he pointed to off the top of my head, but yeah, he had a bunch of roles there and yeah, my impression is he was, seemed to be well situated in kind of the politician world. So it’s interesting to see them come back. I honestly, yes, there was probably promises of a cabinet post made.
[00:30:53] Ian Bushfield: Up in sta kind today, Nathan Cullen announced he wants to seek the nomination there if he’s allowed to run because of it unclear if you would qualify under the party’s equity mandate, which says that if a current NDP, MLA steps down the new candidate nominee must be from an equity seeking group, either a woman or person of color, someone with a disability, I think LGBTQ plus also counts and an adult.
[00:31:22] One person, another person has already put their name forward. Anita McPhee. Who’s a local indigenous leader who’s quite accomplished. And so it’ll be interesting to see how that race shapes up, uh, the parties in a bit of a sticky situation there, because if they say no to Nathan Cullen per their policy, Popular charismatic well-liked guy and would do well as an MLA, but then if they say yes to them, it looks like they’re not following their policy and favoring their guy over indigenous, an indigenous woman who wants to seek the nomination.
[00:31:57] Scott de Lange Boom: Okay. Let’s go to the trade offs inherent in such a formalized system. All parties, try and get a. Diverse slate of candidates put together. But when you have such a rigid formal system like that, the issue is you can run into this very problem where. Yeah, you’re stuck in a ride in which you have a very solid candidate who would undoubtedly be not just a good MLA, but do well as a senior cabinet minister and one of the faces of the government, which would.
[00:32:38] Without a doubt, help the party in the long run. And I don’t know enough about, I need a McPhee to really say one way or the other, whether she would past that, but it definitely would be, it comes to problem where you want to be able to have that flexibility and maybe try and offset it in a different nomination rather than trying to.
[00:32:58] They have to stick to such a rigid.
[00:33:00] Ian Bushfield: Yeah. It’s a continuous source of contention within the party and within the punditry, I think arguably it has successfully increased the diversity of the NDPs caucus. Now, whether that would have happened without it, people can argue both ways, but the NDP does have a very.
[00:33:17] Diverse caucus. And that makes our legislature more diverse, which is, I think, an overall positive for our politics. The thing with Colin is he might’ve been able to just run in Skeena, which I believe he doesn’t live in. I think he actually does live in stuck-on, but if you ran in schema next door and challenged Ellis Ross for that seat, Then everyone could be happy.
[00:33:37] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. It might be a little more difficult pickup, but I also like the, the institution, since that have these very formalized systems are also probably the ones that need it, the least and the NDVV and what it
[00:33:51] Ian Bushfield: is.
[00:33:53] Scott de Lange Boom: I don’t know. I doubt that the membership and the people in charge of selecting candidates, wouldn’t already try very hard to get a diverse slate.
[00:34:02] Maybe not. It may be just another layer of complication or doesn’t have to be. And if any place needs, those sorts of explicit policies is probably not the ones that are so culturally, an ideologically focused already on
[00:34:18] Ian Bushfield: achievement. And eventually it will avoid itself, like at some point. They will have achieved diversity proportionate to the population.
[00:34:27] And there is the, uh, art
[00:34:30] Scott de Lange Boom: doesn’t actually
[00:34:32] Ian Bushfield: know
[00:34:32] Scott de Lange Boom: once they reached the, a representative cross section of the province.
[00:34:38] Ian Bushfield: Well, I’d have to go back and look at it to figure that out, but there is also the famous Ruth Bader Ginsburg approach, which is, uh, how many women on the Supreme court of the United States.
[00:34:49] Is enough. And she says nine because we’ve had centuries of nine men on the court. So let’s have some time with some, all women courts. And I don’t know if that argument will fly, but I like it. I find it amusing. But let’s get to the final race that I flagged and there’s lots more, or that are interesting and shaping up.
[00:35:07] But in Vancouver Hastings, Shane Simpson seat, uh, which is a pretty safe NDP seat or seeing a Nikki Sharma longtime Vancouver politician inactive with, I believe, vision Vancouver running against the parties. I believe she’s executive director, Raj Sahota or former Sahota has been very deeply involved for the party for quite a while, but both have fairly high profiles and it will be interesting to see who’s victorious out of that sort of,
[00:35:37] Scott de Lange Boom: yeah.
[00:35:37] That’s one of those seats that I guaranteed. A win, never gets the nomination is going to be an MLA. And I, we know it because it’s one that the two seats that held on during the blowout of 2001, the other be in my writing, I’m not necessarily happy about, I wish we’d gotten electoral reform. So my vote would actually matter.
[00:36:02] But. Yeah, there’s a very strong incentive to try and get a Vancouver Hastings or Vancouver, Mount pleasant nomination. If you are a new Democrat
[00:36:12] Ian Bushfield: electoral reform, something, we will probably only see in the greens platform unless the others talk about a citizen’s assembly. Cause I remember Wilkinson being sympathetic to that, at least during the debates.
[00:36:27] But after the results of that referendum, I don’t know if the NDP or liberals will want to touch electoral reform for quite a while. Sadly,
[00:36:36] Scott de Lange Boom: I don’t do the liberals. We’ll just, just, they came out against it so hard. And there’s the assumption among a lot of rank and file liberals that electoral reform would doom the party to perpetual minority status, even though they.
[00:36:52] Having a much better track record of winning the popular vote and overall, not just for realities, but outright majorities of the vote in the past. I don’t think it would be as bad as the liberal partisans think it would be, but they definitely have convinced themselves otherwise that they’re not going to touch it.
[00:37:13] Oh, I don’t know. Whenever the next time they. Come out on the losing side of first past the post. And, but we need
[00:37:20] Ian Bushfield: another 1996 election where the NDP wins the seats, but not the popular
[00:37:25] Scott de Lange Boom: vote. Yeah. We got another one of those that the liberals will take another look at it, but until that happens, they’re not going to
[00:37:33] Ian Bushfield: my other favorite headline from the week.
[00:37:35] Was that Andrew Weaver? I think it was earlier today, said that an election call wouldn’t violate the confidence and supply agreement. Just stick it in his caucus colleagues. Again, I don’t really get the point of his comments anymore.
[00:37:49] Scott de Lange Boom: I don’t think there’s an explicit statement that there wouldn’t be an election.
[00:37:55] So the
[00:37:56] Ian Bushfield: confidence in supply agreement actually starts off by saying the agreement between them as effective from 2017 for four years or until the next fixed election date. And there’s no. Oh, unless the government decides they want to call an election.
[00:38:12] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah, it’s definitely against the spirit of the confidence in supply agreement,
[00:38:16] Ian Bushfield: but that document was never legally binding anyway.
[00:38:19] So I guess here we
[00:38:21] Scott de Lange Boom: are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re right. It’s not legally binding, but it’s definitely against the spirit of it, but there’s no way to really hold them accountable to that. And there’s no port that would touch this at all. So, yeah, it’s, it is what it is. I don’t know why we’ve ever said that other than to get headlines through the part of
[00:38:47] Ian Bushfield: it.
[00:38:48] Nevertheless, unless something changes in the Premier’s mood in the next, I think it’s 48 hours. I think they’re having a core caucus leadership party meeting. Either today or tomorrow to really hash out whether we’re doing this. I think we’re going to see an election call by next week and Hey, maybe I’ll be wrong, but
[00:39:12] Scott de Lange Boom: I hope you are.
[00:39:13] I like talking about elections and thinking about politics, but honestly this really just. Feels like one more damn thing this year that I don’t want to have to deal with. And it just feels potentially exhausting. So I don’t know. I hope the NDP to under their senses and don’t proceed with an election and just decide to write it out the full.
[00:39:37] Full four years and just not subject BC to this, I’m guessing
[00:39:43] Ian Bushfield: at very least it would be a nice distraction from the U S election, which I do not want to pay attention to.
[00:39:49] Scott de Lange Boom: I am not sure about that at all. And that is because there’s nothing Canadian politicians, like more than trying to import U S political cleavages into Canada and to try and exploit them like.
[00:40:06] Guns and abortion, like nobody is seriously proposing, adopting us positions on either of those, but they get Dre dub every federal election beat because it’s good politics for the, mostly the liberals in that case. Sometimes the NDP too. I like trying to do a Canadian electron wellness, a U S one going on.
[00:40:29] You’re just going to blur the lines too much in a way that I don’t think is helpful. And. Honestly, I think Canadian politics and BC politics would just be a lot healthier if there was just a giant or firewall or whatever law supported that just stopped the news coming in for awhile. Completely impractical, no way that would be legally or just.
[00:40:50] Policy-wise a good idea, but it would certainly make Canadian politics healthier. I think
[00:40:55] Ian Bushfield: at very least I’m glad that the BC liberals haven’t fallen down the populous path that a lot of other center wing parties have. And so we at least have that going for now. Hopefully that stays. Cause I appreciate that.
[00:41:15] let’s jump into quick takes though, to close off today’s show turning over to federal politics. The election speculation, there seems to be a little less in the air. As Trudeau’s tone has shifted a bit more towards a consultation in the lead up to next week, throne, speech, and even Chuck meets saying, I believe was talking about how it’s the budget that actually.
[00:41:39] He is more interested in looking at then the throne speech. And so it sounds like this throne speech will ultimately go through pretty easily even Aaronow tool, I think was starting to put dampers on the, I don’t want to force an election if I don’t have to kind of situation.
[00:41:55] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. There’s almost certain to pass.
[00:41:58] Not only because the MTP is not in a great position to run a campaign. But also nobody else really wants to do one right now ever party that maybe the block has a reason not to. And you’re not going to get a situation where every conservative trunks out and votes for, but I could definitely see a situation where there’s enough absences on the conservative benches that it’s guaranteed to pass.
[00:42:23] Ian Bushfield: What that speech coming up on Wednesday. Is there anything you’ll be looking for? Trudeau’s. And the liberals have hinted at lots and lots of goodies coming, a transformation of society. It’s been a little light on specifics.
[00:42:37] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. So there’s a lot of talk about the big push for kind of a dream remaking of the economy, but that got walked back within the law.
[00:42:48] Ian Bushfield: That was incredible. So just for the context of that, I was liking the talk of. The move towards a greener economy, but then there was reports that some within the liberal caucus, I think didn’t want to be seen to take advantage of this crisis for that. And we had the episode with South Klein where it’s pretty clear, even if you don’t agree with his pro his prescription and his cure that we are in a climate crisis, that one is still ongoing and it would be nice to see someone take it seriously.
[00:43:21] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. I’ll even put aside the climate crisis, like interest rates are super low right now. We need a bunch of infrastructure investment anyway, in a lot of this stuff and hell just the air pollution alone. Like the particulate pollution, which is probably we’re spending. Tens of billions of dollars addressing just right away.
[00:43:46] So you might as well do something, fade that there has to be enough thinking about longterm infrastructure investments and the economic recovery. Anyway, you might as well do it. It’s as good a time as any. You’re going to be tough to borrow at this. Optimal interest rate environment again for a long time.
[00:44:08] So let me just go for it of better idea, I think, than trying to approach a universal, basic income in which people would go back and listen to our episode, Lindsay, Ted’s a couple months ago on that, but plan that is just a super complicated policy problem that is not well suited to figuring things out and.
[00:44:30] Unlike infrastructure, which if done right. Can pay for itself, it’s a lot harder to make the case for in, with a universal, basic income. And also you don’t want to just be ballroom to fund that because that’s not sustainable either. So given the two, I’d rather see the green investments
[00:44:52] Ian Bushfield: given like the wind down of Serb, I can see the value in.
[00:44:58] Maybe not a fully universal, but some kind of guaranteed income support. The government’s been the federal, government’s been talking about revamping EDI and they’ve been hinting at a little bit about what that will look like. And EIA is such a bad system that. I am hopeful that we’ll see something good in there.
[00:45:18] There’s been a lot of talk as well. And the liberals have talked a long time about support for child care and pharma care and these kinds of big or expanding our existing healthcare programs, which will ultimately just result be cutting checks to the provinces. But that’s what the federal government is really good at sometimes.
[00:45:37] And so those are a little bit easier to roll out and hopefully we can see those. Maybe he’ll come back with electoral reform. Maybe the whole temp changed his heart on that. I doubt it, but it would be nice
[00:45:50] Scott de Lange Boom: that zero chance that’s going to happen.
[00:45:53] Ian Bushfield: We’ll see which of those come true and which are just vaguely hinted at on Wednesday.
[00:45:59] And we’ll talk about that next week.
[00:46:01] Scott de Lange Boom: The flip side of a green infrastructure investments are pipelines and energy East is back in the news again, as Aaronow tool made a fairly definitive statement after talking with the premier that energy East is definitively off the table.
[00:46:23] Ian Bushfield: The pipeline that. No one was going to build that Quebec was going to fight like hell to stop and really seem dead.
[00:46:35] His,
[00:46:36] Scott de Lange Boom: the thing who’s worthy about this, or at least the interesting thing about it, isn’t that energy East is now less likely to get built because it wasn’t going to get built anyway, but how the conservatives are positioning themselves, Andrew. Sure. For whatever reason, raised energy East a few times during his time as leader, and it only hurt the party in Quebec.
[00:47:02] They’ve already pretty much won every vote they possibly can in Western tan or the Prairie provinces. They’re not going to run at the store anymore. And it doesn’t matter that they can afford to lose 10 points across the prairies and still sweep the region. But the conservatives really need to make gains for in Eastern Canada and taking energy East off the table is something that’ll.
[00:47:32] At least not hurt them there, maybe help them a bit. So it really says to me, is that old tools that learn the mistakes from his predecessor and isn’t going to repeat them. It isn’t as much shrewder about how he approaches a lot of these issues. And. As a result, I think has a much better shot at form in government than Andrew Scheer ever did.
[00:48:00] Yeah, it
[00:48:00] Ian Bushfield: seems like he was making a hard play for Quebec this week. He also talked about bill 21, the lysi take quote unquote secularism law Aaronow tool set in English, I guess that he didn’t like the law, but as a government, he would respect the provincial autonomy to pass such a thing. And I think he was even a little bit more supportive in the language and.
[00:48:20] When he talked about in French saying how much he values secularism and things like that. He also even supported a bill one Oh one expansion and that’s, Quebec’s very controversial French language law. That has been one of the few uses of the notwithstanding clause. As Quebec wants to preserve and protect the French language and keep English out of the province.
[00:48:44] Both controversial things outside of Quebec, but largely popular in Quebec, especially with I think voters who would be more open to go into the conservative. So
[00:48:54] Scott de Lange Boom: yeah, and this fundamentally doesn’t put them in much of a different position than the liberals in Quebec. So in that front line, I think it really just removed enough or potential weakness for them in Quebec, which is.
[00:49:11] Once again, probably good political strategy on O’Tooles
[00:49:14] Ian Bushfield: part. The only other thing I wanted to mention with regard to O’Toole and Quebec is that apparently the conservative caucus had a exposure to COVID. And so did the block caucus, including Eve Francois, blast shuts, wife. And so a lot of them are in isolation right now and working from home or wherever.
[00:49:36] I hope they all get better or. Don’t fully contract come down with symptoms, but shows you how the virus really is getting everywhere. And maybe the conservative call to reconvene parliament fully is not the wisest move.
[00:49:52] Scott de Lange Boom: I should just do it in the lawn in front of the parliament buildings, problem solving.
[00:49:57] Ian Bushfield: Be great in February, they can do it on Rito, canal and skate up and down.
[00:50:01] Scott de Lange Boom: Bundle up
[00:50:02] Ian Bushfield: moving a little bit further East.
[00:50:04] Scott de Lange Boom: Anything that should cut the speeches short.
[00:50:07] Ian Bushfield: Oh, moving a bit further East to new Brunswick. They had an election this week as. Premier Blaine, Higgs sought to turn they’re very unstable minority government hung a legislature into a majority government and his gambit paid off, which probably only helps fuel the ambition.
[00:50:29] And almost let’s say arrogance of the people behind the scenes in the BC NDP.
[00:50:38] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. I was really hoping that the incumbents in new Brunswick would lose entirely for that reason. So, yeah. John Horgan and the team in his office would get cold feet about the idea, but alas, that did not happen. They, the PC party in new Brunswick, fairly decisive when the leader of the opposition, Kevin fitters actually lost his seat.
[00:51:07] So yeah, overall a good night for the new Brunswick, they picked
[00:51:09] Ian Bushfield: up a few percentage in the. A popular vote. I think some of the polls on the night before elections were almost even that it could go either way, but the PCs got a five point lead 39 to 34 over the liberals, which translated into quite a swing and seat.
[00:51:26] So the PCs have 27 seats. Now the liberals 17, the greens held onto their three seats. And I think they picked up a few votes and the people’s Alliance, which is. Are very unique to new Brunswick. So I won’t even talk about it party. They lost a seat, but yeah, a new, uh, stable Blaine, Higgs progressive conservative government in new Brunswick, which I guess only encourages our own government to consider their potential fortunes.
[00:51:56] Scott de Lange Boom: If there’s something to wave them off, it’s not going to be new Brunswick.
