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Is this What Democracy Looks Like?

Making Sense of the BC Election

What should we make of the BC election results?

No matter where you fit on the political spectrum, it was certainly surprising that the BC government was re-elected with such a comfortable majority.

The Opposition couldn't have asked for a better opportunity to displace the Liberals. With unemployment rising dramatically, the economy in the tank, the government in deficit, Olympic cost overruns, the Port Mann bridge P3 bailout, and the loss of the Solicitor General mid-campaign, you'd have expected things to at least have been a lot closer than 49 seats for the Liberals and 36 for the NDP. But it wasn't to be. Why?

Probably one of the biggest factors in the Liberal win was the presence of the Green Party. As in the recent past, it played the role of spoiler, taking 8% of the popular vote, but not a single seat. The Liberals garnered 46% of the popular vote, while the NDP took just a little less at 42%. One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if the Greens had not been part of the picture, the result might well have been different. While there's probably some truth to the idea that the Greens do take some votes that would otherwise go to the Liberals, there's no doubt that the platforms of the Green Party and the NDP are a lot closer, so it's almost certain that the Greens tend to affect the NDP more negatively than the Liberals.

Another point that likely influenced the outcome of the election was the NDP's opposition to the carbon tax. Many pundits have pointed out that this bit into traditional NDP support from environmentalists. Probably at least some NDP supporters are now questioning the wisdom of opposing the carbon tax. The NDP had likely been hoping for more support from rural areas on account of their opposition to the carbon tax; after all, people in rural areas clearly have fewer options to reduce car trips and the use of fossil fuels than urbanites. Of course, the NDP's carbon tax stance didn't work out as planned, and the Liberals won a significant number of rural ridings throughout the province.

Many activists are deeply disappointed that so many of the Campbell government's policies--many of them undemocratic, harmful to the environment, or damaging to the public good--simply didn't play a major role in the campaign. The list of such policies is long: signing long term contracts with private power companies on hundreds of BC's rivers; bringing in Bill 30 to strip local governments of their ability to refuse such projects; ripping up public servants' contracts and instituting  numerous so-called 'public-private partnerships' in order to privatize construction projects or services that were formerly publicly managed and delivered; turning a blind eye to the growth of private hospitals and extra-billing; signing the Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA); and ramming through the Gateway Project highway and port expansion, which will disrupt and pollute the communities in its path and undermine our ability to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Some analysts have identified the NDP's failure to make the economy the issue in the campaign as the party's biggest blunder. With the province and the country suffering from the worst economic crisis in generations, it is very puzzling that the NDP didn't make a greater attempt to call the Liberals on their assertion that they were the steady hand on the tiller best equipped to steer the province through the economic crisis. There was already ample evidence to at least call into serious question the Liberal's economic management: a sharp increase in the province's unemployment rate, a shrinking GDP, and many projects with scandalous cost overruns. As some commentators have suggested, it should also have been possible to frame the ballot question as something along the lines of "If we couldn't trust the Liberals to run the economy in good times, why on earth should we trust them to do it in bad times?"

Many activists are probably scratching their heads and pondering why the NDP's campaign wasn't more focused or more able to utilize the economic crisis to point out the faults of the Liberal government. Shouldn't the current situation have been the perfect opportunity to show how the Liberal government's policies are merely part and parcel of a world-wide right wing agenda that has failed, and failed miserably? After all, isn't the Liberal government's devotion to privatization, deregulation, and cuts to public services the exact same ideology that has spread like a cancer over the globe and brought economies and societies to the brink everywhere?

The results of the BC election have once again shown us how seriously the deck is stacked against all who believe in a more progressive agenda. As some pundits have explained, most of the issues that activists have been trying for ages to inform the public about were largely ignored by the mainstream media during the election campaign. This is certainly true of the issues of independent power projects on BC rivers, TILMA, public-private partnerships, and the steady privatization of health care. One could reasonably ask, how can democracy work if the news media ignores the most important election issues, preferring to instead focus exclusively on the horse race?

Another disturbing issue that the election highlighted was the disengagement of voters from the whole process: only 52% of eligible voters bothered to cast a ballot. While the reasons for this are no doubt numerous, my feeling is that the main culprit is a growing pessimism that derives from the fact that recent governments have seemed to ignore the wishes of most citizens. In such an environment, people tend to lose faith in their own ability to change the situation. Unfortunately, such thinking naturally ensures that their fears become a reality. Disengaged and uniformed citizens are a blank cheque for government abuse.

For people who understand the essential role of government in promoting the public good, these are extremely troubling times. It's probably safe to assume that the BC government will now attempt to claim a mandate for policies that are even further right wing than anything they've attempted so far. There have been a number of allegations that the government has misrepresented the finances of the province, and that with the effects of the recession, the government is already deeply in debt. Don't be surprised if in the government's next budget they reveal a major deficit. In all likelihood, the government will then use that deficit to justify crippling cuts to public health care, education, and other public services.

Activists must be ready for this coming assault. We need to clarify our analysis of the situation and prepare our arguments, so that we can refute the government's claims that there is no alternative to their program. There is an alternative: a progressive government that puts aside the narrow interests of big business and foreign firms and asserts the broad, public interest. Clearly, what BC needs is policies that benefit ordinary British Columbians, and this has never been truer than now when we are facing the most serious economic downturn in decades. BC doesn't need more trade agreements that empower corporations at the expense of citizens; we don't need more regulatory cuts that threaten the environment and people's well-being; and we certainly don't need to trade quality public health care for privatized care that offers a false choice that only the rich can afford.

We need a government that transcends party politics and puts the interests of the environment and ordinary citizens first. Now more than ever, when we face a triple threat of economic, environmental, and social crises, can't we all agree on this common goal and work towards achieving it?