Where Are the Real Liberals in This Leadership Race?

I am a liberal, and have been active in the Liberal Party in B.C., both federally and provincially, since 1960 (except when I was a deputy minister) and have at one time or other done just about everything one can do as a political activist.

I have not been involved over the past few years because I thought the Christy Clark government had nothing of liberal values to offer. I voted NDP in 2017, but it appears most disillusioned liberals voted Green.

If the BC Liberal Party is going to rise again it will again have to appeal to liberals, not just to crypto-conservatives. And right now, most of the leadership candidates are just continuing on the ruinous path brokered by Clark.

The numbers that they will not face are these: 58-46-46-44-40. That’s the downward trend in the party’s percentage share of the popular vote as it moved ever further to the right since 2001. Do you notice that the 18-point loss about equals the Green vote?

The party needs people like me back. And I keep asking, “Why are there no liberals seeking the leadership of the BC Liberal Party?”

I see little of liberal thought or values among the candidates. Most are harping away on a balanced provincial budget, having the lowest taxes in Canada and other Harperite values.

It’s all Trumpian hypocrisy. The federal Conservatives, despite the same rhetoric, have had but two surplus budgets since 1912 — the one they inherited from Paul Martin in 2007-8 and a tiny surplus in 2014-15 that I believe was fudged.

The so called “balanced budgets” of the past few years in B.C. were a fraud, with the Finance Ministry looting BC Hydro and ICBC and leaving both in very serious financial condition. The only ones who care about balanced budgets are those seeking talking points or who do not, in fact, believe in government. You would be surprised how many ministers in the Clark government just did not believe in government.

Most of the candidates are promising “the lowest taxes in Canada.” They can have no credibility promising both more investment in public services and lower taxes. B.C.’s tax rates are inevitably going up, a fact that must be faced, because BC Hydro and ICBC cannot continue to be plundered and much delayed infrastructure investment must be made.

Over the past decade we have seen a government that was at war with the public school system, seriously harming the system and, most importantly, harming a generation of our children’s lives, driving those parents willing to make the sacrifice to put a growing number into private schools.

We have seen a government that has chiselled the health system on which we all depend (not all of us have kids in school), an area of growing concern to an aging society.

And a government that was prepared to give large cash grants to people buying $75,000 Teslas, but take away transit passes from the those with disabilities, had lost its way completely.

We have seen a government that has not only neglected basic transportation improvements, but actively sabotaged efforts to improve rapid transit in the Lower Mainland, making future action more expensive and delaying much needed capacity increases.

We have had a government that has done everything it could to avoid facing the challenge of a First Nations insurrection in B.C. By refusing to negotiate honestly they drove bands to try for relief in the courts and they were so successful that now many First Nations are no longer interested in negotiating. The greatest threat to the Interior economy is Indigenous activism which, I fear, could result in a huge racist backlash within the next decade if projects are blocked or slowed by opposition. Yet, unless I am missing something, none of the leadership candidates have said anything about addressing that issue.

It was huge social and economic damage, all in the name of the chimera of a balanced budget.

By the end the Clark government had become timid, lazy, unimaginative and out-of-touch. By 2017, people wanted facts to be faced. They recognized inaction and an unwillingness to face reality. But, I believe, the liberals in our society were mostly not prepared to trust their vote with the NDP, had lost faith in Clark’s government and went Green. The Liberal challenge of 2021 is win those Green voters. The NDP have the same objective.

Two of the BC Liberal leadership candidates are not associated with the past debacles: Dianne Watts, who is a Tory not even in disguise, and Michael Lee, who seems to realize there are a lot of unhappy party members looking for at least a glimmer of liberalism in a new leader and is trying to respond.

Having the same policies that led to defeat in the past being pursued into the future is not a winning strategy. And fighting the next election based on the expectation that this NDP government will be wild-eyed, careless and incompetent like their predecessors (which nobody under the age of 35 can remember) is the wrong place to start.

Based on what I hear from inside the public service, this is a cautious, conservative and somewhat naive cabinet. They at least seem to know what they do not know. They may well make mistakes, but they are not going to scare people. These are not the great experimentalists of 1972 or 1991. Likely their greatest failing will be that they do not know how to get things done. They have not a hope of meeting their affordable housing targets, for instance, and will dither a lot, if the past several months tell us anything. Premier John Horgan’s support for LNG development was not a surprise.

And the “lowest taxes” argument? I cannot recall a conversation in B.C. where ordinary people complained about the high taxes they were paying other than municipal taxes. Can you?

What people want to see is that their taxes are spent honestly and efficiently and wisely. I think that most people want to have the best education system, the best health-care system, the best transportation system and at least a decent social support system. They want to see the disastrous housing situation faced honestly and forcefully and imaginatively. And they are not going to resent modest tax increases.

But over the next decade it’s going to take a lot of vision to see where B.C. must go to prosper. In transportation — rapid transit, electric cars, driverless cars — there will be a huge challenge. Sorting out the tangled mess that is the housing issue (government built and subsidized rentals, and otherwise land use) will require great will and commitment and courageous courses of action. Unfortunately, the NDP will not be able to overcome its socialist biases in order to harness the private sector in seeking solutions. And coming to grips with First Nations’ aspirations will require courage, vision and will.

Will the BC Liberal Party elect a leader more comfortable with the past than the future, or choose a more inclusive path forward? It should have no choice but to think ahead.