By the day, the scent of a provincial election grows stronger.
Perhaps the most obvious indicator is the virtual blizzard of announcements Premier David Eby is making.
In just the past month, he found money for more than 500 homes and shelter spaces for Kamloops.
He also announced increased B.C. Benefit cheques coming to thousands; new classrooms for elementary students in Comox Valley; more transitional housing in Prince George; new transitional housing in Victoria; more classrooms for Abbotsford; more shelter spaces in Castlegar; more than 70 new affordable housing units in Tofino; a new centre for food, wine and tourism in Kelowna; additional funding for universities; a new community mental health and substance use service in Colwood; and more shelter spaces for seniors in Cranbrook.
And of course that’s on top of $110 cheques to every ICBC policy holder, province-wide.
Eby’s strategy is apparent: More of everything for everybody.
In one respect, he is using the same approach that former premier Glen Clark did in the run-up to the 1996 election.
Clark took over from outgoing premier Mike Harcourt with just three months to go before the vote. He then conducted a whirlwind campaign, with splashy announcements by the day, and squeezed out a narrow win.
Yet notably, Clark disagrees with some of Eby’s policies, in particular his neglect of the economy.
In a speech to the B.C. Business Council’s Summit last month, the former premier criticized the provincial government for making “literally dozens” of changes to the rules governing forestry and land use. The cumulative impact on industry, he noted, “has been devastating.”
As a result, “the B.C. forest industry is in crisis. Harvest levels are down to that which we saw in the 1960s.”
Clark’s solution? Stop racking up huge deficits and spend more time stimulating the economy by developing the province’s natural resources. Coming from an ex-NDP premier with a spending history of his own, that’s a remarkable turn-around.
Clark’s analysis was backed up by David Williams, vice-president of policy at the Business Council.
B.C. certainly has strengths to build on. A far higher percentage of our population has completed post-secondary education (61 per cent) than have Americans (50 per cent), or the average OECD resident (51 per cent).
Yet in 2022, B.C.’s GDP growth ranked close to the bottom among Canadian provinces and U.S. states. We’re tied with such historically backward American jurisdictions as South Carolina and Kentucky.
In one quarter, there has been growth. Public sector employment in B.C. expanded by around 25 per cent between 2019 and last year. In comparison, there has been virtually no change in corporate employment, and self-employment has actually fallen.
Over that period, for every new private sector job created in B.C., 5.5 public sector jobs sprang up.
Nor is the future promising. Over the past five years, nearly all of our GDP expansion came from such mega projects as the Site C dam and the Trans Mountain pipeline. When these are complete, our growth prospects diminish.
That was Clark’s point.
So will Eby’s spend and borrow strategy win him the election? We’ll know in four months.
Though the warning signs are there. In a recent Angus Reid poll, the premier’s popularity fell by five points to 43 per cent, his lowest rating in some time.
Perhaps Eby’s best hope is that the provincial Conservatives and B.C. United will split the right-of-centre vote, and he can ease through between them.
But even if he wins, future generations will pay for the mountains of debt he and his government are running up.
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