The tide has turned on BC United. And there’s no pushing back.
When I was a kid, my grandfather would sometimes take us to Canada Games Pool in New Westminster for a Saturday night swim.
One of our favourite things was when the lifeguards would organize everyone in the shallow pool to start moving in the same direction. Around and around we all went, creating a current, which kept gathering momentum and building strength.
At a certain point, the current became overwhelming, and pushing against it futile. There was no point holding out. You just had to let go and be swept along.
The same phenomenon is happening in B.C. politics. A current of strong dissatisfaction with government is sweeping the BC Conservatives forward. BC United is trying desperately to plant its feet and find a way to buck the tide, but it’s not working, and it won’t work. Their time has passed.
They’re being swept away.
I have been supporting free enterprise since I first got involved in politics and later when I was elected to council in Langley Township. And, provincially, the free enterprise voice was the BC Liberal/BC United party. I’ve worked on campaigns, given money, offered strategy, sat on party committees, given supportive media interviews, attended countless conventions and councils and barbecues, been a riding president, even vetted candidates in this very election cycle.
But I’m also a student of B.C. political history. I know the voice for free enterprise resets every generation. So while there is a sense of sadness around the sudden implosion of BC United, I know we are witnessing this generation’s reset right now, moving toward the BC Conservatives.
That’s why I’m supporting John Rustad and the BC Conservatives, for the good of British Columbia.
My top issue is, and always has been, the economy – which in my mind is made up of factors like affordability, red tape, resource development, the size of government, taxation and consumer confidence. On this front, by every objective measure and metric, the BC NDP are an abysmal failure.
We simply can’t afford the NDP’s tax-borrow-and-overspend policies. We can’t keep overpaying for infrastructure, just so the NDP can fill the coffers of their favoured unions. We can’t strangle the jobs and opportunities offered by responsible resource development. Our per-person GDP is falling, our businesses can’t create jobs, our debt is exploding and affordability is worse than ever. The only thing growing under the NDP is the size of government – its growth is explosive, unsustainable, and not providing any tangible results in improvement to public services.
On other issues I care deeply about – public safety, health care, and mental health and addiction services – the NDP has only created chaos that we all feel in our daily lives.
B.C. is poorer, less safe and less healthy than it was eight years ago. I don’t have the luxury of being patient and hoping the NDP somehow turn their flawed ideology around – I have three kids entering professional careers in the next decade, and I want them to do it here in B.C., not Alberta or the USA.
It’s time for a new government.
For the good of B.C., our communities and our families, David Eby and the NDP must go. And the only hurdle preventing that from happening is vote-splitting.
In 2020, I watched Langley East – a solidly reliable BC Liberal seat over the past 30 years – fall to the NDP, thanks to vote-splitting.
The free enterprise vote splits of 1991 and 1996 gave us the dismal decade of NDP mismanagement, fudge-it budgets, fast ferries, draconian gag laws, and driving natural resource industries out of B.C.
I have many friends in BC United – though fewer today than at the beginning of the year given the rush to the exits BC United is experiencing. They are good people who want to see B.C. prosper. But it’s time to look in the mirror and consider the fact that their message just isn’t resonating.
When BCU-BC Conservative co-operation talks broke down at the beginning of summer, and BC United’s leadership rushed to the nearest microphone to smear the BC Conservatives, I cancelled my BCU donations in disgust. When their new Donald Trump-loving campaign manager shifted their strategy a few weeks ago to focus on smearing the BC Conservatives rather than holding the NDP to account for their terrible policies, I resigned my membership.
Right now, BC United is the only hurdle to changing government in this province. The taxpayers and voters of B.C. are trying to tell BCU that the BC Conservative message is resonating with them. It’s far past time for BC United to listen and not be the obstacle to the change we need in BC.
The tide has turned in B.C., and the voter current is pushing the BC Conservatives all the way to government.
Jordan Bateman is a long-time B.C. political commentator and BC United/Liberal volunteer.
