Canadian by-elections, 2015

[136or142]

Canada is clearly swing to the left. We have seen that federally and in the last series of provincial election in Alberta, Ontario etc... The rabidly right wing BC "Liberal" (aka Social Credit) Gov't is clearly on the way out.

Though even now, I'd deem the BC Libs (like the Bill Bennett Socreds) a bit more big-tenty than "rabidly right wing"--it'd take a different leader than Christy Clark to prove to me otherwise.

I agree. The B.C Liberals did a couple things with attempting to move people on welfare to work that wouldn't be described as right wing.

Beyond that, this government has been so consumed with LNG and with Christy Clark's public relations as governing, that I don't think it's possible to say this government has any ideology.

[136or142]

That soft BC NDP supporter is just concern trolling. The election campaign is years from now, it's too early to make any type of prediction, and that includes the predictions of Clark's "inevitable demise".

And I suppose that you are just another hardcore NDP supporter as well with that diatribe? From Ontario? Man, is this site totally infested with just NDPers? When only 12% of Canadians now support the fed NDP according to the latest Forum Research opinion poll? Reality check - Another 88% of Canadians support someone else!

PS. I know the author of the foregoing article - guy's name is Paul Hillsdon and he's a BCer - unlike most others posting here! And he wrote in the centre-left Vancouver Observer to boot.

PPS. BC election is just 17 months away!

Your idiotic view that everybody who disagrees with you is 'a hardcore NDP supporter' with a diatribe (nobody is posting diatribes except you) is getting very tiresome.

I'd ask you to go away, as it's becoming apparently you are a troll as much as anything else, but I want to collect my $1,000 first.

[136or142]

"In any event, anyone who has any political instinct here in BC can quite obviously discern that the BC NDP has major problems - unseen since after the 2001 debacle - leadership, financial, media exposure, internal schisms, resource development schisms, etc., etc."

This is certainly true up to this point, especially in regards to their fundraising (though a good deal of that is likely because the NDP was focusing on fundraising for the Federal election.)

There is already a sign this could be changing though:

From facebook (I've obviously left out who posted this:

"November 12 at 8:12pm ·
John Horgan, BC NDP leader, speaking at the Vancouver Fairmont Hotel to a largely business crowd. 400+ Great vibes!"

Media exposure is always a problem for any opposition leader, and in these days of social media it can be argued that getting into the newspapers or television is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

That said, the NDP convention and Horgan's speech at it received generally rousing reviews in a number of media outlets, especially The Tyee (http://www.thetyee.ca/News/2015/11/09/BC-NDP-Tubas/) but also the Globe and Mail.  The only outlet offside was the Vancouver Sun editorial page which seems to be doubling down in illogical defences of right wing governments.

In the case of the Federal election, the Sun opined something like "British Columbians appreciated that the Harper government truly made the west feel it was 'in.'  I guess to the Vancouver Sun British Columbians showed this by cutting the share of the Conservative vote in the 2015 election by fully 1/3 (from 45% to 30%)  and by cutting their share of the seats by up to almost 2/3 (redistributed riding results gave them 28 of the 42 seats in 2011 and they were reduced to ten seats in this election.)  The rest of that ridiculous editorial then essentially argued that the new Liberal government should be more concerned with the needs of Alberta's oil industry and its workers than with the concerns of British Columbia environmentalists.   I know that some of the workers in the Alberta oil patch live in British Columbia, but I don't doubt there are a great number more environmentalists in British Columbia than there are oil workers.  I also realize that British Columbia has a relatively small oil industry situated in the Peace River area, but the editorial concentrated on the need to build pipelines which I don't believe is a major concern for the British Columbia oil sector (though I could be wrong on that.)

the Sun editorial on the recent NDP convention said that the NDP would likely have a hard time winning the next election due to their narrow defeats in the 2005, 2009 and 2013 election which is valid enough, but they then added that this was also supported by that opinion poll from the spring of 2015, as if that poll has any relevancy to today.

2.As long-time (couple of decades) Global BC News political reporter Keith Baldrey recently stated: "The BC Liberals are a lot closer to the centre of the political spectrum than the BC NDP".

I personally like Keith Baldrey though I'm aware that a lot of people deride him for mainly being an outlet and a defender of establishment conventional wisdom.  That said, there is no question that he generally leans to the right and, as you've given no evidence from Baldrey to back up this statement, it's entirely possible that what he really meant is that the B.C Liberals are closer to his views than the NDP is.

Anyway, everybody will make that decision for themselves come election time, so why should anyone care what Baldrey's opinion is on this?


3."PS. I forgot to mention the BC Green Party and Andrew Weaver. Now changes the BC poli dynamic moving forward as well and further complicates matters for the BC NDP with the Green's own "wedge issues". No doubt about that."

As Bill Tieleman wrote recently, this federal election was the 3rd (or 2nd) straight election in which the Green Party share of the vote declined nationally.  Of course, some of that was due to 'strategic voting' but their share of the vote has fallen by nearly half federally since, I think, 2006.

The provincial Green Party has also seen it's share of the vote decline since the 2001 election, although provincially they seem to have stabilized at around 8% of the vote.  Of course, given the antipathy many British Columbians feel towards Christy Clark and her government, it's also possible the provincial Green Party will be a victim to strategic voting in 2017.


The Green Party has increased its share of the vote federally in B.C in the mainly urban parts of Vancouver Island, but they collapsed in Vancouver Center without Adrian Carr as their candidate in this election, and they've fallen to little more than fringe party status in nearly all of the rest of British Columbia, including in the West Kootenay area where they used to have a lot of popular support during the 1990s and the early 2000s especially in Nelson and a couple other of the towns there.


I realize that the Green Party has an elected MLA now, but I think the vast majority of people pay no attention to the legislature (with the exception that many of these same people also complain when MLAs don't attend the legislature), and, other than giving Andrew Weaver a platform to get in the media slightly more often, I don't know that it's doing the Green Party all that much good.

Of course, having an MLA also means that the Green Party is now on record with votes of what its member supports and opposes which can be a double edged sword.

[136or142]

1.Everybody had Victoria pegged for the Greens. What happened? The NDP and Mulcair kept stating throughout his BC tours in the BC media that "Only the NDP can defeat the Cons"... insinuating that the Liberals were D-E-A-D (and Greens risky choice). Feel sorry for the poor saps that bought into that false meme.

So, you acknowledge that 'strategic voting' hurt the Green Party in the federal election.  I suspect that right now there is every chance you'll be acknowledging it after the next provincial election as well.

[136or142]

OTOH to everyone else: just a warning.  When you overplay the "BC Liberals = Nouveau Socred" argument, you just play into lotuslander's hands.  "It's more complicated"--and you don't even have to be a native BCer to recognize the fact. 

It has been more complicated than 'Nouveau Socred' the B.C Liberals are obviously much more of an urban based party than Social Credit was, especially obviously the Social Credit government of WAC Bennett from 1952-1972.

That said, the B.C Liberals are a continuation of the 'anti NDP coalition' that started with 'The Coalition' and then continued with Social Credit.  Even the B.C Liberals say that.

So, if people use "Social Credit" as a shorthand for 'anti NDP coalition' I don't have a problem with that.

[136or142]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the BC Liberals more socially progressive, but more fiscally right wing than the SoCreds? i.e., a "true liberal" party?

It depends during the time period.  From 2005-2009 Gordon Campbell governed as a liberal Liberal, no doubt partly because he had the money to do so.

Bill Bennett's restraint program during his final term (1983-1986) and most of Bill VanderZalm's term (1986-1991)  were more fiscally conservative than anything the Liberals have done except for maybe the Liberals from 2001-2005.

On social issues.  The Liberals are much more to the left.  This gets back to what I said about the Liberal coalition being much more urban and suburban than the heavily rurally based Social Credit.

[136or142]

On social issues.  The Liberals are much more to the left.  This gets back to what I said about the Liberal coalition being much more urban and suburban than the heavily rurally based Social Credit.

It's really difficult to make a meaningful statement about relative social policy over this time-scale, since everything and everyone had more socially conservative views than today. Vander Zalm was certainly a religious conservative, but social policy was never a priority during either Bennett Era.  This gets back to the broader British Columbia trend of politics being almost entirely about the getting and dolling out of money above all things. It has always been this way, and it always will be. 

I think Adam T is overstating the rural-urban cleavage.  While the WAC Bennett era party certainly had something of a more country flair, often depicted by the cartoonist Len Norris as uptight old fashioned preachers, Social Credit was really a party of small businessmen- of car dealers and hardware store owners - the petty bourgeoisie as the Marxists might call them, for whom the fundamental concern was that the government produce an environment conducive to business.  The geographic divides reflected much more about how people saw their place in this economy than it did urban-rural cultural attitudes.  Particularly after the consolidations of 1972,

While I haven't run the numbers, there were a number of urban seats which Social Credit rather consistently held, such as Vancouver South, Vancouver - Little Mountain,  Vancouver - Point Grey (post 1972, Liberal prior) Victoria, Vancouver Centre, and Vancouver Burrard usually returned Social Credit members prior to 1972 as well.  Vancouver during the Social Credit Era was mostly governed by their municipal allies the NPA, including rather avowedly pro-SoCred figures like Tom Campbell.  Studies prior to the 1980's Malapportionment cases indicated that the rural bias of seat distributions actually generally benefited the NDP

1.I said most of the seats Social Credit held were in rural areas, not that all of them were. 

2.One of the most controversial things the NDP government from 1972-175 did was to eliminate 'the strap' in school.  Hardly an economic issue.

3.Bill VanderZalm's comment that people on welfare need to 'pick up a shovel' was hardly an economic issue (he was the Minister in charge at the time.)

4.I forget the years, but until the NDP ended it in 1991, hospital boards were elected and the only issue people voted on was whether abortion would be allowed in the hospital or not.

5.The protests against the 'restraint legislation' Bill Bennett brought in after getting reelected in 1983 was less to do with economics (as Social Credit had got reelected over it) but had more to do with anti union components and, even more so, with components that would have eliminated the Human Rights tribunal and other human rights related legislation.  You can say the anti union legislation is economics related, but the human rights stuff isn't all that much so.

I'd have to look up what other social legislation Social Credit brought in (they brought in legislation between 1969-1972) that allowed high school students smoking in school that was controversial at the time (The NDP government repealed it.), but would be seen as common sense now, but I think you are understating the amount of social conservative legislation they brought in, just as you are overstating the amount of Social Credit MLAs who were 'car dealers or hardware store owners.'

There were obviously socially conservative members of Social Credit like the woman MLA who proposed replacing the word 'sex' with 'BOLT' (biology of Living Today) but she got laughed at by everybody in the legislature for that.

[136or142]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

For supposedly making a major correction, we didn't disagree all that much.  I said the 1983 election was about the 'restraint' program and that Social Credit won on that, and you concurred.  I said Social Credit brought in additional restraint after the election and you just backed that up.

You are correct that I did not comment on the extent of the cuts made to social services post election and that that brought out a good deal of the protests, my bad.

However, it is also true that Social Credit passed a number of anti union bills that had little to do with 'restraint' which you did not mention.
"Inspired by conservative economist Milton Friedman, his government passed a series of laws, known as the "Restraint" program, which slashed social services and gutted labour laws in response to economic woes in 1983, provoking a general strike which further crippled the economy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bennett

That is what got private sector organized labor to protest the restraint legislation, not the cuts to social services.

This was one of the schisms that Jack Munro had to deal with.  While the public sector unions wanted the cuts to social services and the public sector layoffs addressed, the private sector unions were mostly only concerned with the anti union legislation.

Finally, while some social activists, like the left leaning churches, got involved in the protest due to the cuts to social services, others got involved because of other things the Restraint Legislation brought in that had nothing to do with 'restraint' like eliminating the Human Rights Commission and the rent review office.  

It should also be noted that while you pointed out that Social Credit was extremely popular after the Restraint Program was introduced and after the protests, that with the continuing of the recession and the aftermath of the cuts and other changes brought in by the 'Restraint Program' that Bill Bennett retired in 1986 around 10-20% behind the NDP in the polls knowing that it was unlikely he could be reelected.  He just stuck around long enough to see most of Expo '86 through, just as Gordon Campbell waited until after the 2010 Olympics to resign.

One of the main reasons the NDP lost the subsequent 1986 election was because leader Bob Skelly and his team prepared their entire campaign to run against Bill Bennett and were caught completely flat footed when he resigned.   The initial popularity of Bill VanderZalm also was something they had difficulty adjusting  to.

I should know these things about the Restraint Program because I was living in B.C at the time.  100 level university courses frequently gloss over things that get picked up on in greater detail in higher level courses.  I can't explain why you didn't find out about these things in your research.

If I recall correctly, part of the negotiations between Bennett and Jack Munro brought back the Human Rights Commission and the Rent Review Office and it was speculated at the time that Social Credit just cut these things so that they could bring them back in case of a backlash to mollify the 'centrist' voters while allowing them to leave in place the anti union legislation and cuts to social services.