NDP failures provide opening for BC Conservatives

Until the absentee ballots and recounts are over next week, we will not know the final seat countin the BC election. Currently both the NDP and the BC Conservatives have won 40 seats each. Eleven more seats could go either way. Of those, the NDP leads in six and the Conservatives in five. Forty-seven seats are required for a majority government. The Greens have won the other two. Former Liberal cabinet minister John Rustad has taken the convoy politics of the BC Conservatives from fringe party status to either opposition or government.

 

Last year, after being kicked out by the BC Liberals for being too much of a climate denier even for them, Rustad won the leadership of the moribund BC Conservatives. This is a party that won 2% of the vote in the last provincial election and last elected an MLA before 62 year-old Rustad turned thirteen. As we have written beforethis success has little to do with Rustad himself. The Conservatives are benefiting from the name recognition of the federal Conservatives and the support of far-right convoy organizers.

 

More importantly the NDP continues to give legitimacy to far-right policies. Rustad himself, in his speech on election night pointed out the NDP “flipped on decriminalization, they flipped on involuntary care, they flipped on a whole bunch of things.” That includes Premier Eby’s backdown on the carbon tax, and the removal of safe drug inhalation and injection kits from hospitals.

 

The NDP’s oozing to the right long predates Rustad arrival at the front of the convoy forces in BC. After the election in 2017 they immediately betrayed Indigenous people and environmentalists by approving the Site C hydroelectric dam. They moved on from that to reviving the empty dreams of fracked gas export terminals that the BC Liberals were unable to fulfill. The NDP did this by providing even greater subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuel expansion than the Liberals. They quickly dropped their opposition to the Trans-Mountain oil pipeline. They sent in the racist RCMP with attack dogs and machine guns to displace Wet’suwet’en land defenders in order to complete the fracked gas pipeline to supply the LNG terminals.

 

Their housing policy has relied on subsidies to renters and home buyers that will end up in the pockets of landlords and speculators. And as the death count from the poisoned drug supply mounts, the NDP has steadfastly refused to consider a safer supply.

 

By valuing profits over people, the NDP has done nothing to fix the housing crisis, the affordability crisis, the climate emergency or the opioid crisis. Naturally people are looking for solutions. The NDP allows things to get worse while promoting right-wing alternatives which gives legitimacy to the parties of the far-right like the BC Conservatives.

 

There was an alternative. During the last seven years of NDP government they could have implemented effective rent control that had brought rents down well below inflation. They could have spent billions on social housing. They could have acted on their 2017 campaign against “hallway healthcare” to provide more beds, nurses and shorter emergency wait times. They could have provided more treatment options and a safer drug supply and saved thousands of lives. Had they done almost any of that, the Conservatives would have had almost nothing to run on.

 

Compared to the 2020 election the NDP has lost at least 10 seats. Their share of the vote dropped from 47.7% to 44.6%. The number of votes they received increased by only 10,000 votes. As happens after nearly every election the strategists in the party, aided by dozens of mainstream commentators, will declare that the election shows the population has moved to the right and the NDP failed to move far enough to the right to keep their seats. This neglects the role of the NDP itself in moving people to the right and failing to provide solutions that challenge the profits of the 1%.

 

On election night Premier Eby referred to the results as a victory for progressive values. But later on he acknowledged that Rustad, “spoke to the frustrations of a lot of British Columbians, about the cost of daily life, crime and public safety.” This foreshadows the accommodations with Conservative policies that are to come.

 

In contrast, Rustad’s speech was a victory speech. He referred to having changed “the political landscape in British Columbia forever.” He declared, “We have not given up this fight yet, we are going to keep pushing hard”. If the NDP forms a minority government “we will look at every single opportunity to bring them down at the very first opportunity.”

 

The NDP’s timidity and the confidence of the right conceal the weakness of the Conservatives and the possibilities to move politics in BC to the left.

 

One possibility is within the legislature. The BC Greens have won two seats and in the case that neither the NDP or the Conservatives achieve a majority (and neither manages to lure an MLA or two to switch sides) the Greens can make any demands they like. In 2017 they accomplished nothing by supporting the NDP. If they are bold enough they should make their support of the NDP depend on fully meeting several of their campaign planks. Scaling down fossil fuel expansion, money for public housing, and an easily accessible safe supply, for example. In return they should give only temporary support so that they can extract more demands after the first ones are met. And if the NDP would rather see an election or the Conservatives take power, let them wear that.

 

Much more importantly are the opportunities outside the legislature. Mass movements could provide an opportunity to shake up both the NDP and the Conservatives. Any minority government relies on the support of every single one of its MLAs. The Conservatives are especially vulnerable. Nobody cared about the Conservatives when Rustad became leader. He is now surrounded with a lot of people who are much more ambitious than he is, better at back room politics and have much more backing from the 1%. The convoy types are going to be upset that he didn’t campaign on their politics of hate, and the former BC Liberals are embarrassed by those same politics. Both groups will be convinced that accommodating the other cost them a solid majority. Mix that up with the ambitions of several former cabinet ministers and you can see that Rustad’s days are numbered.

 

Big strikes, a bolder, broader Palestine solidarity movement, mass support for Indigenous land defenders, protests for safer supply, or public housing, or rent controls could all push back against whoever forms government and hasten the inevitable splits in the Conservatives.

 

Mainstream pundits will try to demoralize our movements by playing up the success of convoy politics in this election. And that success is real, and those dangers are real. But our movements can be stronger and win people to the radical solutions we need.