Horgan pleased with his performance

Afunny thing happens when Premier John Horgan goes out in public. He doesn’t get yelled at. At least, not as much as he used to. Horgan told a roomful of adoring NDP members on Sunday in Westbank that he now encounters confrontational people “far less” than when he was leader of the Opposition.

Horgan suggested that might be because people recognize he is “overwhelmingly optimistic,” and because they’re generally satisfied with the way the NDP is governing the province since taking power five months ago.

The NDP’s accomplishments so far, he said, including eliminating a $50-million tax break for banks, closing a loophole that was often used by “unscrupulous” landlords to jack up rents, providing housing for the homeless, returning a bus pass for people with disabilities, reconstituting a human rights commission, developing a poverty reduction plan, and hiring more than 2,000 additional teachers.

“These things are not rocket science,” Horgan said. “The notion that only Liberals can govern B.C. has been fairly thoroughly debunked in just 137 days.”

The NDP government has been able to implement big parts of its election platform and the “bond raters will still give you a thumbs up,” he said, referring to the province’s retention last month of its AAA credit rating by Standard and Poors.

Of course, BC Liberals will say that continued good rating has everything to do with the rosy financial situation they left for the NDP. Just wait six months or so, they’d say, when the true cost of the NDP’s mini-spending spree comes due.

To the extent they noticed Horgan’s appearance in West Kelowna, however, Liberals might have some reason to be a teeny bit anxious heading into the February by-election to replace Christy Clark, who abruptly quit politics rather than suffer the indignity of leading the Opposition.

It was a standing room only crowd to greet Horgan, with everyone seeming eager to volunteer and donate and generally wage war in the upcoming bye-election. One wag, Bruce Marriott, called it “the bye-bye bye-election, as in bye-bye Christy, and hello NDP.” True, it was a smallish room with space for only 70 or so folks. But measure that against the shockingly low number of Liberals — around 200 or so — who turned out to watch the party’s leadership debate in Kelowna, the heart of the party (if it has one).

Those numbers alone clearly suggest which party has the wind in its sails right now, and it ain’t the Liberals. Call them “cockeyed optimists,” a tag which they’d probably embrace, but the NDP clearly believes it has a shot at winning the Kelowna West by-election.

Richard Cannings, the NDP MP for South Okanagan-West Kootenay was in the room to show, as Horgan quipped, that there is "tangible proof" the party can thrive in the Valley.

Horgan also mentioned the party’s breakthrough, in a 2016 by-election, in the riding of Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, as evidence the NDP can make deep inroads in previously hostile terrain. (The Liberals regained that seat, but only just, by less than a percentage point in last May’s general election)

Still, Kelowna West is not Coquitlam, a riding like others in the Lower Mainland where the popularity of the NDP’s promise of eliminating bridge tolls was badly underestimated by the Liberals. Nor is it the South Okanagan-West Kootenay, an area which has always had a good chunk of left-leaning voters and not for nothing has a big hill called “Anarchist Mountain.”

Kelowna West was won by Clark by 35 points in May. That’s not a landslide, that’s continental drift.

Much is made by the NDP of the credibility, familiarity, and experience of NDP by-election candidate Shelley Cook, but the fact is she did only marginally better for the party than did the two no-hopers that represented the NDP in the two Kelowna ridings.

The local NDP will hit the Kelowna West by-election hard, hoping to energize their base and convince more than a few others that it’s better for the area to be represented in government than outside it. They might have had a shot if the margin of defeat in May had been a single digit.

But there’s more than enough Liberals in the riding who’ll be motivated to resist the typical apathy a by-election arouses and get out and vote. They’ll be motivated by party loyalty, bitterness over the May result, and their fondness for Liberal contender Ben Stewart.

I thought Horgan took an odd approach at the Westbank meeting when he suggested the Liberals had long taken the Okanagan for granted. That’s close to saying people here are so stupid they always vote Liberal.

When she arrived in 2013, Christy Clark said she wanted to represent the Okanagan because it was the “cradle of free enterprise.” The NDP are many things, but they aren’t cradle robbers.

Ron Seymour is a Daily Courier reporter. To contact the writer: 250-470-0750 or email: ron.seymour@ok.bc.ca