EDITORIALS 2017 was a year of transition

As 2017 nears its end, the political scenery has changed in ways that leave most of us wondering: Are we moving forward? Donald Trump, the improbable winner of last year’s presidential race in the United States, has roiled that country’s politics to a degree never seen in the modern era. The United States today is anything but united.

With Trump’s popularity ratings stuck below 40 per cent, his party unable to fulfil most of its election promises and talk of impeachment in the air, the chances of a Republican shellacking at the midterm elections next November grow by the day.

Will 2017 have been the year that Trumpism died before it even began?

In Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May called a snap election to firm up, so she thought, her mandate to negotiate the country’s departure from the EU. But the election was a bust and May is left heading a fractious minority government. Will 2017 be remembered as the year Brexit died?

By far the most dramatic story at home was the election of an NDP government, ending 16 years of B.C. Liberal rule. Moreover, the new government was a minority administration, the first since 1952. Premier John Horgan took office with the support of three Green MLAs.

Here, too, 2017 was a year of transition. Horgan chose to push ahead with a series of controversial projects, including campaign-finance reform, an end to grizzly-bear hunting and, most explosive, construction of B.C. Hydro’s Site C dam on the Peace River.

How this latter decision plays out will only be known at the next election. But before that happens, voters will face a referendum in October on electoral reform that could reshape the face of B.C. politics for decades.

At the national level, both the NDP and Conservative parties elected new leaders — neither, it must be said, well recognized outside their own communities. Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s approval rating has slipped below 50 per cent, the new NDP leader, Ontario’s Jagmeet Singh, and Saskatchewan’s Andrew Scheer at the helm of the Conservatives will have their work cut out to replace him.

Singh’s election, however, represents a positive change, in keeping with our increasingly multicultural society.

In October, one of Hollywood’s top producers, Harvey Weinstein, was accused of sexually abusing numerous actresses he worked with.

A dam then burst, as scores of women, some in filmmaking, others in top-rated news shows, came forward to tell similar stories of employment-based harassment and worse. In Victoria, more women spoke out in the pages of the Times Colonist.

The #Me Too movement that grew out of these revelations has changed gender relations, perhaps forever, and certainly for the better.

This was also the year Greater Victoria’s sewage project finally cleared all of its political hurdles and approval to proceed was given. But how well the project works out remains to be seen.

Might this turn out to be a rerun of the Johnson Street Bridge fiasco, years late and far over budget? So far, we’ve had mostly talk. Can the management team put the past behind it and show us they’re up to the job? We will soon find out.

But overall, 2017 was a year so fraught with change, it’s hard to say whether we are better off as the year ends than we were when it began.

This, though, we do know. Canada’s 150th birthday found our country prosperous, cheerful and at peace. We take this opportunity of wishing all our readers a very happy and successful new year, and the health and wellbeing to enjoy it.