UNITY WILL BE MAJOR ISSUE FOR B.C. LIBERALS
Leadership candidates take turns pointing out how party lost election
For two hours Sunday, six candidates for the B.C. Liberal leadership went back and forth on why the party lost its majority in the spring and how it should proceed differently.
“We were preaching at people from 30,000 feet,” said former advanced education minister Andrew Wilkinson. “Telling them about credit ratings, telling them about our debt-to-GDP ratio, (while) the New Democrats were in their living rooms offering them a cheaper way of life.”
Wilkinson, a lawyer-doctor who represents a riding on the west side of Vancouver, has been known to do a bit of preaching from 30,000 feet himself. These days he’s working on being more grounded.
“People are living with two-income families from paycheque to paycheque,” he told several hundred party supporters who packed a hall in Surrey Sunday afternoon for the first of a series of debates. “We’ve got to understand that and provide a better solution right here in the Lower Mainland.”
Joining the confessional was former transportation minister Todd Stone, Wilkinson’s former cabinet colleague and now rival with three and a half months still to go before the Feb. 3 leadership vote.
“We didn’t speak the language that resonated with enough folks in the Lower Mainland and their issues of affordability and housing, child care and transportation,” the Kamloops MLA said.
Stone recounted how he’d been touting job creation during a campaign stop in Metro Vancouver until a worker told him that he and his friends already had jobs — they just couldn’t afford to live there.
The former transportation minister also admitted that too often in dealings with local government in Metro Vancouver, “we had our elbows up.” Having gone several rounds with the Metro mayors on tolls, bridge replacements and transit funding, he might have added “mea culpa.”
Then there was Dianne Watts, the former Surrey mayor and recently ex-federal Conservative MP.
“We didn’t lose that election because ministers didn’t know their files,” Watts said. “We lost because we took our base for granted and we stopped listening.”
The overflow crowd must have been gratifying to Watts, who did poorly at a Sept. 29 leadership forum with party functionaries and donors.
Still, I gather her resort to the first-person plural was grating to some Liberals. Watts only joined the party after the election in which the aforementioned “we” could have used her help.
Watts, Stone and Wilkinson all faulted the party for (as they characterized it) banking on a $2.7-billion budget surplus instead of funding promises that could have made the difference in key ridings.
Responding was Mike de Jong, the former finance minister and obvious target of the accusation.
“I have heard the criticism — that tightwad de Jong,” he acknowledged, before adding not often are finance ministers faulted for being “too careful with taxpayer dollars.”
Lest there be any doubt, he added if party members were “looking for someone to outspend the NDP, I am not your man.”
De Jong did not challenge the specific accusation that he left $2.7 billion on the table for the NDP to spend. The amount was not certified by the independent auditor general until after the election, by which time it had already been used, as the budget law requires, to reduce the accumulated operating debt of the province.
But de Jong would not gain much by quibbling. The budget he tabled in the legislature in February contained more than $2.3 billion in surplus funds, contingencies and forecast allowances. Some of that could have been used to fund election promises, as his colleagues rightly suggested.
Defending de Jong in a backhand sort of way was Sam Sullivan, one of three Vancouver MLAs in the leadership race. He praised de Jong for delivering five balanced budgets on the operating side, adding if “I become premier, I would make him my minister of finance.”
This got him a hug from de Jong, who was in good humour all day, having earlier picked up an endorsement from the first dropout in the race, former cabinet minister Mike Bernier. (A seventh candidate, Terrace business consultant Lucy Sager, skipped the debate, though says she is still in the race).
The 2017 campaign postmortem from rookie MLA Michael Lee came down to the Liberals presenting themselves as the party of jobs and economic growth while “the other parties were seen to care.”
But Lee also faulted B.C. Liberals for not circling around their leader Christy Clark in the face of intense personal attacks from the New Democrats.
“Our team didn’t come forward to defend her,” said Lee, whose advisers include Mark Marissen, Clark’s supportive ex-husband. As a result, Lee argued, “We have a tarnished brand.”
He also broke with his colleagues on a key issue, advising the crowd that he had resigned as the Opposition transportation critic so he could speak more freely on issues.
Lee then announced his opposition to Uber, arguing it was premature to allow the controversial ride-hailing company to set up business here.
This, one day before his colleagues in the legislature blasted the New Democrats for launching yet another review into the issue, thereby putting off approval of ridehailing services until the fall of 2018 at the earliest.
With all the recriminations among the Liberals, party unity will be a major challenge.
Several candidates did mention one early rallying point Sunday. But that is a topic for another day.
We didn’t speak the language that resonated with enough folks in the Lower Mainland and their issues.
TODD STONE, B.C. Liberal leadership hopeful