Expect the gloves to come off as B.C. election approaches
Clark, Horgan and Weaver set to clash over housing costs, pipelines and taxes
As a new year dawns and the clock starts ticking toward the May election, British Columbia’s three main political leaders will battle for your attention and your votes with three different visions for the province.
Premier Christy Clark is seeking her second mandate — the fifth in a row for the governing Liberal Party — while NDP leader John Horgan tries to finally break what he calls “the divine right of Liberals” to rule the province.
Green Party leader Andrew Weaver seems poised for a breakthrough, especially if he upstages the other two in a televised leaders’ debate.
In many ways, it could all come down to money: who has the most cash to spend on a campaign, and who can convince voters they’re the best choice to manage and spend your tax dollars in government.
For Clark, the biggest issue of the election could be the housing affordability crisis in Metro Vancouver.
“I remember when I was finally able to afford my own first home — a 1,500-sq. ft. house in Port Moody,” Clark recalled. “It was crumbling and it was leaky, but it was mine and I loved it. We have to keep that dream alive for people.”
She said that’s why the government will start accepting applications next week for zero-interest loans from first-time homebuyers.
The government is heavily promoting its “home-equity partnership” program with a blitz of taxpayer-financed TV commercials. (The government just doubled its advertising budget to make sure the commercials receive heavy rotation.) The ads drive Horgan nuts. “I can’t watch a hockey game these days without seeing commercials telling me all the great things the government is doing,” Horgan griped, adding the NDP would ban “partisan” advertising by the government.
Horgan slammed the loan program as a desperate attempt by Clark to make voters forget more than a year of Liberal inaction on the housing affordability file.
“We repeatedly raised the issue and they just denied there was a problem.
It wasn’t until the Liberals realized they could lose the election, Horgan said, that they responded with a foreign-buyers’ tax, a $500-million plan to build 2,900 affordable homes and now the interest-free loans.
“They denied there was a problem until they couldn’t deny it any longer and then they came up with their shock-and-awe approach,” Horgan said. “But prices are still extremely high and there are 15,000 people on the waiting list at B.C. Housing.”
Weaver piled on with his own attack on Clark’s home-loan program.
“It’s a Band-Aid solution that will build an even bigger crisis down the road,” Weaver said, arguing the interest-free loans could actually inflate home prices even more and entice buyers to take on more debt than they can afford.
But Clark seem to love that her opponents are against the loan plan, saying the government is simply taking taxpayers money and giving it back to taxpayers.
Clark seems to be hinting the Liberals could cut taxes in the looming spring budget. But Horgan fires back that the government has been picking the pockets of British Columbians for years.
“B.C. Hydro, ICBC and MSP premiums are all going up, ” Horgan said. “These are all government-imposed costs. People are not getting ahead. They’re falling behind.”
But Clark said the best way to keep money in people’s pockets is to grow the economy. She lashes out at Horgan for opposing big resource projects like the Site C dam, the Pacific North-West LNG project and the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
“All they want to do is just say ‘No’ to everything, even good ideas,” Clark said, who hinted a benefit-sharing deal with the pipeline company is on the way.
“We want to make sure British Columbians are getting the bulk of the work out of it when it happens,” Clark said about the controversial Alberta-to-Burnaby pipeline.
A deal could create political problems for Horgan, who also feels pressure on the project from Weaver.
The Green leader is firmly against the pipeline. He reminds anti-pipeline voters that Horgan has wavered in his opposition to the project and warns that Alberta’s NDP government is in favour of it.
“The NDP can’t be trusted on this,” Weaver. “Only the Green Party has been consistently opposed to the pipeline.”
But Horgan fires back: “If you want to stop this pipeline, the only way to do that is to change the government. Andrew Weaver is not going to change the government. The NDP will change the government.”
But can the NDP win an election in which the Liberals hold a huge money advantage? The Liberals raised nearly $10 million in one year — more than triple what the NDP raised.
The Liberals got the large majority of their loot from big corporations and Horgan says the NDP would ban union and corporate donations if they win the election.
The Liberals are sitting on a $2-billion surplus. Clark is set to deliver another balanced budget that will contain lots of goodies.
“It comes down to who can spend your money better,” she said. “The NDP thinks government can spend it better. We think citizens can spend it better.”
That will be one of the key themes in a looming election campaign that promises to be aggressive, rough and potentially very nasty.