Pre-election hype a bit of a snow job
Enough already. It’s midMarch and we’re still talking about blizzards. Not snow. Politics. It’s unrelenting in the lead up to the May 9 election, good-news government announcements falling from the sky. Every day they come down, piling up kneedeep in the driveway and plugging the downspouts until the rhetoric overflows the gutters and floods the crawlspace.
For Victorians, this week’s big splash was about — take a deep breath — the formation of a working group to look at a business case for maybe doing something about launching commuter rail service between the West Shore and Vic West.
OK, as big splashes go, it was more mud puddle than Seaworld. Kind of like the Canucks holding a news conference on trade deadline day to announce they’re considering signing a stud defenceman next summer. Think of the Trump-style slogan: Let’s Create a Committee to Examine the Feasibility of Possibly Making America Great Again.
Still, it was deemed worthy of dragging four mayors and a bunch of suits to a news conference in Esquimalt, where one of the mayors, Barb Desjardins, just happens to be the riding’s B.C. Liberal candidate.
Also from the province Thursday, an announcement of an extra $500 million over four years for seniors care. We were also told about a two-year, $27-million project to widen and straighten a sphincter-tightening stretch of the Alberni-Tofino highway by Kennedy Lake.
Wednesday we heard how University of Victoria students have saved $51,000 through a program that puts textbooks online for free. Also that day: $91 million for more ambulances and paramedics.
Tuesday the government announced the advent of ride-hailing services (a Vancouver votegetter) plus new legislation to wipe out discriminatory old legislation. Monday it was some backslapping over the addition of five new physicians for the leafier bits of Vancouver Island.
Last week, Victorians were told the new Douglas Street bus lanes are going to tender, the capital region is getting a new police dispatch centre, they’re earthquake proofing Ruth King Elementary and renovations are complete at the old Super 8 motel, which is now ready to house homeless people. It was as though every ministry in the government had suddenly discovered the “send” button on the press release machine.
Now, a cynic might say that if this stuff was so important, they could have addressed it before the impending election lent a sense of urgency to the process.
On the other hand, a realist might say shut up and take the money (even though it’s our own money we’re taking). B.C. seniors’ groups, for example, were thrilled to see more funds for staff in care homes.
It’s just the way politics works. In the month before the 2015 federal election campaign (officially) began, John Duncan — the only Conservative MP from these parts who was running for office again — pinballed around Vancouver Island doling out at least $150 million worth of Ottawa’s cash.
That included everything from $11,000 for a monument in Sayward to $3 million for a Rugby Canada training facility in Langford, $18 million for CFB Esquimalt and $30 million for the Comox air force base. The $85-million McKenzie interchange wouldn’t be under construction right now were it not for $32.6 million committed by the Harper Conservatives 11 days before the federal election was called. (It didn’t help: the Conservatives went 0-for-7 on the Island.)
Governments don’t just rely on press releases to spread the good news. This is also the point in the cycle when they spend tax money telling us what a good job they’re doing spending our tax money. The province budgeted $8.5 million for advertising in the fiscal year ending March 31, but will actually fork out almost double that, $16 million — though it’s worth noting that about $1.9 million of that has gone to the information campaign meant to combat the opioid crisis. It’s also worth noting that the total is only half of the $31.7 million that went to government advertising in the year before the 2013 election.
That still leaves plenty to extol the virtues of the single-parent employment initiative, the $1,200 education grant, the housing action plan, Work B.C. programs, the balanced budget…
Even in a blizzard, the sun shines through.