Liberals finding they are ‘vulnerable on both flanks’ in B.C.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has made four public appearances in B.C. in recent weeks.

It’s not hard to tell why. The federal Liberals face more of a three-way race in B.C. than in any other province, experts say, and polls suggest the party leader’s popularity had dropped in the West since calling the election.

The Liberals’ strategy in B.C. is “all about the Lower Mainland,” because the Conservatives will be expected to win rural parts of the province while the NDP does well on Vancouver Island, said Richard Johnston, professor emeritus in the University of British Columbia’s department of political science. That has included big pledges on housing and transit in Metro Vancouver in recent weeks, before and after the election was called.

More British Columbians reported their opinion of Trudeau had worsened over the past week, compared with Conservative leader Erin O’Toole or the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh, according to a poll last week by Leger. Singh appeared particularly popular in B.C., where polling showed him gaining popularity more quickly than anywhere else in the country.

“The peculiar B.C. thing, though, is the strength of the NDP,” Johnston said. The NDP’s relative strength in B.C. makes it harder for the Liberals to portray themselves as “the sole party of enlightenment” standing between progressive voters and a socially conservative government, he said, so “they’re vulnerable on both flanks here.”

The Liberals are still popular in B.C., and many ridings, especially in Metro Vancouver, are considered safe territory for them.

But while the Liberals’ strategy in much of the country will rely — as it often has in the past — on appealing to urban and suburban voters by portraying the Conservatives as “scary,” that approach will be more challenging in B.C., where the NDP is more of a viable alternative than elsewhere, said an Ottawa-based political theorist and author, David Moscrop.

Moscrop paraphrased Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, describing the Liberals’ situation in B.C.: “It’s cannon to the left of them, cannon to the right — in a way that isn’t exactly true elsewhere in the country.”

Singh is popular and gaining momentum, and “O’Toole is not nearly as scary as the Liberals were trying to make folks believe,” said Moscrop, a Washington Post columnist who previously lived and studied in Vancouver.

The Conservatives’ current leader is more of a centrist than his immediate predecessor, Moscrop said, which makes the party a more palatable option for B.C.’s suburban and urban voters, creating “real vulnerability” for the Liberals.

Environmental issues are often important to B.C. voters, and that could be a challenge for the Liberals, too, Moscrop said, describing their climate record in their six years in power as “not without distinction, but spotty.”

The Liberal climate plan received an endorsement last week from former B.C. Green leader Andrew Weaver, who called it “the only credible, science-aligned plan put forward by any party.” But voters in some B.C. ridings still feel “stung,” Moscrop said, by the federal government’s purchase of the Trans-Mountain pipeline which carries oil from Alberta to the B.C. coast.

“People in B.C. are primed to think about environmental issues right now,” Moscrop said, citing this year’s heat waves and associated deaths, logging protests at Fairy Creek, and a bad wildfire season.

“When you’re outside in August and it’s chilly because the sky’s on fire and the sun’s blocked out, you feel your environmental concerns in a way that someone else doesn’t, because you can see it, you can feel it in your eyes, you can smell it.”