A PITCH TO YOUTH
Horgan reveals $45M initiative
Premier John Horgan tried to patch up his relations with younger British Columbians on Tuesday with the promise of a $45-million “future leaders” program and the appointment of a special adviser on youth.
The leaders program will fund skills training, internships and seasonal employment in the tech sector, forestry and environmental cleanup.
The premier's special adviser is Brittny Anderson, the new MLA for Nelson-Creston. At 33, she is the youngest of a half-dozen or so millennials in the NDP caucus.
“I'm very excited to have Brittny taking up this challenge and doing what she can to make sure we lift up young people right across B.C.,” said Horgan.
He also described her responsibilities as “ominous,” which is as close as he came to acknowledging the troubles he caused for himself in indiscriminately blaming younger British Columbians for spreading COVID-19.
“The cohort from 20 to 39 are putting the rest of us in a challenging situation,” Horgan declared in a March 29 news conference. “Do not blow this for the rest of us. Do not blow this for your parents and your neighbours and others who have been working really, really hard, making significant sacrifices so we can get good outcomes for everybody.”
The reaction was not long in coming from members of the target age group — including one recent NDP candidate — who felt unfairly singled out.
Adrian Raeside, political cartoonist for the Victoria Times Colonist, caricatured Horgan himself, in red suspenders and carpet slippers, sitting on the front porch of a shack that would not have been out of place in Deliverance (all it needed was a kid with a banjo) and addressing two well-turned out young people passing on the sidewalk.
Him: “Huh, you young 'uns are probably going to a super-spreading rave, or a beach party.”
Them: “Actually we're going to our jobs at the supermarket.”
Horgan tried a half-hearted clarification on his Twitter account: “I'm trying to catch the attention of the few who refuse to follow the public health restrictions. To the vast majority of young people doing everything they can, thank you.”
But a week later, he seemed more inclined to double down on his “don't-blow-it” comments.
“People are still talking about it,” he boasted to broadcaster Al Ferraby on CFAX radio in Victoria last week. “I've been in this business now what seems like forever and I will have a press conference and the words are lost or forgotten 20 minutes after they leave my lips. The fact that people are still talking about this I think is good news.”
Having put that somewhat desperate spin on the situation, Horgan took another stab at clarifying his intentions.
“I was trying to get people's attention,” he explained. “I wasn't criticizing young people for being young. I was criticizing people for not following pretty simple directions: Think about other people.
“I'm not apologetic about that at all,” Horgan continued, trying to make lemonade from the lemon of his earlier comments. “Young people are getting sick. We need to wake up to that fact and if my being harsh got people's attention, good, I'm happy about that.”
Not that he lacked sympathy for the younger folk. Once he'd been a young person himself.
“I waited on tables. I know it is tough to get by, pay your student loans and all of that,” said Horgan. “Do young people have a difficult slog? Sure, they do. But so did you when you were young, Al, and so did your parents. That is part of life.”
By this point, one had to wonder if Horgan was channelling Andrew Wilkinson, the time the former Liberal leader recalled his “wacky” days in student rental housing.
Still, the premier wasn't quite done. “If you see someone doing something stupid, call them out,” he told the radio audience.
Something stupid? Like, say, implicating an entire generation or two when you only meant to single out a handful of miscreants?
Notwithstanding the fumbled clarifications, there was no mistaking where Horgan ended up Tuesday: full of corrective sympathy for the age 20-39 cohort he'd insulted two weeks earlier.
“I know the challenges that young people have every single day in a normal year,” said the premier. “During a pandemic, it has been disproportionately on their shoulders.”
The future leadership program was doubtless in the works before this week. But the special adviser might have been pushed to the forefront to reinforce the impression that the premier was serious.
Not a complete backdown in any event. But a reminder of Horgan's propensity for talking himself into trouble and then taking his sweet time talking his way out.
Something stupid? Like, say, implicating an entire generation or two ...?
The Ministry of Finance has asked me to clarify that the financing for the InBC Investment Corporation, mentioned in my column on Monday's throne speech, will not be taken from the economic recovery funding voted by the legislature last year.
The $500-million investment fund was announced at the same September 2020 conference where Premier John Horgan took the wraps off the $1.5-billion recovery fund, just before he called the snap election.
He also cited the investment fund when asked “what British Columbians are getting for their $1.5 billion that was not already on the table before.”
But the Finance Ministry advises that the $500 million will be provided through “financing,” so is in addition to the $1.5 billion for the economic recovery fund.