1 week Ago By Massey Padgham
Article content VICTORIA — B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad has vowed to force an early election if his party finds itself in a position to do so in the next sitting of the legislature.
“If we’re in that situation of the NDP forming a minority government, we will look at every single opportunity from day one to bring them down at the very first opportunity and get back to the polls,” he declared on election night. Later, Rustad set down the conditions that could lead the Conservatives to take early action against an NDP minority government. “If they’re carrying forward with the policies that they are promising to do, which have brought so much destruction and pain in this province, especially to our resource sector in B.
C., then no, I cannot support that, and I will try to bring the government down at the earliest possible opportunity,” he told the CBC’s Stephen Quinn on Monday. An NDP minority government is the most likely outcome of the final round of counting in Election 2024.
The New Democrats hope to rely on the support of the Greens. But they will probably have to do without the kind of power-sharing agreement that provided a measure of stability until the New Democrats repudiated the deal in 2020. Nor can the Eby-led NDP government count on attracting a defector from the Opposition side to serve as Speaker, the way the New Democrats did in 2017.
Not every vote in the house provides an opportunity to “bring down the government.” The main opportunities are “supply” votes — the annual budget vote to approve the supply of money necessary to fund the government — or any explicit motion expressing non-confidence in the government. If the Conservatives find themselves facing off against a minority NDP government that has no margin for error, they may well be able to harass the government or even defeat it on measures that are critical to carrying out the NDP program and thereby generate the conditions for an early election.
That rushed scenario might satisfy the Conservatives, having come so close to driving the NDP from office. I doubt it would reflect the wishes of the voters. The public, having had its fill of politics this year, would prefer that the parties get to work doing what the legislature was elected to do.
Hold government to account. Pass legislation. Scrutinize spending.
Approve programs and policies. Clean up messes. The Conservatives have a lot to learn in that regard.
Only a handful of their MLAs have any experience in the legislature. Only Rustad has served in cabinet. Most of the caucus members are unknown and unproven.
Collectively, this bunch recalls the 17-member B.C. Liberal caucus that was unexpectedly delivered to the Opposition benches in 1991.
Then party leader Gordon Wilson, who put his own platform on hold on the eve of the election, admitted he had not met many of them. Some of them never mastered the job and were gone at the next election. Even with a change of leadership, the party needed another 10 years before it formed government.
If Rustad and the Conservatives are in Opposition when the election results are final, the voters will have done them a favour. They’ll have time to learn the job of Opposition, rather than presiding over a term of government for which they are little prepared. The voters also helped Rustad and crew by delivering a sound and well-deserved thrashing to the New Democrats.
Or rather to David Eby, who has been slow to acknowledge his personal responsibility for the fiasco. On election night he said, “We need to do better.” What do you mean ‘we,’ premier? I can imagine some New Democrats saying that — and particularly the 16 who lost their seats in the Eby-led campaign.
When meeting with reporters Tuesday, Eby did talk about the voters directing a message to “me” and said “I heard it.” He also segued back to the realm of collective blame, with references to how the voters want “us” to do better and “we better get to work.” As a show of leadership, it was a far cry from the standard set by Eby’s predecessor, Premier John Horgan, in taking all the blame himself for the Royal B.
C. Museum makeover. “I made the wrong call,” Horgan said in cancelling the $1-billion boondoggle back in June 2020.
“I am the head of government. I take full responsibility. “I want to assure British Columbians that any failings on this initiative fall to me and to me alone.
” The mistake was mine alone. That’s the gold standard in blame-taking. However, that is not David Eby’s way.
He seems incapable of taking full responsibility for squandering the majority he inherited from John Horgan. Instead, he told reporters the New Democrats will “hit the ground running” in a session of the legislature that he expects to convene later this fall. That, too, could be a gift to the upstart Conservatives: the spectacle of a government promising to do better, without the premier admitting his role in making the mess in the first place.
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