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GOOD: B.C. Liberals wrestle with their identity

The B.C. Liberal Party is in search of a new leader and a new vision to try to reform in time to fight the next election in this province. It’s hard to know what the party stands for right now.
Good

The B.C. Liberal Party is in search of a new leader and a new vision to try to reform in time to fight the next election in this province. It’s hard to know what the party stands for right now. In her desperate attempt to retain power, former premier Christy Clark offered up a throne speech that so closely mirrored the NDP election platform it was remarkable. Many Liberals were aghast. To many Liberal supporters, what most distinguished the party was that it was not the NDP.

There is a lot of confusion about what the Liberal Party is. I heard one critic refer to it as the fake Liberal Party. The party would probably be better known as the B.C. Party or the Free Enterprise party, but that would leave the Liberal brand up for the taking by some other group. The Liberal party in this province is a coalition of liberals like Christy Clark and conservatives like Rich Coleman.

Under Gordon Campbell, the Liberal caucus was under instruction not to participate in federal elections. He didn’t want his members identified with the federal parties.

The reality is the B.C. Liberal Party has only had one major goal, that being to keep the NDP from power.

As long as there is no serious B.C. Conservative Party, that has been a pretty effective strategy. It would have worked again this year if the Green Party hadn’t climbed into bed with the NDP.

Watching shiny new Premier John Horgan enjoying the early days of his administration, it’s easy to forget the Liberals actually won the election with the most seats and the most votes, but lost its majority, allowing the NDP and Greens to take power.

In my view, the Liberals had become too complacent. They allowed the NDP to come up with ideas like cancelling tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges, and promising to address affordable housing and better public education.

In hindsight, it’s become apparent that the Liberals, who ran on economic prosperity, had a bit too much of it. The outgoing government built up an astonishing surplus of $2.7 billion. That money could have been used to make affordable promises on issues like health care and education that would have likely meant a majority for the Liberals. Instead they’ve handed the NDP the keys to the coffers to do the things many British Columbians were crying out for. Taking the tolls off the Port Mann and Golden Ears was probably the biggest promise made by the NDP and almost by itself gave the NDP enough Surrey seats to dislodge the Liberals.

The challenge, of course, for the new government is to manage the issues it has  inherited.

The tolls are gone. That was easy. Creating housing affordability in Metro Vancouver will be a lot harder. Making a difference in the opioid crisis, a lot more easily said than done. Lifting children and families out of poverty is a lot harder than having good intentions.

The journey is just beginning for both the B.C. Liberals and the New Democrats.

I think the Liberals under Christy Clark were too focused on just the economy.

Balanced budgets have long been considered important to Liberal voters, but if that voter can’t balance his or her budget the focus changes.

I believe most Liberal voters want a good environment, much improved transit, and fairness in transportation funding. Canadians generally don’t like tax hikes, but do understand we need to fund the things we want. Some form of road pricing has to come. We need a new Pattullo bridge and Massey tunnel replacement soon. There will be infrastructure demands in the North. We all have to pay in some form of taxation. We know that.

The challenge for a new leader of the B.C. Liberals will be to appear more sincere and more caring than Christy Clark. When Ms. Clark said “Families First” many people felt that didn’t include their family.

One of the biggest challenges is to bring that Conservative-Liberal coalition together and prevent it breaking into two parties that divide the free enterprise vote.

They have until Feb. 4 to find that person.

Bill Good is a veteran broadcaster currently heard daily on News 1130
@billgood_news

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