I moved recently, and as a result I'm no longer sure which provincial electoral district I live in. But it's probably just as well -- I wasn't planning on voting, anyway.
The 40th British Columbia General Election is a dreary race between dreadful choices. That's an easy thing to say about any election, granted, but the sad state of B.C. politics is truly the stuff apathy was designed for. The final droplets of ideology, vision, principle, passion, and leadership having long since drained from this province's governing class, there's now nothing left but empty partisan squabbling. It brings to mind that famous quote by Kissinger (or whoever) that politics is "never more heated than when nothing's at stake."
Premier Clark and her B.C. Liberals certainly don't deserve to be re-elected. On this matter, at least, around 70 per cent of the province is in solid agreement. After 12 years of Grit rule, B.C. now has the highest unemployment rate in western Canada, the slowest rate of economic growth, and the largest pile of debt. In provincial job growth, we're second-worst in the country. Long-standing suspicions that the Libs are the party of the monocle-and-caviar set are becoming increasingly difficult to statistically deny; British Columbia's rich-poor divide is the worst in the country (among the worst of any western democracy, in fact), and much of the wealth creation that's occurred during the Liberal reign has simply benefited the already well-off.
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BC Election Campaign Trail
Then there's the scandals. Premier Campbell's sale of B.C. Rail to one of his top political donors. Two ministerial aids found guilty of fraud, followed by a taxpayer bailout of their $6 million legal fees. Two massive tax grabs -- the carbon tax and HST -- imposed despite election promises to the contrary. Flip-flops on a vast array of issues from greater oversight of Native land claims to televised cabinet meetings. Out-of-control spending and salaries at practically every public utility and crown corporation -- from hydro to buses to ferries to hospitals -- at a time when user fees have never been higher, and services never worse.
It'd be nice if the B.C. NDP's inevitable ascension to power -- an outcome as preordained as Justin Trudeau's rise as Liberal boss, only more predictable -- held promise of a clean break with any of this. It'd also be nice if scabs were made of jelly beans.
The Liberals, lest we forget (and few B.C.ers do), only came to power on the back of a revolt against the equally -- hell, let's ditch the niceties, worse -- corruption and economic mismanagement of a decade-long New Democrat administration equally skilled at racking up debt, bleeding jobs, and ruling for the benefit of a privileged few. Despite a dozen years in the wilderness, there's not much evidence "today's NDP" has learned much from their exile.
Party leader Adrian Dix is about as literal a yesterday's man as they come. As the ex-chief of staff to Glen Clark, easily British Columbia's worst premier, Dix's long been one of the NDP's least apologetic figures when it comes to the legacy of the 1990s -- even running ads mocking the idea of remorse. A recent exposé in the Vancouver Sun likewise revealed his party is still overwhelmingly funded by public sector unions -- including many that will be negotiating contracts in coming years. With the wages of bureaucrats among the largest line items in the provincial budget, it's hard to imagine a worse interest group for a premier to owe favours in this age of austerity.
More depressing, however, is the vast array of matters on which the NDP and Liberals agree. Both parties have similarly crass plans to raise revenue (hike taxes on corporations and the wealthy), both have an equally NIMBY attitude towards the Northern Gateway pipeline (opposed), both share a consensus on the size and role of government (big is beautiful!), and both have similar plans to stimulate the creation of jobs in industries beyond natural resources and government make-work (none).
In such a context, conditions should be ideal for the provincial Tories to swoop in and fill the province's leadership vacuum, but with John Cummins' ramshackle party hemorrhaging moron candidates at a rate of nearly one a day, it seems the Conservatives will defeat themselves before voters get the chance. Which leaves the Greens, I suppose, and their promises to "create thousands of new green-collar jobs," -- mostly by killing off the rest of the rainbow with 41 pages of bossy new regulations on everything and anything (dentists must "use dental fillings that do not contain mercury" decreeth page 13).
It's not cynical or spoiled to want better choices. If British Columbia's political parties all offer the same barely-discernible mix of high-taxing, high-spending, debt-growing, special-interest-marbled, economically illiterate, visionless management of a bloated, over-extended government that does way more than it should and does most of those things badly, there's no law obligating voters to reward one of them for merely being the cleanest dirty shirt.
Which isn't to deny the possibility that B.C.'s parties may get better with time. Their present failures stem mostly from deficiencies of talent and ambition, after all -- not any larger dysfunction with representative democracy itself. Abstaining from voting in this election (or any other) doesn't make you a nihilistic anarchist, just a temporarily disappointed citizen. And disappointment is a political opinion as valid as any other.
Good thing there's a remarkably low-effort way to express it.