Monday September 28, 2020 | VANCOUVER, BC
by Mary P Brooke, Editor | Island Social Trends
BC Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau said today in Vancouver that she is “so tired” of the old ways of doing politics in BC, saying the ways of the BC Liberals and also the BC NDP not only “lack imagination” but are unfair to many in British Columbia.
She points out the tired approach of going town to town, region to region, making promises about expenditures that would be made locally if the candidate or party is elected to form government. Some communities who end up with one candidate of either major party (Liberal or NDP) for a long time end up being neglected.
Sooke is a perfect example of that, where improvements to roads and health services infrastructure lagged far behind during the years of the BC Liberal government when the rising star John Horgan was MLA there from 2005. Only after Horgan became premier in 2017 did things really change for Sooke.
“We need leaders to put ideas and policies on the table that will serve everybody in this province,” said Furstenau with gusto today.
Old techniques, used to advantage:
Another tired old technique is grabbing the advantage by calling a snap election, as the BC NDP did one week ago on September 21. That has left the other parties a bit unprepared in various ways.
The BC Liberals don’t lack for campaign resources (as their party generally represents the monied sector of society) but their campaign does seem to be pulling a lot of old perspectives out of the playbook — mostly around offering tax cuts (notably a promise of suspending the Provincial Sales Tax in BC for a year, then restoring only to 3% for another year).
To some degree being dragged into a BC Liberal trap, to focus on PST manipulation, Furstenau said “there are far more effective ways to spend $7 billion” (the annual intake through the goods and services provincial sales tax).
Meanwhile, the snap election scenario has seen the BC Greens scrambling to put a candidate on the ballot in all 87 ridings. Today Furstenau bemoaned the challenge of asking people to decide in a matter of a day or two to make a huge decision to run for political office. But she proudly announced several candidates today during a press briefing in Vancouver, most without BC-wide name recognition. See list of BC Green candidates here.
And the old intimidation trick of campaigning in another leader’s riding was used yesterday by Horgan, making a campaign pit stop in Duncan within Furstenau’s home riding of Cowichan Valley.
But Furstenau is clearly up for the fight. Her positions are articulate and there sure is the ‘belly fire’ that a rising political star needs on her road to the top. Her French is impeccably fluent, as an added bonus for an added connection point with more voters.
Internal appointment:
Meanwhile, the BC Greens today have announced that former BC Green leadership candidate (who ran against Fursteanu this year for the top job) has been appointed to the position of Vice-Chair of the party. He is a Vancouver-based lawyer. “I am glad we will have his voice at the Council table as we move into our next phase of growth,” said BC Green Leader Sonja Furstenau in a news release today.
