Sunday June 25, 2023 | LANGFORD, BC [Updated 11:45 am]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Since last night’s BC by-election coverage, pundits have been musing about why the BC United did so poorly in the results in both Langford-Juan de Fuca and Vancouver-Mount Pleasant.
A few simple observations can be made:
- The party very recently changed their name from BC Liberals to BC United. Except for those deep in the political sphere, that name change seems to have gone unheeded or at least confuses voters as to the party’s purpose.
- The colours chosen for the newly named party are not simply ‘pink and green’ like those of the BC Green Party, but they’re ‘magenta and teal’. Very lovely from a graphic design point of view, but not simplistic enough to be a party-branding combo. And when used with strong black-background it comes across a bit stark.
- The party has chosen to focus — at least in this by-election — on the important matter of crime (and more specifically about drugs in public spaces as a criminal issue not a health-care issue). But again for the average voter this feels like a single-issue campaign. The single-issue campaign perception can contribute to the demise of any well-intentioned candidate or campaign. The same might even be said for the Langford-Juan de Fuca BC Green campaign which fought hard against the single-issue danger zone that their candidate brought with being first associated with the doctor shortage issue.
- Repositioning. BC United tried to position themselves a bit more to the center of the political spectrum which left the right-of-centre wide open for the BC Conservatives (who came in second overall last night in Langford-Juan de Fuca).
Good memory:
As well, the low results for the BC United on June 24 may well stem from good memory on the part of BC voters. It was the BC Liberals who decimated the health-care jobs of many, shattered the school system in so very many ways, hand-picked which ridings to leave completely out in the cold when it came to infrastructure.
Regarding the political attack side, one case in point would be in Langford-Juan de Fuca where the MLA/future-Premier’s political influence unfortunately backfired in that respect under a BC Liberal government, though Horgan turned it nicely around (with Highway 14 improvements and improved health-care arrangements with local doctors) once he became premier.
Voters who remember things like siphoning the lifeblood out of ICBC (pushing up the cost of insurance for most vehicle owners but worse destabilizing the province’s finances) and hounding people like bad credit-card debtors if they fell behind on medical services plan fees, these are voters who would have not voted BC United. Add to that list any voters who cared about the money-laundering to which the BC Liberal government turned a blind eye.
The former BC Liberals mostly seemed to take an in-the-moment approach to things like providing enough schools and health-care facilities, lacking a vision for seeing what might be coming next around the corner. For example, schools were built to current capacity rather than looking at population projections in fast-growing communities. Regions that weren’t populated enough for a full hospital (e.g. Sooke region) were somewhat left in the dust as to alternatives.
Changing the party name was in part to try and leave this rather soulless history behind in the mind of most voters. But dashing the old name was probably much like a snake shedding its skin… it leaves old stuff behind but will do the same again in future. Many of the same players — including party leader Kevin Falcon and long-time MLAs Shirley Bond, Todd Stone and others — remain in the party which has historically tried to position itself right of center.
Overall, the Christy Clark years were sombre for many people and smaller businesses. People don’t forget that. It could be argued that the former BC Liberal premier’s dragging of BC people through the mud is what forged the NDP-Green alliance in 2017 that ultimately ushered the NDP into being government.
So far, BC United has not yet succeeded in finding the new foothold that their new leadership and new party name has set out to do but they have plenty of reasons to want to do that.
By-election timing:
In the by-election, the BC United’s poor showing possibly also resulted due to by-election date timing… the by-elections came up fast after the BC United name-change.
They will still have time to work on that component of renewal while leading up to the October 2024 province-wide general election. In fact, in that respect the by-elections were an important learning experience for how to pivot going forward.
Who is BC United appealing to?
They still seem to attract supporters who are business people and folks who champion clear-facts law and order. Falcon says the party has a broad tent and that everyone is welcome.
They genearlly complain that there are ‘too many taxes’ in BC. But it is many of those same taxes that make possible the expenditure on programs that the NDP government uses to help support a wide range of British Columbians.
The care factor:
This is no reflection on the individual candidates in the by-elections this month, but the BC United so far has failed to convince people that the overall well-being of people and the more complex interplay of society is actionable. That is possibly what has mostly shot them in the foot.
In the parliamentary system of democracy it’s not easy to be the official opposition — a big part of the role is to criticize and find fault.
Doing that probably does require picking and choosing issues that strike a chord with the broadest number of people. It also often leaves good debate in the parliamentary chamber in a way that doesn’t easily make its way into the general public realm.
The past few months of Falcon and MLAs pushing for no drugs in parks, playgrounds and beaches should have worked in their ballot box favour. But it didn’t seem to shift many new voters their way.
True colours:
There is no candidate or party that doesn’t have a strategy and their own crafted ways of achieving their goals. But all the political machinations in the world can’t hide true colours.
If Falcon is indeed determined to bring forward new colours for his party, the bedrock of that will need to be a genuine transformation of approach.
With NDP and Greens already eating up the oxygen on the we-care-about-people-first side of the room, it’s a tough job ahead for the BC United to show how they care.
And more importantly, they need to clearly demonstrate to the average voter how their approach would do better if they formed the next provincial government after the October 2024 election.
===== BACKGROUND LINKS:
Elections BC (main page) | By-Elections section
History of provincial elections in BC (Wikipedia)
By-Elections News & Archive (Island Social Trends)
===== ABOUT ISLAND SOCIAL TRENDS:
Island Social Trends has been covering politics, business, education and communities through a socioeconomic lens since 2008 on south Vancouver Island (previously as West Shore Voice News, and before that both Sooke Voice News and MapleLine Magazine).
Island Social Trends posts news daily at islandsocialtrends.ca (2020-2023). A new bi-weekly print edition will launch in mid-July 2023, with the online news portal continuing robustly.
Mary P Brooke is the editor and publisher of Island Social Trends. Ms Brooke followed and wrote extensively about the COVID pandemic during 2020-2022, and continues to follow that topic as new developments arise. She has covered news of Sooke School District 62 (SD62) in-depth since 2014 and BC education more broadly for over 10 years; in 2022 she ran as a trustee candidate in SD62. In the west shore she also reports on West Shore Parks and Recreation. Mary Brooke is building a FOOD RESILIENCE NEWS ARCHIVE.
Ms Brooke now reports with the BC Legislative Press Gallery. Mary Brooke was awarded the McGeachy Prize in Journalism (University of Saskatchewan, 1981) and in 2023 year has been nominated for the Jack Webster Foundation Shelley Fralic Award honouring women whose work in journalism serves their community. Island Social Trends was mentioned in the House of Commons in June 2023 as a publication making a valuable contribution to reliable news on south Vancouver Island.
Among other qualifications, Ms Brooke holds a health sciences B.Sc. (Foods & Nutrition), a university Certificate in Public Relations, and an industry certificate in digital marketing.
Mary Brooke is actively covering the by-election in Langford-Juan de Fuca. | BY-ELECTION NEWS SECTION