November 7, 2024 | by Gary Porter
The October 19 election in British Columbia resulted in 47 seats for the NDP, 44 for the Trumpist Conservatives, and 2 seats for the Green Party after mandatory recounts in seats where the win was by less than 100 votes. The popular vote was also very close 46% for NDP and 45% for the Tories. The Greens got 8%. In the previous parliament, the NDP had 55 seats out of a total of 87, a big majority. NDP Premier David Eby and the social democratic staff clique ran an uninspired campaign offering a few meaningless reforms leaving most British Columbians feeling no one represented their interests or cared about their real problems. The huge loss of seats and the defeat of six cabinet ministers was deserved, although victory for the NDP was certainly preferable to the Rustand-led deeply racist, sexist and anti-worker Conservatives.
Although Premier Eby won a bare majority; after appointing a speaker, he will often need the support of the Greens to pass legislation.
In 2017, a somewhat similar situation arose where John Horgan needed the support of Andrew Weaver’s Greens to form a government. The Greens and the NDP signed a confldence and supply agreement. But the NDP subsequently approved the Site C dam project on the Peace River to produce vast quantities of electricity primarily to support fracking of natural gas (methane) in north east BC. Then they approved the 600 km Coastal Gaslink pipeline across rivers and lakes in indigenous territory to Kitimat on the Pacific Coast where the methane will be liquefied and shipped abroad. The NDP rank and file oppose this project, to this very day, but the Social Democratic pro-capitalist leadership has never allowed a vote to occur at party conventions.
This pipeline resulted in the struggle of the Wet’suwet’en people to block construction and the brutal suppression of their peaceful efforts by the RCMP, with NDP government approval. Supporters of the Indigenous people took to the streets across Canada resulting in the blockade of the Port of Vancouver, the blocking of roads and bridges and the shutdown of the main railway between Toronto and Montreal for two weeks.
Although the BC Green Party proposes inadequate reforms to fight climate change and does not challenge the capitalist drive for profit, at any cost, including wrecking the climate, they nevertheless felt betrayed by the social democratic NDP government who gave $6 billion in subsidies to the oil companies in support of the Coastal Gaslink pipeline. With good reason they may hesitate to sign a supply and confidence agreement with David Eby’s NDP.
On the other hand the Green leader Sonia Fursteneau has ghosted the Tory leader’s efforts to contact her. “There have been statements made by Conservative candidates that are truly disturbing, racist, dehumanizing, homophobic, conspiratory,” Furstenau said. “Some of these (Tory) candidates were elected and I am yet to see a satisfactory response from John Rustad.” The Tories advocated the repeal of the BC Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People and a policy of repression of homeless people and people suffering from addiction, cutting funds for Medicare and privatising more medical services.
Seven years of NDP government in BC left workers with the highest and most unaffordable housing costs in Canada. One in five British Columbians have no family doctor, medical wait times are the longest in Canada, death by fentanyl is epidemic, groceries are unaffordable, and the billionaires are paying virtually no tax.
The lesson of this election is not that the NDP needs to move to the right to win over Conservatives. The lesson is that the NDP must move sharply to the left, tackle the ruling class head on, and implement real solutions to the serious problems of working people in BC, solutions that transfer a massive amount of the hoarded wealth of the BC rich, to workers. 42% of British Columbia’s eligible voters did not vote. They reasonably felt that none of the parties represented them or their children. If the NDP begins to advocate for the urgent needs of working people, if it advocates a socialist program, it would likely win a crushing victory, or at least lay the basis for one.