Please Advise! Did We Need This Election?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Premier David Eby has called a provincial election for Oct. 24. Is this a good thing?

Signed,

Mark

Dear Mark,

B.C. politics has been on fast-forward this month. We’re all just a pack of Wile E. Coyotes trying to keep up. Even David Eby.

His Tuesday speech announcing the election call sounded like it was written in that long-ago era when Kerry-Lynne Findlay was still B.C. Conservative leader. Eby focused on the threat of Trump-like politics coming to B.C. That was certainly true in what historians now call the KLF Epoch.

Is it still true? Maybe. But it does seem likely that this election snowball started rolling a couple of weeks ago and simply got too big to stop. Look out below.

At the beginning of the week we were all still digesting the political bottle rocket that was Findlay’s Conservative leadership. It is not easy to earn a place of honour in the B.C. Politics Hall of Insanity — the competition is fierce — but Findlay managed it. She accomplished something rarely seen, a leadership tenure that did not even make it to an election before imploding.

But again, that was Monday, when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. Times have changed. Seven Conservative MLAs who were ousted from the party by Findlay or left in protest of her leadership quickly boomeranged back in. Surrey South MLA Brent Chapman, Findlay’s personal and philosophical soulmate, announced he was quitting the Conservatives to join Dallas Brodie's uber-right-wing OneBC.

Interim B.C. Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson announced that a meeting had been held with Peter Milobar of CentreBC about a coalition.

The departure of Findlay cleared away obstacles and, sure enough, the B.C. Cons and the newly expanded CentreBC party announced a co-operation deal almost immediately after the election call.

Eby and his team had seen a window of opportunity to strike a divided opposition. That window now appears to be behind a fresh layer of drywall.

Will the coalition hold? The B.C. right has been fractious and there is no guarantee that this collection of little jellyfish will now become a single Portuguese man-of-war.

To employ a different zoological metaphor: the BC NDP was hoping to face 100 duck-sized horses. Will they instead face a horse-sized duck?

Next month will be Electionpalooza, with municipal elections Oct. 17 and the provincial vote a week later. That’s a lot of suffrage. British Columbians will be voting so hard, there could be an epidemic of voter’s elbow. Nutrition will suffer. Delighted children will chow down on fast food as parents juggle full-time careers and full-time balloting. Provincial candidates will be fielding questions from confused voters about potholes and garbage pickup. But then, don’t they always? It all tends to get rolled together anyway. Mayoral candidates would be well advised to prepare a policy position on the Strait of Hormuz.

Adding to the electoral confusion, Eby certainly wants to run against Donald Trump. But B.C. voters may feel that Prime Minister Mark Carney, not Eby, is wearing the captain's C for Team Canada. As Canucks prospects are discovering this week, not every player earns a ticket to the big leagues.

At any rate, it doesn’t seem auspicious to call an election on the first day of fall. This year the autumn air will carry the scent of pumpkin spice, woodsmoke and cynical opportunism.

Of course, a more powerful stench may yet emanate from the ranks of B.C.’s political right. There’s no telling what those people will say during the campaign. Eby will have to hope the era of Kerry-Lynne Findlay has not entirely been relegated to the history books.