View on Politics: A chaotic Summer in BC

0:00Vom Palmer and I have a lot of catching up to do. Don't we, Vaughn? Oh, we sure picked a great time to come some time off. Nothing's gonna happen the last week. Well, August, the first few days of September. Anyway, here we are. So boring. Where should we start? Well, let's do this. Let's take a look at both sides of the equation, right? For BC politics. So look a report card kind of thing. Let's start with the government side of things. Yeah, I sat down last night when I got back and started going through transcripts. And the one that really jumped out at me was David E.B. Last week, late last week, gets asked point blank. Premier, are you thinking of calling a snap election to take advantage of the first that passes for the official opposition in this province? And he said, well, that's a fun question. Well, I'll laugh a minute this guy. Yeah, that's a fun question. And I'm not gonna rule anything out. So thank you for clarifying the situation, Premier,

1:03and for your candor. Because if you aren't thinking of an early election to take advantage of the total disarray in the opposition side, you're not thinking like a politician. I mean, this is an irresistible opportunity. And I think, as far as I'm concerned, the only real question is when will he actually do it? I think he's trying to create the winning conditions to get himself reelected. And I think as long as the chaos is there on the opposition side and it doesn't look like it's going away, I think David E.B. has got a good shot at winning another term. In spite of some of these issues from the last couple of weeks, let's talk about this budget hole. How does this happen? This would be an enormous story. This is the biggest hole in the history of the BC budget. And certainly all the time I've been doing it, which is more than 40 years. And I can't think of an equivalent. So in August the 25th, David E.B. just asked, point blank in the news conference,

2:05are you aware of a significant error calculating natural gas revenues in the BC budget? And the premium says in the transcript, I am not aware of any error regarding oil and gas revenues in the budget. He said it, it's there in the transcript. Next day, his government comes out late afternoon, 430 in the afternoon, we get the news release, admitting there is an enormous hole in that budget, regarding oil and gas revenues. The hole is one and a half billion dollars over five years. But Vaughn, so what happened then? Did he say that? And then somebody realized, oh, we better tell him. Like, right away they said, you better correct us like what happened? I guess you'd say if the premier was telling the truth, when he said he wasn't aware of the error, then he learned about it overnight, somebody went,

3:06bosser is, bosser is a really big error. We better come out and tell everybody, so he does. But the problem he has is that, that when I talked about it on your show, while you were away, I got a note right afterward from the leader of the West Moeberly Band, Roland Wilson, saying, the government has known about this error for weeks. He said that they told the energy minister, these are the first nations in the northeastern part of the province, who were involved in discussions with the government on the natural gas royalties. So they're very well briefed. And he says, Roland Wilson says, that he told the energy minister, he and their experts told the energy minister the problem, Adrian Dix at the end of June, and Wilson said that he personally handed a letter to David Eby on July 14th,

4:06listing math errors in the way they were calculating. So in the premier said he wasn't aware of an error, either he didn't read the letter or he forgot what was in. So this is a huge problem, but see me. Premiers got a news conference today. He's going to be talking about a provincial response to and support for the federal government's retaliation against Donald Trump. And I expect he will do very well today because, and he's doing well not because of Donald Trump. That's been around for a while, because there is really no opposition in the promise. Right. Okay. That leads us to the problem. That is the problem. We're going to talk about that coming up in a moment, like after the break, but I wanted to ask you before we get to that point. Von, you mentioned this in passing. You actually got to go see, come from away. Had you not seen come from away before? Because it is so good.

5:08I'd seen come from away down online. You know, also a streaming service, but I'd never seen it with a live audience. And in this case, I saw it with a live audience. So 25th anniversary coming up, right? Of 9-11, a live audience in the United States. In a blue state, in a blue county, and a blue audience, Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And the thing was an enormous hit. Really incredibly well received, terrific production, funny as hell. It was actually better than the one I saw on a streaming online, partly with a live audience. Now, again, I will say, folks, this is a blue state. These people didn't vote for Donald Trump in the first place. And I'm sure they have, well, it was obvious. They have a very fond regard for Mufan Landers, first of all, and for Canadians. They, there's a joke in the script about Tim Hortons. They applauded it. My wife Dale said to me, she said, they've heard of Tim Hortons. Yeah. So, you know, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, it's the arts community.

6:08Hey, to me, this is an arts community, every single production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, opens with a land acknowledgement. That's how woke these people are. So, most of them are from California, the rest of them are from Oregon and Washington. And it isn't surprising because the play is so good, that it was a big hit, but it is one of the biggest hits in their season this year. And, you know, they do 9 or 10 plays. So, they do Shakespeare as well, obviously. But so good, right? Like, I love come from away and if people ever get it, if they haven't seen it, they should definitely go in. Yeah, no, it's a fantastic play. And a great musical. And a lot of laughs. And man, does this theater company milk the stuff for laughs? It really, really works well and see. Catching up on BC politics with the help of Vom Palmer from the Vancouver Sun. So, we talked about the government side of things. Let's talk about the opposition here, Vaughan, because, you know, a few things happened while we were gone. Which one of the half dozen manifestations of the opposition in BC, would you like to discuss?

7:09Actually, that's sitting there trying to sort through the list and go, who the hell is the opposition in British Columbia? Good question. I was just about to ask that. Look, going into the fall, who do we call the official opposition? Well, okay. So, you've got Carolyn Finley, leader of the BC Conservatives. And she's running for in a by-election. She persuaded the member of her caucus to step down. And she is running and the by-election is an happens for admission. And it is, what, two and a half weeks away? Her opponents in the party have on the record declared she's unelectable. I don't know what the hell is what they're going to do if she does win. The, she may well be elected there. It's not surprising for opposition parties. The BC Conservatives are still the opposition in the province. In numbers, not surprising from the to-win by-election. Of the new Democrats are running a candidate against her, Pam Alexis, former cabinet minister held that writing until she lost it in 2024.

8:10But I think you sort of have to wonder, given the political landscape, whether the NDP really wants to win that, that seat or not, or whether they would much sooner see KLF win it and continue the divisions. If you're a voter out there, if you're not happy with the government, you'll look at the opposition. It's the opposition's job to show that it holds the governments to account, and that it's united and ready to form a government. I don't think anybody in their most delusional will think this opposition meets that standard at the moment. So it's a tough call. And I, we mentioned, Simmy, because so many people have left the Conservatives now that, I don't know what, there's a dozen and a half of them almost rattling around in the house under one label or another. We're going, hmm, are they running a candidate? Well, there is a candidate running for a party calling itself center BC. That candidate is a former NDP candidate, so it does qualify as center. But I don't know, the people that have left the Conservatives and have

9:16banded together with Peter Millibar as a party to be named later. And that's not a joke. That's what they're saying. They will tell us the name of their party later. They're not running a candidate. So I don't know. It's a tough call for a voter. I wouldn't be surprised if most voters out there just go, hell, I'm going to sit this thing out and see what happens later. Yeah, that's pretty confusing. But the whole thing was, it's not many people leaving with the BC Conservatives and Carolyn Finley thinks she can hang on. Like have we ever seen anything like that before, Ron? Well, anytime the NDP gets in power, when they did in the 70s, when they did in the 90s, when they did in the, in the 2017, the, not the NDP party in the province. The people that are in the other parties that aren't the NDP and put the Greens aside for a minute. Center right, they tend to reorganize themselves. And there's a lot of speculation about who's going to be the new vehicle to take on the NDP.

10:21And sometimes they manage to put their act together very quickly when David Barrett was premier in the 1970s. He lost the next election. They put together the unified party under the social credit label in three and a half years in the one-the-election. In the 90s, it took longer. It took almost 10 years for the, not the NDP party. And then it was social credit, reform, and liberal, to organize themselves under the liberals and finally win an election. But it took them 10 years. Well, we're approaching the 10-year mark under this NDP government. And damn, if I know what the unified vehicle is going to look like, or even if there will be one, because there's BC conservatives, there's ex BC conservatives who were accused of being liberals. There are populists and people who haven't decided on a label and all sorts of other things out there. And as I said, five of them, with Peter Milovar and four others, have gotten together, Simi, and have told us they're a party.

11:23And they will be a party when the house sits in October. But they don't have a name yet. Well, actually, they do have a name. We're told, this is even more ridiculous, but this is the situation. They do have a name, but they're waiting for elections, BC, to approve the name, because under BC election law, you're not allowed to use a name that has been used in the last 10 years. So a whole lot of options are ruled out because they have been used in the last 10 years. So they don't apparently like central BC, although that might seem to capture some people's idea of what you want and center-right party. There's some speculation that they're toying with the name of the old social credit party, which did government promise for a long time. Yes, look, the imagination is free to roam free in British Columbia, because according to elections, BC, Simi, there are some 30 party names that have been used in British Columbia over the years.

12:28The rule is, you can't use a name that's appeared on the ballot in the last 10 years. So that, for example, rules out the BC party. One can't resist pointing out that that's true of free enterprise. BC Liberal is ruled out except if you happen to be one of the people that holds the rights to BC Liberal, and that is the former leader of BC United, which still holds BC to BC Liberals, and that's Gavin Falcon. So I don't know, maybe he's prepared to release that name, but it's just an example of it's a first. It's really a first, and the job of the opposition is to hold the government to account and to show they're ready to form government. And this opposition collectively is failing, spectacularly at that job. No wonder David Eby is, despite of all of his troubles, joking about us, a fun question,

13:32and I'm not ruling anything out. Okay, thanks. Premier, I don't think you'll call us an app election before the civic election, because that would mess things up. I think you'll wait for the House to sit and October or see how it goes, but don't be surprised at me if we're into an early election next year. Oh, boy. All right, Vaughn, thank you. Bye-bye, Senator.