David Eby’s blunders have eroded public trust and could ultimately lead to an election loss for the NDP
David Eby’s NDP government could well lose the upcoming provincial election in British Columbia to a conservative party led by a human climate-change-denying evictee of the former Liberal government. And Eby will have no one to blame but himself.
The embattled premier has stumbled from one misstep to the next, blown a healthy budget surplus posted by his predecessor and fumbled the drug controversy so badly that he seems to have permanently alienated the moderates who kept the left-leaning party in power.
And yet, in an extraordinarily tone-deaf response to the party’s falling fortunes, Eby continues to pursue a classic tax-and-spend socialist agenda that is taking a wrecking ball to the province’s finances.
In recent weeks, his announcements have included a $500-million rental protection fund, $300 million to help build housing for 1,500 students at the University of British Columbia, major road construction on Highway 1 between Mt. Lehman Road and Highway 11, and $15 million in direct payments to local farmers.
The impact of his government’s unrestrained spending is alarming. Eby inherited a projected budget surplus of $5.7 billion when he took over from John Horgan in late 2022. With his first budget, Eby knocked the surplus down to just $700 million. Since then, the deficit has exploded to a little over $5 billion and growing.
The NDP was firmly in the driver’s seat when Eby took over from the popular, and relatively fiscally prudent, John Horgan in 2023. Since then, the party has entered a slow and steady death spiral that puts its election future in serious doubt.
Eby seems to hold the misguided belief that spending with no thought to future financial consequences will win over the hearts of the province’s voters. It appears to be doing the opposite, driving former rival parties (the BC United and the Conservative Party of British Columbia) to join forces to bring the NDP government down. So far, despite deep concerns about Conservative leader John Rustad, the incumbent NDP government is staring down the dark tunnel of death in this fall’s provincial election. From a high mark of 46 percent in a May 2023 poll, his party has slipped to 41 percent this July. More alarming for Eby is the rise of the Conservatives from a near-invisible four percent in 2023 to 38 percent today.
A myriad of factors have played into the NDP’s rapid decline. Eby’s government has seen several big failures, including an unsuccessful legal challenge to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project and a failed referendum on electoral reform. But his biggest cockup is undoubtedly the mismanaged experiment to decriminalize the possession of certain illegal drugs.
In January 2023, B.C. decriminalized possession for personal use of less than 2.5 grams of cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA, and opioids like fentanyl. The goal was to treat drug use as a public health issue and keep users from falling into the criminal justice system. But the move led to open drug use in places like bus shelters, parks and hospitals, and people freaked out. Healthcare workers, police and regional political leaders also spoke out against the policy.
Feeling the heat, Eby backtracked and sought to reverse the policy In April of this year. Drugs would still be decriminalized in private residences, places where people are legally sheltering, overdose prevention sites and drug-checking locations. But, by then, he had largely destroyed his government’s credibility with the public.
The other major factor working against Eby is his elitist personality. Horgan, his predecessor, remained popular because he was seen as one of us, a true people’s premier whose personal values transcended party politics.
Eby, instead, is all-urban, a longtime left-wing activist from Vancouver with an intellectual bent. Before entering politics, he was a lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society in the Downtown Eastside and then executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA). On the side, he was a singer for the indie rock groups Ladner and World of Science.
“They (the NDP) have lost touch with the average person,” Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist and ex-leader of the B.C. Greens, wrote on X. “Dave Eby is coming across as an ideological, know-it-all elitist, who surrounds himself with sycophants.”
His nemesis, the Conservatives’ John Rustad, is no darling, either, but in a much different way. Two years ago, Rustad was ejected from the then-BC Liberal caucus by leader Kevin Falcon because of his views on climate change. In a recent meeting with the Globe and Mail’s editorial board, Rustad said it was “false” that humans burning fossil fuels are the cause of climate change and that climate change is a crisis.
“It doesn’t matter how much we try to reduce carbon,” Rustad said, “it is not going to change the weather.”
Last winter, Falcon said he couldn’t see “any scenario in which John Rustad would be remotely ready to step into the position of premier.” Since then, the parties made peace so they could join forces to bring down the NDP. “I know that the best thing for the future of our province is to defeat the NDP, but we cannot do that when the centre-right vote is split,” Falcon said.
Rustad, in his own way, is as out of step with B.C. voters as Eby is. Yet, voters have a hate on for Eby now, and one that seems unlikely to ease before this fall’s vote. Barring a potential implosion by the Conservatives, the elitist premier seems likely to soon learn a bitter lesson in humility.
Doug Firby is an award-winning editorial writer with over four decades of experience working for newspapers, magazines and online publications in Ontario and western Canada. Previously, he served as Editorial Page Editor at the Calgary Herald.
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