FLETCHER: B.C. Conservatives find fertile ground amid NDP missteps

Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984It’s summer, not much conventional news is happening, so it’s time for those situational pieces that a former legislature press gallery colleague used to call “chin-strokers.” The Canadian Press news service had one out last week, looking once again at the tribulations of B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad. A couple of party members were located to complain about his leadership, referring vaguely to a suspicious drift to the middle. A big donor says he’s not moving far enough to the middle. It’s a political science exercise, not getting bogged down in those dreary day-to-day events.Events, meanwhile, keep hitting the B.C. NDP government upside the head. Good-news announcements keep coming, but they don’t always land just right..Last week the province rolled out an extension of its emergency ward wait-times website, offering a real-time display of the grim situation at Vancouver Island hospitals, as is being done in the major population area of the Lower Mainland. Except, it’s not really real-time. It’s based on eight-week averages.“You could go in thinking the average is four hours, but actually you are in for an eight-hour wait,” B.C. Conservative health critic Dr. Anna Kindy said. “ Basing the data off of eight-week averages is a faulty, flawed mechanism that can’t account for incidents like car accidents, heat waves or mass street-drug poisonings.”The vast Interior and Northern Health regions are supposed to have something similar this year, but the number of forced emergency room closures in smaller centres makes that an even more questionable exercise. Posting wait times for Greater Vancouver hospitals may help people who have options within driving distance..Housing is another priority area for Premier David Eby’s government, and the subject of two of the most disappointing announcements in recent days. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon announced some technical changes to allow home builders more time to pay for development and amenity cost charges. Builders say the problem is the charges are too high. The changes don’t take effect until 2026.After the province paid for a food truck in Seattle to give out free snacks and coffee in an effort to lure U.S. health care workers north, Kahlon had another announcement about reducing the airborne fentanyl level in supportive housing units. Fentanyl smoking is also a problem in hospitals, forcing staff to resort to respirators at times. The “action” taken for supportive housing is to set up a “working group” to look for options to remove not only the fentanyl smoke but also the drug dealers who move in as guests, and bring weapons with them. Last year the NDP government changed its residential tenancy law to include supportive housing, blocking operators from evicting dangerous people without months of process. (I wrote about this horror story for Western Standard on May 14.) After more than a year of protests from operators, they and the equally frustrated police have been assigned to the “working group” to find solutions to the problem the NDP caused..FLETCHER: Tenants’ rights out of control, police can’t intervene.After more than a year of protests from operators, they and the equally frustrated police have been assigned to the “working group” to find solutions to the problem the NDP caused..The same day, B.C. Conservative attorney general critic Steve Kooner asked the province why bright, cheery instruction cards for using cocaine, meth and ecstasy were distributed at a Nanaimo school. This, not a working group, is what voters are likely to remember.Other announcements by the B.C. NDP in recent days include the signing of that summer staple, a “memorandum of understanding,” with Vancouver and local indigenous groups to work together to host seven World Cup soccer matches in 2026. The updated cost could be north of $600 million, including upgrades to B.C. Place Stadium, for a brief event that will likely be lost amid the other North American host cities a year from now. The final bill will come later.Speaking of bills, the Fraser Institute has just released a study showing that, adjusted for inflation, B.C. government debt has increased faster in the past two years of Eby’s guidance than at any time during the past 50 years. (The pandemic years were second.) In 2024, taxpayer-supported debt reached $17,147 per person, a 44% increase in those two years alone.The government hasn’t yet budgeted for the loss of more than $1.5 billion it would have collected this year from the once-revenue neutral carbon tax, which was suddenly found to be expendable. That’s another bad-news story that won’t be told for a while, closer to the next B.C. election.Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984. He lives in Victoria.tomfletcherbc@gmail.com X:@tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: B.C. Conservatives find fertile ground amid NDP missteps

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