FLETCHER: David Eby's anti-Trump strategy reveals his desperation

Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.VICTORIA — It’s starting to make more sense to me now. The silly “NEVER 51st state” signs at the border, the lumber jacket, and most of all the unseemly haste shown by Premier David Eby in calling a by-election to clear a path for BC Conservative ex-leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay to Trump-dance into the legislature.Like a train full of soldiers that couldn’t be stopped to avert the First World War, Eby’s Orange Man Express steamed ahead even when Findlay bowed to the inevitable last weekend and resigned her mortally wounded leadership. He scrapped the by-election and called a general vote for October 24, less than two years into his slim majority mandate, because he had a deadline to meet.That deadline is a vote before November 2, the date of the US mid-term elections that could take Donald Trump out of the spotlight. Eby’s government is so bad, so broke, and so bereft of ideas that a desperate Project Fear campaign against a fractured opposition looked like the only way forward to an unprecedented fourth NDP term.I thought John Horgan calling an election in the midst of a pandemic was as low as the NDP could go. I was wrong again.Eby’s first campaign sign told the story. No NDP logo, no Eby name, just a plagiarized Carney slogan and a maple leaf on fire. His speech, which one reporter referred to as “low-energy,” grasped at every hint of compromise with the US aggressor. .Eby reached back to an X post made by BC Conservative MLA Heather Maahs a year and a half ago, selectively quoting her comment that “Eby needs to comply” with Trump’s demand that Canada stop the flow of fentanyl into the US. This, he said, is evidence that the opposition wants to turn the province into “America Junior.”National media have insisted that the small amount of fentanyl seized at the Canada-US border is proof that there is little smuggling. The RCMP’s discovery of a fentanyl “super lab” in rural BC with drug and precursor stocks of 90 million doses was the first of several such finds, clear evidence that Mexican cartels and Chinese suppliers are finding new ways into the US after Trump’s team shut the southern border and started blowing up drug boats with Air Force missiles.Still dealing with his disastrous experiment in hard drug decriminalization, Eby makes a bold choice in blaming Conservatives for being too tough on fentanyl. Facing a record $13.8 billion deficit, he makes another bold choice to accuse the opposition of “chaos, cuts, and cozying up to Trump.”After six credit downgrades for an economy whose only growth is in government, Eby started making his own cuts, mostly to new long-term care homes. BC’s debt is now as big as Ontario’s, with one-third of the population. There had better be more cuts before the International Monetary Fund steps in.Opposition chaos was Eby’s hole card, and that just turned up a joker. The upstart CentreBC party vapourized as soon as Findlay was replaced by Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Lorne Doerkson. And if the 2024 election is any guide, the remaining few independents are on their way to the exits..Regular readers will know about the crisis in indigenous relations (see here, here, and here), with the NDP government spending the summer in frantic talks to amend or suspend the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) and get treaties or out-of-court settlements to the many overlapping land claims.Those talks have produced nothing. Asked about the state of private property rights at his election announcement, Eby shrugged and said they’re appealing the court decision that overrides fee-simple property rights. Presumably he meant to include that other BC Court of Appeal decision that says DRIPA is in effect over all laws, requiring “free, prior and informed consent” for those big projects that Eby and Prime Minister Mark Carney like to talk about.The rush to the election has another big side effect for Eby. It’s over loud protests from BC’s local governments, which the province mandated to serve four-year terms specifically timed to avoid provincial elections.They’re set for October 17. The legions of government union staff who toil to elect the NDP’s farm team have suddenly found they have to multitask. Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: David Eby's anti-Trump strategy reveals his desperation

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