FLETCHER: David Eby’s desperate search for a villain targets Jimmy Pattison

Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.VICTORIA — It was Justin Trudeau who first tried to blame the rising cost of groceries on Big Food, personified by Loblaws boss Galen Weston.Perp-walked before TV cameras to a parliamentary committee, Weston and other grocery executives brought receipts, showing a thin profit margin below 5% in a competitive industry hit by inflation, drought, trade tensions, and carbon tax at every level of agriculture and transportation.The “blame billionaires” routine has since been taken up by federal NDP leader Avi Lewis, arguing in campus Marxist style for government grocery stores, and by neophyte BC Greens leader Emily Lowan, who staged a “fight the oligarchs” tour to kick off her campaign for a wealth tax.BC NDP leader David Eby’s desperation to find an issue to deflect from his awful government record was shown by his bizarre choice to target not Weston or big US players like Walmart and Costco, but Save-on-Foods, the privately owned chain developed by BC business icon Jimmy Pattison.As someone who was buying Canadian before it was cool, I’ve been a regular Save-on-Foods customer for decades as the chain grew across Alberta and Saskatchewan. Eby’s choice of Pattison’s grocery stores landed with a personal sting after what happened a few days earlier at my local store in Victoria.The store is on the city’s notorious tent-strewn 900 block of Pandora Avenue, where daily food handouts attract the destitute, drug users, and predators in and around the city’s shelter and social housing hubs. A store manager was assaulted after confronting a frequent shoplifter who had been banned from entering, suffering a concussion and other serious injuries..Like many others, the store has resorted to full-time private security to combat theft, adding to costs amid the worst food inflation among G7 countries. Eby’s latest contribution to this problem has been to extend the provincial sales tax to services, including accounting, engineering, and, yes, security guards.BC Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson has a target-rich environment in his bid to end nine years of NDP rule. His Cariboo-Chilcotin constituency has seen its share of sawmill closures, hospital emergency department closures, business closures, street crime, and tax increases, including an Eby campaign pledge of income tax hikes starting at $190,000 per year.Eby labelled it a “millionaire tax,” but the BC Conservatives rebranded it as a “doctor tax” as the province continues to face a shortage of basic healthcare.Pattison’s charity work for hospitals is famous far beyond BC. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe replied indirectly to Eby’s comments about Pattison, who spent his first six years in rural Saskatchewan, where his father lost his car dealership in the Great Depression before moving to East Vancouver to start over.“To the boy from Luseland, Saskatchewan, who has never forgotten where he came from,” Moe wrote on X. “Thank you for your incredibly generous $50 million donation to Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital, the largest private gift in Saskatchewan history. Thank you for the hundreds of millions you have invested in Saskatchewan agriculture, in broadcasting, and in grocery stores.”.While Eby was blaming billionaires and touring the West Kootenay in his lumber jacket, Doerkson targeted street crime and disorder with a campaign stop in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He proposed to stop the “safer supply” of opioids, add 1,000 more police, prosecutors, and provincial court judges, and increase abstinence-based drug treatment. Eby chose a Save-on-Foods store in Kelowna to announce his pledge to introduce price controls on staple grocery items. A “price guard” on retail markups would apply only to large corporate chains. It’s unclear how this vast government intervention would be imposed to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.Voters here recall how Eby campaigned two years ago on a promise to send out $1,000 “grocery rebate” cheques, with the bill to be added to what would soon turn into record provincial deficits. Not long after winning a narrow majority, he abandoned the promise, blaming Donald Trump.Taxing the rich and giving out drugs are part of the NDP’s formula for attracting young voters. A look at the hastily assembled candidates in this sudden election shows where young people are migrating — to the BC Conservatives.Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: David Eby’s desperate search for a villain targets Jimmy Pattison

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