BC Politics, and why the BC Conservative Party is no Party - Part 3

A Four-Part Series:
Part 1 here | Part 2 here

Part Three of Four

When the extreme-liberal-left socialist NDP were in power in British Columbia in the 1990’s, during one of the greatest economic booms in the history of North America and much of the world, the BC economy collapsed, and BC officially became a “have-not” province for the first time in history.

At the same time, the attitude of entitlement among its population—though admittedly hard to measure scientifically—grew to what I believe was rivaled only by Castro’s fabulous Cuba or perhaps Sweden in the degree to which people saw our province as a socialist nanny-state in which the government was called upon to fix everything and take care of everybody (especially labor unions and the unworking). A large percentage of the population was on some form of government welfare toward the end of the 90’s, as even the province was itself, since being a “have-not” province in Canada means getting “equalization payments” from the federal government (with a hat tip to rich Alberta and Ontario).

The less socialist BC Liberals won the election of 2001 by a landslide and completely turned the economy around despite horrendous odds—the 9/11 Islamist terrorist atrocity, a lousy economy in the U.S. (which President Bush has now turned around against even worse odds) as well as in Japan which is a huge BC trading partner still reeling economically; a series of historically devastating forest fires (forestry and tourism are BC’s main economic drivers); a series of floods unmatched in BC history; a crippling softwood lumber tariff battle with the U.S.; a crisis in health care funding created by the federal Liberals; mad cow disease, avian flu outbreaks, pine beetles literally eating the forests; a horrible labor climate; and even more.

An economic turnaround of this magnitude is an achievement deserved of huge credit and respect and I am among many happy conservatives in offering it to them.

The BC Liberal government under Premier Gordon Campbell has moved in the right direction economically. Of course even if their policy-in-chief was to stand in the legislature and embark on some serious nose-picking, it would have improved things after the socialist NDP put BC into the economic toilet then summarily flushed it.

Before leaving the can, the NDP had also made sure, as would be expected of good socialists, to rudely show the international investment sector the door, from whence they have yet to return for fear of being thrown right back out as, amazingly, the NDP polling numbers look pretty good for the NDP currently. As recently as this past summer the NDP were tied with the BC Liberals (though recently the Liberals have moved back ahead somewhat). As I explained in prior parts of this series, there’s no explaining this polling phenomenon except that the electorate is entirely unsophisticated, and the media and academia have successfully nurtured the extreme-liberal-left back into favor.

Nonetheless, even a slight turn to the right, if you can call the BC Liberals a turn to the right, has turned this province around, and back into positive territory looking forward. But international investors—even investors from this continent—still fear BC, as even the discussion of another socialist NDP government quite rightly strikes fear into the hearts and minds of business leaders and their shareholders. It would take a complete destruction of the NDP to stop the discussion of it, thereby stopping the warning bells from going off in the international investment community.

Without the international community looking extremely favorably upon BC, as well as other factors to boot, the province will never taste greatness.

Would I invest millions in BC to start or expand a business? Not on your life. And I live here. Apparently I’m not alone as Vancouver, BC’s largest city, has lost nearly all its clout as a business center to Calgary, Alberta, where “conservative”, “profit”, “free-market”, and “America” are seen as perfectly fine notions. No coincidence that Calgary and the Conservative Party-led province of Alberta are awash in cash and a great economy. Meanwhile, Vancouver is ruled by a neo-communist ideologically-driven civic party with a mayor, Larry Campbell, who calls conservatives “barbarians”; and the province of BC is perpetually within a hair’s breadth of electing another socialist, anti-business, anti-free-trade, anti-globalization, anti-American, pro-Kyoto, pro-labor-union, pro nanny-state NDP government.

What is needed in BC to really get it on the road to greatness—which is not impossible since gorgeous BC has the only decent climate in Canada and is the size of Germany and France combined—is a conservative government. A real, true conservative government. One which would:

value the traditional family first and foremost as the primary province-builder (in every conceivable way);

value and promote freedom in every sense including full economic freedom extending even to health care (wow!—how unSoviet!);

promote a climate wherein winning is valued, individual initiative is rewarded, excellence is pursued, security and privacy of the individual is provided and prosperity is guaranteed by a free competitive market economy;

value and promote free markets in every sense including getting government out of absolutely every commercial business and utility and service provision;

value and promote an attitude of personal self-reliance and personal responsibility including in their own housing, their family, their career, their income, their job-training and otherwise, and that while it is the responsibility of individuals to provide for themselves, their families and their dependents, recognize that government must respond to those who require assistance and compassion;

value and promote a massively reduced government generally;

value the concept of lower taxes for people and business;

value the concept of real solid law and order, and laws created by the elected people’s representatives rather than by activist judges in the courts;

value the concept of being a good environmental watchdog;

…and more.

Until a real, true conservative, free-market government is elected and shows the world all that BC can be, BC will be relegated to the resource/service-sector backwater to which it has become so accustomed, and will continue to be seen by businesses and investors internationally as yet another business-unfriendly, anti-many-things, socialist nanny-state going nowhere fast.

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