Last Wednesday, Kevin Falcon announced that he was suspending the BC United campaign. This leaves David Eby and the BC NDP facing off against John Rustad and the BC Conservatives. It’s a close race, with Angus Reid reporting that the BC NDP and the BC Conservatives are in a statistical tie. 10% of voters say they’re undecided.
The stakes for housing are high, since Rustad has already said that he’ll roll back all of the BC NDP’s housing policies, including provincial restrictions on Airbnb. He thinks it’s “crazy” to override municipalities and make it easier to build housing.
There’s unconfirmed reports that Rustad would remove provincial rent controls, although I haven’t seen any reporters ask him about this directly. (In 2018, Doug Ford removed rent controls in Ontario for new housing.)
What’s likely to happen?
Incumbent governments have been in trouble everywhere, regardless of their political stripe. (Federal government, US, UK, France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia.) This isn’t too surprising, given the post-Covid housing shortage. There’s a lot more people suddenly working from home and needing more space, and housing scarcity has spilled over from the biggest cities to smaller centres, spreading misery everywhere. Drug addicts who might previously have used shooting galleries are now out on the street.
To me, David Eby’s problem-solving approach is a reasonable way to deal with a situation that’s tough on multiple fronts. Eby and the BC NDP look like they have a good shot at winning re-election, but they’ll have strong headwinds.
Even though housing is one of the key issues in the election, I suspect most voters won’t be thinking primarily about housing when deciding who to vote for. An analysis of the 2018 Vancouver election by David Armstrong II and Jack Lucas, looking at how individual voters decided which cluster of candidates to support, found that most people seemed to be choosing candidates based on left vs. right, rather than pro- or anti-housing. The structure of municipal voting in Vancouver.
So then the question is whether voters will find David Eby (pragmatic, centre-left) more appealing than John Rustad (leading an extreme party, as Kevin Falcon always emphasized).
Who is John Rustad?
Wikipedia. Rustad is 61. He’s from Prince George, with a background in geographic information systems (he founded a GIS consulting firm) and forestry.
Rustad was a BC Liberal cabinet minister under Christy Clark, responsible for the high-profile portfolios of aboriginal relations and forestry. On issues like the HST referendum in 2011, relations with First Nations, and LNG development, he appeared to be a team player.
In opposition, he was kicked out of the BC Liberal caucus by Kevin Falcon in April 2022 for his climate skepticism. At the time, Falcon commented:
Let me be clear, climate change is one of the most critical threats facing our future. The B.C. Liberals are strongly committed to substantive climate action and restoring B.C.’s place as a world leader in climate policy. John Rustad does not speak on behalf of caucus on this issue.
As Matthew Yglesias explains, natural resource extraction is important in rural communities, so Rustad’s climate skepticism isn’t surprising.
Rural communities tend to have natural resource extraction of various kinds — fishing, logging, mining, ranching, farming — at the core of their economic model. In a rural community, like any other community, most people work in local service industries. But the natural resource extraction is the export, it’s the thing that brings money into the community, it’s the reason the community exists. So when you adopt a regulatory posture that is hostile to the interests of natural resource extraction, people don’t want to vote for you.
But in Metro Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, Rustad’s climate skepticism seems likely to be a handicap, which is presumably why Falcon kicked him out: “We shouldn’t do anything about climate change” is an extreme position.
Rustad was on Jordan Peterson’s podcast a few days ago, and Peterson is certainly a climate skeptic. Transcript.
PETERSON: So, the fundamental shibboleth of the left with regards to the environment is carbon dioxide production. Now, personally, and I'm not going to push you on this to any degree, but personally, I'm very skeptical of the climate change science. Science is a complicated business and what the media reports is not necessarily science.
I've been struck to the core, I would say, by the NASA reported findings that the planet is green 20% since the year 2000. And that one consequence of that is that crops are much more productive, like 13 to 15% more productive. And that is directly because of carbon dioxide increase. And so I truly believe that a dispassionate scientist who wasn't being affected by the hangover of the anti-human Malthusian agenda from the 1960s would look at the data and say, well, the planet's 20% greener and most of that greening occurred in semi-arid areas. So the deserts are actually shrinking. How the hell is that not a net good from the environmental side? …
RUSTAD: I always like to joke, and I mean, this is a sad reality, but how is it that we've convinced carbon-based beings that carbon is a problem?
… Even if you think CO2 is the problem, many people still believe that, we can't make a difference one way or the other anyway.
Parenthetically, Peterson seems to have garbled the data: what NASA reported is that the earth has gotten 5% greener over the last 20 years, due to reforestation programs and agriculture in China and India, not due to higher CO2 levels.
Rustad also talks about nuclear power as an alternative to wind and solar. I don’t have anything against nuclear power in principle (especially for provinces which don’t have hydro), but as Blair King points out, it doesn’t make sense for BC, which has much cheaper options.
The “loose cannon” problem
When you’re a fringe party, as the BC Conservatives were until very recently, you’re going to have fringe candidates.
I found it surprising that Rustad initially defended Rachael Weber, the BC Conservative candidate for Prince George - Mackenzie, after BC United revealed that she thinks 5G causes Covid. I would have expected him to drop her immediately.
CKPG, August 20:
Prince George-Mackenzie B.C. Conservative candidate Rachael Weber was promoting claims on social media that 5G cell towers are “genocidal weapons” and the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The posts were made in 2020 on Facebook and claimed that “EMF’s + 60ghz (5G) IS A WEAPON!”. and that 5G is linked to the spread of Coronavirus which will “mess with the absorption of oxygen in the human body”.
Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad says he stands behind his candidate Rachael Weber.
He said so in an interview Tuesday afternoon with CKPG News.
“I support all of our candidates and the work that they’re doing. I’m not going to allow cancel culture to take root in this province, I think it’s done too much damage.”
This past weekend, she was dropped as a candidate. She doesn’t sound too happy about it. Prince George Citizen:
"I am seriously considering running as an Independent, more on this will come soon if I decide to run," she said. "We need a candidate in this riding who is actually a Conservative and will fight for these communities, not self seeking opportunistic candidates who will run for whatever party approaches them."
She continued her criticism of the party: "I believe this Conservative Party of BC is no longer Conservative but running under the guise of the name Conservative. They have allowed many BC United (Liberal) candidates to infiltrate the party and have lost sight of the real Conservative values we as Conservatives hold dear. Your new Conservative candidate for this riding will more than likely be BC United Liberal opposition."
Public services vs. tax cuts
I thought this exchange on Twitter, immediately after Kevin Falcon’s announcement, was interesting. David Eby:
No matter what our opponents do, I'm focused on what matters to you—building more homes you can afford, lowering your costs, and strengthening your health care.
John Rustad is planning deep cuts that will cost you, just like he did before. That’s a risk we can’t afford.
The only “deep cuts” I’m planning are on taxes for hardworking, everyday British Columbians who are struggling to make ends meet.
But taxes and public services are closely linked, because taxes are how we pay for public services like education and health care. If Rustad cuts taxes, that blows a big hole in the budget that has to be made up with deep spending cuts. The BC carbon tax alone provides $1.5 billion in annual net revenue.
More
If you’d like to get involved, on one side or the other, here’s the volunteer sign-up pages for the BC NDP and the BC Conservatives:
The "vote against you if you oppose extraction" theme was really highlighted for me by the CBC story on one Adem Campbell of Ft. Mac, linked from here:
http://brander.ca/stackback#adem
Adem loved Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" in 2006, but by 2021, was ready to vote Smith for Premier, because he by then lived in Ft. Mac, loved being a teacher and baseball coach, loved the community.
The interview was some years after Ft. Mac burned down, had barely recovered population - and the birth rate that supplies his elementary school had been in decline for three years.
If I were Adem, I'd be looking for an exit while my property values hadn't dropped much. Even great believers in Al Gore will still vote Conservative, for the sake of their town.