A largely AI generated transcript for our 2020 election announcement bonus podcast. Apologies for any errors.

Ian Bushfield: Coming to you from the West coast this is a special emergency episode of PolitiCoast. Today is September 21st, 2020, and dammit, we’re actually doing this fucking thing.

[00:02:43] Scott de Lange Boom: I’m Scott de Lange Boom

[00:02:44] Ian Bushfield: and I’m Ian Bushfield. Off the top of you heard clips from John Horgan announcing that we’re headed to an election on October 24th, 2020, BC Liberal leader, Andrew Wilkinson making his initial pitch for their party and BC Green leader Sonia Furstenau critiquing the current government, the clips of Horgan and Wilkinson came from their respective social media pages.

[00:03:02] And the clip of Furstenau came from the latest episode of This is VanColour with Mo Amir that was recorded last week. I believe. Check out. That show VanColour for the full interview

[00:03:12]before we jump in, as a reminder, sign up to support this show at patreon.com/politicoast to support, I guess our ongoing election coverage there, you can get access to our exclusive patrons Slack channel, where the political conversation, both provincial, federal and municipal with our friends at Cambie Report, continues nonstop.

[00:03:33]Scott de Lange Boom: and a reminder to register, to vote and request a mail-in ballot. If you so desire, I can do it online super quick and easy. I did it to myself today. Just need to go to elections.bc.ca/vote in slash how to vote by mail with. Hyphens in between there.

[00:03:51] And we’ll throw links in the show notes.

[00:03:53]Ian Bushfield: Let’s get into it. We’re doing this damn thing. So the unofficial reason that everyone knows for this election is that the NDP is up somewhere between 15 and 20 points in the polls over their opposition. And it feels like a damn convenient time to turn a minority into a majority. But I thought we’d break down the official reasons John Horgan gave in his press conference after meeting with the Lieutenant Governor for why we need an election right now, I think the main one he spoke of was stability, you know, sort of a strong, stable. NDP majority government was like the language Harper used in 2008 and 2011 only  swap NDP for conservative.

[00:04:37]Scott de Lange Boom: but noticeably different is that unlike that period in Canadian federal politics, the last couple of years of BC have not been wrapped with constant speculation of snap elections. The past couple of months excluded. for the most part it’s. Has actually proven to be a stable configuration and there’s really no sign that was going to change at all.

[00:05:04]Ian Bushfield: There was a couple moments where Andrew Weaver would throw up his arms and yell that, you know, this is a red line. He did that around LNG. And I think once or twice, In other situations, but no one took it too, too seriously. And he tended to walk those back. And as far as we could tell, Sonia Furstenau was eager  to uphold CASA the confidence and supply agreement until October, 2021, like had been agreed upon by her caucus and the NDP caucus.

[00:05:37]Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah, th th there was just simply no sign that there’s any actual instability in the BC legislature. And that kind of goes into the next part about not wanting the instability and speculation for the next 12 months, but the only real instability and speculation has been caused by the government in their lead up to the selection call.

[00:06:02]Ian Bushfield: One area that might have changed or might change quickly was if Andrew Weaver. As rumor suggested was going to resign his seat. Yeah. In the next couple months that would put a byelection in Oak Bay, Gordon head, which could go to the liberals and could change the math, such that the NDP and greens I think would be unable to get legislations through, except they would not die necessarily on confidence votes because every vote would go to the tie with the speaker. And so the government would continue, but unless they could bring over a liberal on occasion or have a liberal miss the occasional vote, it would be, political stalemate.

[00:06:47] Scott de Lange Boom: well, yeah, that really does seem to be a, you can trust this bridge when you come to it situation, right? Nobody knows whether or not we ever would have resigned anyway and say he does resign , you have six months to call them a byelection. There’s no real rush on this one. So that also rings very hollow.

[00:07:09]Ian Bushfield: There was a little bit of blame thrown at the greens by the premier. He talked about bills that were held up over the summer and an amendment passed on a spending bill. I think we’ve talked about those two bills. In the past and they were talked about in the press conference today. One was a energy policy bill where the green slot, there should be more consultation with indigenous communities.

[00:07:29] And the other was a addictions and mental health bill that dealt with, involuntary confinement of minors who were admitted to a hospital for, addictions issues and overdose issues. that latter one john Horgan suggested very strongly that it was just the opposition and the greens that held that up.

[00:07:50] But there was a lot of protest about that bill and a lot of questions about that bill outside the legislature as well from civil society and a number of other groups and the spending bill amendment seemed very inside baseball. It’s kind of thing. I think we both missed and sort of bring up now seems kind of petty.

[00:08:10] Scott de Lange Boom: Oh, it’s super petty. And it’s hard to say, you know, this government is unworkable just because a party with three seats put forward an amendment it’s farcical is really what it is.

[00:08:25]Ian Bushfield: I think there are stronger arguments in terms of an election now versus in a year though, that were laid out the discussion about, you know, this pandemic, isn’t going to go away. So we are going to hold an election during a pandemic, whether it’s now in the spring or one year from now, right now, we have a sense of where we’re at.

[00:08:47] I think you and I both agree that it’s trending in a bad direction, but hospitalizations aren’t out of control. So we don’t know where it will be in a year. And so if things aren’t terrible right now and given that we’ve seen elections in other jurisdictions around the world, be held safely, doing it now is not totally unreasonable in terms of the safety aspect.

[00:09:12]Scott de Lange Boom: It’s still not great to pull everyone’s focus away from this. I I’m not too concerned about any one catching over it at the polls, although someone does it. Probably is John Horton’s fault in a roundabout way, but more to the point, it’s the fact that we’re clearly in a second wave, that the trend line is done in a very oriented direction when it comes to new cases and these things come and go in waves at some point in the next couple months, we’ll likely be at the point where cases are trending downwards and you know, that would have been a better time to call this and.

[00:09:53]Yeah, I don’t think we should pin our hopes on a vaccine or anything, but looking at it 13 months from now, it is much more likely we have a vaccine approved somewhere in the process of being distributed to the population that now

[00:10:09]Ian Bushfield: The last kind of reason, and it’ll depend how the campaign  plays out to decide. How good of a reason this was, but the idea of giving British Colombians a choice in how this is perceived and how this goes forward. It’s the idea that, you know, we should go to the people and get a mandate, whether or not you agree, Canadians give governments mandates or not, but at least put forward a vision for what the recovery looks like.

[00:10:40] And notably that a recovery will be more than the next 12 months. It will be for 10 years. And so presenting, competing visions, hopefully we get three strong visions for that and not a lot of negative politics, but we’ll come around to that in a minute. Does give us the opportunity to reflect on how we’ve come through this pandemic so far, how it’s been managed by the government and whether that deserves. Praise, additional ground.  or if the opposition presents a different vision, one that, you know, appeals to more people or something, it gives us the chance to actually debate and stop and take a little bit of consideration on how things have gone. And should they go a different way?

[00:11:26]Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. On the flip side of that though, is we elect government, not knowing everything that’s going to happen over the next four years. In 2017, nobody had pandemic response as their ballot question. same thing in 2000, nobody had, what are we doing to do about nine 11 when, John for Chen won that election, that, and we give governments four years, they power to deal with those situations.

[00:11:56]  we didn’t rush to the polls after any of those other instances, if a pandemic is so important that it doesn’t necessarily follow that  six to 10 months into this thing  that if it’s so important that British Colombians weigh in right away, that we can wait that long for it.

[00:12:15]and on the chance for the imp, just going off of what the NDP put forward, last week, what we talked about with their, pre-start rebuild, a stronger BC thing, they’ve put out.

[00:12:30]Fundamentally, it’s not charting a different course than they ran on in 2017. I haven’t done any side by side comparison with their platform, but maybe there’s an extra billion here for something,

[00:12:44] Ian Bushfield: Arguably it’s more pro business.

[00:12:47]Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. That might actually be the case, but like, It’s just not really the case that, that they’re, you know, gonna radically upend the social contract or anything it’s, from what we’ve seen, it’s more or less a business as usual.

[00:13:01] The thing you would expect an NDP government to do in this situation. And. British Colombians in 2017, voted with that in mind, not knowing the specific situation, but these sorts of responses that a government of this configuration would put forward in the event of a crisis.

[00:13:21] Ian Bushfield: that’s where I somewhat reserved judgment through the campaign to see what is put on offer, because there is the chance that they do put forward a radically different vision. Now, one of the best counter-arguments to an election that I’ve heard is why haven’t they taken the Trudeau of centrally approach or at least the approach Trudeau has mapped out and we’ll find out on Wednesday if is sincere or not.

[00:13:48] But the idea of all right, things have changed. We’re going to even parole and have a new throne, speech and chart, what needs to happen going forward. And if that. Doesn’t survive a confidence vote. Then we’ll go to an election because it’s been forced. Instead, as we’ve talked about for several weeks now, this has felt, push while this has been pushed by the Premier’s office has been pushed by the party itself.

[00:14:15] And so it comes off as more opportunistic. Now whether people are still paying attention and still debating that in a week or two. I think will depend on how many issues come up during the election itself and how much we turn our attention to the shiny things on offer versus the somewhat, you know, tiring debate over just should we have an election during a pandemic?

[00:14:41] Eventually we just get around to all right. We’re having it. How is it going to play out?

[00:14:46] Scott de Lange Boom: Well, I think that depends a lot on whether or not anything happens with respect to the pandemic. Like we are one big outbreak in the school away from like  the NDPs chances, just cratering and the narrative becoming all about, you know, a reckless election that they, they took their eye off the ball.

[00:15:08]And it’s a very high, it’s a much higher risk play than I think the NDP are treating it as

[00:15:16]Ian Bushfield: Very much. So, I think I saw one, journalists tweeting out today that he’s been covering,  politics for 20 years and  is the first election he covered was way back in the, Ontario election of Peterson versus, Bob Ray and Peterson, he says, started with a massive lead in the polls only to, lose to Bob Bray in the end.

[00:15:47] I don’t really believe in fate or anything like that, but 

[00:15:51] Yeah.

[00:15:52] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. And that kind of goes to something the premier set a couple of times during this press conference, which is something along the lines of, you know, if British Colombians can go to the grocery store safely, they can vote safely, which, Hey, I don’t think anyone’s really too concerned about the actual mechanisms of voting versus the broader.

[00:16:12] Pandemic developing through society and a government. That’s not as responsive because it’s on the campaign trail. But besides that, like, I don’t, I think the argument that you’re not going to die, going to get food is as a compelling reason to hold an unnecessary election as the premier seems to think it is.

[00:16:31] And. We’re six months into this. I go in grocery store thing is still kind of stressful. You’re still inside with a bunch of people you don’t know. You’re always having to watch where you’re going, keep in space and everything. And if something has routine, is that it is. A source of stress in people’s lives, putting this onto them as well.

[00:16:54] It’s not necessarily going to be something that British Colombians respond well to do. You can’t really blame it for that either.

[00:17:01]  Temperamentally, I don’t think very many people are really clamoring to weigh in on the direction of BC versus just kind of wanting to get through this and they have enough going on in their lives.

[00:17:14]Just trying to do that. And it’s going to be a real challenge. I think for the NDP to actually break through kind of the, the emotional drain that 2020 has had on everyone and kind of rally them around John hoarding, doing an unnecessary, pretty transparent power grab election.

[00:17:34] Ian Bushfield: Well, if the NDP are going to have difficulty. Grabbing people’s attention, then it’s going to be at least twice as hard for the opposition parties, both the BC liberals. Who’ve struggled to get headlines for several months now, and then especially the BC greens. And I think it’s worth taking a minute to dissect a little bit of the responses.

[00:17:56] Both of those parties have put out. And I haven’t managed to see enough of either yet, but like you heard off the top, they have campaign. Frames starting to come out and through some of their initial reactions to the press. They’ve both had, feelings come out. Let’s say, let’s start with the BC liberals.

[00:18:17]I mean, the clip I played off the top there 32nd video is kind of standard BC liberal fair of economic prosperity for BC, but what was really striking in the last couple of days on their social media and  in their. Discussions with reporters today was a real pivot to talking about being tough on crime, and they have a meme out and a petition about public safety and to tell the NDPs Horgan it’s time to crack down on crime, really leaning into the growth of tent cities and what they call dangerous criminal activity and open drug dealing in our streets.

[00:18:54]All of these things that kind of follow inevitably when a lot of people are out of work and we’re still in the midst of an overdose crisis,

[00:19:01]Scott de Lange Boom:  I watched the full Andrew Wilkinson press conference and everything. And it actually didn’t feature that heavily. I think this is one of those things where Twitter kind of took it around with it, which it’s a campaign that’s going to happen. You do have to be prepared for it.

[00:19:16]but when it seems to me, artistically public safety is something people feel pretty viscerally about and like, No part of you is going to do well citing statistics when there is a much more kind of direct in this rare reaction people are having, but in the midst of the, be just public safety crisis in decades, since we are focus on crime, as opposed to the pandemic and everything else associated with that, If you wanted to create a sense of unease among the voting public to capitalize on it, it seems like much bigger source of unease out there.

[00:19:59]Ian Bushfield: Yeah, I think it’s partially motivated by the like liberals calculating what their path to victory is. So their goal in the selection will have to be to hold the 41 seats. I believe it is. They have right now and pick up another three. And then they have a majority. It’s not that far. It’s also not that far for the NDP, but they have the polling advantage.

[00:20:24] If the liberals assume they can hold their current seats, they can then aim for a couple in maple Ridge, for example, where the NDP narrowly won in the last election, if they can pick up Oak Bay, they have a majority government and a major issue as you and I both know in maple Ridge in the last couple of years has been in the growth of tent cities.

[00:20:45] And I believe the last municipal election was fought on this tough on crime agenda and really focusing on that approach to responding to these issues. what I would have loved to see and what I have appreciated about BC politics when it’s at its best is when there’s kind of a cross partisan consensus that we need more than a.

[00:21:07]police response, frankly, to these issues. it was Sam Sullivan who pioneered the four pillars and really trying to take a broader approach like harm reduction has not been controversial in BC, largely as an approach because we recognize across the political aisle that it’s not enough to send the cops in.

[00:21:31] We also need to have wraparound services to support people.

[00:21:34]Scott de Lange Boom:  on that front, the liberals dropped an ad today, where part of their complaints against this government and their unnecessary election was. not giving people the support they need. I think it was the line and the visual that paired with that was one of these tent cities.

[00:21:51] And it’s a thing where I’m not sure it necessarily comes across, right when Andrew Wilkinson is at a press conference, trying to communicate first when they are actually not doing it so much off the cuff and have prepared it. So I. It may be a thing where the party actually gets it. And it’s just typical Andrew Wilkinson awkwardness, which isn’t a great thing when it comes to your job is to actually communicate with British Colombians

[00:22:22]Ian Bushfield: Yeah, especially in an election, that’s going to be very leader dominated because with the lack of in person events, we’re going to be very closely following the leaders. And it’s going to be very hard to follow all the local and individual campaigns.

[00:22:36] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah, exactly. And that was the other big takeaway I got from watching his press conference. He just actually really needs to step up his game. I think he managed to  worked with the word cynical into every single answer he gave on the press conference. but I think more problematic for him is that.

[00:22:57]He kept trying to argue that this was a reckless move by the NDP because they were turning their back on a stable government. And if your pitch to British Colombians is my opponent represents stability. That’s not going to be a winning play at all. And that they need to find a message. Yeah. As a much better framing for them because.

[00:23:22]There was very little I saw out of that press conference that wasn’t either very awkwardly trying to respond to an admittedly cynical play by premier or basically, yeah, you’re repeating the same talking points they’ve been using for the past two decades or more. That felt a little, I would place in the current situation.

[00:23:46]Ian Bushfield: It’s hard complaining about the socialist hordes at the Gates when we’ve had three and a half years of government, that hasn’t really been so. Radical that too many people are mad. I’d like there are some wealthy homeowners who were not very happy about extra taxes. There are some people who own multiple extra properties in hot real estate markets who aren’t very happy, but that’s us small call voter base.

[00:24:13] Overall. I have to imagine like these vacancy taxes are not hitting the vast majority of British Colombians. And while they may not be doing everything necessary to cool the housing market. They’re still rather popular.

[00:24:26]Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. Notably, I don’t think he actually mentioned affordability once in there. they have a, definitely a challenge ahead of them. And I just spit balling here off the top of my head, taken a much more of a, this is a failure of leadership, you know?

[00:24:41]The Premier’s responsibility is to lead the province through crisis and  the premier has decided to selfishly not do that forcing unnecessary election and,  walk away from the helm of the province to throw a Naval metaphor in there for some reason. during the storm, that’s the sort of argument I think would be a lot more impactful and not expose the liberals to anywhere near the sort of problems that this government was just too damn stable.

[00:25:14]Ian Bushfield: Yeah, we’ll have to see what the liberals are able to. Present in terms of a positive message because they will have to present something. It’s not enough to just say this was a cynical ploy, but you need to be able to say, this is a cynical, opportunistic ploy. Therefore you shouldn’t trust them. We’ll continue in the vein that we’ve all agreed on as a legislature and sort of play up that continuity while then also like if you’re not willing to write a full platform as the BC liberals, then at least say, ,  We agree with like most of what’s been done, but we think here are some, a couple small areas that could be done better.

[00:25:51] And here’s how we would cut taxes after that or whatever the standard line is or how you would deal with the deficit in the end. Cause those are BC liberal talking points

[00:26:02] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah, you can’t run a campaign very successfully unjust. The other guy sucks. Ask Andrew Scheer how that workout. Ultimately, especially in, in a time where people are really feeling a lot of uncertainty and worry, you need to be the government in waiting. You need to send the message that you’re ready to take over day one and can do a better job.

[00:26:28] Not just because the other guy SOPs, but because you actually have the better ideas. And I heard nothing in that vein and looking at. What Andrew Wilkinson, was saying, or I guess listening to what Andrew Wilkinson was saying, it was like, he’s trying to run for leader of the opposition. That’s the job he has now.

[00:26:47] If that’s what he wants to do, he’s running a fine campaign for it, but he’s not actually running the campaign on day one that you’d actually need, if you want to really be premier.

[00:26:57]Ian Bushfield: Well, let’s maybe pivot because we’ll talk lots about Wilkinson and Horrigan going forward. But there’s a third party. That’s got a realistic chance of holding onto some seats and possibly growing or possibly disappearing. And that’s the BC greens under Sanya. First. Now one of the challenges perpetually for a minority government situation is the junior partner gets a lot of prominence and does really well during their time in office.

[00:27:28] But as soon as things go awry, or as soon as you go to an election, they often. Disappear from the political landscape after that, we’ve talked about this a bit before in the past, you know, the BC greens risked this, going into an agreement with the NDP and it feels like if they’re not very smart in this campaign, they’re at risk of being wiped out in the selection.

[00:27:55] , their ceiling might be four or five, six seats. I suspect Sonya personnel was going to run on a lot more ideas and we already have seen some of them through our leadership campaign and in some of the initial conversations that she’s doing, and she has strong critiques of the NDPs record, particularly on things like LNG,  and coastal gas link and how that was handled. I didn’t manage to see her response to the announcement today, but I saw second hand through number of journalists on Twitter who were listening in on it. And they noted the strong sense of betrayal that she espoused the anger that’s uncharacteristic. They described it of her. maybe that’s what it will take to start getting her some more attention.

[00:28:41] Did you catch her press conference at all?

[00:28:43]Scott de Lange Boom: I did the, the audio on eight questions, really hard to hear. So I kind of only got one side of it, but, yeah, there’s definitely a sense of anger and you won’t be as interesting I about this, but we were talking back when the Cassa agreement was first signed about how it was likely to be abandoned at some point before the full four years.

[00:29:06] And. Yeah, it sucks with the junior partner. Who’s kind of left holding the bag on this one, but that’s also just how these sorts of situations work. I mean, you can ask the lib Dems and the UK, how well it worked out being the junior partner coalition there. The problem is that the senior people get all the glory and  your supporters will blame you for anything that didn’t go the way you wanted to.

[00:29:32]It’s really hard to come out of that situation ahead and know that your daughter know everyone is just doing it because that’s, what’s politically convenient and

[00:29:43]great. If it’s gets honored for the full four years, but nobody should count on that being the situation.

[00:29:49]Ian Bushfield: Was there anything specific in first styles reaction, then that kind of hints at where the greens are going to take their campaign.

[00:29:59]Scott de Lange Boom: I mean, she’s throw out the line about how the other two parties, the NDP can, the liberals want to move backwards with the dreams, want to move forward? You know, very much kind of the, the third party positioning on a lot of stuff.

[00:30:14]Nothing really stood out like super clearly to me be as new information about how the greens would position themselves.

[00:30:23]Ian Bushfield: I guess the other disadvantaged the greens are facing is having just concluded their leadership race. In the last week we found out Sonia, first one, I was a leader, I think a week ago today. They’re now in the toughest position of having to find a nominate candidates in almost every writing, the NDP and liberals started with about almost half the province of existing MLS, minus a half a dozen each who have resigned or an outset of resignations or intentions not to run again.

[00:30:54] But the greens are starting from two MLS and probably a couple of interested names in every other writing. They need to find a lot of candidates because. They probably want to try and run pretty close to a full slate to look like a serious party. Again.

[00:31:10] Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah, that she announced that they were going to be running a full slate, Kansas, or tend to, I. But, yeah, it’s tough. Like vetting takes a lot of time and it’s really hard for a third party that just doesn’t have many resources to spend that much on candidate vetting.

[00:31:25]Ian Bushfield: Especially, if you have a number of potential candidates who are kind of waiting to see who won.

[00:31:31] Scott de Lange Boom: Exactly. And I, the last election, they had to dump a couple candidates. Because stuff came out that wasn’t properly vetted, but the federal greens, I think, had issues this past election with that

[00:31:46]Ian Bushfield: The federal conservatives had issues with that. Every party has

[00:31:50] Scott de Lange Boom: every party it does, but the big parties have enough trouble with that. Those little ones are sure to know.

[00:31:56] Nominate someone who shouldn’t have been because they weren’t able to actually do the proper vetting ahead of time. And with 33 days and minus two weeks of the address, that’s when the ballot deadline is,

[00:32:12]it’s just not likely to happen where they’re actually going to be able to do the proper vetting. And there will no doubt be some embarrassing moments for the dream party during this.

[00:32:21]Ian Bushfield: Well, but let’s bring it to our last topic for the night. Since we’re talking about vetting and embarrassing moments, I think. First one for any of the parties to have to face is what I’m going to call the stitch up in Stikine, which is, I think we talked about this briefly, the potential nomination race in sticking up in Northern BC, Doug Donaldson’s, former writing, Nathan Cullen had put his name forward as a potential candidate there.

[00:32:47] We talked about how Anita McPhee, a local indigenous leader and woman had also been talking about running the BC NDP announced. This afternoon, who all of their already approved candidates were. And Nathan Colon was among those lists, did having already taken the nomination and sticking. And this raised a number of eyebrows as the BC NDP equity policy says, if you have a retiring ML, a like Doug Donaldson, the next candidate should be from an equity seeking group.

[00:33:22] Whether that’s a woman, a person of color, someone with a disability, someone from the queer community and so on and so forth. And as far as anyone knows, Nathan Colin does not meet that threshold. And so the party had to find a reason why he would get it. And the argument is they could not find a candidate who wasn’t from an equity seeking group and Nita McPhee didn’t qualify because her nomination paper didn’t have enough valid signatures by the time of the.

[00:33:54]Deadline for that writing. And they managed to sort that out this morning, but it was late because you know, we’re already into an election and they’d already decided it. And now Nathan Collins did it. So deal with it.  yeah. And most embarrassingly of all is McPhee learn that she was disqualified via Rob shaw’s Twitter account this afternoon because no one had the courtesy to give her a phone call.

[00:34:18]Scott de Lange Boom: Yeah. Don’t know. And having the courtesy to give me my phone call, probably Sonia first. So now, you know, leader of the party in the conference supplied room and also didn’t. Barrett a phone call prior to the election being called. but yeah, back to the stickiness issue  we went through the whole issues around, these sorts of equity policies, especially when they’re applied at the writing level, but.

[00:34:43]They really screwed this up because they should not have gotten into a place where a star candidate, well, light, former federal MP was going to be in a position where either he gets disqualified for not meeting the equity requirements or somebody who very clearly should be getting the nomination because of the equity requirements.

[00:35:08]Won’t get it. And. They just, they should never have gotten themselves in a position where that was going to become an issue. And that becomes the story of day one. And also the story of the week leading up to it.

[00:35:21]Ian Bushfield: And like, it seems like every step of this was mishandled up until this like McPhee tweeting back at journalists being like, this is the first I’ve heard of any of this. Like this went poorly from the party side. Now the party and the government are different people. So this isn’t. John Horgan himself his fault, but these are the people who are picking who’s in charge.

[00:35:45] Scott de Lange Boom: And only that, like, these are the people who may be in senior staff positions after the election. Like, yeah. It’s not technically the premier Duke making this decision, but. It’s very much the people, the Premier’s happy to surround himself with and trust in key roles.

[00:36:04]Ian Bushfield: it’s a bit disappointing from my view of Nathan Cullen, like I’ve largely liked him as a politician. I didn’t end up putting him at the top of my ballot when he ran for federal NDP leader against Tom WellCare. I think in 2011, I believe it was right after Jack Layton died. ultimately because I didn’t really believe in his, let’s not run against the liberals and they won’t run against us.

[00:36:29] And we’ll just like have a noncompete because getting Harper out as the main thing. I found it too smart and cynical by half, but that’s an entirely different debate. You know, beyond that, I thought he was a very personable and smart and talented politician in this situation. I’d almost hoped he’d be the bigger person and say, you know what, this doesn’t pass the smell test to me.

[00:36:52] I don’t want the nomination under this cloud. I either want a fair fight with Anita McPhee and he doesn’t have to pass judgment on the equity issue, but at least could have a nomination battle. Or move next door and take on Ellis Ross and Skeena. But instead he kind of enters BC politics under a bit of a cloud.

[00:37:12]Scott de Lange Boom: I

[00:37:12] was one of those things. Like, no matter what he does, it’s not going to look great for him. Does like having to walk with your tail between your legs, to a neighbor and writing. That’s also not a great look.

[00:37:25]No matter what, there’s no way everyone was going to come out of this looking good. And I’m sure Nathan Collin was talking to people like weeks to months in advance. There’s probably, you know, assured that, Oh, you’ll be a shoe on for this riding, you know, we’ll get you the nomination. No problem. And then the whole thing kind of blew up and like it’s.

[00:37:49]The managers of the party that let this happen are really the ones who

[00:37:53] are to blame here. And once you’ve gone to the trouble of Al announcing, you know, putting your capital of reputation on the line for this one, it’s hard to just pull out as well. And like, you can raise the issue of the equity, And like, I, I, my problems with applying it at the writing level for free since just like this, as opposed to the slate level, but like, I also can’t really blame him for once.

[00:38:20] He decided to go for wanting to keep on going forward.

[00:38:24]Ian Bushfield: And Colin’s official story is that he only decided to seek the nomination after he learned of Doug Donald sentence retirement in the last couple of weeks, whether you believe that or not is up to you.

[00:38:38]Scott de Lange Boom: I’m going to guess. The, the  former federal MP and Lee current MLA for an area, especially when they’re from the same, probably probably talk to each other.

[00:38:49]Ian Bushfield: Probably, but I think that’s as good a place as any to leave this special emergency pod.

[00:38:57]Scott de Lange Boom: so I just want to actually throw one thing in here while we’re recording this. My parents actually just texted me and they are also not keen on the selection. So if you want to. Get the view from the people who don’t spend all their time thinking about and podcasting about politics. That’s at least a small if slightly anecdotal example of where the public may be at with, the election being called.

[00:39:22]Ian Bushfield: We’ll find out in one to two weeks, how that attitude grows or shrinks. We’ll be back on Friday with our usual weekly episode. Remember to register to vote elections.bc.ca click the buttons from there. Get your mail-in ballot. Figure out when to vote in advance, wash your hands and stay safe.