I am knee deep in the B.C. election coverage; I listen to at least two hours of CBC each day on my drive to and from work, I’m the editor of a newspaper where my reporters have interviewed and written stories on the candidates, I receive multiple emails from each of the parties every week, if not every day, and receive regular election coverage from our provincial correspondent Tom Fletcher.
Yet, I have no idea what this election is about. Obviously, I don’t mean I’m completely ignorant of what’s going on; the Liberals want transparency on political donations while the NDP and Greens vow some form of sweeping reforms to limit donations and I am well aware the parties all have different stances on individual projects such as the Site C dam project and the Kinder Morgan pipeline. While these projects are no doubt important, they don’t really touch on the broader issues at play in the province.
When MLAs (from any riding) or the party leaders are asked about the issues, responses quickly turn to putting emphasis on anything ranging from jobs, the economy, health care, the environment, seniors’ care, resource extraction or whatever most appeals to the group being courted at the time.
To roughly echo what a former political science teacher stated on the CBC this week, there’s been very little in-depth discussion or delineation of what the candidates or parties plan to do to deliver results on many of these complicated and difficult issues.
Simply throwing money at any of these issues isn’t necessarily going to work and the outcomes will depend heavily on how the money is going to be utilized.
There’s still plenty of time to get a better understanding of how the parties and candidates plan to tackle these issues with several weeks left that will, I’m sure, feature much more election news, interviews, all candidate forums and more. Let’s hope we start getting more in-depth discussions on a vision for the future of B.C. and less finger pointing and mudslinging.
After the Trump’s health care plan failed, he said: “nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.” Without the B.C.parties and candidates providing a deeper explanation of their future plans, I’m a bit worried any of them could come back on any issue stating “who would have thought issue X was so complicated.”
Great, you think we should be doing better in “X”, now please tell us how you plan to do that. That way, voters can at least get an idea of your understanding of the issues. Although, based on the streeter this week, people may not believe any party will follow through on their promises anyways. On the other hand, maybe it’s time for some inward reflection and to start asking tougher questions.
