A survey showing dissatisfaction with the state of health care and other issues 10 months before B.C.’s next election reveals openings for a “well-organized opposition” but governing New Democrats enjoy greater levels of trust to handle those issues.
UBC political scientist Stewart Prest offered this assessment in run-up to the provincial election scheduled for Oct. 19 following the release of a survey by Angus Reid that shows British Columbians give their provincial government poor marks when it comes to handling health care.
Whereas 63 per cent of British Columbians said in 2020 that government has done a good or very good job in handling health care, that number has dropped to 27 per cent in 2023.
The survey tracked dwindling health care satisfaction across the country, but nowhere was this drop — 36 per cent — more pronounced than in B.C., whose NDP government under former premier John Horgan enjoyed the highest approval rating in Canada when it came to handling health care in 2020.
The survey also reveals broad, declining dissatisfaction with the way provincial governments across Canada including B.C. have handled issues such as housing and cost-of-living.
Prest said the findings of the survey are surprising because they show a disconnect between the satisfaction of British Columbians with the provincial government on theses crucial issues and their voting intentions.
Several polls released in late 2023 show New Democrats under Premier David Eby with commanding leads across the province, especially in provincial populations centres like Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island.
So why would people plan to vote for a government which they criticize?
Prest points to different possible interpretations. Voters might be dissatisfied with the state of health care in general, but are not specifically blaming the current NDP government under Eby, he said, noting that health care also has a federal dimension.
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“Another (interpretation) is…voters still remain confident that the NDP is the best option to deal with those challenges, better than BC United, better than BC Conservatives, that they continue to trust the NDP more on issues of health care and issues of affordability than they would trust those right-of-centre parties.”
Prest added that on health care “left-to-centre parties in general, the NDP in particular, tends to be the one that voters are more willing to trust.”
How long that trust will last is what Prest called the “million-dollar-question” in noting the “seeming disarray” on the right of the political spectrum.
“(BC United) really seems to have stumbled in the wake of the name change, alienating some part of their voter base in opening up a vulnerability to the BC Conservatives,” Prest said. While that party not positioned itself to compete for power in the province, “it certainly has positioned itself effectively for owning the right side of the political spectrum,” Prest said.
This has created an interesting dynamic, he added. “If there was an opposition really firing on all cylinders that could speak to centrist and right-of-centre voters in the province, I think the NDP would be much less comfortable than they are.”
But for Prest, it is not a simple case of uniting the right.
“The reality is, they (BC United, Conservative Party of BC) are speaking to different voting groups and it’s not clear that they can work together,” Prest said.
He added that the right side of the political spectrum in Canada as a whole has divided itself into populists stressing cultural issues and their opposition to climate change policies and more centre-of-the-road voters, who might be conservatives when it comes to fiscal issues, but are still looking for “progressive” social action on a number of issues.
“So that’s a huge divide and I don’t know that there’s any single party that can reverse that right now,” he said. That division represents a structural advantage for the NDP, he added.
Prest also does not foresee a scenario that sees the NDP outcompeted on specific policy, pointing to housing.
“To some extent…it’s actually hard to imagine a basket of policies that go beyond what the NDP is currently doing on housing,” he said. “They are producing a series of pretty radical changes that are going to take some time to play out. So it’s really hard to outbid the NDP on an issue like housing and on issues of affordability.”
@wolfgangdepner
wolfgang.depner@blackpress.ca
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