Powers that Be: The NDP has no vision for this province

Maya Tommasi (she/her) writes Powers that Be, a column covering political ideas. She is a third-year political science student and holds a previous degree in psychology. Her email is m.tommasi@ubyssey.ca.

Every morning before getting to school I walk down Davie Street to reach the bus. A few weeks ago, I noticed two restaurants seemed to have gone out of business.

B.C. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey started her Feb. 17 budget speech honouring the Tumbler Ridge victims and reminding us of Trump’s trade war. It should be clear to anyone that these are not normal times. It seems that there is something deeply wrong with the state of the world.

Bailey’s speech acknowledged this. In the buildup to the budget, although the B.C. NDP said it wouldn’t make cuts to health care and education, some sort of austerity seemed to be coming. For a government that has consistently adopted right-wing framings on mental health, immigration and drug law, perhaps it was time for the austerity pivot. In all honesty, when Bailey foreshadowed being “the least popular person in the province,” I was reminded of former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her fiscal hawkishness. The thing about Thatcher, though, is that she still had strong supporters. This pseudo-austerity budget does not even have that going for it — it’s as if it were strategically assembled to annoy literally every British Columbian. Want a lower deficit? No job cuts to the public sector? New capital investments? Tax cuts? Tax increases on the rich? It’s a ‘no’ on all those fronts.

The situation is no better if you dig into issues that affect post-secondary students. International student permit cuts mean universities lose substantial funding. Tuition will continue to rise, and services will be fewer and farther between. The provincial government could have given us a lifeline. This is their jurisdiction, and education, after all, was one of their focuses. We didn’t get anything. Instead, we need to brace ourselves for a more expensive but lower-quality education. The pressure now falls entirely on our university administrators.

Housing will also see no real change. Yes, the budget includes an increase in the vacant homes tax — but this isn’t likely to be a silver bullet for the housing crisis. More likely, it just slightly reduces the deficit growth like their other tweaks to taxation, while providing little in the way of material improvement. There was also no announcement targeted at youth employment opportunities.

Health care (the other priority) also saw little change. The government paused the construction of the Burnaby hospital and retirement homes. Despite mental health contributing to two of the most tragic days in our province’s history in the last year, the budget gave us only a slight increase in appropriations for involuntary care — the most fascist of all health care.

In a moment of crisis, most of us expect bold leadership. Especially when leaders like B.C. Premier David Eby and Bailey are pointing to extraordinary circumstances like the economic one created by Trump’s tariffs. And though this government’s economic mismanagement seems to have preceded any tariff-induced crisis, a crisis narrative is appropriate. Not only are we seeing the global rise of far-right extremism, the crumbling of the global order, rampant imperialism, genocide and economic crisis — we are not doing that much better provincially. The British Columbian right-wing — a once dominant, centrist group — has given way to a much more radical bunch. The B.C. Conservatives, whose future is somewhat uncertain, brought together conspiracists and bigots who were not often seen before in B.C. — the hateful clowns from OneBC descended upon our very campus a few weeks back.

I hope the NDP knows their 2024 victory was less an NDP success and more a rejection of the alternative. Eby did not exactly inspire voters in the last election; he is not the most popular Canadian premier. John Rustad probably would have won had the B.C. Conservatives been less marred in controversy.

My fear is that by failing to inspire British Columbians, the NDP opens the door to extremist forces who could form a government that would be genuinely catastrophic for many. Not least those like myself, who need access to politicized but lifesaving health care. The NDP isn’t going to advocate for transformative politics any time soon. Even with John Horgan’s more fiscally responsible government, the NDP was still siding with oil interests over Indigenous peoples, opposed climate activists, and — my personal pet peeve — did not extend free health care to international students despite doing so for most other residents.

Bold politics are not exclusive to the left. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech was not only bold, but it also reverberated across the globe. Domestically, since the speech, the Liberals have risen in the polls. Canadians have an appetite for this type of politics. Ironically, Carney’s vision for the country is pretty close to what Eby’s might be. The difference between them, though, is that Carney actually has a political vision, while Eby seems to lack one.

At Davos, Carney managed something not many politicians manage to do — escaping the allure of inoffensiveness. Minimizing your chance of alienating part of the electorate is an everyday political calculation. One way to do this is to avoid unnecessary controversy — plastering over points of division to the point where any coherent message is impossible. The consequence is the blandest, most uninspiring form of politics. It leads to a lack of political vision, which allowed us to sleepwalk into our current political predicament.

Perhaps it came from not being a longtime politician, or perhaps it is something special about the man, but Carney seems to escape both blandness and needless polarization. To the appreciation of the masses (although not uncharismatic), Carney’s vision makes him appealing to so many Canadians. Eby could learn from that.

Carney is far from the only politician who is gaining a following outside the fasciosphere. Last year saw the rise of New York City’s Zohran Mamdani and the England and Wales Greens’ Zach Polanski. Crucially, both eschewed the traditional political blandness and, with a wave of political excitement, have shown formidable success, at the expense less inspiring left-of-centre politicians. Strong political leadership doesn’t have to come from the outside, as Carney showed. One thing is certain: even in B.C.’s political climate, it is still possible to inspire and have success. It just requires political leadership. We need actual governance when it comes to the future of our province, not least in education and health care.

The prospect of long-term outsider change is exciting. It seems like it is more likely to deliver transformative political change. But its impact is not certain, and might take a while. If we are to keep right-wing extremists at bay, we need bold leadership. Federally, Carney showed this was possible. When he came to power, the Liberals had already governed for almost 10 years, having lost a clear political vision. The cost was a rising Conservative party flirting with dangerous extremism. By demonstrating a vision (even if one I don’t always agree with), Carney changed that. The B.C. NDP had a chance to do that with this budget. Instead, we got something deeply uninspiring.

Our next provincial election might still be years away. Until then, we are stuck with what we have. The Canadian left talks about insufficient Democratic party leadership in the south; perhaps it's time we make our dissatisfaction known when the same brand of politics is done here. I would like to imagine politics can be better and not just stuffed with politicians seemingly just going through the motions, doing the bare minimum to stay in power.

Hopefully, in a few years, when I walk down the streets of Davie, I won’t see a revolving door of generic businesses opening and closing every month or so. Instead, I might be greeting establishments on the road to becoming as iconic as the Junction, Numbers, or the Fountainhead. For that to happen, we need a functioning politics and economy.