In an election campaign, an ambush can come from anywhere.
Let’s examine last week’s perpetrators, the Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation, which disingenuously “surveyed” the provincial parties to gauge their views on regional transportation issues.
The council then proceeded to release an NDP-smoocher of a report as part of its #CureCongestion campaign in the hope that the public would swallow the survey’s claim of spontaneity and non-partisanship.
Right.
The mayors long divined the parties’ views, of course. A Google search, followed by copy and paste, would have produced the results of the faux survey.
But timing is everything, and in releasing the five-star recommendation of BC NDP policy in the thick of the campaign, the mayors hoped voters would conclude it was time for a change in Victoria to get the loose change into more transit financing.
Most of our region’s mayors are not-too-subtle NDP avatars.
In devising this #CureCongestion survey as the election approached, the mayors knew the survey fix would be in for the BC Liberals. They were ready to feign aw-shucks surprise when everyone and his dog suggested an endorsement of a John Horgan premiership.
When asked, our mayor indicated it appeared that way but that he was going to spend more time analyzing the results in the days ahead as more information became available from the campaign – rather like asking “What doughnut?” as you lick icing sugar from your lips.
The only dissonant note for the NDP is the council’s grief that the New Democrats would follow their spendthrift ways and eliminate tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges. Why the upset? Simple: their own plans include an exhaustive and extensive new path to the public purse in the years ahead, something the NDP would in principle permit and the BC Liberals would fight. Rather than plan well and adjust local revenue and spending to accommodate what was evident more than a decade ago as transit imperatives – or at least working out a solution with senior governments as it formed the strategy, not after – the mayors chose instead to wait too long and then to launch into full-mooch mode.
Even so, mayors can be a persuasive bunch, and in the last federal campaign they got the Liberals to offer historically high financial support as part of a national infrastructure initiative. Now, though, they are like the marathoner who cramps up in the first half-hour of the 26-miler. They need some help to stay in the long race ahead, and while they might find their fortunes within their own strength, they seem to want to shift the remainder of the heavy run to the shoulders of Victoria or the public through a new form of taxation.
OK, so, we get it: campaigns call for tough tactics, and sometimes deviance and deception enter the equation. But it’s an excellent illustration of the true debate in this campaign over how we pay for what we need.
BC Liberals don’t want to confer additional powers of taxation on the region – at least, not without some sort of plebiscite. Premier Christy Clark was clear on that in discussions with our editorial board last week.
The NDP, meanwhile, wants to give the cities what they want – but perhaps inadvertently, they have thrown a wrench into the plan. They like what the council wants, but in promising to kill bridge tolls, it would be philosophically inconsistent to proceed in an NDP government with mobility pricing, something the cities clearly favour. Then again, no one said campaigns were about consistency.
We missed the opportunity for the right conversation at the right time, and we are trying to paper it over. The plan took too long and was overloaded and insufficiently financed. It will only become more expensive.
The election, like the issue that ambushed the Liberals, is about deciding between the deceptively easy road of writing cheques and the more difficult one of looking for more creative and less burdensome ways to find finances.
Seems an easy answer.
Kirk LaPointe is Business in Vancouver’s vice-president of audience and business development.
