The extremely closely contested provincial election in British Columbia illustrates both the rise of conservatism and the peculiar tenacity of the leftist New Democratic Party in B.C.
The trend to the responsible right is general in the Western world and is the appropriate response to the wokeness, fiscal irresponsibility, muddled view of the collective, and individual national interest of the Western nations. It denotes an entirely understandable rising boredom with the platitudes of supposedly post-national human brotherhood, as well as the exaggerated claims and extremist techniques of environmental extremism.
But B.C.’s imperishable susceptibility to the call of a leftist party has a source that is a little harder to identify. Because it is such a beautiful place, and Vancouver and some other cities are wedged picturesquely between the ocean and the mountains—a majestic situation reminiscent of Naples, Sydney, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, and other magnificent port cities—there is perhaps a larger than-is-justified weakness for taking seriously overzealous claims about what it takes to protect the province’s natural beauty. It may have something to do with the fact that the post-Cold War militancy of the environmental movement is traceable to its effective takeover from authentic conservationists by the militant international left, defeated in the Cold War but tactically regrouped with great skill of improvisation to attack capitalism from the new angle of ecology in the name of defending the planet.
Because British Columbia is also primarily an economy of resource extraction, chiefly base metals and forest products, the labour movement is, by Canadian standards, unusually strong, and has no trouble making common cause with the academic and theoretical preoccupation with the environment—as long as the unionized mining and forestry industry workers can translate their environmental concern into more pay for less work. In this conception, less work is less spoliation of the environment, and B.C. makes a unique laboratory for the competition between enlightened capitalism and the unstable alliance between militant environmentalism and a labour movement claiming a right to be paid more while helping to preserve the environment by doing less.
The combination of finding every conceivable environmental reason for delaying the extraction and export of B.C.’s resources and frustrating the whole province in guilt-ridden deference to the indigenous peoples, and thus obstructing almost every development project based on more sophisticated land use, has consistently retarded the economic progress of the province. That and other policy nostrums have made B.C. a notorious and failed laboratory for woke and politically correct behaviour. The experiment with unfettered marijuana distribution has been a disaster. The attempt to treat hard drug addicts by a system of voluntary gradualism has also been a disaster. Only the fact that it is such a naturally splendid place could possibly explain the extent of public indulgence in stupid and destructive policies.
From the perspective of the federal Conservative Party, however this provincial election turns out, the news is relatively good: it means that the Conservatives should be well ahead of the Liberals in federal MPs from B.C. in the next election, and whatever the NDP can preserve in that election should accelerate the Conservatives on their way to being the governing party in the succeeding Parliament.
Additionally, whether the NDP ends up having won this election or not, with or without the collaboration of the two Green MP’s who have been elected, the party has suffered a serious setback from its previous position, and the emerging trend incites and justifies some optimism that British Columbia is at least proceeding towards a return to its political senses.
