As they settle into the unfamiliar – for them, anyway – role of Official Opposition, the B.C. Liberals are slowly starting to figure what issues may or may not work for them.
The party caucus has hit upon a few policy areas during the daily Question Period that they raise consistently and with some effect. One of them is the new payroll health tax, while the other is the anti-pipeline debate.
Both issues play well with the party’s supporters and provide a nice wedge between them and the NDP. The vast majority of small business owners – a major component of Liberal support – are likely upset about the new payroll tax, since it will inflict significant financial pain on their bottom line as the tax can add up to thousands of dollars.
The B.C. Liberals have been compiling a list of businesses and how much tax they will have to pay. It allows them to present a stark choice in front of Finance Minister Carol James every day in QP.
The refrain is along the lines of “should this business lay people off or raise prices” to pay the tax. James likes to boast about scrapping MSP premiums, but replacing them with this new payoll tax gives the B.C. Liberals some big ammunition.
And the anti-pipeline debate allows the Liberals to constantly require the NDP government to cast their lot with the activist protest crowd, creating a message and image Premier John Horgan has been trying to avoid acquiring. As the anti-pipeline protests start to heat up, and people are arrested for chaining themselves to fences and the like, it will be in the B.C. Liberals’ political interests to tie those actions to NDP cabinet ministers who support them.
It is one thing to be opposed to the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, but it can become problematic for a sitting government to be seen as being closely allied with a U.S.-funded protest movement.
However, other issues simply do not work for the B.C. Liberals, and when they try to raise them they fall flat on their faces.
Chief among them are education funding and ICBC. The B.C. Liberals lack credibility on either issue, as their track record on both issues when they were in power is abysmal.
The party fought school districts and the teachers' union constantly and ultimately lost a Supreme Court ruling that required the refunding of hundreds of million dollars for the school system.
When the B.C. Liberals now try to attack Education Minister Rob Fleming during question period when it comes to funding – as they did several times last week – they simply allow Fleming to throw their 16 years of underfunding right back at them.
Education has become a no-go zone for the B.C. Liberals, as ICBC. Even with significant car insurance rate hikes likely in the offing, it will be hard for the Liberals to tar the NDP with them since the Crown Corporation’s finances were run into the ground on their watch.
The same can almost be said about B.C. Hydro. When the B.C. Utilities Commission denied B.C. Hydro’s request to freeze electricity rates for a year, all the B.C. Liberals could offer in response was a rather mild rebuke that this meant the NDP could not keep a campaign promise to freeze rates.
The reason the freeze was denied was because B.C. Hydro’s bottom line, after the B.C. Liberals managed it for so many years, is not healthy and so a freeze is simply unaffordable.
Still, the NDP government can take some criticism here as well, since it too will drain B.C. Hydro of more than $700 million in the coming fiscal year. If that money wasn’t taken, the BCUC may well have improved the freeze, but the B.C. Liberals did precisely the same thing for years, so it’s hard for them to condemn the NDP for following suit.
So, the B.C. Liberals would be wise to stick to things like that payroll health tax and trying to push the NDP into the environmental protest camp.
Attempting to pretend to have clean hands and credibility on a bunch of other areas is almost impossible after 16 years of running the very things they now criticize.
Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.
