“[Eby] may remain premier, but not because British Columbians want him there.” 

“Because [of] the Opium War… Chinese Canadians are very scared of the negative impact of drugs.” 

“The NDP was brought to its knees by a BC Conservative party it argued was full of racist, homophobic, science-denying whackos, unfit to even run for public office, let alone hold it. Turns out, not everyone sees the world through the lens of moral superiority that New Democrats do.”

All of these explanations may have elements of truth. But they all rely much more heavily on truthiness. 

Part of this is the way we consume news these days. Everything needs an instant reaction. Everything needs immediate analysis. But the reality is that these things take time to dig down into. If the Conservatives end up with 150 more votes spread across two ridings, they’ll have a majority. Would those extra 150 votes fundamentally change your analysis about the will of the voters? 

Well, not if you're Rob Shaw: 

“But we already know the bottom line: David Eby lost this election, even if he won.” 

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Some of the pundits amongst us are blessed with the rare ability to read the will of the voters, regardless of how people actually vote! If only I were so lucky. 

But this question is serious. Voting day is just a snapshot in time. We don’t know exactly why each individual person voted. That doesn’t mean that elections are irrelevant. But it does mean that it’s a lot trickier to unleash accurate takes about why people voted the way they did.   

So what were the real takeaways from the election?

1. Land doesn’t vote, but lots of empty land around you can make your vote look way more important. Especially compared to the votes of those pesky city folks.

2. Despite all the negative press about the NDP’s significant new housing changes, the areas most affected were still dominated by the NDP.

   1. This includes all five Burnaby ridings, where the city just ignored the province’s second deadline to implement upzoning near transit stations. 

   2. This was even notable in wealthier ridings that currently lack housing options (like Kitsilano & Oak Bay).

3. Drug policy didn’t seem to be an issue for the NDP anywhere near the DTES, but it was reportedly significant in Richmond. Interestingly, Richmond had amongst the lowest overdoses per capita of any Metro Vancouver city in 2023. 

   

4. The age-old trick of promising brand new infrastructure looks like it was successful. But there hasn’t been much (or any?) analysis of the electoral effect of these commitments. Why? There’s nothing ideological about people wanting new infrastructure. The pundit takes-economy thrives on broad and conclusive statements about what people think and believe. It’s not as fun to say that “the Conservatives nearly won the election by effectively targeting spending promises in electorally valuable areas.” 

   1. Were voters in the Surrey-Panorama & Surrey-Newton ridings influenced by the uncosted promise to extend the Skytrain to Newton?

   2. What about the, again, uncosted promise to build a new children’s hospital in Surrey? Or the promise1 to expand the Patullo Bridge to six lanes?

   3. In Maple Ridge East, Bob D’Eith and the NDP are currently losing by ~300 votes. How big of a factor was the Conservative’s promise to expand Mission Memorial Hospital with a new maternity ward?

   4. Did voters in the Fraser Valley want privatized healthcare? Or did they just want their nearby hospital to stop closing down once a week? 

I’m not saying that Elections are all about new spending promises. But they absolutely do matter! It’s crazy how quickly everyone’s moved on to discussing ideology and crime and drugs and the “moral superiority” of the NDP without first digging into any of these huge spending promises and their potential effects. 

Elections are critically important. But understanding them and why people vote the way they do takes patience. You can’t just stand up on a soapbox partway through the counting of votes and make broad, definitive statements on which ideas WON, and which ones LOST. That’s just not the way our democracy is set up. I’m sorry if that makes your punditry a little more difficult. 

It’s enough for an election to just happen. It doesn’t have to mean something definitive about the human race. I’m as guilty as anyone of throwing wild takes out there, but the media has a responsibility to be better than random private citizens. Especially compared to an anonymous blogger with a goofy George Carlin profile pic. 

Ultimately, when the media gets into these kinds of proclamations, they promote baseless criticisms of whichever ideas lost (according to them), without ever stopping to consider why they, as pundits, have been granted this divine gift to read the will of the people. 

All I’m asking for is a little patience. Is that really so crazy?

“If BC had a government that took economic growth seriously, we’d have over $10 billion more per year for the services we need – at no cost to taxpayers.” 

The BC Conservatives are nothing if not serious. To suggest otherwise would be condescending. 

You might be going crazy reading some of the recent BC Conservative platform analysis. These numbers don’t even pass the smell test:

These listed estimates total $3.1B not $2.3B! They’re also mixing together spending from different years. I’m not even trying to criticize Global News here. There’s no actual cost breakdown of the deficit in the Conservative platform, or the appendix of their platform. What we have there is more of a concept of a plan. A vague notion of common sense change that hasn’t quite materialized into anything more than a catchy slogan.

In the absence of all this critical financial information from a political party attempting to lead a province of 5 million people in three days, I have spent a ridiculous amount of time calculating my own estimates based on the limited information they did provide.

The current government’s projected deficit for 2025/26 is $6.7B1. I believe the Conservatives are starting instead with the ~$9B NDP deficit for 2024/25. From there, they have about $1.5B in new expenses in 2025/26. That gets you to the widely reported “deficit forecast of nearing $11 billion” for 2025/26. After combing through way too many press releases, government documents, and political platforms last night — I’m pretty sure that’s how they got there. 

The issue is that when you add up the expenses that they explicitly listed out in the appendix of their platform, as I did below, it adds up to ~$4.3B over the two years. That’s almost double what they even listed out at the beginning of the costing! 

“Common Sense Change for BC calls for new additions to BC’s operating budget that total $2.3 billion across Budget 2025 and Budget 2026”

So they can’t do basic math. That’s okay. We all have those moments. Especially late at night when you’re cramming to finish that project you promised your boss last week (at the latest). 

What gets a little more nefarious is that this “costing” fails to include any of the significant tax cuts that the Conservatives have proposed. The Cons assumed that "eliminating the Carbon Tax" would “return $3B to British Columbians” in 2025. Just to keep things simple, let’s assume the same exact number for 2026/27. 

What we end up with here is a net increase to the deficit of $11.3B in just the next two years. That’s nearly five times as much as the $2.3B they listed out in the appendix of their platform. 

That would bring the deficit to ~$13.5B in 2025/26, and $13.1B in 2026/27. That’s a bit of a problem, especially considering they’ve committed to a rule that requires them to have a referendum whenever they want to institute a new tax. 

Out of simplicity and time, I’m excluding a lot of their other significant “commitments” that simply weren’t costed at all:

• “Build a new Children's Hospital in Surrey, provide Eagle Ridge Hospital with its first MRI machine, expand the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital with a new tower and cath lab, construct a new patient care tower at UHNBC, expand Mission Memorial Hospital with a new maternity ward.

• Extend SkyTrain to Newton in Surrey, commit to a new bridge across Okanagan Lake, commit to a new Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, expand the new Patullo Bridge to six lanes as soon as possible, expand Hwy 1 to six lanes to Chilliwack, rebuild Highway 19 in Nanaimo, rebuild the Red Bridge in Kamloops, replace the aging Taylor Bridge across the Peace River”

So, not only are they predicted to have significantly higher deficits than the NDP, but those projections don’t even include the cost of all the new hospitals, Skytrain, highways, and bridges they've “promised” in their platform.

Obviously, they’ll just end up cutting lots of programs instead. Which ones, you may ask? Well, don’t expect answers anytime soon. 

Aside from this basic budget malpractice for the “costing” of new expenses, the whole Conservative plan to eliminate the deficit relies on ridiculous assumptions about economic growth. 

The Cons argue that they will never have to raise taxes because they’ve decided to start taking economic growth seriously. Despite cutting $4B in taxes annually, the Conservatives project that this commitment to seriousness will generate an extra $10B in government revenue for them in 2030. 

The Cons “generously” assumed the NDP would have a significantly lower growth rate than them (3.1% vs. 5.4%). I found this a tad ironic, since the NDP have had consistently higher growth rates (by nominal or real GDP) than Rustad did when he was in government with the BC Liberals. In fact, the only year that the NDP grew less than 3.9% was when the Covid pandemic started in 2020. So it’s a little disingenuous to say that the 3.1% average nominal GDP growth rate is “significantly higher” than what the NDP have achieved in recent years. Especially since the last three years had nominal growth rates of 3.7%, 11%, and 15.8%, respectively. 

You may think this is stupid. Does it really make sense to compare based on nominal GDP at a time when inflation was surging? Good point, person in the peanut gallery. Well the average real GDP growth rate since the NDP have been in power has also been higher than when Rustad was in government. And that includes the unprecedented Covid economic hit in 2020. 

Now, personally, I think this hyper-focus on top-level deficit numbers is a little outdated. It's way more meaningful to compare debt-to-GDP levels (of which BC is still amongst the lowest in Canada). That being said, lying still matters! Especially when you're lying about billions of dollars.

When you dig into the serious common sense change economic policies of the Cons, you see the world for what it could be, rather than what it is. You too can free yourself from the shackles of reality, ideology, and facts and embrace what could be. Then — and only then — can you set yourself free.