258. Rob Shaw: Is David Eby’s Government Failing?

Journalist Rob Shaw joins to examine David Eby, British Columbia’s deficit, DRIPA, drug decriminalization, media bias, foreign interference, the future of the B.C. Conservatives, and the growing conflict over taxes, debt, generational wealth, and whether the NDP can regain public trust with host Aaron Pete.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

David Eby's approval has fallen to 27%. Is his government failing? It's close. I think it's on the edge. Would you use the term radical to describe any of the NDP's policies right now?

SPEAKER_00 0:14

You could call the drug decriminalization radical because I think the term is sort of centered around the idea that it's something new, it's untested, it's unproven, we're taking a flyer on it, we're way out there on a limb on it.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

I'm hearing from lots of reports that David E. B is on his way out.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

I think he has to the end of the year to try and get a hold of the situation. And that's going to involve landing Dripa, ending the free fall in his popularity, and bringing some uptick to that, prosecuting the conservatives in some way that lands with the public, and getting a vision that his team can get behind. Some plan. What are we here for?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Is British Columbia going broke? Rob Shaw, thank you very much for joining us today. I'm very excited to chat with you about all things British Columbia and beyond. But would you mind first briefly introducing yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Sure. My name is Rob. I cover politics at the BC legislature wearing different hats these days. I report on TV for Czech TV. I do some columns for business in Vancouver. I do some columns for the website called the Northern Beat. And I do a bunch of other stuff. I host Political Capital, which is a weekly political show, and Political Capital Daily, which is a daily podcast, and a bunch of other commentary and different things in this crazy media landscape that we live in now, where um you just gotta kind of do as many things as you possibly can because it's changing all the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

A hundred percent. Uh by the time this airs, I'm sure a lot will have happened since then. Before the television appearances, the columns, and insider access, I'm just curious, what convinced you that journalism and specifically political journalism was something you wanted to devote a lot of your life to?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Yeah, I don't really have a big interest in political journalism, to be honest with you. I uh I started in my hometown of Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, uh doing a co-op term in high school at the Ladysmith Chronicle, this tiny little two-person newsroom community paper in Ladysmith. And there's a great editor there named John McKinley, and he let me write some stories and using his red pen, he showed me how to write uh a news story. And I remember getting on the front page with a story about the postal code changing in Ladysmith. Huge. People were like, What are we gonna have more than one postal code? They were all worked up about it. And I kind of got hooked a little bit on that. And um, you know, the the small community paper of Ladysmith was like um the bulletin board for the community. It was filled with pictures of people and their thoughts and their stories and the review of the play at the high school and the sports, and uh everyone read it and it was in the coffee shops. And um I just got hooked. My other path, I was gonna do computer science because I had I had been raised in high, I was in high school just as kind of computers were taken off and you know, writing the first HTML and stuff like that. Uh, and I went down the uh journalism path. I there's a different version of me in the multiverse who went into tech early on and maybe designed some killer app whose uh not whose do whose backdrop is the Bahamas uh and not this bookshelf. But um I I loved the idea of it. I grew up in a household where my parents had like four newspaper subscriptions. And um I was really lucky to be able to chase down that dream of of doing it. Now, had I known that it would change so much, would I have done it the same? I I probably, but at the time, um it was just an incredible kind of feeling to be able to to have your name and tell a story and kind of be part of everyone talking about it in the community.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Sorry, what do you mean something something changed from your perspective? Like what what it is now from what it was? What is that?

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Well, the industry kind of collapsed, you know. Um I always feel like throughout my career, and I've been doing this for more than 20 years now, um, like just always at the verge of some sort of change. When I started, they were just kind of moving to pagination of of newspapers on computers. And then they were just moving to sort of like uh digital photography. I was still using a film camera when I started at the Ladies McCronicle, and then just and then everything just kept changing and the layoffs began and the classified collapsed and the papers started to shrink. And, you know, by the time I joined the Vancouver Sun, it was like the just the last part of the paper when it had the big name on the top of the tower in downtown Vancouver, and they were still in the tower, and then that they moved. And so it's it's always been like I'm I can see what the profession used to be like, you know, the glamorous stories of the people with the fedoras and the smoking at their desk and the bottle whiskey in their drawer and the incredible hard-nosed um, you know, and and I just missed it by that much. And uh the whole career has kind of been watching the industry shift and change, and um it's it's it's been a wild ride.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Why provincial politics over federal politics?

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah, well again, I just I don't I didn't really have any drive to be a political journalist or columnist. I was at the Victoria Times colonist. I'd finished uh journalism school and I'd come home to the Times colonist, and I was covering police and I was covering military, and I'd actually gone to Afghanistan uh war reporting, and I was my mind was blown. And I was sitting there um and another journalist at the award-winning Times Colonist Legislature Bureau uh left the profession. And they had just that bureau had just been nominated, uh, and I think they won uh were nominated for a Missioner Award for covering the the poor state of indigenous housing on the island. And the reporter left, and I thought, well, this is an interesting beat. That was back when you had beats. There was a court beat, there was a politics beat, there was a city hall beat, and so I went down uh to do the legislature, and uh I've sort of been there in different um incarnations uh ever since. But I did not set out to cover politics. I don't the naked art of politics, like the backroom politics, does really nothing for me. The great part of covering politics is because the government touches everything. And one day you're writing about pipelines, and one day you're writing about agricultural land, and one day you're writing about solar panels, and then you're writing about justice reform, and then you're writing about um, you know, procurement, and it's just like children's uh funding. It just goes, it's in it's it's incredible. And that is the part that is interesting. The sort of like backroom shenanigans, um, they have their place, but I don't I I don't know if the public cares as much, and it's hard to be motivated by that. It's better, it's easier to be motivated by the government. It touches every part of your life, it has a massive amount of money, it collects your taxes, how is it spending it, hold it to account?

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Um that is much more rewarding than political skullduggery, which is it's probably not a term, but in 2010, you and Luis Dick Dickens Dixon and Lindsay uh Kines visited 10 BC courthouses and found that supposedly public information was routinely withheld, that access rules changed from courthouse to courthouse, and that fees, understaffing, and poor training were effectively creating secrecy without any government publicly ordering it. How did you end up finding that story?

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Well, that was a frustration because you'd be I'd be doing police reporting and I'd show up to the courthouse and I'd ask to see like a search warrant, which is supposed to be public, and yet depending on the clerk you got at the front counter and the time of day and their temperament, you could be told no or yes. And I remember thinking that doesn't that's not how public records are supposed to uh work. And other colleagues had the same problems, and um it felt like the access that the public should have to the court system, which is very complicated and intimidating, wasn't there. So we went set about uh Louise was the court reporter, and we just set about going out to the different courthouses and asking for public things, search warrants and uh documents you should be able to have and things that are supposed to be there. And we just recorded who said no and who said yes, and then took it to the government and said, doesn't make any sense. And they brought in some new policies. And it was kind of born out of the frustration of the bureaucracy of government. Anyone who's probably had that experience, you're going to get your fishing license and you haven't put the right box in and someone says no, but someone else might say yes, but you didn't have the form in triplicate, and also you didn't put it in the mail, and you're just like, uh. So that was kind of the the impetus behind it, but um, it was a fun story to do.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Do you think that that issue exists more broadly across government?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. I think the bureaucracy of government is the bane of a lot of taxpayers uh who have to fill out their forms, their taxes, their homeowner grants, um, the speculation vacancy tax, all these sort of things they have to do. You need to get an answer from government on a permit to uh drill a well, you need to do this and that, and you end up in just like red tape hell. And uh, you know, that's one of the uh things we're supposed to do in the profession is sort of act on behalf of the public and kick the tires of government and say you're not helping uh the public in the way that they're supposed to be helped. So I'm I imagine I haven't checked in the courthouse recently, but I imagine the problem still exists, which is kind of depressing to think about, but uh it probably still does.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

You also co-wrote a book about how overconfidence contributed to the collapse of Christy Clark's government. Are you seeing those same warning signs in David Eby's government today?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Um You know, every not quite the same, but every government around 10 years, give or take, um, starts to hit a sort of sniff test of the public, uh, kind of going, there's a lot of baggage behind whoever is in power here. They made a lot of decisions. It's harder to blame your predecessors when you've been in power for that long. Uh and people kind of get more interested in change. And we saw that federally, the federal liberals managed to get around it by putting in a new leader, Mark Carney, and getting a new fresh coat of paint on it. But um, David Eby's been in power now for, you know, the better part of four or five years, so that's it's harder for him. Um governments just become intracted. They've made so many changes, they've put in so many policies, they can't reverse anything anymore because it was their policy, and they don't want to look like they're uh reversing themselves. And and eventually people just kind of want another try. And is it either a new leader or a new party or something like that? So it's not the same. You know, the liberals at the very end were very mean-spirited. The stories we were writing about the liberals at the end of their government going after uh single mothers on income assistance for, you know, uh pregnancy benefits and going after disabled people for their bus passes to save a couple hundred dollars here and there uh to pinch pennies to balance the budget. There were there was some mean, meanness that people picked up on in the final stage. And and I don't think they feel the same way about the NDP right now, but they it the polls seem to suggest they're frustrated about topics, um, and that may be just as powerful as as whatever the liberals were facing.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Can I ask? And this is uh like a just a reflection I have, I'm sure you've seen there's a lot of criticisms about the drug policy of the NDP, because that likely did contribute. I think if correct me if I'm mistaken, contribute to like more people died due to drug deaths during the NDP's leadership than previous. And so you might say that there are reasons for that beyond just the the policy of safe supply, but that killed a lot of people. When you look at how how are we the people supposed to measure these things? Because I I hear your point about Christy Clark going after single mothers, but then you think of this policy where people died as a consequence, but not like directly. It's not like David Eby was giving people directly the drug, like it's a consequence of the general philosophy of the policy. How do you hold a government accountable for something where you can say like it wasn't directly his decision? How do you digest those differences?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

It's very frustrating. I just wrote about this a couple of weeks ago with the uh toxic drug death numbers are coming down. And the question to government was why? Like, explain to us why. And the answer back is not satisfactory. They don't they don't really know. And they don't really know why they went down, and and people speculate why they went up. Uh, it could it be the policies that were put in place, uh decriminalization, expanded safe supply uh that started during COVID, where people could take it from pharmacies home and then it became an underground drug source. Um you know, like it looks like those things contributed, but I'm amazed on drug policy, the lack of scientific study and evidence. Some people will point to some studies, but the government policies haven't been studied. They w the metrics weren't there when they brought them in. The dashboards they promised the federal government on decriminalization never materialized the way they thought. They haven't produced the studies on the impact of diversion on safe supply that they said they would. Just like this giant gaping hole of understanding on one of, as you put it, like one of the, I think, biggest public health crises of our time. And it's very frustrating. And um for a while the coroner's service took a stab at like trying to explain it. It doesn't do that anymore. And in the absence of that, it's it's very hard to explain. I think most people were triggered by the visible sight of the decriminalization policy allowing more public drug use and and they uh the public got upset about that. Um and that provoked the backlash that forced the government to reverse that policy. But it it's such a long-standing, sad, tragic story that um I don't know if there's anyone out there who can write exactly why and if it's going to get better and why it's getting better now. And that's a that's a frustrating thing as a journalist to to face.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

What is the first sign of a governing party not listening to its citizens from your perspective?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Uh usually doing something and not reversing it is a sign. And I'll I guess I'll give this government credit that it does eventually reverse things. But governments get intracted by uh their um belief that they're right or this is a hard decision that they have to make, and they kind of double and triple down on it, and they dig a big hole and they can't get out of it, and then people just kind of throw them overboard. And I'll give John Horgan credit for being able to reverse things like the Royal BC Museum and read the wind, and I'll give David Eby credit for reversing things begrudgingly, like safe supply, decrim, the carbon tax, um, the clean BC plan on electric vehicle mandates, uh all sorts of things that uh when the public sentiment turns, he kind of turns with it. But um, you can only do it so many times before then people question what you stand for as well. And if you're constantly reversing things, um maybe you shouldn't have brought them in in the first place. And so it's a very thin line. But the arrogance and the um the belief. I I think another thing is when you start hearing a political party say that the reason to vote for them is because maybe they're not perfect, but the other guys are awful. They're good, they're just gonna run this province into the ground. You start to realize, well, that's not a that's not a hoped message, that's a fear message, you know, like we we suck, but the other guys suck more. And that's usually when you can tell a party's kind of running out of oxygen because they don't have any ideas. Like the ADP came into power on $10 a day childcare and eliminating the tolls on Metro Vancouver bridges and and UNDRIP and big ideas. Um now they go to election campaigns and they say the conservatives are Trumpian crazy people, you know, uh stick with us because they're worse. And that's not an inspiring, it's not an inspiring message, and it's usually a sign governments are kind of struggling.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Okay, this is the part where I want you to throw tomatoes at me. I'm curious. I don't know if you saw my recent take, um, but I saw Minister Mike Farnsworth uh made a post about the conservatives uh saying whose side are they on? And I was pretty critical of that. Some said I used the wrong, I think, language, but my criticism was once we start doing that, if you're not actually going to bring evidence of treason, which is basically tantamount to what that claim is, then we're not really engaging in good faith political discussions about which policy. I honestly don't know what you should do about the Trump tariffs. Do you capitulate or try and meet them where they're at, which we've done with the DST, uh, the digital sales tax and other uh things, or do we hard line and stay where we are and say we're not moving any further? I don't know what the right answer is, but the conservatives saying we want to kind of meet them where they're at and we're trying to diffuse the situation and we understand some things like our dairy management system aren't perfect, so we're gonna be more open-minded to their frustrations, doesn't seem like they're on the US's side. And I think that rhetoric to me is just dangerous. There's certain taboos I don't agree with. Going towards motive of you no longer represent the citizens that elected you, I think is a very dangerous motive to start to poke at. Am I incorrect? Am I crazy? What are your reflections? Throw tomatoes at me.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

No, I mean, I think that's a fair uh assessment. And I and I know we all have different lines of ridiculousness that we sometimes draw on the sand on on the language that politicians use, because it can get really ramped up. You know, on the opposition side, uh, they can call government corrupt and they can call, you know, they can attribute government policies to to killing people, and they can and and sometimes you stop and you go, oh man, that's not really helpful. Like that, that's a little too far. Uh, and government can do it too. One of the reasons they're ramped up the Trump language is because it pulls so well for them, because David E.B. was never more popular than during the beginning of the Trump tariffs when he started coming out with one-liners like Americans can have their watery beer and all and all that sort of stuff. And so whenever the NDP is in trouble, they kind of fall back on that messaging and they throw Trump in their opponents' faces and they say, look at you out supporting uh the the you know the American president. They did that in the last couple of sessions, too. So it's not new, but I understand at a certain point um what you're saying was it's not helpful, you know, and uh um politics is sometimes not helpful at all. It's uh uh so I don't begrudge your point uh at all. I think we all have different kinds of um lines when it comes to political discourse.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

When we talk about the NDP, I've had, I don't know if you know Sam Cooper on, who's talked about his concerns uh with the BC NDP's government. And I I just interviewed uh Kennedy Stewart, who's who said on the record that he believes there is a minister um based on his conversations with Cesus that is in power currently, that is accused of um working with the Chinese government. When you hear a story like that, how much time are you able to give to that? Because like I understand you're covering a lot. And as you described from the outset, there are a lot of different issues facing our province right now. But when you hear that, like, is there somebody dedicated to trying to figure that out in the legislature? Is there people focused on this? I'm just I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. So I'm just curious from your perspective, is that being covered adequately?

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Yeah, you know, it came up in this in the summer session, I believe, or it was the fall session. It came up recently in the House, this this sort of accusation from uh Kennedy Stewart. And I remember there was a couple days uh of questioning uh people in the hallway. Um, I believe Terry Young and George Chow got questions about this uh from the NDP side. There were questions to the Premier's office about do you know anything about this? There's questions in the house. Uh have you ever been aware? Has Cesus ever said anything? Has the RCMP ever said anything? Do you know? Have you ever been told? And you're sort of trying to parse all the answers and put it together. Uh, and it and we ended up uh you know with the premier's flat denial of it. Uh and uh that was kind of where it landed. So it it's tough because things move so quickly that it's harder than ever to spend weeks at a time. That's why we need um people who are outside to conduct longer investigations and people like Sam, um, because what we're doing at the legislature is trying to keep people up to date on everything that's happening, uh sometimes scandals, um, question period, ministers and their portfolios, the estimates, the budget, the throne speech, uh, and and you can't spend a month on that one story. Um, but it it was canvassed, and I it depends on how you feel about um the validity answers from the government, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

And how do you look at the validity of the answers of the government?

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Aaron Powell Yeah, you watch to see how definitive they are, because politicians love to use weasel words, you know, slide sideways and the and kind of give themselves openings to get out of it. And I think he uh Mr. EB was pretty definitive in uh and I have to go back and check, but in saying that I've never been told by Cesus that uh a a minister has um you know been open to foreign interference and I've asked. And he he was somewhat definitive in his language, uh, which is noteworthy. But um, you know, the the issue hasn't been uh brought up since then. And I know I know it's a live issue of foreign interference in government elections. I'm sure it's gonna come up in the next federal election. It'll probably come up in the next provincial election again, uh, and whether we have the right checks and balances to catch that.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

That also reminds me of what Sam Cooper said, which is that that is still uh potentially weasel words because from his perspective and from Kennedy Stewart, they'll never tell you definitively that Chinese foreign interference is happening and this person is influenced. They will provide guidance or say it looks to be, it could be, it may be, it and so they're not going to definitively say that. How much scrutiny do you think the government deserves on these types of things?

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yeah, I mean, I think if someone like Mr. Stewart is out saying it, it deserves to be asked to the government and answered. Uh, and then those two pieces sit there for people to look at and and try to understand. But um I I don't know if anyone is under foreign interference from the government. And we're a lot of us are reading Sam's stories and uh looking at his investigations and trying to to make sense of it. And uh I think the government owes a responsibility to explain itself and respond to any accusations, and then people look at the response and decide if it meets their test of of honesty and um and matches the moment.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Are you harder on the right than the left?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

No, I don't think so. I think there's a there's a well, there's a bunch of things around this question, uh, but I think there's a natural flow in politics to an opposition and a government. And it doesn't really matter who the parties are. They come and go and they change. I've covered an NDP opposition and a liberal opposition and a conservative opposition, uh, and you know, a liberal government and a and a uh new Democrat government. And the roles create the reporting that you see and the and the structure of the news that you cover. You know, an opposition opposes, it goes through the budget and finds problems and brings them forward. It has question period and raises cases, it uses um real people to highlight government programs and and uh problems. It and you end up in a um position where usually the government in power, whoever it is, eventually at a certain point feels like the media is out to get them because all the stories are about government didn't do this, government failed that, this report says government's no good, this like, and it and that's that's kind of the cycle. And the New Democrats used to think the media was so biased against them. I remember John Horgan going on rants after losing one of the elections, blaming uh the media company that I worked for, Can West, for being uh anti-New Democrat. And you know, uh like, you know, there is an old line in journalism that if everyone's mad at you, you you must be doing something wrong or something right, I guess. But um it's more the structure of of things that the opposition provides the material and the research and the and the fuel, and you cover that and you criticism of government, uh, and occasionally of opposition too, um, uh depending on what's going on. Uh, but uh it's it's just kind of the way things are.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

You described in 2024 the conservative movement as harder right. Would you describe the drug decriminalization process as hard left policy?

SPEAKER_00 25:56

I think it was a very progressive, we can call progressive or hard left. Um sure. Yeah, it was a progressive policy to try to reduce the stigma of drug use by allowing personal possession of small amounts in public places to uh encourage people to go for help. That was the government rationale of it, and it was a very progressive policy. No one else had done it. Um so whether you call that left or progressive or right and conservative to oppose it, um the you know, the terms are what they are, yes. But it was certainly left, uh I guess if you want to put it that way.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

It just seems like in its wording, hard right sounds scary. Progressive left sounds not so scary.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

That that's true, I guess. You know, conservatism scares some people and progressivism scares other people, but there are entire um groups that embrace that that terminology uh as their own. And uh I haven't heard an alternative for conservative.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Um but uh not conservative, just hard. Like hard right sounds hard right sounds extreme, alt-radically.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Yeah, no, that's I mean, that's fair. Hard left, far left, um would be fair, I think, on the drug on the drug issue for sure.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Uh would you use the term radical to describe any of the NDP's policies right now?

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Right now, or the ones that they I could you could call the drug uh decriminalization radical because I think the term is um it's sort of centered around the idea that it's something new, it's untested, it's unproven, we're taking a flyer on it, we're way out there on a limb on it. Uh and uh so yeah, I think the drug policies were radical. Trying to think of current policies. Um Yeah, I don't it's it's harder because they've moved so many of them back. We used to be the leader in EV mandates. We had the tightest timelines where we're gonna end the sale of uh fossil fuel-powered cars and ban it. And now we've kind of moved away from that. Our carbon emissions and our climate plan was more stringent than anyone else's, and we've moved away from that. Um, the government is less radical, if we want to call it that, than it was when it came in in 2017. Uh, even the Indigenous relations policies are slowly kind of being uh pushed a little bit back. So it's uh if if we want to correctly apply the term radical, the government started off with a bunch of radical stuff and it's um less radical now. It sounds like a ninja turtles thing, like radical and tubular, but it's not it's not that kind of radical, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

I guess I just ask because I really am trying to work this out for myself. It feels at times, from my perspective, that it's easier to be hard on conservatives because they don't come to the table with empathy the same way I find NDP people or liberals or left-leaning people do. Like when you hear, when I interview somebody on the left, they're like, well, we just want everybody to have everything they need, Aaron. Like that's that's what's motivating us. And they will drive us off a cliff in our economy with the best of intentions. And so it's really easy to give them like a lot of space mentally because, well, they're doing the best they can. Where conservatives are much more upfront. We can't afford to pay you for this. This is impossible, this is like unsustainable, this is unrealistic. And so it's kind of like, well, that doesn't sound like that much fun. And you don't sound like you're being a very nice person about this whole thing. And so it's easier to from my for even from my perspective to criticize conservatives because it's so there's no tie to empathy or no sell of like, you're a good person if you support this. And I wonder if you've had to grapple with any of that at all.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Well, not really because I and I I I think it's a cyclical thing. Like I remember covering Gordon Campbell. When I started at the legislature, Gordon Campbell was at his peak in the idea of fiscal discipline, not passing on debt to your grandchildren, uh, and and being responsible with the public's money. And every dime is a dime, and um, and not expanding social assistance and disability because uh that would discourage people from working in some cases, was the line from the liberals. Like there was a there was an unapologetic fiscal conservatism there that matched the moment of the time. And the New Democrats failed to win several elections in a row with a plan to do the opposite. The public wasn't there. They didn't want it, um, and and they weren't willing to vote for it. And possibly because of the 90s NDP government. So you see waves, right? We've gone through the NDP 90s government, we've gone through the the uh you know conservative liberal government, we've come through the now a new new Democratic government, and you do feel like the idea of fiscal discipline uh and balancing the budget and the deficit that we're in is is um picking more traction up with the public. And you and you it's like an elastic band, it it snaps the other way, and suddenly people are uh less ashamed uh to talk about the fact that there should be limits on government uh and its spending, even if that uh doesn't help people as much as they might want. It's it's it's this is an interesting cycle, I think, that I see that it feels like if you were to fall out of space and look at things right now, you might be able to kind of make the conclusion that um it's easier to pick on the conservatives. But uh like the conservatives will have their day. They've had it, they're gonna have it again, it's coming. It's everything is that that yin and that yang. It balances out. Uh, and there will be a period where the public has just had it with deficits, they've had it with debt, they value the change on that more than spending on new programs. And the discourse will change for many, many years. And then Democrats will be the one complaining. When did progressivism become a dirty word? When did helping people become a problem? When did using government's power for change become a bad thing? And I I've guess I've been around long enough to see both of that in action and and kind of believe that eventually it it balances out.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. David Eby's approval has fallen to 27%. Is his government failing?

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Uh it's close. It's close. I think it's I think it's on the edge. Uh you know, there's a few things. Approval rating is one thing. Uh public sort of uh willingness to change is another thing. You could uh uh Von Palmer has this great line that he uses all the time where he says, you know, you don't have to be a 10 to win an election. If your opponent's a six, you only have to be, you know, a seven. Uh like you don't have to be perfect to win and be government, but you have to be better than the alternative. And so it it's a government in challenge, enormous fiscal challenge. It's a drift on policy. No one really understands w what its agenda is anymore. It's befuddled by some of the biggest topics of our time, including uh indigenous reconciliation and it's floundering. Uh, and it's been in power for almost 10 years, where there's a natural sniff test that comes in. So all those things are working against it. Can it survive? Will depend on whether uh an alternative is presented to the public that people want and that they're willing to accept and they're willing to take a chance on. Because if they're if not, then it doesn't matter how bad he's doing, um they they'll win another election. And that's that's I think that was the kind of position in the last uh election as well.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

So one that I'd love to get your take on that really stands out to me is his moves, David Eby's moves on DRIPA, because I was blown away by coming out and promising amendments to Dripa will be done, and they will be done urgently and at the next sitting, and then and then it will be a confidence vote, and then it wasn't going to be a confidence vote, and then it was a move to maybe not now, maybe later, and then it was delayed, and just the absolute 180 on how to move that forward, and between us, like my big fear, and what I've been really trying to stress is there is a subsection of British Columbians that felt that David Eby and the NDP government chose the BCAFN, UBCIC, and these uh lobbying indigenous organizations over the concerns of the citizens of this province. And I think you look at it on its face and you go, it's kind of hard to argue with that. And that doesn't help my community, that doesn't help indigenous people, because then it makes it look like we're a cabal of people who control this government and everything that it does. And I don't think that that's true, but it certainly on its face looks like that. What was your reflections on that whole debacle?

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Well, he certainly does want those groups to try and support what he's gonna do, and it becomes very difficult for him to push it through without that because um they're loud voices that um many people in his party uh have listened to for many, many years, including when the NDP were in opposition, uh, as influential barometers of a government's uh being on the right track or not. So I think he would prefer to have uh those groups on side, and that's why he backed down. He's facing a point in the fall here where he's gonna have to decide whether he goes on his own in a solution, because it's clear that the solution that those groups are proposing isn't quite far enough for for the public. And that's gonna be a test of his leadership. Is is will is he reading the public mood enough to get behind um where the public wants him to be in the moment that it's at? And uh that didn't happen in a vacuum. It's not a it's not just this one issue. His government, through successive policy changes, going back to the Pender Harbor Dock situation, at the proposal to the Land Act changes, the Heritage Conservation Act changes, the Haida Gwai agreement. There's a series of things that the government did that failed to bring the public along and contributed to the sense of public distrust that now has reached a critical mass on DRIPA. Um, and that is the NDP's bed that they are lying in on the issue, that the public didn't come with them. And it makes it harder for them to navigate DRIPA now uh and and uh you know the Couch and Aboriginal Tiger case and the solutions that they need to bring in because um the public trust isn't there uh and people don't feel like they were listened to, and the government presented with them these fate accomplished policy and law and legal changes and treaty agreements that they didn't know about until it was sprung on at the very last minute and they had no say in. And that is kind of a corrosive element uh against the the current administration, and um that's their fault, right? They're there that there's no one else to blame but them on that, and uh it makes it harder for the premier to get out from under this drip of thing this fall. I don't know what he's gonna do, to be honest with you. Um everyone's speculating on on what he'll come back with uh for this session.

SPEAKER_01 37:10

I guess I don't even understand uh if we go to an election today, it looks on paper that the NDP would lose and the conservatives would come in and repeal it tomorrow. And so it's not even it's not even clear to me that they've they've won the day on the issue. It just seems like they're delaying potentially the inevitable.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Well, and but the conservatives, and we they were asked this question in the last election, and they were asked it during their leadership race. The question is not um, what do you do? Like, are you gonna repeal DRIPA? The question is what do you do next? What is the plan without DRIPA? What is your version of DRIPA? What is the policy? How does it work? Will it stand at the test of court challenges? Will it buy public support? Will it buy indigenous support? Um, you can't force the public to do something that it doesn't want to do or it isn't behind. But uh so sure, repeal DRIPA, fill your boots, but um that doesn't change case law. It doesn't change constitutional obligations, it it doesn't change uh the situation the province is at. And that's the real question is to the NDP and the conservatives, what what's next? Like what is the path? What is the policy path out of this? And no one has presented anything that is credible uh that I've seen.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

Carrie Lynn Findley won the conservative leadership narrowly by four ballots. Does she lead a credible government in waiting from your perspective?

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Yeah, well, we are live in a political system where uh the winner wins. It's uh you win and you win. It's a one, that's it. You win or you lose, and she won. So she has she is the credible leader of the opposition. And uh the what question of whether she's a credible government in waiting is one that the public decides, you know, in the in an election campaign. But there's no doubt she won the leadership race. This is her chance to change the party uh to her image if she wants, it's her chance to bring in her policies, it's her chance to to do it all. Um I guess the question that some of us are watching is the margin of victory was so slim that would it be smarter to offer the other half of the party um some policy concessions or some lieutenant who's represents them or some d do you want to bring that that group in? And how do you bring them in if they didn't vote for you? But that's you know, her decision. And uh it doesn't change the legitimacy of her victory and legitimacy of leading the opposition. It just is a is a policy, that's a judgment question of whether she wants to do that, I think.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

Aaron Ross Powell Do you think that the concerns around her being Trump light and all of these things are legitimate or just political talking points?

SPEAKER_00 39:59

Uh I don't know. It's so early. It's hard to, you know, like uh it she is gonna need uh I've never even interviewed her, although I'm also probably on a list of people that she won't talk to, but that which is a whole other subject. But um like I think everyone gets time to put together their team and put together their policies and present it to voters. And I don't know enough about her. Uh the NDP are free to call her whatever they want, um, but it doesn't mean that that's what it is. People in politics try to label their opponents all the time. And uh, you know, her positions will develop and her her like it wasn't a a conservative race where there was a lot of policies. Like I reviewed all the candidates' policies. There was uh some, but it wasn't a policy-heavy race. So you don't really have a full view of what a a conservative government would do right now, and that's that gets closer to the election when they put that together, and then you kind of uh are able to make conclusions about it. But it's still so early now.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

Why do you think she wouldn't talk to you?

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Uh my understanding is she is has a new strategy to talk to media that she considers will give her a friendlier uh audience of some type. But that's again, this is very early too. Like it, you know, I I remember Christy Clark winning um the election that everyone thought she was gonna lose in 2013. And she came back and everyone had written her off, and she basically told the media to go pound sand. I remember a press conference where she told a columnist that maybe if he'd spent less time out in the golf course, he would have understand why she was gonna win the election. Score settling becomes part of politics. You come in, you don't think you got a fair shake, you go after your critics for a little while, or people you don't think were fair to you, and then it settles back down, is usually how it goes. So, you know, whatever. This is how politics works. And we're in a changing environment too, where there's so many different media outlets, media outlets and influencers and people that are that are have an audience that um her strategy might be to just bypass the traditional media entirely, which is a strategy that is um one that the federal conservatives have tried and and other parties have tried and um with different levels of success, and maybe she's gonna try that too. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Why don't you think she thinks you're a part of that safe group of people that would be a willing audience?

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Oh she didn't like my story during your leadership race about her being under Elections Canada investigation. So I think that uh that kind of she didn't like that story, and therefore I'm I'm uh a persona non grata for a while, is my understanding. But that's fine. I, you know, that's that's okay. I can still cover the conservatives, I can still um take the opposition points in the house, I can still uh analyze the budget with their critics. I the the the process continues. It's it's not um it is what it is. These things come and go in politics, I think. You know, there's um they try not to take it that personally.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Aaron Powell What came of that story from your perspective? Could you refresh people who might not have read it?

SPEAKER_00 43:09

Yeah, well, the there was a investigator from this uh federal elections watchdog that was conducting interviews over some allegations uh from Ms. Finley's last federal election campaign uh that there had been uh misspending and that there had been uh folks who've been brought in that weren't properly recorded as compensating for being for working, uh, and some allegations in this uh email from an investigator who was conducting interviews. So I found the inter I got the email and I reported on it and went to her for comment and didn't want to talk about it. And um that the investigating agency said they're, you know, working on it and they're not gonna comment on it. And we're all just waiting to see if um there's a final report or something comes out of it, or they they produce something, but uh Um that was that was the s that was the one story.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

BC is projecting a $13.3 billion deficit next year, deficits exceeding $11 billion in each year of the fiscal plan, and taxpayers supported debt reaching $189 billion. Is British Columbia going broke?

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Uh yes. That's I there's that's hard uh hard to get around that. Uh yes, um, you know, it will never go broke in the way that you and I could go broke, and then it can't pay its bills. Uh it has the ability to run infinite debt. Uh, and it'll it's but its credit rating, which is what we all have, uh, is getting downgraded significantly. And that makes it more expensive to borrow, and it's spending more money on borrowing, and it's borrowing more money, and it and it's um it's stuck in what we call a structural deficit, where it's spending has outpaced its revenue. It's got more money on programs and salaries and services than it's bringing in in taxes. And really the only way out of that is you increase taxes, which it tried to do a little bit in the last budget, or you cut spending. And it doesn't really want to do either. So it's fiddling uh as the debt gets worse. And it's the bleakest financial picture I've seen. Uh, and I covered the 2008-9 sort of global recession and the uh liberals getting into deficit there. Uh, and I don't know how this government gets out of it. It's a you talk to experts and it's a multi, multi, multi-year process barring some giant windfall to get the budget back into balance. Although I'm sure we'll see a magic budget in a couple years right before the election that that pretends to get us there. But uh in reality, it we're the province is in fiscal trouble for a while. And it deals a bad hand to whoever takes the government next, whether it's another NDP premier or a conservative uh premier, because they're gonna have to make structural cuts uh or tax increases uh to balance this out. And um, the economic changes that the premiers promise to grow the economy with mining and LNG and things like that, those aren't gonna kick in for many years down the road. And and and it um it's a bad hand to whoever uh inherits this next.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

You report for Czech as you described, write opinionated columns for Glacier Media, offer commentary on CBC Radio, and host a panel show. Where do you think reporting ends and commentary begins?

SPEAKER_00 46:32

Yeah, I'm a we call it legislative correspondent for Czech. And the idea is that I'm sort of at a certain point your value becomes how long you've done this, what you know, and your ability to kind of cut through things and bring a perspective and context to it. And that's what I try and do on TV is tell people this is this is what's happening. It's happened before. Um, this is what people are saying, here's what the real numbers are, and you kind of cut through it. So it's not quite um the traditional news reporting pack of the and and the columns are are, you know, opinion columns uh and anal. I like to call them analysis columns because rarely am I just kind of going on rants, unless you get me going on e-scooters, which I think are just death on wheels, but don't get me started on e-scooters. But um, you know, there's an analysis that comes from having done it for a while that I'm trying to bring in because I think that's the real value, and that becomes a little more than just government said, opposition said, more questions than answers. See you later. Um I don't know. Uh there's lots of people who can do that, but I'm I'm trying to cut through it a bit.

SPEAKER_01 47:45

So with what we just described of the debt, would there be any taxes you'd like to see increased, removed, changed, modified?

SPEAKER_00 47:54

I don't know. I mean personally, no. I don't I could I could care less what government does on taxes, but I think the questions they're gonna have to ask are in an affordability crisis where cost of living is the number one issue in polling. How do you go about increasing taxes? And you know, some people will say you increase them on the wealthy, but that has a trickle-down effect to people who are entrepreneurs who are creating jobs. And uh there's a whole economists can debate this uh be forever. I uh there's a larger issue that I think you probably uh feel and other people feel of intergenerational um inequity that is has crept into politics and a feeling of like maybe you need to go after the people who have had a great ride a little bit and are uh are well to do and in their retirement years a bit more to help the people who are starting off who can't afford a 600 square foot apartment in a city renting or owning. That's a fascinating kind of bubbling pit of political um sentiment out there that governments are gonna get trapped up in then in the next little while, I think, too. And uh uh I don't know if this government wants to get into it, like, you know, some type of enhanced inheritance tax or or, you know, like something like that. So like um I don't know. But it has to be a fascinating question. I'm sure there's I'm sure there's ways to do it. A economist, smarter economist than I could figure that out, but like there's an area there that I think government's probably looking at.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

That's what I find really interesting about Emily Lowen and the BC Greens, is it seems like she's trying to take up that space. And the more the BC conservatives and the BC NDP seem to have zero plan to address that, the more I think her pitch is gonna become appealing. And I don't think that there's a lot of substance to some of those ideas, but I've asked Trevor Helford, I've asked economists, like, are we taxing the rich enough? And what what is enough and what is sufficient? I don't know. I see left-leaning people go, yes, we should, um, even if the marginal tax rate and the real tax rate are are somewhat the same that they were in the 1970s. But then I see conservatives get very uncomfortable with that question and not really want to talk about well, how much are they paying and what is reasonable? And when you're a billionaire, what is there? I actually don't know the answer to that question. I'm open-minded to what the path forward on that is.

SPEAKER_00 50:28

But it seems that what is rich too. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 50:31

100% in Coover, that's a big question.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

Yeah. And there's a lot of people who worked hard, bought a home at the right time, maybe bought a second home, are in their retirement now who are rich, right? They're rich on paper, they're gonna be able to, they have no mortgages, they've got RVs and they're gonna sell their homes. But if you were to tell them they were rich, they would not consider that at all. They wouldn't, they wouldn't feel being taxed is fair. They'd say they've paid their taxes. Why are you coming after me? That's a fight, right? And then you have the younger generation saying you got to go after those folks because that they they have the wealth. It's not just the billionaires, it's uh the intergenerational component. And uh I don't know. I feel like that is the fight of our time that's about to happen. That that and it's gonna be messy and it's gonna pit families against each other and and grandparents and retirement plans and long-term care and first-time home buyers, and um it's a mess. And uh because it's kind of like speculators. When we went after speculators in the province on real estate, families who buy a condo downtown for grandma or for their kids don't consider a second home speculating, even if you're gonna sell it a couple years later for a massive profit. People don't consider themselves the problem, uh, even if maybe they are on paper and uh they don't want to be targeted by government, and they're gonna get hecka mad if you do, if you're if you go after their Airbnb rental, uh they're gonna be mad. And and you know, the solutions make people upset. And uh, if you're gonna mandate density in a community, they're gonna be mad. And um, but you know, that's politics, I guess, navigating that space.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

I'm sure you've heard this. I'm hearing lots of reports that David E. B is on his way out. Um, across the board, I've heard it. I asked him about it because uh it was being speculated that um Nikki Sharma may be primed to take his place. What did he say? So I'm uh he said no plans to leave yet, but Nikki's doing a tremendous job and uh she would make a great uh premiere, which I don't think was a hard no. Um what are your reflections on that? What what do you think if you're looking at the I think the other piece of politics, you kind of talked about like how is this useful to them? I think the other piece of politics is at least trying to look at a few dominoes down the way. Where do you think we're heading over the next? You've seen the trends over 20 years, you understand kind of how these things go. What do you think the next steps are in our province?

SPEAKER_00 52:54

Yeah, I think the premier has this is just my opinion here, my sort of analysis of it, but I think he has to the end of the year to try and get a hold of the situation. And that's going to involve landing DRIPA, uh ending the free fall in his popularity, uh, and and slowing and bringing some uptick to that, um, prosecuting the conservatives in some way that that lands with the public, uh, and and getting a vision that his team can get behind, some plan. What are we here for? And if he can put those things together, I think he buys himself enough time uh to maybe even get to the next election. Uh but if he can't, if the numbers stay where they are, uh I hear the same thing that there's rumbling that, you know, people would like their their chance at it. And they kind of want to do it now because you need to get a leadership race set up, you need to execute that, you need to bring in someone. There's only two years to the next election. Um, you know, you ideally want to get that all done and then give someone a a year's sort of runway to put their own budget in and have the premier title beside them. Um, so he's his window is shrinking to fix things, I guess is how I would put it. Uh, but um man, I've done this so long that like things just come out of the blue. They just smack you in the side of the head, topics you didn't see coming, wars, pandemics, issues, they just arise and they grow and they become like who knows if we're even talking about reconciliation as the top topic in the next election. We could be talking about something totally different. And that unpredictability, uh, and I don't want to say fickleness of voters, but um um just moving public sentiment makes it hard to uh to write anybody off in in this day and age.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

With everything you know about BC politics, all the drama going on behind the scenes that never m reached the front page, with all the issues facing our province right now, what is your advice to British Columbians?

SPEAKER_00 54:58

Don't don't give up hope. You know, like for all the we've uh conversation we've had here today, I do get the privilege of seeing some things work at the legislature. I do get to see MLAs and ministers sidebar in hallways and solve things for constituents who are tied up in problems. I do get to see policies that may or may not work changed or improved in response to criticism and petitions. Uh, and you do get to see uh a functioning, healthy democracy. Now, is the discourse healthy? Probably probably not. But but um it's not quite as bad as sometimes maybe we think it is. And um there's a lot of work that gets done at the legislature. And in this past session, there's a lot of private members' bills that made their way through, which we never really had before as well. Uh so don't give up hope. Vote. For God's sakes, vote. You know, get out there and vote. Uh, and and pick pick where you get your information from carefully and challenge yourself, you know, like um we live in an era of in uh we have more information than we've ever had in our lifetimes and we're dumber for it somehow. And you know, we should all have to challenge our preconceptions of things to test them to see if you can't just go on the Reddit thread that proves you're right. Try to go on the Reddit thread that you disagree with and and see how you feel about it and uh and challenge yourself a bit because maybe you're not right a hundred percent of the time. No one is. Um, and and that's a a challenge of our time, too.

SPEAKER_01 56:38

I'm not very, very wise words. Uh I greatly appreciate the work you do, Rob. I've relied on a lot of your articles in preparing for interviews with the premier, um, with Trevor Helford when he was interim leader. Uh, you are a source that I greatly rely on, and that's why I was excited to have you on. Is I think it's important that we recognize the work you do, that frontline reporting where you get information and then it's it's utilized by uh, I guess I'll call myself an influencer or an idiot in a suit, but that I take that information uh and then rely on it to have these thoughtful conversations in order to prepare, in order to make sure I'm informed. And so I'm just I'm very grateful for the role that you play in making sure that we're an informed democracy and for the approach that you took in this in this conversation. Uh, I think we are going through uh another change right now. And so we should just buckle up, make sure we're ready to hold these people accountable and rely on reporters like yourself to provide us information in order to make sure we we vote in an informed way. So super grateful that you were able to share your time today.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

No, thanks for having me on. I love the show, so I was glad to be here.