Premier Christy Clark’s visit to Powell River Tuesday afternoon tells us a couple of things about the coming provincial election – the Liberals are looking at Powell River-Sunshine Coast as a winnable riding; they are going to have a fight on their hands to unseat the NDP’s Nicholas Simons.
Clark’s very presence in the riding proves the first point. Her reception bears out the second.
Before Clark even showed, her appearance was controversial, as the Powell River Peak reported Monday. Three directors of the Powell River Chamber of Commerce resigned within 24 hours of the announcement, apparently objecting to how the visit was arranged. Critics also blasted the venue for the premier’s meet-and-greet: Snickers Restaurant on Marine Drive, which has the capacity for only 130 people.
When Clark arrived at the restaurant Tuesday, she entered through a back entrance to avoid more than two dozen protesters gathered in front. “In street performance art style, protesters staged an oil spill, complete with cardboard cutout oil tankers, ferries, sea creatures and people dressed in HazMat suits splattered in black paint,” the Peak’s Chris Bolster wrote. During Clark’s speech, the sound of car horns and people shouting on the street penetrated the room.
In her 30-minute speech, Clark quite rightly took credit for the historic Tla’amin Nation treaty (“We are finally getting there when it comes to reconciliation”), touted the Liberals’ economic record and jobs plan, and preached the gospel of small government.
Days earlier, at the Truck Loggers Association annual convention in Vancouver, Clark announced a “contractor sustainability review” that was hailed by the TLA executive director as “the most significant announcement for forest contractors in almost 20 years.”
Clearly it’s election time in B.C. and Clark is looking to reach out to the boondocks. But why does she think Powell River-Sunshine Coast can be hers for the taking?
By the numbers, our riding looks like an NDP stronghold. In 2013, Simons won with 13,120 votes, or 55.2 per cent – well over the combined Liberal (7,792) and Green (2,856) totals. In 2009 he won with 58 per cent.
What, then, are the Liberals counting on?
• Simons has held the riding since 2005. That’s 12 years in the political wilderness. Regardless of how generally well liked he is, voters might be ready to try something new.
• Liberal candidate Mathew Wilson is young, articulate and eager to represent the riding on the government side. He also has name recognition as the son of former BC Liberal Party leader Gordon Wilson.
• Green Party candidate Kim Darwin, president of the Sechelt and District Chamber of Commerce, can be a major spoiler by siphoning NDP votes. It was Gordon Wilson, in an interview with reporter Laura Walz, who pointed out after the 2013 election that the Green Party vote in the riding had more than doubled since 2009. Noting B.C. voters rejected both the NDP’s “notion of deficit spending and [its] ambivalent and somewhat confusing position with respect to pipelines,” Wilson suggested the Green Party under Andrew Weaver was the logical choice for those with an environmental agenda. Quite a telling analysis coming from Mr. Wilson.
Other factors include the extended carrot of a fixed link and Simons’ alienation of Pender Harbour voters during the dock management plan debacle, still unresolved.
Finally, there’s Clark herself, who appears ready to slice and dice NDP Leader John Horgan in the campaign leading up to May’s general election. Horgan, when he attended a fundraiser in Roberts Creek last fall, was channeling Justin Trudeau’s deficit-spending strategy and suggested the public was ready to embrace an “activist government” along those lines. Things can change very quickly in politics, and the sunny ways approach may already be yesterday’s bad idea.
Those would be some of the calculations behind the Liberals setting their sights on Powell River-Sunshine Coast. Can they do it? Anything is possible.
