Amy Hamm: David Eby’s failure of an election debate

Composite photo of NDP Leader David Eby, Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson and Greens Leader Emily Lowan. Photo by Postmedia

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B.C. NDP Premier David Eby brought all the charisma and energy of a disgruntled used car salesman — desperate to sell voters a lemon — to the provincial election debate last night. He was bested by both his opponents, Conservative Party of B.C. interim leader Lorne Doerkson and the B.C. Green Party’s Emily Lowan.

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Eby, who comes off as morose at baseline, looked particularly gloomy, and often on the verge of losing his temper. His lagging poll numbers may as well have been written on his face. Predictably, the night opened with moderator Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, asking the question of the hour: Why are we even here? Why did you call this snap election, two years early and in the middle of municipal elections, Mr. Eby?

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Voters of all persuasions know the real answer. This election call was an attempted power grab, taken at the precise moment Eby saw the Conservatives in disarray and leaderless after the resignation of short-lived party leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay. Eby thought he could extend his term by another two years, just months after his public approval rating dropped to an abysmal 31 per cent. It surely looked like the opportunity of a political lifetime, notwithstanding — or so Eby thought — a populace that might not want to go to the polls twice in a month.

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Eby, of course, claimed his one-seat majority government has been preoccupied with “surviving another day” in the legislature. He even invoked recently deceased NDP MLA Joan Phillip, telling us that she had to vote from her hospital bed to keep his government from crumbling.

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“Joan Phillip, dying of cancer, after her tracheal tube was removed, voted at 4:30 in the morning,” Eby claimed, apparently referring to Phillip’s history of having voted on legislation several times while hospitalized this year. It felt uncouth for Eby to discuss Phillip in this manner. It wasn’t a tribute to her dedication so much as it was a desperate attempt at emotional manipulation. It was only his first act of debate desperation.

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Eby, who professes to despise the “culture wars,” invoked them almost immediately. More than once, Eby attempted to derail Doerkson with tired claims of “hate” and “extremism” within Conservative ranks. He mentioned an allegation that Conservative MLA Heather Maahs called Centre B.C. MLA Elenore Sturko “immoral” for being a lesbian. Maahs has denied this, and posted on X before the debate that the claim is “false and defamatory.”

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Maahs also took heat for previous comments about sexualized LGBT books held in public high school libraries in the province. The NDP broadly conflated her criticism of age-inappropriate books with criticism of homosexuality. At the debate, Eby repeatedly accused Maahs of suggesting that gay men are “secret pedophiles.”

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Doerkson deflected from the Maahs issue, but went on the defensive for his campaign director, Katy Merrifield, who has faced calls to resign over a now-deleted X post stating “F–k Islam” and calling for the expulsion of the “abhorrent ideology.” Merrifield linked her posts to anger over the U.K. grooming gang scandal. Doerkson will not tell her to resign, he told Eby — but how about that 2018 comment from Attorney General Niki Sharma about the “unbearable whiteness of local elections results,” eh, Eby? Or Selina Robinson’s 2024 resignation over alleged antisemitism within NDP ranks?