Geoffrey Moyse: Eby is responsible for B.C.’s problems, not Trump

B.C. NDP Leader David Eby Photo by Jason Payne/PNG

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Premier David Eby is taunting British Columbians with a snap election just two years into his mandate. Eby is sensing a golden opportunity to obtain four more years to continue the largely incompetent reign of his provincial New Democrats and is pivoting hard to become Prime Minister Mark Carney’s de facto wing man in the present trade war with the United States.

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Eby appears to be looking to re-brand his socialist government as akin to the federal Liberals and virtually tied at the hip with the currently popular prime minister. The reality is that while socialist political parties never change their spots, it is clearly a critical time for Eby to back the federal Liberals for one reason and one reason only: U.S. President Donald Trump.

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Calling a snap election two years early when he already has a workable majority in the legislature is obviously an enormously cynical and entirely self-serving move. After years of incompetence on almost every front, the B.C. NDP is now looking closely at the federal Liberal playbook that took the federal Conservatives from a huge lead in the polls to losing the last election.

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Attempting to capitalize on what until just hours ago was the chaos among B.C.’s splintered opposition parties was going to be the icing on the cake for the snap election call. Unfortunately for the premier, the Conservatives have quickly and effectively coalesced around a highly competent and experienced interim leader in Lorne Doerkson. This was not the outcome Eby was expecting.

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B.C.’s premier is well aware of the strong anti-Trump sentiment in the province and clearly wants to capitalize on it to smokescreen voters into believing that everything that has failed in British Columbia on his watch is Trump’s fault.

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Saying that he needs a new mandate to fight the trade war with the United States is complete nonsense. All the talk about his slender one-seat majority is also nonsense. Eby had sufficient control over the legislature before the writ was dropped to assist in combating the trade war to the extent that the province has any constitutional capacity to do so.

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More importantly, British Columbians have a prime minister and a federal government that are actively working to resolve the trade dispute.

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At the core of Eby’s thinking is likely one thing and one thing only: to hide his government’s gross mismanagement of the province’s economy and finances, not to mention its failed “reconciliation” agenda, by blaming Trump as the author of all of B.C.’s political misfortunes.

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Cynical as it may be, it is a shrewd political pivot by a failing premier to hide all the enormous problems created by his government behind an anti-Trump election campaign.