So, what was the top story of the day, on Friday? It's a fair question because there were several competing choices, depending on your personal stakes in a panoply of different things.
The race riots in Minneapolis got a lot of deserved attention after video showed a policeman killing a black guy suspected of being a rioter by holding his knee on the black guy's throat until he asphyxiated -- but there also was President Trump's war of words on and with Twitter, which was quite novel -- China's imposition of edicts against the vestiges of democracy in Hong Kong as part of its (China's) global empire-building -- the continuing saga of COVID19 -- and other perceived global crisis stories such as the environment, the economy, the markets and other aspects of the real world like mass media politics, economics and technological shifts.
Would it be fair to say these times are unprecedented?
Yes, though other times such as the onset of
World War Two could have been even more challenging for the people living then
as now, say comparing U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to pre-war Winston
Churchill.
While global politics and Canadian politics will evolve more or less beyond our reach ("our" including most readers of this), the future of how British Columbia handles it all does remain to be seen. Lots will depend on how things being done now, by the government of NDP Premier John Horgan, work out -- and whether other options could have been better or worse in so many ways and areas from the $1,000 handout to CERB recipients to back-to-school on Monday on a voluntary basis to a dogmatic stipulation for a 14-day quarantine period for new arrivals that could more or less kill Vancouver's hopes of being a "hub city" for an National Hockey League playoff series involving the Vancouver Canucks.
Premier Horgan has earned high marks for his initial handling of the COVID crisis, which was to delegate responsibility for most all of it to Health Minister Adrian Dix and Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry. It worked out brilliantly and gave B.C. one of the best data response records to #COVID19 in all of North America if not the world, which IS a good thing, but meanwhile in the real world a great many British Columbians are still struggling to cope with huge changes in their lifestyles and living conditions due to COVID impacts.
Horgan earned high marks when his government quickly decided to send $1,000 to everyone applying who qualified for the federal $2,000 Canada Emergency Response Benefit, which was followed by a variety of other moves to help people and families cope with a sudden radical change in their lifestyles, especially the province's rapid emptying of the hospitals so any suspected victims of COVID could quickly access high levels of medical and health care which after several weeks has given British Columbia one of the lowest COVID infection and fatality rates in North America, if not the world.
The Horgan government in fact deserves huge kudos for using provincial employees to quickly do what the federal government failed to do, notably screening arrivals at Vancouver International Airport and then lobbying successfully for a 14-day sequestration period for new arrivals. It shamed the feds into doing their same job nationally.
There are other perhaps yet-untold stories behind B.C.'s exemplary response to COVID19, such as the very early role of B.C.'s own Centre for Disease Control [did Dr. Tom Perry have a role in it? did they have a contact in Wuhan??], but in any case it became an international news story when B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry stepped into the fray, calmed the waters and implemented a brilliant response plan that has given B.C. one of the statistically best records of responding to COVID19 in North America, for which she earned international publicity.
Anyway, the political angle is that Horgan's handling of COVID has suddenly vaulted up his approval rating to 71 per cent in an Angus Reid Institute poll, third highest in Canada after the Premiers of Quebec and New Brunswick (probably both skewed up by ethnic sentiments) and a huge leap from only 46 per cent for Horgan in ARI's February poll.
No doubt there are other factors behind Horgan's sudden jump in popularity, which I'll probably explore in a future issue of my B.C. Politics Trendwatch newsletter (e.g. the fractures inside the Green Party of B.C.? or the scrambled-eggs image of the B.C. Liberals?), but it remains a fact that the Horgan New Democrats now have an abnormally high approval rating.
In the context of B.C.'s volatile politics that's no guarantee of a win for the NDP in the next provincial election, which is due to be called for a vote in October 2021, but an election could come sooner if there is a voting glitch in the B.C. Legislature where the Horgan New Democrats are in a slim minority supported by the disintegrated three MLAs of the Green Party of B.C., and that could be tested as soon as June 22 when MLAs are being called to a new sitting.
What are the key turning points? Probably economic issues, as usual, and not social issues like COVID or climate or whether schools returned too soon or too late, etcetera, and Horgan will need to take care to ensure that political correctness won't be allowed to kill an economic recovery that already has taken a heavy toll on many many businesses.
Does the socialist union-oriented NDP regime have enough mental understanding of what it's like to run a business to have sympathy and help for entrepreneurs? Or for landlords?? We'll see.
A good example of that is the National Hockey League playoffs in which a proposed "hub" may not be viable in Vancouver because the province has a 14-day quarantine period for new arrivals from out-of-country. A real pro-business and pro-hockey Premier would be stepping in to find a way to make that work, such as with a targeted exemption, but the politically-correct wing of the New Democrats appear to be saying that the 14-day limit can have no exceptions.
It's kind of a how-many-angels-can-dance-on-
Maybe Horgan will try to avoid the question by claiming it's a federal jurisdiction question, but on the other hand maybe he'll grab it as a leadership opportunity and ride it all the way to a re-election. We'll see. Probably when the B.C. Legislature resumes sitting on June 22, or sooner.
Isn't B.C. politics great? Never a dull moment.
John Twigg ... is a long-time independent journalist and occasional partisan activist now based in Campbell River.
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