CTRL+ALT+ELECTIONS BC

BRITISH COLUMBIA 2026 PROVINCIAL ELECTIONS LEADERSHIP DEBATE, MODERATED BY SHACHI KURL, PRESIDENT OF THE ANGUS REID INSTITUTE, CITY NEWS, LIVE STREAMED ON PRIME VIDEO, 6:15 pm PST, 2 HR RUNTIME

REDUCING HISTORICAL TIME WASTAGE IN RICHLY DIVERSE PACIFIC PROVINCE

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

I

believe a good person can make joy happen in this province, given the abundance of natural beauty and the richness on-top of and beneath the rolling land.

Yet, which one of the party leaders running for election to form the governing party and thereby become Premier of the Province of British Columbia is that good person. Only three of the ten party leaders had sufficient popular backing to participate in the leadership debate.

Premier David Eby, leader of the New Democratic Party, Conservative Lorne Doerkson, and Green Party Leader Emily Lowan, “the only renter” on the stage during the debate, all stood for politics during the debate, which aired on City News, and live streamed by Prime Video on Wednesday, October 14, 2026 at 6:15 PST.

I am sure David, Lorne and Emily are good people, including moderator Shachi Kurl, President of the Angus Reid Institute. You know, Shachi is good for thinking, Emily is good for eco-friendly programs, Lorne is good for fixing fiscal mess, and David, well, David is good for calling snap elections with two years to go in his mandate. No really, David built a lot of pubic school seats and hospital beds during his 4 years as Premier.

Emily figuratively threw her hand up for the support of all of those workers earning minimum wage as the only person on stage to be a renter and to have held a minimum wage job during the last decade, not suggesting that Lorne and David got fired from a minimum wage job, at least not in the last ten years.

Now let’s figure this conservatively, in that Emily held a minimum wage job and cannot afford to own her own home. I believe that.

 And I believe Premier David Eby when he says Lorne intends to spend $5 billion dollars, and being a fiscal conservative, will cut government services rather than raise taxes to pay for that spending. Lorne did not object, so I guess it is true, based on past conservative politicians dating back to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Eby intends to heavily tax the province’s millionaires. And I think that includes techs from San Francisco working in Vancouver, surgeons in hospitals and street corner dentists. Private ICBC lawyers have been excluded after going extinct and evolving into civil litigators after the previous government reworked ICBC car accident insurance in favour of the Crown Corporation, ICBC.

Eby wants to continue building schools with the tax revenue, and continue expanding existing hospitals – not the emergency room wait lines mind you – including replacing St. Paul’s at Burrard Street with St. Paul’s at Terminal Avenue, or thereabouts.

Emily intends to do a one-time cash grab of the ultra rich individuals and the ultra rich corporations in the amount of $22 billion the first year and $5.4 billion in subsequent years. Don’t laugh, California and Massachusetts have an ultra rich tax.

All quotes in Canadian dollars mind you.

Everyone had a good word in for seniors and the lowly standard not even being met in care homes of getting one bath per week. Eby finds that standard outrageously low, and inferred that seniors in care homes ought to be bathed at least twice per week.

Lorne wants to give income tax breaks to seniors and those voters with incomes less than $32,000. No, no that was the Conservative’s relief idea for rising food costs.

Emily wants to open public grocery stores. David wants to lower costs and lower monopoly price gauging at existing grocery stores, although I bet he might have to check with food magnet Jimmy Pattison first.

I might have missed it, but no one mentioned increasing social assistance income rates.

Instead, everyone got stuck on involuntary care for the homeless. The Supreme Court of British Columbia struck down Eby’s legislation that allowed for involuntary care. I guess the wise old justices have not toured the Downtown Eastside, anytime lately.

Eby worked in the Downtown Eastside so he knows what a human rights emergency is going on down there, for more than a few years now – all you have to do is listen for the first responders scurrying out of their pyjamas and into their knee length fire boots every 15 minutes to run those engines from a firehall in downtown to a street corner in the downtown east, while biting their nails.

Wait for it – then the ambulances start up. Two fire engines, a lead fire truck and an ambulance back and forth everyday and all day long. That response is not so bad in itself except that the downtown streets are locked-in with traffic – so much so a cab ride to the otherside of the neighbourhood costs you $10+.

Anyway, that might by a city issue, especially given the construction of new highrises and public works is so spread out and so slow that the cabs have to create a work around just to keep operating.

You cannot put the homeless in the city jails because the city jails are already crowded with thieves, vandals and drug addicts. David says that these people need to be housed in an environment where they can get the help they need – and these people have real needs that require professional help.

Oh, how I enjoy a good cream cheese and lux bagel.

Emily is against involuntary care and would like instead to funnel more money for outreach. At least, I think that’s what she said. David, a lawyer, thinks he can bring the legislation in compliance with the BC Supreme Court Ruling. And we all know what conservatives think about more money for low level street gangsters.

I know that Conservatives are against crack use on our sidewalks – no one has to repeat that. You just have to inadvertently get a whiff of the crack smoke to agree with that, although open crack smoking is tolerated in Vancouver, Victoria and probably Tumbler Ridge.

Eby wanted to make everything clear from the outset that he was against hatred of every kind, and that all three party leaders should be able to agree on that at least. Well, not so fast. Lorne begrudgingly moved into the issue to agree at least that hate is universally unacceptable.

Someone might want to draft legislation that puts a dimmer switch on social media hate. I might have missed that part where they bring in parental controls and prosecute hate speech on apps. Has anyone checked if the Downtown Eastside support centers understand that tolerance and hate are opposite, not withstanding Eby’s comment about drug addicts slumped over, half naked on sidewalks.

Moderator Shachi moved this very emotional conversation into budgetary issues by pointing out that the current provincial deficit is $13.8 billion and that servicing the provincial debt is the 4^th largest budget expenditure. Now Shachi is talking like the President of Angus Reid.

Shachi asked what was up with the Green economy. And Emily retorted that lottery and liquor was a bigger draw than LNG. The Green plan is for the community to take the reigns and create value added products in BC – instead of shipping raw logs overseas for corporate shareholders.

Now you see, David, Lorne and Emily are all good people, it’s just that they think so remarkably different from each other it’s difficult to get enough common ground for an agreement on moving the province forward.

David built schools and added 60,000 more seats for kids in schools.

Emily claimed that David is not collecting the province’s fair share of royalties on resources extracted from the province. And she said that with $22 billion from the ultra rich tax revenue there would be money to pay down the deficit and provide government services to the people.

Eby wants to fund health care and raise funds to pay to medical professionals, which would increase access to services since more doctors and nurses would be available to treat the sick. And while David said the wealthy have to pay more – the $1 million bracket again, Lowan said most of the government revenue comes from $190,000 and lower income earners – and too few people make $1 million to service the healthcare system.

Doerkson maintains that the government cannot fund that aggressive expansion of medical services with individual taxes. The government promised to bring in a $7 billion deficit and have created a $14 billion deficit, someone said.

Now you see – the difference is clear. The problem is that three different people want to run the whole show, whereas the best result would be to share power. David could take care of the Downtown Eastside and Victoria – oh sorry that is Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s job. Let’s reconsider that decision.

Well, the way I see the problem is that the politics in the province constantly turns out divided results.

The province is clearly separated into several regions with distinct issues. And within each region, the politics is a bit of a trifecta between the NDP, Conservatives and Greens. Now that we have looked at the politics, let’s look at the map now and find the regions: Victoria Capital Region, Vancouver Island, Vancouver Island North, Vancouver City, Lower Mainland – oh this is starting to look like an electoral map.

Let’s do this differently. Vancouver Island, Vancouver City, Lower Mainland, Hope-Fraser Canyon, Kamloops, Prince George, Okanagan (orchards and vacation properties) and everywhere else.  No, that still looks like an electoral map.

It’s not exactly the Five Burroughs of New York City we are arguing about.

Let’s try an issue based approach. Taxes for example. No, Eby wants a targeted tax, Lowan wants an ultra rich tax, and Conservatives typically believe in trickle down theory in which a no-tax creates cash flow that incentivizes the rich to spend money on factories and housing developments – which benefits the lower income classes as much as the upper income classes are pleased to do so.

I strongly believe that you cannot just criticize, without putting your own ideas forward.

So, here goes. One, taxes should be structured around the cost of living and the poverty line. No tax if you cannot afford to make samosas. More tax if you buy a Tesla. Even more taxes if you have a four-car garage and two more cars in the driveway and one parked on the road. Less taxes if you live in a single income household.

Finish construction on the new St. Paul’s Hospital since leaving an incomplete empty shell would look a bit awkward.

Increase the rental portion of income assistance to help the homeless find private housing. Those homeless that have mental health and physical barriers to housing should be provided assisted living, a.k.a. involuntary care beds.

End street use of illegal drugs.

Require petty criminals to complete community service that would benefit the neighbourhood where the crime was committed.

Reform the justice system with an omnibus overhaul. For too long, the justice system has been corrected piecemeal, resulting in a hodgepodge of fixes that have left a lot of nuts and bolts on the ground for people to trip over.

To eliminate traffic congestion in the larger cities, reduce vehicle traffic and install street cars. That would mean, Vancouver, Victoria, Surrey and Abbotsford would get street cars for downtown traffic. And organize development permits to allow current citizens to enjoy the city.

End the food retail monopoly in British Columbia. Grocery stores by the thousands are owned by a handful of food chain oligarchs.

Encourage local farming, instead of discounting development on farmland, to reduce the need to import and transport food over hundreds of kilometres. Hydroponics and solar power technologies are now advanced sufficiently to generate cost effective, greenhouse farming, which produces multiple crops per year.

Don’t let foreign governments, using corporations as proxies, raid our resources.

Gain better control of immigration – such that cities and towns can be socially engineered.

Grow the economy to pay debt. The more jobs and the more product manufacturing, the more consumers, the more stores, the more taxes from those transactions to pay for services.

Bully for you, until next time.