Vaughn Palmer: Premier losing control of daily political agenda
Opinion: David Eby finds his docket is being hijacked by questions regarding matters he would rather not discuss
Vancouver Sun
Published Apr 19, 2024
VICTORIA — Premier David Eby has lately found his daily agenda, keyed to an election year, is being hijacked by questions regarding matters he would rather not discuss.
A case in point was what happened Tuesday morning, when Eby went to North Vancouver to announce funding for literacy.
The set-up had all the trappings of a typical NDP government media event. Cabinet minister on hand. School as backdrop. Principal standing by to serve as validator.
News release vowing that the promise of $30 million over three years “will help students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities be more successful.”
But when it came time for questions from the news media, the event veered off topic. Only two questions dealt with literacy issues, both were at the end, neither were the stuff of headlines.
The other dozen or so questions dealt with one or another of the controversies that have dogged Eby in recent weeks.
The premier was asked how he felt about the country’s other NDP premier, Manitoba’s Wab Kinew, and the national leader of the NDP Jagmeet Singh both walking back their support for the carbon tax.
Eby claimed B.C.’s circumstances are different, which is surely true in the sense that it stands alone among Canadian provinces in embracing the continued escalation of the tax.
He repeated the line about B.C. returning “100 per cent” of the increase via the climate action tax credit. But that is only true about the latest increase.
His own government’s financial statements have the New Democrats collecting $9 billion in carbon taxes over three years and returning only $3.5 billion in credits.
That’s a return of less than 40 per cent, not 100 per cent for the math-challenged premier.
Many of the questions Tuesday had to do with the fallout from the government’s ill-fated experiment with decriminalization of hard drugs.
Eby struggled and scrambled in his responses, showing the New Democrats really don’t have a handle on how to deal with the diversion of safer supply drugs to the illicit market or the use of hard drugs in hospitals.
Decriminalization came back to plague Eby again Thursday when he called a news conference to update the government’s crackdown on short-term rentals of the Airbnb type.
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The Vancouver Sun is the equivalent of Pravda. It wouldn’t be in business if it wasn’t for money from Justin Trudeau funneled to its owner in New Jersey. They are nothing but a propaganda rag that’s a force for evil that no one should pay any attention to unless you support their agenda. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Spotlight needs to be on the changes to the election process for the upcoming BC election.
#ElectionFraud