If you choose to vote in the Provincial election, and you desire authentic changes to government policies, it would be irrational to cast your vote for either of the major political parties. On issues of environmental, social, and economic justice, one party has a chance to form a government that claims to represent your interests. But if your intention is to inspire real substantive changes on issues that are sincerely important to you, withholding your support for the major political parties is crucial. These parties, while rhetorically pandering to their respective ideological voter bases, are the two headed monster of neo-liberalism, and the threat of lost voter support is the only possible electoral resistance to them.
The Conservative Party’s predecessors, the governing B.C. Liberals initiated the unnecessary and destructive Site C Dam, with the John Horgan led NDP claiming to oppose the project. The B.C. NDP formed the new government in 2017, while Site C moved forward regardless, costing many billions of dollars more than budgeted. Years of NDP government have not significantly dealt with the chronic shortage of affordable housing, or seriously mitigated the opioid crisis. The B.C. NDP claimed to oppose old growth logging, then criminalized resistance to its continued practice. In 2019, the B.C. NDP brought us the B.C. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples legislation, yet we still saw the Coastal Gas Link pipeline forcibly pushed through First Nations’ territory despite clear opposition by indigenous people and their leadership, with the RCMP violently dragging the non-violent occupants and land defenders off to jail. John Horgan is now an executive employed at a B.C. coal mining company.
According to advance polling, the NDP and Conservatives each hold about 45% of likely voter support, leaving about 10% of the electorate as the so-called undecided “swing voters’, or “third party” supporters. These voters will ultimately decide the election, and we can expect to see all of the candidates aim their campaign messages at this heavily researched segment of the electorate. Both major parties take their base of support for granted, and the only hope to push a major party toward authentic change is to withhold your support from them until they actually deliver on it, unlikely as that may be. Those who support so-called strategic voting will argue that you should vote for the party that has the best chance of defeating their partisan opponent and forming a government. There’s a need to break this cycle of support for the “lesser of evils” and begin to firmly hold the more principled ground without compromise.
It’s often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. The grip of the neo-liberal duopoly ensures that the voices and will of common people are silenced and minimized, and that corporate interests remain firmly in control, with all of the evidence showing us that the hollow promise of incremental change is not tenable. The partisan advertising is revealing, with the primary messages of the major parties being, “The other party is terrible, and we’re not them.” As long as the major political parties receive support from their respective ideological bases, more pipelines will be the reality, and real change is a pipe-dream.
