The elitism of the left is laid bare in the BC election
We still don't know who won the election, but the results demonstrate the urban elite are on their own
Canada is always lagging behind the times, desperately trying to keep up with the U.S. while simultaneously insisting we want nothing to do with them, and our politics are no different.
The left particularly want to follow in the footsteps of America’s Trump Derangement Syndrome and “far right extremist” hysteria, unable to muster sufficient passion for our own political landscape.
Fair enough, I suppose. Up until very recently, Canadian politics were rather dull. Our three main parties hardly differed from one another — there was no genuine anti-abortion contingent to rile women up nor did we have any kids in cages or Clinton-type sex scandals to keep the nation engaged as though watching one long, sordid TV series. Our scandals were called things like the “SNC-Lavalin affair,” and not only do I not know what that is, but I have never desired to find out.
This year, things are different. Canadians have successfully lifted the American political divide and applied it to to their once peacefully irrelevant country.
It all began, from my perspective, in 2020, when Canadians imported Black Lives Matter protests into the country in an attempt to pretend to be mad about a thing that did not exist. The fact there is no epidemic of racist police violence in Vancouver was no matter — we refused to be left out of the battle for woke. I recall pointing out to a friend that this wasn’t an issue in Sechelt, but she explained it was to “show solidarity.”
The stay home people came out in the thousands, in masks, of course, albeit failing even an attempt at social distancing (I guess Covid was only transmissible at the grocery store) to hold signs explaining that “dark skin is not a crime” and demanding a stop to “violence against BIPOC.”
After that, we were pretty much all in, as those insisting on maintaining constitutional rights and rejecting the vaccine and isolation mandates were tarred as “far right extremists,” “anti-vaxxers,” and “MAGA,” somehow. A mysterious, lone confederate flag (apparently a plant intended for the exact use that followed) was used by Prime Minister Trudeau and his media to paint the Freedom Convoy as racist, insisting the rallies “had to stop,” saying that people across the country “deserved to have their safety respected and get their lives back,” as though it wasn’t he himself who had been holding the country hostage for two years, with no end in sight until the truckers came along to put a stop to his ego-driven melodrama.
Why would anyone in Canada bring a confederate flag to a Canadian protest for constitutional rights and freedoms? They wouldn’t, of course, but the idea offers Canadian progressive exactly the narrative they seek, and why let reality get in the way of a good story?
Things were no different as British Columbians went to the polls last weekend to vote in B.C.’s hotly anticipated (for once) provincial election.
For those unfamiliar, which is probably most of you, B.C. has long been an NDP stronghold. They have traded off power with the Liberals over the last 30 years, who were were marginally different in being more pro-business and less married to the unions, but there has never been a genuine right wing or conservative contingent in B.C. as long as I’ve been politically cognisant. In the last election, the Conservatives won less than two per cent of the overall vote. The last iteration of a conservative party to win an election in B.C. were the Socreds, back in the 80s.
As a young leftist, I dutifully voted NDP in every election until about 2017, when I realized Canada’s progressive parties no longer represented me. Until then, I liked to frame the Liberal Party as “right wing,” because they weren’t socialists and because, until then, I thought the NDP was the party of the working class, on account of their allegiance to the unions. Things have obviously changed enormously in the last ten years, but many Canadians have not kept up, and still believe our progressive parties are the parties of the people — the marginalized, the women, the workers, the BIPOCs… And they are dying for a battle with “the far right,” just like their American frenemies.
Well, this year, they are in luck! Not only did B.C.’s Liberal Party (rebranded as BC United) drop out of the race, but half of Canada had already turned on the NDP as a result of their embrace of Covid-related authoritarianism, gender identity ideology, and free crack. The allure of progressivism had faded over the last four years, as people who had been dedicated leftists realized “their” party had left them behind, in favour of, to use
’s term, “luxury beliefs.”Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
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