This one in British Columbia produced a party rupture and reconsolidation, a leadership resignation, and a snap election.
asserted
one → produce → rupture
When I talked with Caroline Elliott last week, the official opposition B.C. Conservative Party was already fracturing.
asserted
Party → talk → Elliott
By Friday, more MLAs were peeling away and the upstart CentreBC was stocking itself with the defectors.
asserted
CentreBC → peel → defectors
On Sunday, Kerry-Lynne Findlay resigned as leader, four months after her narrow win over Elliott.
asserted
Findlay → resign → Elliott
On Tuesday, Premier David Eby dropped the writ for an Oct. 24 election, casting it as a firebreak against Donald Trump — and seven of CentreBC’s eight legislators, including Peter Milobar, walked back to the Conservative fold.
asserted
seven → drop → fold
One stayed behind.
asserted
One → stay → ?
So much has changed since I first spoke to Elliott that the interview has aged in dog years.
asserted
interview → change → years
Among other things, Elliott’s own situation has changed.
asserted
situation → change → things
She is no longer just the well-respected but recently failed runner-up for the leadership; she appears likely to run as a B.C. Conservative candidate on Oct. 24 (more later on that), and who knows what happens after that.
asserted
what → respect → that
The party is being led by an interim leader; the party is saying he gets to keep the job if the Conservatives win the election.
asserted
Conservatives → lead → election
Amid all this, Elliott has been making a sharp case for her worldview in Without Diminishment, the publication she co-founded: any party promising “free enterprise and nothing else” will not fix British Columbia.
asserted
party → make → Columbia
“In British Columbia,” she told me, “we have people saying, ‘We can’t fight the culture wars, we have to stick to free enterprise.’”
asserted
we → tell → enterprise
She knows that strategy’s lineage.
asserted
She → know → lineage
Gordon Campbell, premier from 2001 to 2011 and her mentor, built the B.C. Liberals as the province’s “free-enterprise alternative” to the NDP.
asserted
Campbell → build → NDP
Elliott can recite the free-enterprise catechism without notes: “Grow the economy.
asserted
Elliott → recite → economy
That’s it.
asserted
That → ’ → ?
That approach, she argues, was “an old way of doing things, effective for the time it was in.”
asserted
it → argue → time
Campbell launched it to repair the wreckage of the 1990s.
asserted
Campbell → launch → 1990s
“I respect what he did immensely; he turned the economy around, he got B.C. booming again.
asserted
B.C. → respect → economy
“Today, we’re in a different world where the budget’s a mess, the economy’s a mess.
asserted
economy → ’re → world
Those things have to be dealt with.”
asserted
things → have → ?
But the NDP, she says, has spent its more recent years in office doing far more than labour economics.
asserted
she → say → economics
It has pushed identity politics and social-justice ideology into ministries, schools, courts and professional bodies.
asserted
It → push → ministries
Talk of “culture wars” makes people flinch.
asserted
people → make → wars
Elliott thinks that flinch is the point.
asserted
flinch → think → ?
“When we use that framing, and then step away from it in fear, because we shouldn’t talk about these things, what we’re actually doing is buying into the left’s framing.”
asserted
doing → use → framing
They do not want those files examined, she says, because they are vulnerable on them — and because those files are producing worse economic results.
asserted
files → want → results
“I want to scream from the rooftops: You can’t just focus on the economic issues because the economic issues are cultural issues and cultural issues are economic issues.”
asserted
issues → want → issues
Her method is not a call to join a battlefield; it is to name the files.
asserted
it → join → files
Take on the issue of land giveaways where you’re handing away people’s land.
asserted
you → take → land
Take on the issue of the catch and release criminal justice system that is wreaking havoc on people’s lives.
asserted
that → take → lives
Take on the activism in our education system that is teaching kids they have to develop mindsets of cultural humility, that teaches them to be ashamed of being Canadian.
asserted
that → take → them
Do that without rage-bait, she says, “and people will open their ears and their minds to that in a way they won’t if you just say, ‘Come join me on the cultural battlefield.’”
asserted
you → do → battlefield
Then she connects the dots with the patience of someone who has lived inside the argument.
asserted
who → connect → argument
An education system that denigrates the resource sector produces voters who will not elect pro-resource governments.
asserted
who → denigrate → governments
Pitch equity over equality of opportunity and “get ready for high taxes” and policies that make the province less competitive.
asserted
province → pitch → taxes
Run a catch-and-release justice system “all day every day, which we’re doing in British Columbia,” and “don’t be surprised when small businesses just shut down and leave.
asserted
businesses → run → Columbia
”
“The Indigenous policy sphere is maybe the best example of the overlap between cultural issues and economic issues,” she says.
asserted
she → say → issues
“What starts as a land acknowledgement, and the ideological training that’s pushed into every professional association and the public service … becomes something very real.
asserted
that → start → association
It becomes the public’s acceptance of something like DRIPA, which then in turn sends investment away and sends away all those free enterprise jobs that we’re all so excited about.”
asserted
we → become → that
…and 24 more, not listed.
The Aporia
