By Sumayya
VANCOUVER — The people of British Columbia elected David Eby as their premier on October 19, 2024. On that day, they elected New Democrat MLAs in 47 out of 93 seats. This gave his party a third term in office and a second majority government in a row.
He was given a majority power to lead until 2028 if he wanted to.
Speaking on election night, a newly re-elected David Eby told the gathered crowd: “The campaign is over, but the work has just begun, hasn’t it? I promise again. I know we all promise again to work for the people of British Columbia every single day. That will be our only focus: getting things done for the people of British Columbia.”
He also added: “I know that the people of British Columbia, our whole province, deserve a premier who is going to bring us together, not pull us apart. And I promise to be that premier, to bring the people of British Columbia together.”
However, less than two years into that four-year term, these two important values stated by the premier of British Columbia on election night would be broken. They were broken by a tricky, early election call by a desperate premier. He was trying to take advantage of two political situations: the B.C. Conservative Party, which was disorganized at the time, and the very high unpopularity of U.S. President Donald Trump and his unpleasant presidency.
Premier Eby ultimately failed because he thought the voters were foolish. He believed the voters would not see through his obvious trick to take advantage of the disorganized Conservative Party. He assumed voters would not find that behavior nasty and unworthy of a person holding the office of the premier of British Columbia.
He proudly assumed that the people of British Columbia did not know that his government was already a working majority government. His government had just passed the provincial budget and was moving through the rest of the year with a very small list of laws to pass. This setup would have survived any vote of no confidence for at least another six months, or even longer.
He also assumed that voters were too uneducated to understand that relations between Canada and the United States are mostly led by the Government of Canada, not by the premier of Canada’s third-largest province. Furthermore, polls show that the people of British Columbia prefer the method used by Prime Minister Mark Carney over any plan put forward by Premier Eby.
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The public is smart about these things because the risks are very high, and people have been dealing with President Trump for a long time now. We know when there is a real effort to protect Canadians and when politicians are just putting on a fake show.
Premier Eby treated the public as if they were unintelligent people who did not understand how our government works. He believed that the public would not notice cheap political tricks when they saw them. He thought he could get away with a cheap election stunt to reset his term and run away from the future loss of support inside his own party.
Voters are smart, and they can naturally sense nonsense and insincerity when they see it. They take great pleasure in holding accountable and punishing those who misuse the great privilege of serving in public office just to help themselves in such an obviously dishonorable way.
Enter Lorne Doerkson
In the end, this whole plan was bound to fail from the start. Part of the reason was that the new Conservative Leader, Lorne Doerkson, was waiting for him on the debate stage. I think that at the NDP headquarters, they have a computer hard drive with a file written on each of the 25 most likely B.C. Conservative leaders in the province, ready to use just in case one of those 25 people became a leader anytime soon. I also think that the name Lorne Doerkson was not on any of those 25 files. Why? Because he is a leader who is not like the others we have seen in recent leadership races.
He is a change, in a good way, from what politics has too often become. He is not a person who brags. He is not a person who is hungry to be on television or in the media. He is not someone with a huge social media presence who worries about clicks, likes, thumbs up, subscribers, and online talk. He is not an angry politician who lives by making people mad and stirring up wild emotions over imaginary problems with unworkable answers that keep fights going forever.
He is a normal politician who has served two terms. He was born in New Westminster, grew up in Salmon Arm, and lives in Williams Lake, which has a population of 11,000 people. He was a Rotary Club president and a rodeo announcer. He was voted the Williams Lake Stampede volunteer of the year in 2019. He spent 20 years working in local media at community newspapers in central and northern British Columbia. Later, he became a financial planner before running for office in 2020.
He is a humble, highly honest, very decent, hardworking, good man. He cares more about getting things done than being loved by extreme political thinkers or hated by the people he disagrees with. In modern politics, he is a kind of hero who stands against the overly loud and angry style that has become the normal political way.
In the face of David Eby’s tricky election call and divisive campaign of social class warfare—which included a nasty and cheap attack on one of the greatest people in British Columbia, the giver to charity Jimmy Pattison—Lorne Doerkson stood out as a refreshing new start for a province and a political system that needs normalcy.
Turning the page
British Columbia has deep problems, and the answers will not come easily for our new premier-elect. His new team, new group of politicians, new cabinet, and officials will struggle with some of the biggest problems our province has seen in a generation. But the voters have sent a clear message that they want to move past David Eby and the NDP. They gave Mr. Doerkson a huge victory with seats across city, suburban, and country areas of British Columbia to work together and get things done.
Premier Eby bet that the people of British Columbia would not notice what he was doing with this early election call. They did notice, and they fired him. For Lorne Doerkson, the work has just started. If he leads the government the same way he ran his campaign—as a humble and thoughtful fixer of the many problems the province faces—it will be a welcome fresh start for a province that seriously needs one.
