Final B.C. election resultsIt might be too soon to throw in the towel on the Liberal fortunes in B.C. They do after all hold 43 seats. Granted the Greens are clearly anti oil and gas but we must remember they only constitute 3 seats not 43 or 41 as did the Liberals & NDP. If the Greens has been that popular they would have won considerably more seats and their ridings would not have been just confined to the Island but to the mainland as well; but they didn’t! Besides, I’m not so sure that either the NDP or the Liberals are prepared to have the shots called by a group that don’t even qualify for official party status. Nor do I think that the NDP could be that blas about ignoring employment imperatives for province in aggregate as a party, or as individual members.
If I take any impression away from this election, it’s that B.C. voters are very concerned about jobs, especially at a time when the B.C. forest products sector could be under the guns in the upcoming NAFTA talks. The reality is that the province simply can’t just run on tourism alone or be set up as some Green mausoleum. B.C. voters recognize this. No doubt both NDP and Liberals will do their due diligence in jockeying for best advantage but in the end it may well turn out that substantial Liberal power sharing with the NDP vis--vis cabinet posts may be the only practical outcome. Too much is at stake for the province to have all major employment initiatives filtered through the Green lens first and then passed to one of the other parties. It just doesn’t seem to make any democratic sense apart from possibly being a recipe for disaster.