The twin byelections sure didn’t grab anybody’s attention, and it’s an open question whether a few months of arguing in the legislature will get much notice, either.
The NDP Opposition will resume grilling the B.C. Liberal government next week after an 11-week winter break. The caucus is bolstered by two new MLAs who won last week’s byelections. B.C. Liberals will be taking comfort in the fact that almost no one cared.
Apathy counts toward the status quo, and the monumental indifference in both ridings was the most striking feature.
MLA-elect Jodie Wickens won a former Liberal seat with just 3,607 votes. That’s the fewest needed to win a seat in B.C. in 30 years. The riding managed just over 20 per cent turnout. Just 10 per cent of the registered voters in the riding checked off her name.
Vancouver-Mount Pleasant turnout was just slightly higher. MLA-elect Melanie Mark takes the seat with just 5,353 votes.
The pair arrive on a scene that’s almost as quiet as their elections were. Alberta politics is an absorbing study in how the first NDP government in history there is dealing with a financial crisis. The House of Commons is a day-by-day story of how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau redesigns the Harper approach.
B.C. is a comparative yawn. (Proviso: All hell can break loose at a moment’s notice.) The issues have been on the agenda for some time. The positions are entrenched. There aren’t many dramatic new developments.
There’s one particular problem that will draw a lot of attention during the session, and likely in the budget — housing.
Two extremes at opposite ends of that issue are on daily display now. There’s the fantastically high paper wealth that’s accumulating among metro Vancouver property owners at the expense of the rest, and the desperate straits of some homeless people in Victoria. Pressure has been building to do something about both problems. And although the Victoria courthouse tent city looks much more acute as a problem, it’s actually slightly easier to handle.
Vancouver’s unaffordability is now beyond the reach of the provincial government to do much about. Finance Minister Mike de Jong dropped a few hints this week that the government will be taking steps. But the levers he has available to pull have minimal impacts.
The property transfer tax is the most obvious one. It’s been tinkered with periodically, but the fact people are still seizing on it as a problem indicates the refinements haven’t made much of a difference. The PTT amounts to about $20,000 on a million-dollar house, less than the average real-estate fees.
Cutting it slightly would allow more people to qualify for mortgages. But it’s the gargantuan mortgages that are the problem.
Another possible move isn’t a lever. It’s a hot button. Curbing foreign ownership would spark a furious debate where an assortment of interests would ride frantically off in different directions. The B.C. Liberals have been very reluctant to go near that notion. De Jong’s ministry experts are dubious it would accomplish much.
The other potential move is to dramatically increase supply, which is largely a municipal issue. Making a difference there means rounding up all the local governments on short notice and co-ordinating them toward a common goal. (See the transit dilemma for an example of how easy that is.)
Housing Minister Rich Coleman got started on Victoria’s tent city problem Friday by laying the groundwork for a Feb. 25 deadline to clear it from the courthouse lawn. He’s been saying for months that there are shelter spaces available for all the campers who need them. But he bulked up the options considerably, by buying the Mount Edwards care home and taking over the shuttered youth-detention centre in View Royal.
That’s 88 new spots, plus 40 more rent-supplement cheques for people to live elsewhere. It’s all supposed to be available two days before the deadline.
“A problem exists in downtown Victoria that everybody is talking about and we have to go to work to find a solution and we’ve done that,” he said.
The day after the deadline will determine whether the months-long tent city was a housing problem or a political protest. If it’s the latter, it could still have some time to run.
