The New Democratic Party caucus — a.k.a. the Opposition for Life — trooped back into the legislature Wednesday and signed up for another four-year hitch of watching other people wield power.
While a school of thought has been developing for the past month that Leader Adrian Dix pretty much booted it single-handedly, he’s been pretty gracious and good-natured about it in public.
There’s not much doubt, though, that he is wracked privately about his new place in the history books — as the guy who blew a 20-point lead and stunned almost everyone by dropping a sure thing.
His job Wednesday was to warm up to the idea that his caucus is back doing exactly what it did before. And that after a year or more of counting on a glorious breakthrough, nothing has changed.
He said the swearing-in was a great day, but “we could have imagined ways that it could have been greater.”
Dix had a lot of enthusiasm for the strength of his 34-member team. “It’s fair to say many of our MLAs have achieved more on the opposition side than many cabinet ministers.”
The emotional impact of the ceremony, in which new MLAs join the select club of 915 who have represented voters over the last 132 years, also raised his team’s spirits — a bit.
But he acknowledged: “Obviously, there’s disappointment on the part of many of us.”
While the party’s forensic analysis of its catastrophe takes shape, Dix’s first priority is to lead the Opposition back into the legislature this month and debate the budget.
Prepping for that, he got in a few shots about the pay hikes for political staff that were dreamed up by the B.C. Liberal government during the transition period.
“It’s a reflection of a government that has been in power for a long time and is supporting Liberal insiders first and people second,” Dix said. “We’re already seeing significant differences between what the government campaigned on and what they’re acting on. It’s very much more of the same.”
He got a touch evasive about his role in the catastrophe in a media scrum after the swearing-in.
Defeated NDP MLA Harry Lali said the party abandoned blue-collar B.C. by not stressing jobs above all else. Specifically, when Dix came out against the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, NDP support started to evaporate.
Dix didn’t disagree, but said various issues were in play.
“We lost by four per cent,” he said. “If you look at different parts of the province, different things occurred.”
Dix said NDP advocacy for the film and TV industry played well, although that seemed to be a marginal issue in most minds.
Unreliable polling, negative and positive ads will be looked at in the party’s review, along with incidents and issues from local campaigns.
The big one is the party’s relationship with voters. “We have to address those issues in the long run,” Dix said. “There’s lots of reflections taking place right now.”
The party’s provincial council will meet in 10 days to lay out terms of reference for the review. They will be as wide-open as possible. Said Dix: “All the issues have to be raised about the conduct of the campaign and the performance of those in it. I surely wouldn’t expect to be spared from that review.”
That’s one thing he can count on. Dix made every effort to appear as a confident leader, but he’s a badly wounded politician at the moment. No decisions on his future will likely be made until after the review.
But his own personal review is likely well underway, and it’s likely to be tougher than anything the party conducts.
Just So You Know: The B.C. Liberals’ pay-hike caper detailed this week by colleague Rob Shaw was approved by the last meeting of the old cabinet.
The first meeting of the new cabinet added a refinement. They knocked back the new potential maximum for ministerial assistants (MAs) — now chiefs of staff — by a few grand, down to $102,000.
That puts them just a few bucks ahead of the base rate for MLAs. The joke is that some backbench MLAs saw the original rate for MAs — higher than their own — and started thinking about erasing the “L” from their business cards.
