Amy Hamm: David Eby’s failure of an election debate

B.C. NDP Premier David Eby brought all the charisma and energy of a disgruntled used car salesman — desperate to sell voters a lemon — to the provincial election debate last night. He was bested by both his opponents, Conservative Party of B.C. interim leader Lorne Doerkson and the B.C. Green Party’s Emily Lowan.

Eby, who comes off as morose at baseline, looked particularly gloomy, and often on the verge of losing his temper. His lagging poll numbers may as well have been written on his face. Predictably, the night opened with moderator Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, asking the question of the hour: Why are we even here? Why did you call this snap election, two years early and in the middle of municipal elections, Mr. Eby?

Voters of all persuasions know the real answer. This election call was an attempted power grab, taken at the precise moment Eby saw the Conservatives in disarray and leaderless after the resignation of short-lived party leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay. Eby thought he could extend his term by another two years, just months after his public approval rating dropped to an abysmal 31 per cent. It surely looked like the opportunity of a political lifetime, notwithstanding — or so Eby thought — a populace that might not want to go to the polls twice in a month.

Eby, of course, claimed his one-seat majority government has been preoccupied with “surviving another day” in the legislature. He even invoked recently deceased NDP MLA Joan Phillip, telling us that she had to vote from her hospital bed to keep his government from crumbling.

“Joan Phillip, dying of cancer, after her tracheal tube was removed, voted at 4:30 in the morning,” Eby claimed, apparently referring to Phillip’s history of having voted on legislation several times while hospitalized this year. It felt uncouth for Eby to discuss Phillip in this manner. It wasn’t a tribute to her dedication so much as it was a desperate attempt at emotional manipulation. It was only his first act of debate desperation.

Eby, who professes to despise the “culture wars,” invoked them almost immediately. More than once, Eby attempted to derail Doerkson with tired claims of “hate” and “extremism” within Conservative ranks. He mentioned an allegation that Conservative MLA Heather Maahs called Centre B.C. MLA Elenore Sturko “immoral” for being a lesbian. Maahs has denied this, and posted on X before the debate that the claim is “false and defamatory.”

Maahs also took heat for previous comments about sexualized LGBT books held in public high school libraries in the province. The NDP broadly conflated her criticism of age-inappropriate books with criticism of homosexuality. At the debate, Eby repeatedly accused Maahs of suggesting that gay men are “secret pedophiles.”

Doerkson deflected from the Maahs issue, but went on the defensive for his campaign director, Katy Merrifield, who has faced calls to resign over a now-deleted X post stating “F–k Islam” and calling for the expulsion of the “abhorrent ideology.” Merrifield linked her posts to anger over the U.K. grooming gang scandal. Doerkson will not tell her to resign, he told Eby — but how about that 2018 comment from Attorney General Niki Sharma about the “unbearable whiteness of local elections results,” eh, Eby? Or Selina Robinson’s 2024 resignation over alleged antisemitism within NDP ranks?

From the start, Doerkson was placed in the unenviable position of deciding how much time to dedicate to countering Eby’s mudslinging, versus focusing on the premier’s terrible track record. Did he strike the right balance? We’ll have to wait for the next round of polls to find out.

Lowan held her own in the debate, coming across as serious as any Green Party leader could in promising free, well, everything. She very well may split the left-wing vote after demonstrating her ability to make Eby look like the unreasonable person in the room.

Candidates were asked about a range of topics, from the economy and government spending, housing, health care, daycare, public safety, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), and how the parties will work together after the election. Eby deflected from his record and insisted that the Conservatives would be no better than former B.C. Liberal governments, which haven’t been in power for nearly a decade. Neither Doerkson nor Lowan took the opportunity to hammer Eby on his family’s scandalous use of one of B.C.’s coveted $10-a-day child-care spots, a program that Eby halted the expansion of, but personally benefits from. That was unfortunate.

Doerkson stressed his plan to grow the province’s resource-based economy, fix the health-care system, repeal DRIPA, and offer better policing, housing and involuntary care to address B.C.’s homelessness and drug addiction crisis. He denied that he would privatize healthcare. He demonstrated a calm, confident demeanour that may persuade voters of his ability to lead the province.

Eby, meanwhile, struggled to articulate why an election was necessary to make the changes he now promises. On street disorder, Eby entirely blamed the former Liberal government for shutting down Riverview Hospital, a mental health facility. He then spoke of “providing dignified care so people aren’t lying half naked in a gutter,” as though the NDP hasn’t been in power since 2017, and hasn’t worsened street disorder and the addictions crisis by expanding “harm reduction” policies and running a failed drug decriminalization experiment.

If there was a single moment that should have proved Eby’s inability to govern this province, it was his admission that he cannot get over his ongoing resentments and work alongside the Conservatives in the legislature. “I have a hard time imagining working with this iteration of the Conservative Party,” Eby stated. That was a bombshell.

Is B.C. really going to elect the guy with the terrible track record, who called a self-serving election, and who announced that he cannot work with colleagues over differences of opinion?

British Columbians head to the polls on Oct. 24.

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