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How Clark can survive minority

Alright, I am ready to go out on a bit of limb this week. I know that everyone is saying that the Green Party is holding the balance of power right now and that they have a lot of opportunity to have significant impact on public policy.
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Alright, I am ready to go out on a bit of limb this week. I know that everyone is saying that the Green Party is holding the balance of power right now and that they have a lot of opportunity to have significant impact on public policy. For sure it is true that the Liberal Party will need the support of the three Green MLAs to keep confidence in the House but I think that this minority government leaves the door wide open for the B.C. Liberals to build bridges that could put them in much stronger position in a future election.

When Christy Clark came to power in 2013, she was faced with three other contending parties: the NDP, The Greens and the Conservatives.

I recently watched the 2013 leaders' debate and was reminded that, at that time, Clark was not expected to win.

You may remember the shock on election night when the Liberal Party won a majority government. At that time the Liberal Party was making a pitch that it was the just-right-of-centre party.

John Cummins was seen promoting a far more conservative agenda, the NDP were on the left and the Green party was really just trying to educate the B.C. electorate to the fact that they stood for more than just environmental policy.

In many ways, Clark ran on the NDP record of the 1990s, suggesting that the NDP would return to spending and that the Liberals would continue to defend the B.C. economy by maintaining a business friendly environment, creating jobs and balancing the budget. Clearly this approach worked and over the last four years, Clark has held that line adding a focus on the middle-class - something we have seen in many other elections including the recent gederal election.

During this election cycle, Clark found herself as the only representative of the right-of-centre and she again used the same language to frame public policy choices: creating jobs, being open for business and taking care of the middle class.

The NDP, as the left-of-centre party, also said that they would build a strong, stable economy. They used the term 'middle-income' in their platform rather than middle class but they also had a greater reach in their platform to low-income families/people. The Green Party, as I mentioned a few weeks ago in this column, is generally social democratic but they do have some fiscally conservative policies that are typical of national and international Green Party platforms.

The Greens argue that there are ways to support innovation and technology that will protect the environment while actually growing the economy and creating jobs.

Now there are two ways to read the 2013 and the 2017 election in B.C.

We could argue that B.C. is as polarized as ever.

No other province can boast the kind of politics that we have here in B.C. The left/right divide here is characterized differently than in other places because the left has a constituency of both labour and the environment who are very often at odds in a resource economy and the right has a constituency of populists and progressive liberals who are also often at odds. The 2013 election, with a majority, allowed the Liberals to continue to maintain the same trajectory of policy that we saw beginning in 2001. But the 2017 election gives the B.C. Liberals a chance to govern across the spectrum.

They can now reach out and say that the electorate is asking for more cooperation across the aisle. They can open the door to all sorts of new policy options. They can begin to repair the damage with public sector unions. They can advance climate change policy that will demand market changes that could spark new jobs. Clark can demonstrate that a female premier can promote equality by recognizing the needs of women and families across the socio-economic spectrum including, for example, supporting $10-a-day daycare.

My point is that the Liberals really have a chance to gain momentum out of this minority government - perhaps even more than the Greens. The Liberal Party can build this momentum while saying that this approach is the mandate they have been given by the B.C. electorate. Any other approach is likely to give the NDP the chance to run their own minority government or to send us back to the polls.