British Columbia is going to see some big political change. But it’s going to be a year or two before it actually arrives.
Premier John Horgan has announced he is stepping down as premier. With two years before an expected provincial election, Horgan is giving his party plenty of time to hold a leadership race, choose a new leader, and let that leader show what direction they want to take the NDP and the provincial government.
Meanwhile, the B.C. Liberals have already chosen their new leader in Kevin Falcon, but they might not be the B.C. Liberals much longer.
Falcon is looking to possibly re-name the party, which has long been a sometimes mighty, sometimes uneasy alliance of federal Liberal and Progressive Conservative/Reform/Conservative supporters.
So both parties are in for a bit of a rebranding, and when we go to the polls, likely around the fall of 2024, some things will be quite different.
It’s also likely that the issues will have changed radically.
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Hopefully (fingers crossed) we won’t still be worrying about COVID-19 protocols by then. We will have decided whether or not we’re going to host another Olympic Games. We might even have decided what we want to do about a replacement for the Royal B.C. Museum.
A lot of other things are unknown. Will we be worried about housing affordability, or recovering from a construction slump? Will inflation be under control? Which direction will gas prices have swung? What forest fires, floods, or other major climate-related disasters will be on the minds of voters?
Considering how fast things change in B.C., it’s appropriate that we’ll have a renewal at the top by the time we next go to the polls. Change in leadership and party revamping will hopefully bring some new ideas. In a province where things are always in flux, new ideas are always needed.
— Black Press