THE BI-WEEKLY(ISH) EH?! - The October 23rd, 2024 Edition

You Could Also Call This One The 'Post BC Election' Edition, Eh?!

Hi!

It appears that the British Columbia provincial election is both over and not quite officially over… yet (at least at the time of me writing this newsletter).

See “live results” over on CBC, including by riding (but just know that they won’t likely update again until sometime around October 26th-28th)

Personally, I hope things stay more/less as they are — as an NDP minority government, with the Greens holding the balance of power, is probably the best scenario for the people of BC getting a government that might actually be held more accountable to more progressive values (and, for no reason at all, I would also like to point out that the opposite of the word “progressive” is “regressive”).

Now, me recently writing a long post about why I thought NOBODY should vote BC Conservatives in this election might make me a bit biased here — BUT — I genuinely think it is also worth pointing out that of the estimated 57.41% of eligible voters that turned out to vote in this latest provincial election, only 43.6% of that 57.41% actively went out and cast a vote for the BC CONS.

If my math is correct, this means that out of a British Columbia voting population of approximately 3,548,563 adult humans, only 888,221 of those adult humans went out and actively said they wanted the BC CONS to represent their voice.

That’s only about 25% of the total BC voting population — which is more than one would hope given the information and context presented by many concerned British Columbians about the BC CONS during this election cycle, BUT, it is also not as many adult humans as one might think when you consider how close that number of votes is to winning a majority government (which should serve as another great example of just how problematic a first-past-the-post voting system is for EVERYONE, including all those people currently worried that the NDP might still walk away with a majority too).

This screenshot shows all votes cast for all parties across BC.

Now, I am not suggesting that my one-blogger campaign of “NOT BC CONS” reached as many people as I would have hoped (ie. the actual newsletter has only been viewed 530 times as of the writing of this sentence, plus there is also whatever context people pulled from what I shared within the walls of Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook + whatever dialogue happened in the comments section of those posts) — BUT — me seeing that around 75% of the BC voting population was not interested in the vibes that the BC CONS were putting out there (ie. because 75% of the BC voting population did not go out and actively vote FOR the BC CONS), I can take some comfort in that.

I also biasedly think it is worth noting that in the Kimberley, BC riding of Columbia River-Revelstoke, even though the BC CONS candidate was able to ‘get past the post’ first by the end of election night, if one were to bust out their calculator, they would clearly see that 51.9% of the people who went out to vote in our riding actually voted “NOT BC CONS”.

CRR riding results as of October 22nd, 2024

And if one were to tally up the progressive votes in the Kimberley riding altogether (for example, imagine that the NDP and Greens decided to join together — OR — much like how BC United dropped out so that the right would not split their votes this election, if the NDP or Greens worked together to drop out of ridings where vote-splitting is expected to work against their most important shared values), Columbia River-Revelstoke actually voted 9297 for progressive values and 8,616 for BC CONS.

Interestingly, this is also about the same split that was shown in the 2020 election, just with more people voting in the 2024 election (except the right was represented by the BC Liberal party back then, which eventually changed to BC United after so many people’s undying hate for Justin Trudeau was getting confused with their branding, but then BC United ended up… well, you already know the rest of that story).

As you can see, even back in 2020 the combined “progressive” vote ended up being higher than the unsplit vote on the right in Columbia River-Revelstoke.

And over in the Cranbrook riding of Kootenay-Rockies this year, if we continue to focus on the desired outcomes that my “NOT BC CONS” campaign was hoping for (which was for people to actively NOT vote BC CONS), even in this traditionally much more conservative area, if we break out our calculators again, the numbers clearly show that more people voted for “NOT BC CONS” (ie. 57.2% of whoever built up enough energy to get out and cast a vote in Kootenay-Rockies DID NOT cast their vote for the BC CONS).

Of course, I am not lumping former BC United candidate Tom Shypitka in with the NDP and Greens in regard to their plans/policies/perspectives, I am just stating that I consider a vote for Tom Shypitka a vote for “NOT BC CONS”, which was the main point that I was trying to make in my previous newsletter.

So, if Kootenay-Rockies was not going to go progressive (which it clearly was not), I was at least hoping that the riding would have gone Independent (as having MLAs that are unaffiliated with excess party-baggage would be a positive thing to start seeing going forward in our politics).

Oh well, so much for that.

Relatedly, when BC United announced that they were dropping out of the election a few weeks before the election got started (because they weren’t polling far enough right for the loudest in their tribe and the right knows how much vote-splitting works in their favour when there’s only one rightwing option for people to choose to “stick it to the libs”), I was hoping that Scott McInnis would go the Tom Shypitka route and also run as an Independent (rather than joining the party that he had already been talking smack about back when he thought he would be running against them with a different party).

I was hoping that Scott—who many local Kimberlites vouch for as a good/great person, as he has been a principal at a local school and seems to be an overall friendly member of the community—I was hoping he would be able to see all of the objectively problematic and concerning things happening on the far right of politics, and also see those same things happening within the BC CONS team/base (information that Scott’s former party BC United gathered into a 200-page document before disbanding), and that he would take that moment in local area political history to publicly stand up for AND stand up against things that should unquestionably matter to adult humans living today (and that he would then run an Independent local area campaign that didn’t fly the BC CONS flag).

But, instead of actively choosing to NOT attach himself to the ongoing normalization of outdated and harmful thinking being demonstrated by more than just a few BC Conservatives (even if this all gets willfully ignored or swept under the rug by their most ardent supporters), Scott chose to throw his hat in with the BC CONS (which was hopefully to the chagrin of at least a few of his already-being-pulled-further-right-when-it-was-BC-United personal supporters).

And then, when the time predictably came that a political opponent would try to test Scott’s personal integrity by bringing up several examples of fellow Conservative colleagues saying wildly inappropriate things and asking Scott whether he condemns such speech (a tactic that Tom Shypitka never had to answer for because he chose to run Independent, fyi), rather than showing that he will put basic personal/progressive values ahead of toeing the BC CONS party line, Scott released a statement written by Bill Bennet that basically says, “how dare the NDP try such dirty political tricks!” — while also not condemning any of the hateful things their fellow conservative colleague said all the way back in 2015… when he would have been in his fifties (a candidate that went on to win their riding in Surrey, smdh).

Since I already shared my main thoughts on the 95EH Facebook and Instagram (my main point being: "Because it matters what you say you stand for AND it matters what you won’t say you stand up against"), and since the post I shared to the Kimberley Corkboard seems to have been scrubbed from existence, I just want to take a moment to address one of the main complaints I saw regarding what I posted.

So, for those that don’t want to click over to FB or Insta, I’ve included a screenshot below, along with the screenshots above, which should capture the general gist of the context that I put out on the local internets on the 17th of October (although I also mentioned some stuff about the BC CONS “costed” platform in my post, however, nobody commented about any of that).

Since my Kimberley Corkboard post, where I simply shared my 95EH Facebook post, seems to have been disappeared from Corkboard history, you will just have to take my word that there were a few people in the comments who suggested that what I posted was tantamount to libel/slander. Some people also said that I was a biased publication (which I think is sweet that they would call me a “publication”, tbh). And for some reason, one person kept referring to me as a “yellow journalist”.

Basically, they were making me out to be quite the little stinker.

But, since I know how gossip can move around a small town (I once heard I didn’t want the McDonalds in Marysville to happen because I supposedly run that ‘Hungry Eh’ food truck, which I do not), I would just like to point out that all I did was share the verbatim statements that both local area political candidates chose to make/release, and then I simply stated that I thought this moment should have been…

a personal integrity layup to say something like "of course I condemn anyone calling a race of people inbreds, especially someone running for public office in BC, even if they happen to be running for the same party as myself"

So whatever some people think that I might be implying by saying the above things and sharing the literal statements that each candidate put out to the public, I’m going to have to counter your implied-based outrage with the suggestion that you really should do a bit more investigating into why you think whatever you think I’m implying would be implied by me simply sharing what one’s actions/inactions were.

Also, I’m not implying what I think some people think I’m implying.

I’m literally stating that I can’t believe how easy it should have been to deal with this situation in a way that doesn’t totally avoid addressing how wrong it is for someone running for public office to have shared such overtly horrible statements in their not-so-distant public online history.

There’s nothing implied there.

I will just add that it should not be considered a “gotcha!” political move to ask an opposing candidate whether they publicly disavow calling another race of people inbreds (among other things). Unfortunately, the bar of expectations is currently so low in politics that it is practically on the ground.

Apologies in advance for continuing to think it is ok to openly expect better.

However, as one of the Corkboard commentators so astutely pointed out in defense of Scott not taking a public stance against the objectively unacceptable comments his BC CONS colleague made — and I fully admit to paraphrasing here (as I forgot to take screenshots of all the comments before the post was deleted from the Corkboard):

“Maybe Scott didn’t want to release a statement that would upset the people who support the objectively unacceptable comments that were made… did you ever consider that you yellow journalist?!”

So, I guess there’s also that point to consider… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cheekiness aside, since the Corkboard comment section got locked up before I had a chance to jump in and add any replies of my own (FWIW… I was entertaining baby kittens during the last week of the election and didn’t really have the right state of heart/mind for arguing with people on the internet + there were already other people commenting rational arguments on my rationality’s behalf), I would just like to take a moment to tell the person making the “Scott wouldn’t want to upset the people who DO think a race of people are inbreds, now would he?” argument that you were not making the point that you think you were making.

I am genuinely sorry if anyone got upset by something that I did not actually say during this local area election season (again, everything I actually said is still located on Facebook and Instagram or in the above write-up, or over in the previous newsletter, and you can always feel free to quote what I actually say to provide better context about what exactly I said that was upsetting, if I actually said it) — BUT — I would also just like to reiterate the idea that if something bad feels implied by someone simply sharing a politician’s actions/inactions on a public issue (especially when no one is disputing those actions/inactions), the responsibility of the bad implication lies with the actions/inactions in question (not the person pointing out the actions/inactions).

And before anybody clutches their pearls too tightly about me bringing this local area “campaign controversy” up again (I promise, I’m over it… because I’m also not surprised by it), I would just like to point out that a lot of the same folks who showed outrage on my Corkboard post sure didn’t seem to have an issue with the insincere letter that Doug Clovechok sent to The Bulletin editor (which was then shared on the local socials - with some spicy comments in The Kimberley Connection version) around the same time.

Screenshot of a snippet from Doug Clovechok’s letter to the Bulletin editor

Because I hope we can all see the bi-partisan irony of “you cannot always rely on somebody' else’s talking points” coming from the same campaign team that literally just released a statement written by somebody else the day before.

Politics, amirite?

ANYWAYS… I will shut up now and leave y’all with this excellent recent podcast episode of The Dig where Naomi Klein + Daniel Denvir have a very rational discussion about topics that people are usually not so great at talking/thinking rationally about these days:

And I hope some of whoever made it all the way down to here will find some time to give this podcast episode a listen, as there are some very insightful insights to be absorbed in there, especially on the topic of current “Left” and “Right” dynamics (which apply quite fittingly to this latest BC election cycle… not to mention the big ‘Merica vote happening next month or whatever is happening politically on a federal level in Canada right now).

Finally, if you liked this newsletter enough to want to pass it on to someone else who you think might also get some value out of it, please feel warmly encouraged to do just that ✌️

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Cheers 🍻

--

Jeremy / HI54LOFI

(95EH’s Temp Intern)