How desperate to win are the two major parties battling it out in the provincial election?
Very desperate, you can smell, it and in the ridings where the gap between the two is narrowest — and the Green Party has momentum — the smell of gunpowder is particularly pungent.
Let’s start with the BC Liberals, who carpet bombed several key ridings with announcements prior to the writ being dropped. Millions of court-ordered dollars for schools, much needed upgrades to Eagle Ridge Hospital ($22.6 million for the ER), Royal Columbian Hospital (business plan approved for $1.1 billion Phase 2 and 3) and Surrey Memorial ($7.4 million for the cancer unit) plus grants matching the federal contribution for the Broadway SkyTrain extension and Surrey LRT were announced (not long after the province said it wouldn’t match those grants).
All these announcements are targeted to ridings that will be close races and where Green candidates can poll 8% without leaving their bedrooms.
In Coquitlam-Burke Mountain, where the NDP won in a byelection last year, the BC Liberals will be keen to win back that seat. In Coquitlam-Maillardvile, where the NDP won by only 41 votes in 2013, both the NDP and the BC Liberals are expected to be particularly active.
Even in the Port Moody-Coquitlam riding, which usually casts its vote for the BC Liberals, the governing party won with only a 437-vote margin four years ago.
Similarly, there are a couple of ridings in Surrey where races are expected to be close.
So cue the hospital funding announcements, the transportation announcements and the daycare promises.
As opposition, the NDP hasn’t had the same firepower as the governing party but it has held fast on its promise for $10-a-day daycare, which may win traction in close ridings such as those in the Tri-Cities, where there are a lot of working parents, and its promise to axe tolls on the Port Mann and Golden Ears bridges and freeze BC Hydro rates, will be music to the ears of Surrey residents.
The BC Liberals meanwhile, would cap tolls on those bridges, to cut motorists’ driving costs.
Meanwhile, the Greens have street cred as the environmental party, although not always the strongest candidates, and the relative newcomer to the B.C. political scene has promised free daycare for kids under three years of age.
Our view? It’s going to be a nasty fight so if you don’t like the sounds of battle, head for the bunkers until May 9.
But whatever you do, get out and vote.
@TriCityNews
