The oldest trick in the how to win at politics playbook is to take the best parts of your opponent’s agenda, make them your own, and then claim they were part of your platform all along.
The federal Liberals have been doing this to the NDP and Conservatives since the days of Mackenzie King, that fella on the $50 bill.
Now David Eby and the B.C. NDP are doing it to Kevin Falcon and his BC United Party.
At an event called the BC Natural Resources Forum in a place like Prince George in an election year, Falcon should be a rock star, surrounded by adoring fans and supporters eager to send him into the premier’s office in October.
Except he and his Resource Prosperity Plan unveiled Wednesday sounded more like Trooper, while Eby – even in a ridiculous winter parka – came across as Metallica.
Eby stole Falcon’s thunder – and almost all of BC United’s resource development plans – with a series of announcements.
Hydrogen energy development?
Manufacturing projects?
B.C. Hydro infrastructure?
A rare earth elements minerals mine north of Prince George?
Eby and the NDP are on it with money and political support.
Falcon is so yesterday’s news that his announcement even rehashed the old BC Liberals nugget about the NDP being the party of always saying no, scaring away resource development and investment.
That so-called party of no has been saying yes, please, to two new mines in the Prince George area – Artemis Gold’s Blackwater Mine south of Vanderhoof and Osisko Development’s Cariboo Gold project near Wells.
Falcon says he and the BC United are all-in on LNG.
More all-in than the NDP’s support of the Woodfibre LNG project in Squamish and the Cedar LNG project in Kitimat?
What’s in Falcon’s resource development plan that the NDP isn’t already doing?
Cancel carbon tax increases.
Except Falcon was a cabinet minister in the provincial government that introduced the carbon tax to B.C. in the first place.
New party name but the BC United is sticking with the same, old ideas and slogans from years gone by.
Or as Trooper would sing it, they’re a three dressed up as a nine.
Neil Godbout is the Citizen’s editor.
