The political debate in British Columbia over how to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threat continues to reach new lows, just at the critical moment the tariffs are set to land.
BC New Democrats and Conservatives have spent the week trading pointed barbs on social media, accusing each other, at various points, of being liars and traitors when it comes to the dispute.
It culminated in a video released by the Conservatives on Wednesday, comparing American tariffs to atomic bombs and warned “the atomic tariff” could vaporize B.C.’s natural resources sector.
The whole thing was played for laughs as a , including black and white scenes of people in gas masks and buildings being blown away from bombs, while an old-timey narrator mocked Eby for his “duck and cover” response.
It was a bit bizarre — made doubly so by the fact an overwhelming number of people who work in the forestry, mining and oil and gas sectors where the tariffs will cost the most jobs voted BC Conservative in the last election, right across rural B.C.
Instead of producing videos of its MLAs standing alongside workers at mills, mines and farms, saying they’ll fight like hell in Victoria to make sure the government protects those jobs, the party’s urban intelligentsia spent untold hours producing a smart-ass video making fun of the whole scenario because it couldn’t see the people through the partisan politics.
“People’s jobs are at stake and all you’ve done is defend Trump,” fumed NDP Forests Minister Ravi Parmar in a post on X.com. “Now you’re mocking a plan to support people.”
The Conservatives had been building to the moment for the better part of two weeks. The party and its MLAs have advanced the argument Eby is deliberately refusing to improve border security, like Trump has demanded, in order to use the crisis as cover for his record provincial debt and deficit.
“Make no mistake, David Eby will let tariffs happen so he can justify his reckless spending with borrowed money,” Conservative MLA Harman Bhangu posted on X.com.
“The NDP gave themselves raises, went on vacation for 4 months, and created a $9.4 billion dollar deficit. Now they’ll blame Trump for our financial mess instead of their own failures.”
There’s a kernel of truth to the idea that the NDP is using the crisis to redirect attention away from its record on turning a $6 billion surplus into a $9.5-billion structural deficit in fewer than two years.
It’s also beneficial to Premier David Eby to have an unpopular enemy on whom he can unload overworked attack lines and war metaphors, after barely winning the October election.
Without the international crisis, British Columbians who clipped the NDP’s wings at the polls might instead be demanding to know the governing party’s new approaches to the many problems it has so far unsuccessfully tackled in health care, addictions, crime and affordability.
And the sanctimony with which New Democrats have claimed the moral high ground, framing any difference in opinion on their response to the tariffs as disloyalty to the province and the Team Canada approach, is off-putting in the extreme.
Still, benefitting from a crisis is a long way away from actually deliberately fuelling one. And Conservative Leader John Rustad’s attacks — “Eby wants to goad Trump into a trade war” — dramatically overplay British Columbia’s significance in being able to influence Trump’s decision-making.
Rustad has called for provincial conservation officers to do border patrols, like in Manitoba. And he’s previously demanded a provincially funded port policing unit, to make up for Ottawa’s enforcement shortfalls. He’s said cracking down on the smuggling of fentanyl and illegal drugs into Canada is not only what Trump wants, but also beneficial to British Columbia as well.
New Democrats, meanwhile, think the border security argument is a false flag from Trump. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey has said Trump’s history of tariffs, and his creation of an external revenue agency to collect tariff revenue, prove he has misguided economic goals instead.
Ordinary British Columbians would probably think a mix of both approaches to be most prudent. But in our binary, hyper-partisan political climate, our party leaders can’t seem to find any shared middle ground during this crisis.
That’s a shame. If Trump does follow through with the tariffs, and if B.C.’s economy is sideswiped to the tune of $69 billion and 124,000 job losses, the public would be better served by politicians who can see themselves to at least trying to co-operate in the crisis, rather than devolving into the safety of their echo chambers to lob meaningless attacks at one another.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 17 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
