Premier David Eby was mildly teased this week in the legislature about his hot yoga routine.
It was raised to key to the question: “What is more flexible, his promises, or his principles?”
Turns out he’d gone to yoga earlier in the morning. He laughed it off with: “I had a good stretch. It helps with the heart rate during question period.”
Eby recommended it to the entire legislature and it is sound advice, because B.C. politicians are going to be going through contortions that were unimaginable just a few months ago as U.S. President Donald Trump contemplates starving Canada into submission.
The stretching and twisting is already well underway. The NDP is folding most of its re-election campaign platform and stuffing it in a closet. The government continued the trend by reversing course and retooling the dangerous drug safe supply program this week.
There will be more to come.
Finance Minister Brenda Bailey is fresh off snatching the $1,000 grocery rebate back from voters and putting a even bigger tax rebate on the back burner (with the burner switched off).
“The world changed,” she told the legislature. “We cannot move forward…”
She also has a new twist on the NDP’s new emergency drive to boost the homegrown economy in the face of open across-the-board hostility from B.C.’s largest trading partner.
Eighteen major energy and mining projects in lengthy approval processes were put on a fast track this month.
But Bailey told the legislature this week that doesn’t mean automatic yeses.
“While we accelerate these important projects that we have brought forward, acceleration doesn’t necessarily mean only getting to yes.
“Acceleration can also mean getting to no, because we are still keeping the vital, vital protection of environment and collaboration with Indigenous peoples as our guiding lights on these decisions.
“What we’re getting rid of is death by maybe.”
The NDP spent several years adroitly using those processes to drag out the Trans Mountain Pipeline project that it firmly opposed. (Since “the world changed,” that pipeline now could turn out to be lifeline.)
And a certain amount of dithering after they took power in 2017 added to the cost and delays on the Site C Clean Energy Project, which they opposed, then grudgingly completed.
It too takes on much more importance in the new “all Trump, all the time” universe.
That respect for due process and review after review is being replaced by a hurry-up offence.
There’s a certain appeal to getting rid of “death by maybe.”
But some of that $20 billion worth of development is going to get shelved if Bailey is intent on respecting environmental protection and Indigenous consultation, even while barging ahead.
A faster no is more efficient. But it is still a no.
It’s going to be a tightrope walk. Good thing yoga is good for your balance.
Another example of the contortions underway comes from Tourism Minister Spencer Chandra Herbert.
About a quarter of tourists in B.C. are from international markets, and most of that share are from the U.S.
In normal times that would be a recipe for a boom. Everything in Canada is 30 per cent off, due to the slump in the dollar.
But Chandra Herbert described the source of that revenue stream as “our neighbour, who is a friend, now saying: ‘We’re not a friend anymore, and we’re coming for you. We’re coming for your things. We want what you have and we don’t want to listen to you.’
“That is a serious threat. … It’s something we have to be ready for and it’s something we’re going to have to deal with…”
Chandra Herbert said “we certainly welcome” U.S. visitors. But there’s never been a time when politics was more likely to get in the way of friendly day-to-day encounters with people south of the border.
Driving a Tesla with U.S. plates around B.C. these days is not as much fun as it used to be. It’s going to take some more stretching to make a marketing campaign work.
Just So You Know: There used to be a sign reading “Yoga Room” in the old Armory Building behind the legislature.
By the time the tariff threat shakes down, it could be filled with politicians trying to become double-jointed when it comes to matching past stances with current realities.
Namaste, baby.
