Politicians, it matters who you get on board with, literally and figuratively, during this election season.
With the provincial election quickly approaching on Oct. 19 and a federal election looming, it is enough to make a voter’s head spin trying to keep up with all the politicking.
The oft-repeated adage that politics makes strange bedfellows has been on display with the recent provincial BC United Party implosion.
On Aug. 28, the party’s leader Kevin Falcon announced the suspension of BC United’s campaign, passing the election campaigning baton to the Conservative Party of BC.
On the national stage, a federal election is, at most, a year away, with the 45th election set to take place on or before Oct. 20, 2025. It could be much sooner given on Sept. 4, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh announced that his party was ending its supply-and-confidence agreement with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.
It is against that backdrop that Sea to Sky constituents were exposed to Member of Parliament West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Patrick Weiler’s latest campaign-style video on YouTube and shared on social media about the political hot potato, regional transit.
In the video, Weiler gives a rundown of the history of corridor regional transit and notes what the Liberal government offered along the way.
“In 2018, the federal government offered to match funding to sustain the routes that the Greyhound Bus services used to serve, but the B.C. government declined the offer for the Sea to Sky Corridor,” he says.
“Over the last nine years, the government of Canada has invested over $30 billion in public transit projects, which is 10 times more than the previous Conservative government invested,” Weiler continues. “And on top of that, we just announced another $30 billion for [the] public transit fund over the next 10 years to provide predictable, reliable long-term capital funding for Transit projects that help meet the need for our increased population.”
Weiler says his government is “prepared to invest in this [regional transit] project to start up the system.”
He encourages viewers to contact their provincial government leaders to make regional transit happen.
Interviewed in the clearly Liberal promotional video are the mayors of Squamish and Pemberton.
This struck me as odd, given Weiler has clearly been in campaign mode for several months.
Now, is this a breaking news story that makes or breaks an election? Frankly, no.
But there are questions savvy politicians at every level should be asking themselves in the coming days and months: “Who am I publicly aligning with, and how will it be perceived?”
“Who is potentially trying to use me, and for what?”
Maybe I am hyper-sensitive to this issue because journalism rules are so strict.
Editors and reporters must be extremely careful not to be seen as endorsing or supporting any one politician or party.
Some folks in the community already think journalists are biased and/or seeking favour (we aren’t!), so I do everything I can to not add to that perception.
Politicians should too.
For the record, the politicians themselves say their appearance in that transit video had nothing to do with supporting Weiler in the forthcoming federal election.
“Mayor [Armand] Hurford’s participation in MP Weiler’s regional transit video demonstrates the mayor and District’s commitment to regional transit in the Sea to Sky and is not an endorsement of any political candidate or party,” said a District spokesperson.
“The mayor is a key part of a regional group comprised of First Nations and neighbouring municipalities in the Sea to Sky that has been advocating to the province for several years for a commitment to help fund and implement a regional transit solution. A federal commitment to support regional transit is a promising step to help move this work forward, and the District looks forward to working with all orders of government to make this a reality.”
Pemberton Mayor Mike Richman told The Squamish Chief pretty much the same thing about his appearance in the video.
On the provincial front, Jeremy Valeriote, of the BC Green Party, who is running to replace BC United’s retiring Jordan Sturdy, shared the video to the close to 74,000-strong audience of Facebook’s Sea to Sky Road Conditions with the text that read, in part, “ I can’t wait to work with Patrick and the fed/prov governments to finally make this happen.”
But the share of the video is not intended to be taken as an endorsement of Weiler or the Liberals by voters, Valeriote said.
“If elected as MLA, I will need to work closely with our MP to dislodge the inertia on regional transit—talked about for decades and not acted on,” he said.
“MP Weiler’s thorough summary of where we are and how we got here draws important attention to this critical issue for Sea to Sky residents that I wanted to highlight. I will work with anyone, regardless of partisan politics, to finally make this essential service a reality,” he said.
“No federal election has been called and I don’t see the [federal] NDP announcement as directly leading to one in the near future.”
Fair enough; however, given what folks have seen on the provincial and federal stage of late, from here on in, aware of it or not, voters—and journalists—are watching closely for who lines up with whom.
