NP View: October’s provincial elections are a chance to vote for common sense

Over the next two weeks, voters in three provinces will have a chance to disavow progressive nonsense and cast a ballot for common sense. For the sake of Canada, let’s hope they do.

If they don’t, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick can each count on a future of wasteful wokeness: crime tolerance, free drugs, performative paper straws, homeless camps in public parks and elaborate protections for government employees who put children on the path to receiving cosmetic mastectomies and genital surgery.

Nowhere is this more critical than in B.C., which is headed to the polls Oct. 18, after seven years of governance guided by the oppressor-oppressed thinking of the NDP. To Premier David Eby, oppressors are property owners on Haida Gwaii, who have been left in a legal grey zone after the NDP announced sweeping new land title changes on the island to advance reconciliation with Indigenous communities.

Oppressors are pregnant nurses, who, because of NDP-style harm-reduction policies, have to inhale toxic meth smoke on the job to accommodate addicts seeking care. Oppressors are children, whose playgrounds were ceded to homeless folk during the NDP’s radical decriminalization experiment — which was finally halted this year because it was such a disaster. Oppressors are female athletes, who have the privilege of competing in female sports — a benefit that must also be extended to transwomen as a matter of inclusion.

And most importantly, oppressors are high-income earners, who have seen their top tax rate rise to 20.5 per cent and are now paying one of the biggest tax shares in the country, to cover the cost of the NDP’s big government policies.

The federal government’s wage-suppressing, housing-cost-inflating immigration policy certainly adds to the mess, as does its climate policy. But for many years, the B.C. government has stood idly by as local development charges suffocate new development. Eby’s big plan to turn the ship around is to subsidize demand further by handing out housing loans.

And on climate, B.C.’s NDP has led the crusade with a plan that’s projected to shrink the province’s prosperity to 2013 levels by 2030. Another Eby government will stay the climate penance course, keeping young people away from home-ownership to keep activists feeling warm and fuzzy about saving the planet. Meanwhile, regular people have paid the price dearly: food costs are up 29 per cent since the NDP took power in 2017, no doubt a factor of the price of gasoline, natural gas and fuel oil, which have risen by 45, 49 and 62 per cent, respectively, over the same period.

It’s hard to find a province where regular, rule-following, no-nonsense people have been treated by their provincial government like servants who needs to be put down and kept there. Like any cycle of abuse, it’s not going to get better — no many how many times Eby offers flimsy promises of, “This time, I’ll be better.” He won’t do better. He’s proven he can’t.

The only way to break the cycle is by electing John Rustad — a man who believes in restoring public order by providing drug treatment for addicts, ending the government’s free drug scheme and bringing in court reforms to ensure timely justice.

The province needs a premier who believes in treating every person like a human being — an option only offered by the Conservatives. The NDP has spent its time integrating LGBTQ+ activism into schools under the guise of anti-bullying and gaslighting students into believing they’re colonizers — teachings that reject classic Canadian notions of equality and individualism.

The government has also made radical legal changes that give rights to Indigenous populations that are not enjoyed by other British Columbians. Rustad, at least, would roll back ethnic favouritism in favour of an economics-focused approach, and for the kids, he’d go back to having schools focus on plain old bullying prevention — something that protects both queer students and straight, without getting into divisive transgender politics.

New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, at least, are already on the path of respecting human dignity. They just need to stay the course.

Premier Blaine Higgs, who’s up for re-election on Oct. 21, has proven himself a trailblazer. He made the difficult but correct choice to publicly stand against radical gender policies in schools last summer by enacting Policy 713, which restricted the ability of schools to transition minors behind the backs of parents, and eliminated the province’s previous guarantee allowing students to participate in cross-sex sports. It was a good compromise for vulnerable minors, who face all sorts of risks in the course of gender transition, and the safest for girls, who are vulnerable in change rooms and who don’t have the same athletic advantages as biological males in sport.

It set off a cascade: Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who’s up for re-election on Oct. 28, quickly followed suit, and Alberta later tagged along as well. To their credit, Higgs and Moe have stood their ground in the face of mobs of loud, federally funded activists in court, doubters in caucus and schools attempting to disobey provincial orders.

Like Rustad, they don’t flinch in the face of the nonsense left. They stare it down. And when they decide what the alternative looks like, they don’t take “no” for an answer.

It’s common sense, and Canada needs a lot more of it.