“The 2017 Election Loss Is On Mike de Jong,” Said Former B.C. cabinet minister Bill Bennett!
VANCOUVER – Boastful former finance minister and BC Liberal leadership candidate Mike de Jong is being accused of misleading the party on the size of the surplus which the BC Liberals didn’t utilize and ended up losing the last election and turning power over to the NDP after a long 16 years of party reign.
Former B.C. cabinet minister Bill Bennett took on de Jong this week, accusing him of misleading cabinet and caucus on the size of the Liberals’ last surplus in government – billions of dollars that he said the party could have used for programs that could have won votes in the spring election.
Bennett’s criticisms, in an e-mail obtained by The Globe and Mail, come in the week before BC Liberals vote on a leader to succeed former premier Christy Clark, who quit politics after the Liberals were ousted from government last summer as the result of a political alliance between the BC NDP and the BC Greens. Mr. de Jong is among six candidates for the leadership.
“Had we used even a portion of that extra money to help with strong social supports, I don’t believe we’d be having this leadership campaign today,” writes Mr. Bennett, a high-profile BC Liberal first elected in 2001 who chose not to run for re-election in 2017, reported the Globe and Mail.
“The 2017 election loss is on Mike de Jong.”
The BC Liberals won two more seats than the other two parties in the legislature as they sought a fifth term in government last May. However, it was not enough seats in the 87-seat legislature to outnumber the combined New Democrats and Greens.
Bennett’s comments speak to a continuing theme in the leadership race, which came up this week in the last debate among candidates, namely that the Liberals did a poor job of conveying to voters the benefits of the buoyant economy that came about on their watch in government.
“Balanced budgets and triple-A credit ratings have to have a purpose – and that purpose has to be people,” leadership candidate Dianne Watts told the debate during a segment on what went wrong for the party in the 2017 election. She said Liberals have to connect with voters.
Andrew Wilkinson said the party was preaching to voters from “30,000 feet” about credit ratings and debt-to-GDP rations. “It meant nothing in [voters’] daily lives. The NDP, in the Lower Mainland, were in their living rooms, saying, ‘We’ll give you free bridge tolls, cheap daycare and a renters’ subsidy, $400 a year.'”
Bennett, whose cabinet portfolios included mines and tourism, said in the e-mail that he does not trust de Jong.
“He either knew we had $2-billion more in surplus than he told us before the election, in which case he is not trustworthy, or he actually seriously messed up as finance minister in calculating the surplus, in which case he is incompetent.
