Pay hike for NB Power CEO while ratepayers struggle ‘doesn’t make sense’: NB ACORN

On a mid-campaign Wednesday morning, the leaders of British Columbia’s two main political parties held events a few blocks apart in Surrey. BC NDP Leader David Eby stopped in at the Buy N Save South Indian Grocery on 72nd Avenue just west of King George Boulevard in the Surrey-Newton constituency to talk about supports for businesses and youth employment.

We seem to have entered the age of the flash-mob party, when political organizations appear out of nowhere or implode overnight. In Quebec, the Coalition Avenir Québec ruled the province for eight years and vanished in the recent election. At the same time, a Conservative Party of Quebec suddenly materialized with 19 seats in the province’s national assembly. And the Parti Québécois went from three seats to a minority government.

State capitalism and economic interventionism are on the rise. Normally the remit of authoritarian states or leftist governments, economic intervention is becoming more common even amongst free market champions. The most startling example is the Trump administration—ostensibly a conservative Republican government—and its frequent use of direct equity ownership, golden shares, and provisions for first-right-of-refusal. Dirigisme has long been a part of the economic fabric in Quebec, and the trait has often spilled over into Ottawa. Laurentian capitalism, as The Hub christened it, was frequently practiced by the Justin Trudeau Liberals, from EV battery plants to clean manufacturing. The Carney government, while a vast improvement on this front, is still “spending less, investing more,” from hydro dams and mining stakes to a new sovereign wealth fund.