The Ben Mulroney Show - Vaughn Palmer: Breaking Down B.C.'s Election

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

On today's episode of "The Ben Mulroney Show," Ben welcomes  Vaughn Palmer, columnist with The Vancouver Sun. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube --⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at ⁠https://x.com/BenMulroney⁠ Insta:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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For example, I wanted to know if in Canada there has ever been a situation where municipal elections were held in close proximity to provincial elections and what happens to voter turnout. Well, it turns out it's happened a number of times, especially in the province of Saskatchewan for some reason, and it's documented. that when that happens, municipal turnout plummets. So if you want an indication of an anti-democratic move, it's deliberately choosing to place your election in close proximity to another one. And that's what happened with the NDP's David Eby,

when he set his province down, I think, a foolhardy path to an election where he thought that he could get more votes and more seats at a time where his opponent was in disarray. to talk about this. That's my position from Toronto. Let's talk about somebody who's in the trenches day in and day out and has acquitted himself with honor for years. Von Palmer, columnist with the Vancouver Sun covering political political, provincial politics. Von, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ben, for inviting me. And so far, the opinion polls say you're right. This was not a brilliant idea to call a provincial election in the middle of a civic campaign when you didn't. need to do it. Most of the opinion polls show the NDP is behind the conservatives. Around five points, well, that means you lose and it means the conservatives will be the next government of BC. Yeah. Things can change. Things absolutely. Polls change. They absolutely can.

And I probably have confirmation bias. Like I'm looking for reasons to to champion Lauren Dirkson, the underdog in this thing. And when I, and the algorithm feeds me that sort of thing. day in and day out. But I can't imagine that the BC Conservatives have been running an error-free campaign. No, they've had some rough moments, although not as many as you would expect

considering what a fiasco they were before the campaign started. And that's where I wanted to go with you. You would have thought that what the NDP were seeing and the reason the cynic like me thinks they called the election, was this, this, this party, you know, couldn't, what's the expression? They, they couldn't organize a two, a two-car parade.

So how, how did they, how did they become disciplined overnight? Well, they did. I mean, on Friday, there were still three, on a Friday, there were still three political parties rattling around out there, calling themselves conservative. And the leader of the conservatives, Carrie Lynn Findley, former federal MP, who was like under fire from her own members. Over the weekend, she quit. On the Monday, the party, the conservative party, united,

a whole bunch of people that had been kicked out and left came back. And they picked this guy, Lauren Dirkson, low key, being around for a while as their leader. And he's done okay. So it happened. Yeah. You know, and it happened like incredibly within a very short period. time and you know i'm sure when the postmortems are written and if ebbe remains on the track he's on now and loses the view in his own party will be why did we do this well just uh for the main opponent

resigned and you know the funny thing was the first thing the new democrats complained about was all this new interim leader he's just an interim leader you know they've only got an interim leader well the The reason they only had an interim leader is because the NDP called the election 48 hours after the guy was appointed. And speaking of Lauren Durkson, he is joining us on Thursday in the second hour of the Ben Mulroo show. So very, very excited to speak with the BC conservative leader. And, you know, I've watched a number of missteps. I've watched David Eby try to, you know, casually demonize Jimmy Patterson. I've watched him say buy Canada while wearing an American fleece.

But it's this most recent one of his admission that despite making hundreds of thousands of dollars, he and his wife have been availing themselves of $10 a day daycare, only to then try to fill in the gap by saying, well, we've donated the difference between the two. But that doesn't open up an extra slot in daycare. So, and from what I'm reading, this is a pretty, this could be a big problem for him. Yes, because British Columbia, the new Democrats for three elections running, have promised $10 a day childcare, but they've never delivered it. Only 10% of those spaces in BC are at that price.

So one of the cabinet ministers said, if you got one of those $10 a day spaces, you've won the lottery. And you're right, Eby got asked. Well, Eby first of all said yes. Then he realized he'd better explain this. So he brought out a statement saying, you know, we covered the difference. So, of course, reporters said, well, what was the difference? Because in some places, if it's not 10, you pay 35, you can pay 50.

How big was your donation? E.B. wouldn't answer today. You got asked three or four different ways today. Wouldn't answer how big a donation it was. Said there's going to be a second donation for his second child, who's going in as well, won't say how much that was. And he got asked, did you claim all this on your taxes? no answers. So the questions continue. And you make an interesting point. If you're in one of these

very limited number of $10 a day sites and you're in, and you've got two children in there, you're taking up spaces that aren't available to somebody else. Even if you're covering the cost difference, those are two spaces that are not available because this government is not delivering what it promised, which was universal, $10 a day, child. care and they made the promise the first time nine years ago. It's it's the double-edged sword, Vaughn, of promoting yourself and the left tends to do this as being as being the virtuous ones. And when you demonstrate by your acts that you are not so virtuous, and in fact, you're

pretty much like just normal people, you lose credibility with the people that you're seeking to gain it with. One of the knocks on the conservatives, Vaughn, was that it was too much about social issues. Everything was about social issues. And it feels, at least from my perspective here, that the pocketbook issues are the ones that are winning the day in terms of what people are talking about. Not to say that reconciliation is not on the table, but does seem that the economy is front and center when the conservatives are talking about what they're promoting. Yeah, I mean, I think they've looked at the opinion polls, which say that the big issues in this election are the same as they were to. years ago and that is the cost of living affordability housing prices public safety health care waiting

lists and so that's what they've talked about you're right they've they've stopped pushing hard the woke stuff yeah it's still out there but it's not the kind of thing that people are deciding how to vote on and so the conservatives unlike the previous leader have decided we're not going to push that stuff And, you know, that's again what somebody running for office does, I think, is they look at this and they go, wait a minute. These are the four problems Eby said he was going to solve when he became Premier four years ago and what he said in the election two years ago. And he hasn't solved them. So we're going to go out and point that out. And, you know, this could be a very good test case for conservatives writ large.

That if Lauren is able to convince enough people to grant him access to the Premier's office, it feels to. to me, like he'll be able to answer the question, if we take care of the basic stuff, if we take care of the cost of living, if we can fix health care, they're going to listen to us on other stuff that maybe we're not running on and we're not pushing hard right now, but maybe they'll have more time for us on the social stuff if we can solve the things that make people's lives better. Well, there's a great temptation in politics, especially with the rise of social media, to spend so much time making your base happy and your internet trolls and keep things.

them happy. They're going to vote for you anyway. You do not need to keep pandering to that extreme set of views when you should be thinking, how do I convert the people who are in the middle who are undecided or say, I don't know enough about this Dirksen guy yet to know whether I want to vote for them. That's where you should be working. But unfortunately, I think it's a curse of politics today. You see more and more politicians pandering to their base, which is going to vote for them anyway. Well, Vaughn Palmer, it's been a treat speaking with you. And hopefully, I'd love to have you on the day after the election.

Maybe we'll make two segments out of it and go through a chapter and verse. And we can write our own post-mortive what went right and what went wrong. I'm really good at hindsight. I'm terrific. Not great at forecasting, but man, oh man, just wait for hindsight. Vaughn, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Okay.

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at the top. But hurry, because some dates are already sold out. Crime and Mayhem and the music industry on the road this fall. Hope to see you soon.