Health care, education, rural issues take a back seat in B.C. election

Despite continuing concerns about the state of the health care and education systems, the B.C. election will turn on who voters think can best manage the economy and the public purse.

According to a post on Full Duplex, which looks at trends in polls and social media, the economy and jobs were the top two issues regardless of party messaging. Education ranked third and health care fourth, with concerns about two proposed oil pipeline projects in fifth place.

No one knows what's in a voter's head when he or she marks their ballot, but B.C. campaigns historically have been fought on money issues.

The incumbent Liberals under Premier Christy Clark have campaigned on their three-term government's record as sound managers and dangled the promise of massive future natural gas development and liquified natural gas (LNG) exports as the key to prosperity and erasing the province's debt.

The New Democrats under Adrian Dix seem less willing to embrace large-scale expansion of the resource economy, leading to concerns that hard line environmentalists will take control of the agenda and cripple the cornerstone of the B.C. economy. Dix has already come out against expansion of an oil pipeline to Vancouver to increase exports of oilsands crude from Alberta and his supporters are dead against Enbridge Inc.'s Northern Gateway bitumen pipeline from Alberta to the northern port of Kitimat.

The NDP's position plays well with a lot of voters in Metro Vancouver but has spooked the business community. It probably doesn't sit well with many B.C. Interior voters in communities that depend on mining, forestry and energy for high-paying jobs.

[ Related: Economy, leadership major issues in B.C.'s May 14 election ]

The Vancouver Sun, which has declined to endorse either of the main parties (its sister paper, the Province, backed the Liberals, as did the Globe and Mail in a weekend editorial slammed for factual errors), said in an editorial last month that the NDP's lukewarm approach to resource development raises questions about what will power the economy down the road.

"The resource industry has been the heart and soul of this province," the Sun opined. "It has created the prosperity that we now enjoy and holds an equal if not greater promise for the future ...

"What economic opportunities can the New Democrats envision that will take its place?"

Clark, by contrast, has put pretty much all her chips on resources. She hasn't ruled out building the two contentious pipelines if provincial conditions are met and is pushing ahead with a proposed $4-billion LNG export terminal.

Neither the Liberals nor the NDP are fully trusted on their handling of taxpayer dollars. The Liberals have tried to amp up the fear factor that the NDP would open the treasury to public-sector unions and other supporters. Indeed, the party's election platform forecasts three consecutive deficit budgets, compared the Liberals' promised surplus for this fiscal year, which many observers consider dubious.

The politicking over money questions has dropped other key issues out of the larger debate in the four-week campaign.

Health care, the single biggest envelope in any provincial government's budget, has gotten little ink.

The Liberals have been taken to task for hollowing out health services in small Interior communities. Both parties have promised to maintain and improve the system but there's been little substantial debate about how to contain costs while providing adequate services for all.

The leaders never raised it in their TV and radio debates, the Vancouver Sun noted, even though it's perennially a top concern among voters, especially seniors.

"So health care has become the elephant in the room, a voracious beast that the parties are tiptoeing around," the Sun columnist Craig McInnes wrote. "Their relative silence may simply reflect their lack of answers to questions that are becoming more pressing by the year."

[ Related: Health care an election battleground for NDP, Liberals in Week 2 ]

One over-arching issue that almost never gets mentioned is B.C.'s deepening urban-rural divide. Like other provinces, British Columbia is experiencing a demographic shift towards larger urban communities, but its economic health remains closely tied to things that are pulled from the ground in the B.C. Interior.

A disconnect has developed as the centre of gravity moves to cities like Vancouver, Kelowna and Kamloops. Both Clark and Dix hail from Metro Vancouver. The last premier from outside the Lower Mainland was Social Credit's Bill Bennett, from Kelowna.

As the Globe and Mail pointed out recently, the NDP thinks issues that concern urban voters also resonate in the boonies. The Liberals are hoping that by highlighting their openness to resource development in contrast to the New Democrats' go-slow approach, they can capture those rural votes.

But the larger issue of how to deliver services in smaller communities that will make them attractive places to live and work remains unaddressed. Doctors and other professionals are hard to lure to Interior towns, and banks, schools and post offices have closed as young people leave to find make their future in the big city.