Author: dcbieber

PUBLISHED IN THE VANCOUVER SUN
March 17, 2017

Opinion: Paying people less isn't economic innovation

Not long ago when we had stuff we didn’t like we just dumped it in the river.

It was super convenient and quick. Then the rivers started to catch fire.

In the wake of the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969, governments imposed tough regulation to reduce the amount of crap being dumped in rivers. Most of us now recognize that there are severe consequences when you abuse the environment.

So when are we going to learn the same lesson about the economy?

Last week, the provincial government announced their plan to allow ride-sharing technologies like Uber to operate in BC. Coming after years of consultation and delay, one might have expected a substantial strategy to address the opportunities ride-sharing technology presents to under-serviced suburban and rural regions of BC, the potential for augmenting strained mass transit systems, and the possibilities for incentivizing made-in BC solutions to create local companies and jobs. Even a minimal strategy might also have addressed the enormous challenges related to taxation, regulation and above all employment standards needed to ensure peer-to-peer service workers enjoy the rights and benefits required to achieve a decent standard of living.

Instead, we got a strangely hasty announcement that suggests some minimal rules to protect passengers while allowing Uber to hoover 20% of the ride-sharing economy profits out of the province. There is nothing to address these other questions, or one of the most controversial aspects of ride-sharing technology — the exploitatively poor treatment of drivers.

Uber drivers make not much more than the minimum wage, and usually much less. This has been established time and again, most recently by a Washington Post investigation. Proponents of Uber blow past this and any other objection as hopelessly stuck in the past. Uber is super convenient and quick, they say, as if this excuses all downsides and renders any objections as merely stuck in the past.

Ok. Who’s stuck in the past here?

The future belongs to businesses — and governments — which understand if you treat people like garbage, they’ll catch on fire too. Millions of Americans now burn bright with the intensity of their anger, their determination to punish the immigrants, the educated, the Muslims, the experts — someone, anyone — for the indignity of lives increasingly limited by lost jobs and precarious income, diminished hope and opportunity for themselves and their kids.

So has Uber single-handedly turned American citizens into a mob bent on burning down the institutions of democracy itself? Of course not. Just like tossing a beer can in the river isn’t specifically responsible for disrupting the food chain in our oceans.

But companies like Uber, which underpay their drivers while undermining more secure jobs elsewhere — and governments which allow them to do so — are degrading what we might think of as the economic ecosystem. Just like dumping waste in a river, there is a cumulative cost to small acts of economic exploitation, each of which corrodes a bit of the complex and interdependent economic systems needed to provide citizens and productive businesses with security and safety, and maintain mutual trust. When it inevitably begins to collapse, the damage rapidly gets out of control, and all of us are threatened. We’ve figured that out when it comes to the rivers, the ozone layer and, mostly, to carbon emissions, but It’s time to start applying the same logic to the landscape of the economy.

A healthy economic ecosystem needs competition, change and even disruption. But when inequality and polarization overtake fairness and opportunity for all, public confidence fails, economic growth stalls, communities clash, and extremism thrives. And when innovation always seems to mean lower wages, no wonder people are angry and resentful. After 40 years of free-market fundamentalism, it’s increasingly clear that governments need to act to re-balance the system. Here in BC we need a government willing to do the hard but worthy work of setting conditions that foster innovation while protecting people and productive businesses from predatory actors who can only make money by inflicting long-term damage to us all. That’s why a group of BC-based tech sector leaders last year called on the government to to invite on-demand ride services into the province with a set of policies that provide benefits for all. (link)

Let’s follow their lead and demand better, smarter, tougher regulations to encourage innovation, local job creation and a living wage for hard work. Taking care of our economic ecosystem won’t strand us in the past. It will help us all share a better future.

PUBLISHED IN THE TYEE
October 3, 2016

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/10/03/NDP-Growth-Party/

Social democratic parties in Canada haven’t had a lot to say about economic growth lately.

There’s been plenty on offer about redistribution of economic gains — directing taxation revenue towards productive investments in education, health care and infrastructure as opposed to handing it back to citizens, mostly the very rich ones, in the form of politically targeted tax cuts. But not so much about facilitating stronger economic growth needed to generate those public revenues.

Take for example the BC NDP’s 2013 election campaign, one in which fiscal responsibility was put front and centre because it was well known that voters are nervous about how the NDP can manage the economy. The campaign explained, in exhausting detail, how changes to tax rates here and there could free up money for much-needed public investment while still balancing the budget. Similarly, the federal NDP’s 2015 campaign tried to hang on to an early lead with cautious positioning, offering major public investment balanced with tight fiscal policy that promised a balanced budget every year. Putting aside the various factors that led to the blowout in each case, note that both campaigns, while ostensibly profiling an NDP vision for the economy, talked about redistribution rather than growth.

Partly this is tactical. Public opinion research shows consistently that the NDP is the most trusted party on issues like health care, education and helping the vulnerable, yet much less trusted on managing the economy. Conventional thinking has long held that the path to victory is to focus on the former issues, and avoid the latter.

Partly it is borne of habit. For decades now the NDP’s turn in government has come rarely, and outside of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, more or less fleetingly and only when voters are looking to throw somebody else out of government. There hasn’t been as much experience in government, hence less comfort dealing with the engines of the economy.

Increasingly, it is a point of pride. Where the NDP has retreated to urban and more affluent regions, there has been a greater tendency to dismiss economic growth as indistinguishable from the consumption of non-renewable resources and the production of waste, therefore incompatible with the urgent need to achieve environmental sustainability.

Either way, it’s something social democratic parties in other countries have been better at grappling with. But as long-robust market-based economies find themselves mired in slower and slower growth, threatening jobs, pensions and investment in public assets, it seems more urgent than ever for progressive parties to take an interest.

Here in BC, it’s certainly proven a big obstacle for the NDP. Despite scandals and broken promises, deteriorating health care and declining education, the BC Liberals have run and won elections in 2001, 2005, 2009 and 2013 by riding the public perception, rightly or wrongly, that all that aside the economy will do better when they are in power. There are few indications they plan to change the strategy in 2017.

So it’s encouraging to see the Broadbent Institute to gather leaders of progressive groups across BC and confront them with the question of what the economy should look like in years to come. At its inaugural Progress Summit in Vancouver last week, the non-partisan organization, headed up by former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, provided an opportunity for community activists to sit down with respected business leaders to chat about finding common ground.

The session opened with an extensive presentation by Tamara Vrooman, former deputy finance minister of BC and now CEO of Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union, controlling $20 billion in assets. She laid out a compelling business case for co-operative enterprises like Vancity, not just because of their long record of community support, but also because they are more efficient and more economically productive.

“When you look at business results, most of the things that other corporate forms are recognized for actually are things that co-operatives can do better, stronger, more efficiently, faster,” said Vrooman. Co-operative businesses tend to be closer to the ground, she explained, more integrated with communities and responsive to their consumer, and thus tend to make better decisions. They are also more efficient because they have no shareholders to extract a portion of each transaction, more innovative because they are participatory, and generate higher employment and incomes.

Taken together, these businesses generate greater long-term economic performance and exhibit greater resilience in the face of challenges that might cripple more traditional business organizations. And in a world of increasing social unrest driving by economic inequality and disruptive change, there are great benefits to economic activity that is participatory, focused on long-term value and responsive to communities instead of shareholders.

Prem Gill, CEO of Creative BC, followed Vrooman with thoughts on the importance of the film and digital industries, which have grown to provide a thousands of highly-paid jobs and a significant portion of the tax revenues powering the province.

“We have an excellent foundation,” she said, “and in the last five years we’ve become a global leader in visual effects and animation.” The industry depends on the pool of skill that has developed in the last two decades, and she noted that its future is now threatened by the challenge of hanging on to people, and attracting new ones, in the face of the skyrocketing cost of living.

Taleeb Noormohammed, former Chief Growth Officer for Farfetch and vice president of Strategy and Partnerships for Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics, spoke about the economic and social potential of BC’s growing technology sector. By creating jobs where people are paid not just a living wage, but a “thriving wage” that allows them to do much better than just get by, he said the tech sector can play a big role in creating the conditions which offer everyone an opportunity participate in economic success.

Economic growth is fundamental to social equality, he argued. Wealth creation is is necessary to create opportunity and provide investment for social infrastructure like health, education and housing. “The challenge for progressives,” he pointed out, “is that you have to be willing to get comfortable with the notion of creating an environment where economic growth, wealth creation and and social good are not seen as oppositional.”

He suggested that a progressive government could help create more jobs in the technology sector by thinking of how to provide capital — not just financial capital, but other forms like space, which is expensive in BC, and education, which is needed for the highly-skilled and constantly evolving work.

Ross Beatty, a leading mining entrepreneur who now working on conservation and renewable energy, took dead aim at the benefits of economic growth.

”I think we have to move off of our growth model,” he said. “It’s been the dominant economic model of our lifetime. The problem is this model is just not sustainable.” Economic growth has built a society providing many benefits, he conceded, but at the cost of our soil, our water and our air, and unchecked economic growth now presents an existential threat to the future of life on the planet.

“We need to change our direction and change it quickly. The result might be less choice, less speed, less stimulation, and less stuff, but it will result in a more healthy more happy and more prosperous people and province. Prosperous in the biggest sense. And truly sustainable.”

“Let’s get our priorities right: slow down, use less junk, and get outside a bit more.”

This led to an interesting exchange.

“I’d like to respectfully disagree with you,” said Noormohammed. “I think one of challenges is that people are trying to figure out where their next meal is going to come from. It’s pretty tough to take the time out to slow down when you’re figuring out how to make ends meet.”

“I couldn’t agree more with that,” responded Beatty, quickly.

Later, when asked how to help transition workers whose livelihood depends on our current carbon-intensive economy, Beatty acknowledged that this was a very thorny question. Thorny indeed, and in the discussions to follow the answer remained elusive. Certainly Beatty’s zero-growth vision, while describing an attractive, if not utopian end point, cannot reasonably be achieved. Nor would it be wise for the NDP to embrace it, lest they consign themselves to the support of a shrinking constituency of supporters in the wealthier quarters of Vancouver and Victoria.

The other presenters provide options for smart policy, but little tactical advantage for winning elections.

Film and technology, great successes which were substantially kick-started by the NDP’s much-maligned 1990s government, create jobs for younger, urban and creative voters who are more likely to vote NDP. But both sectors have lately enjoyed attention from the BC Liberals, making it more difficult for the NDP to showcase them as examples of their ability to generate robust and sustainable economic growth. Furthermore, while tech arguably benefits small communities across BC due to its integration with resource industries, neither it nor the film sector are seen to benefit rural BC, so too much focus on them would strengthen the impression the NDP doesn’t understand or care about jobs in resource communities. Co-operative enterprise, while sharing a common social democratic heritage with the NDP and extremely promising in the face of current economic challenges, is still too small a part of the BC economy, and arguably too far off the mainstream, to deliver a convincing message that the NDP committed to growing the economy and working with the established business community

And therein lies perhaps the best path forward. Engagement and listening, as exemplified by the Progress Summit itself, inviting a growing circle of diverse perspectives, is the best bet for establishing that social progress and a strong economy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one depends on the other. That’s something the left understood implicitly back when strong unions and strong growth went hand in hand, and helped establish the social programs that created opportunity and hope for working people. Today, with extremism on the rise, central bankers and corporate leaders around the world are increasingly calling for higher wages, higher taxes and greater public investment to stimulate the economy and create the more inclusive growth needed to reduce polarization and restore faith in democratic government. The NDP, and the left in general, has an historic opportunity to come to the table and work with new partners to define and deliver growth that is strong, sustainable, and shared.

PUBLISHED IN THE VANCOUVER SUN
January 9, 2016

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/editorials/opinion+will+force+with/11640176/story.html

PUBLISHED IN THE VANCOUVER SUN
January 10, 2014

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/oped/must+support+economic+growth+equality/9370271/story.html

It’s a new year. It’s time for New Democrats to reinvent their party.

A new president and executive have just been elected, and in the coming weeks, leadership contenders will start to declare themselves. Let’s hope they make some bold resolutions.

To reconnect with British Columbians, they must look past the individual personalities and tactical decisions conventionally blamed for last year’s election upset and deal with the fact too many voters don’t trust New Democrats to grow the economy. Victory in 2017 depends on presenting a modern economic vision that balances compassionate and environmentally responsible government with the generation of wealth, and yes, the development of natural resources.

In some corners of the NDP, growth is heresy. But this ignores the history of social democratic parties, like the BC NDP, which have traditionally sought to build a more equal society achieved through the redistribution of wealth and opportunity generated by a growing economy. In much of the post-war western world this vision was broadly accepted across the political spectrum, fueling the greatest period of upward mobility, opportunity and economic security in history.

In recent decades, and for a number of reasons, the NDP and other social democratic parties have retreated from this economic leadership. Globalism stripped governments of local power, effectively challenging social democratic redistributive policies. At the same time, the existential threat posed by climate change and environmental destruction called into question social democracy’s basic commitment to growth. What good is redistributing wealth from economic development if it renders our planet uninhabitable?

Unable to confidently articulate an agenda built on economic growth and redistribution, the BC NDP has become a conservative force, fighting to protect the gains of the post-war boom but also resistant to new ideas for a changing world.

To win again, the BC NDP needs to put the core social democratic commitment to economic and social equality back on the agenda. More equal societies are better societies. But they don’t come free. They are paid for by economic growth.

For the BC NDP that means getting serious about developing a forward-looking economic agenda built on the pillars of growth, opportunity, and environmental responsibility. It’s not good enough for the party to quote Tommy Douglas and insist that what worked in the post-war world will still work in a 21st century transformed by globalization, demographic shifts and technology.

That means the BC NDP must celebrate and promote entrepreneurial aspiration. Healthy societies evolve and advance by giving good ideas a chance to succeed. The BC NDP must embrace change, reward risk, and foster innovation.

That means the BC NDP must put education at the forefront of its agenda. In a global economy where change is the only constant, modern government must invest in an education system that will prepare our citizens, from pre-school to mid-life, to seize the opportunities within it.

That means the BC NDP must get serious about diversifying our economy by supporting BC’s fast growing technology industries. BC’s technology sector is a world leader, creating the products that will power the economy of the 21st Century and protect our province from the boom and bust cycle of raw materials for export.

And that means the BC NDP must say yes to developing our natural resources. Every school and hospital in the province owes something to resource extraction. Tens of thousands of British Columbians depend on the jobs these industries create. If the BC NDP abandons these communities it will never win an election, much less deserve to win one. The BC Liberal government is right when it commits to taking full advantage of our natural resources, but it is wrong when it builds those plans around empty slogans and shoddy projections while scrapping environmental obligations. New Democrats can, and must, do better. British Columbians deserve resource development that provides stable, long-term growth, takes greater advantage of our unique wealth of renewable resources, creates skilled local jobs and sets world-leading standards for protection of the environment.

Tough to do? Yes. So is losing weight or quitting smoking. And just as important if your survival is on the line. So let’s get on with it.

David Bieber (@dcbieber) was the BCNDP’s director of party communications from 2003 to 2009. Dawn Black (@Dawn_Black) served as Interim Leader of the BCNDP in 2011 and has represented New Westminster over two terms as an NDP Member of Parliament and another term as an NDP Member of BC’s Legislative Assembly.

PUBLISHED IN TECHVIBES
October 25, 2013

http://www.techvibes.com/blog/a-warning-for-bc-2013-10-25

On a pleasant morning last June, less than a month after her storied victory in the recent provincial election, Premier Christy Clark announced the creation of BC’s Ministry of Technology, Innovation and Citizen’s Services.

For the first time, BC’s technology sector had its very own government ministry dedicated — mostly — to supporting its goals. It was a worthy and perhaps overdue recognition for an industry that has come to employ more than 85,000 British Columbians, a number oft and correctly quoted as representing more jobs than all of BC’s more well-known resource industries combined. And by naming as Minister long-time Liberal Party insider Andrew Wilkinson, in addition to giving tech entrepreneur Todd Stone a key position in her cabinet, Clark signaled that under her government, the technology sector was going to have a seat at the table.

Several months later, on a somewhat overcast evening in October, Robert Reich stepped onto the stage of the Orpheum Theatre. The respected American economist, who served in the cabinet of President Clinton, delivered an engaging overview of the origins and consequences of growing income inequality in our globalized economy. And he delivered a gentle but firm warning.

“The real issue here, and it’s an issue for California, for the United States, for British Columbia, for Vancouver, for Canada,” said Reich, strolling about the stage, without notes, relaxed and engaging as if at a cocktail party. “The real question in terms of standard of living of any group of people is what those people add. The value they add to an increasingly integrated global economy. If you add a lot of value you do very well. If you are not adding very much value, you will not do well.”

He let this sink in while lightening the tone a little, shifting to a story and a few jokes. Then he returned to his point.

“Now this is very important for places like British Columbia. There is a fundamental challenge that any natural resource economy faces. And that challenge is that while natural resources are a blessing, they are also an economic curse.”

The curse, he explained, is that the sale of natural resources tends to pump up the currency and this puts every other exporting industry, including manufacturing and technology, at a great disadvantage. Sometimes this is called “Dutch disease,” and many economists argue that it currently afflicts Canada. The federal government, quick to defend aggressive development of the tar sands, dismisses the idea. Either way, Reich was emphatic about the need to avoid it.

“Australia is a good example,” he continued. “Australia is becoming a mine and a beach for China. The Australian dollar keeps going up. That makes it more difficult for Australian manufacturers to sell their goods worldwide. It makes it more difficult for high technology in Australia to get much of a grounding. Do you get my point? A natural resource based economy can generate huge gains, but those gains come at a cost. And that benefit may be temporary in any event. Those natural resources are themselves subject to huge changes in the global economy. The demand for commodities can go all over the place.”

“So be careful,” he said, after a pause.

Now, it’s hardly reasonable to suggest that Premier Clark should abandon her ambitious plans to grow BC’s economy by developing liquid natural gas resources for export. Nor is it reasonable to suggest that she, as a provincial leader, has the power to manipulate the value of the Canadian dollar to mitigate the impact on BC’s other industries like technology.

But it is reasonable to ask how the BC government plans to reconcile its new-found commitment to growing the technology sector with its almost singular focus on growth through resource exports.

PUBLISHED IN 24HRS VANCOUVER
December 10, 2012

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2012/12/09/ndps-performance-in-the-1990s-shows-it-is-ready-to-take-the-reins

I don’t generally start a lot of fights at bars. Not recently, at any rate. But it wasn’t that long ago I found myself confronted by a large man calling me a liar in a crowded pub.

“They did not,” he repeated. I considered my options. I didn’t have a copy of the Auditor General’s summary financial statements, and he clearly wasn’t going to take my word that the BC NDP had left a $1.498 billion surplus when they left government in 2001. Plus, I’m not that big. So I changed the subject.

There’s a lot of heated debate in BC politics, and in my experience as director of party communications for the BC NDP in the last two elections, one of the hottest was this question of whether the NDP can run the economy. And when things get heated, it can be hard to see the facts.

Expect the temperature to rise we approach the next election and the Liberals release their attack ads. And while she’s far more pleasant than the bar guy, I know my friend Kathryn will respond with a whole pile of scary numbers to make her case that the NDP created economic hell in the 1990s.

So let’s cool things down with some important facts: BC was worse off in 2010 than 2000 compared with other provinces. After ten years of Liberal government, BC’s ranking on the economy fell from fourth place in Canada to fifth. Personal income declined from third place to fourth. On jobs BC slipped from fifth to seventh in Canada.

Says who? The BC Progress Board — an independent panel of senior business leaders created by then-Premier Gordon Campbell himself. He set it up in 2001 to quantify the economic boom he promised. Instead, their 2011 report shows the NDP actually did better than the Liberals on key economic measures. Ouch.

Maybe that’s why the public just isn’t buying the scare tactics anymore. Polls now show people trust NDP leader Adrian Dix to manage the economy — not just traditional NDP strengths like health care and education.

And with Dix eschewing heated rhetoric to invite business leaders to work with the NDP to meet BC’s serious economic, social and environmental challenges, it’s time to move on.

Because scare tactics — whether at the bar or in TV ads — just make it hard to talk about what’s really important.

David Bieber is a Vancouver political consultant and former director of party communications for the BC NDP.

PUBLISHED IN THE VANCOUVER SUN
April 26, 2010

It’s been almost a year since the BC Liberals won the provincial election, and it’s pretty clear that apart from a lot of frantic waving of red mittens during the Olympics, they aren’t having much fun these days. 

They’re still dealing with the fallout from a budget deficit four times higher than promised. The remarkably unpopular HST seems daily to grow only more so. They’re rolling out painful cuts in health and education after promising not to do that sort of thing. And then there is the polling. For six months they’ve trailed the New Democrats, and instead of a post-Olympic bounce the gap is getting worse. The Liberals are now 18 points behind the NDP according to an Angus Reid poll released last week, and their own support has slipped below the crucial 30 per cent threshold.

A bad run of luck, to be sure. But with three years left in the mandate, BC Liberals say there’s plenty of time left to turn their fortunes around.

Maybe, but there’s good reason to think that’s going to be pretty tough.

That’s because there’s more to this than just a string of broken promises, scandalous revelations, unpopular policies and bad polling numbers. The BC Liberals have overcome those things in the past.

The difference now is Gordon Campbell has dealt a serious and perhaps fatal blow to the one thing that allowed him to get away with all this in the past: economic credibility.

Mr. Campbell has never been particularly popular with British Columbians. Since long before his landslide 2001 victory and throughout his two subsequent election wins, he and the BC Liberals have been seen as uncaring, dishonest, unaccountable, untrustworthy, out of touch, mean-spirited and arrogant. And yet, he just kept winning those elections.

Why? Voters believed that when it came to managing the economy, he was good enough to trump all these other concerns, and better than the NDP alternative.

That started to change only weeks after the last election. When Mr. Campbell flip-flopped on the HST and fudged the deficit numbers, he made a lot of his own supporters very, very unhappy and left a lot of people realizing the BC Liberals weren’t all that good at the only thing they were supposed to be really good at. Last month, another Angus Reid survey showed that more people now trust Carole James – not Mr. Campbell – to find the right solutions for BC’s economy.

This is a very significant finding and suggests a major shift in the fundamentals of the BC political landscape, one that could make it very challenging for the BC Liberals to recover.

Much depends on what the New Democrats do at this point. The BC Liberals could recover their economic credibility over time, as the economy improves and the HST anger abates, or they could remake themselves under new leadership. Both will be harder to do if the NDP takes real steps to change their reputation on economic management.

New Democrats have traditionally stayed away from focusing on the economy, and for good reason. The majority of voters trust New Democrats on health care, education, care for the vulnerable and the environment – these are the issues on which the NDP traditionally wins elections. There’s an ongoing debate inside the party. Some worry new economic ideas and partners will take the NDP away from its core values. Others fret it’s tactically impossible to beat the BC Liberals on their ground.

The fact remains a lot of potential NDP voters stay away because they don’t trust them on economic questions. Carole James seems to have decided it’s time for the NDP to change that.

At the NDP’s November convention, James acknowledged the party’s weakness on economic issues and pledged a new focus on balancing social progress with economic strength. She spoke of building a bigger tent by seeking new connections with the business community, new, more diverse partners and new ideas for the post-crisis economic world.

Next week we’ll see the first concrete steps when Ms. James hosts discussions with leaders from across the spectrum: business, labour, environment, community and culture. The meetings are unlikely to produce any immediate policy announcements, but by showing voters she’s willing to bring change to the NDP and listen to a balance of voices Carole James is already making sure the BC Liberals’ problems have only just begun.

David Bieber was director of party communications for the BC NDP from 2003 to 2009.

PUBLISHED IN THE VANCOUVER SUN
November 24, 2009

This weekend, Carole James will gather several hundred New Democrats in downtown Vancouver and try to figure out how to break the losing streak.

It’s an important opportunity for her to show that she has a plan not only to attack BC Liberal weaknesses over the next three years, but also to show the NDP is preparing for government by confronting and mitigating their own vulnerability.

Just six months after a disappointing election, winning in 2013 may seem inevitable for New Democrats surveying the landscape in the fall of 2009. For the first time since 2004, the NDP enjoys a healthy lead over the BC Liberals. Gordon Campbell’s apparent inability to recover from dishonesty about the HST and the budget deficit have created an historic opportunity to break apart, perhaps permanently, the BC Liberal coalition between centrist urban voters and more conservative folks in suburban and rural communities.

There’s a chance that New Democrats can engineer a tactical victory in 2013 just by leveraging public anger to drive a wedge between these two groups and winning the election with a minority of voters. The problem is this is not a recipe for government with sufficient political capital to make meaningful progress in cleaning up the messes of the Campbell government.

The NDP cannot really end the losing streak until they form a true majority government with the stability to make real and lasting progress. And to do that, James has to make some changes.

The BC NDP under Joy MacPhail and Carole James has come a long way from the wipeout of 2001, but too many voters, even some of those who support the NDP, still don’t trust them to manage the economy. A majority of voters know New Democrats share their values on and will stand up for health care, protection for the vulnerable and the environment, but these are ideal qualities for an opposition party. Government is expected to balance these values with prudent fiscal management and private sector economic development.

There’s the rub. The fact is voters think the NDP just doesn’t get the economy. And the economy is a pretty big deal. It may not always show up as top of mind in polling, but voters have come to expect fiscal competence as a prerequisite for parties aspiring to government.

Around the world, social democrats who have confronted their own economic weakness head on have established stable, popular and progressive governments where the social and environmental gains New Democrats crave were actually achieved — along with private sector job creation, economic growth and responsible budgets.

It’s time for James to do the same. Starting this weekend.

Changing public perception about the NDP’s ability to manage the economy competently will take time and concrete action. It can’t be put off until the three months leading up to the next election. And right now, the conditions are perfect.

After years of taking credit for an economic boom led by factors outside the province, the Campbell government is now facing tough questions about their handling of the deficit and response to growing unemployment. For the first time since 2001, British Columbians who have tended to vote BC Liberal, including leaders in the business community, are coming to the conclusion that these guys may not be all that good at managing the economy — the one and maybe only thing they were supposed to be really good at.

These voters are now open to an alternative, but they need to know that the NDP has changed their take on economic management.

James needs to do more to reach out to business leaders and build the partnerships her government will need to ensure a strong economy that benefits all British Columbians, not just friends of the Liberal Party. She needs to recruit candidates with financial and economic credentials to form a cabinet that will ensure the long-term economic stability needed to make lasting improvements to health and education. She needs to build relationships with economists and governments and bring forward the best of their ideas and experience to develop concrete plans for government that combines competence with caring.

In short, she needs to show that she can reach out and build a government-in-waiting with some real economic experience. This team will bring the new ideas and wider base of support the NDP seeks right now, but most of all it will show the NDP can be trusted to balance social and environmental progress with a strong economy.

And one that happens, the shutout will be over.

David Bieber was director of party communications for the BC NDP from 2003 to 2009.