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gary mason

Oh, how the world has changed for Adrian Dix and the NDP in a year.

This time last year, B.C.'s opposition party was in the throes of an ugly internecine war that had led to the ouster of leader Carole James. Few understood it. The party was ahead in the polls. Ms. James was fashioning the kind of pragmatic, centrist platform most felt the NDP needed if it was ever to regain power in the province.

And then, poof, it was all gone.

Many believed the coup that led to Ms. James's resignation showed the NDP wasn't ready to govern – that it was incapable of quelling ideological fissures that seemed constantly to threaten the stability of the party and its leadership.

When Mr. Dix threw his beret into the ring to succeed Ms. James, many suggested he was precisely the wrong person for the job. He was likely, they said, to take the controls of the party's apparatus and chart a radically different course – in a radically left-leaning direction – that would effectively kill any hopes the NDP had of claiming support from centrist-minded British Columbians.

It's support most everyone agrees is crucial if the NDP is to form government again.

Well, that was the fractured then and this is the unified now. And Mr. Dix has defied almost every stereotype that was assigned to him during the leadership race. As Official Opposition Leader, he has been cautious and even positive, a trait for which he's not been known in public life.

It seems Mr. Dix is attempting to demonstrate he is not the angry ideologue the Liberals are trying to depict. Additionally, he has been travelling the province trying to persuade voters that not only would they be in good hands with a Dix-led NDP government – they'd be in better hands.

To that end, he has softened his class-warfare rhetoric, but not completely abandoned it. Mr. Dix is aware that after years of talking about inequality, about the widening chasm between rich and poor that he insists is destabilizing society, his message has found mainstream resonance. And it doesn't bother him in the slightest that it took the Occupy movement to focus attention on the issue.

"I don't think political parties should have a monopoly on political action," Mr. Dix said over coffee the other day. "I see it as a good thing when others take up the cause and get involved. That's what democracy is all about."

But true to form, or at least to his new form, Mr. Dix doesn't bite when I use our discussion about Occupy and inequality to talk about the rich paying more in B.C.

Mr. Dix has said he would roll back corporate tax cuts in B.C. to 2008 levels and reinstitute a minimum tax on banks. In other words, he has promised two tax hikes in advance of an election – which may be a first for an opposition leader in the country. But he's less sure about what he'd do, if anything, about getting the uber rich to pay more than they do now.

"I don't think there is a massive amount of room on the income tax side to get more money," Mr. Dix said. "I haven't really landed on the high-income stuff. But I don't think there is any room under $100,000 or even $150,000 for that matter."

"So, in the short term in B.C., the rich are not going to have to pay more," I say.

"I haven't said that," Mr. Dix replied. "These are the issues we have to review."

It will be fascinating to see where Mr. Dix ends up in this area. After harping on about inequality for years, he can hardly stand pat, should he get into office, and do nothing. On a simplistic level, addressing inequality means closing the gap between rich and poor. How a government, or society, does that is another question.

"It was the guys at Citibank who said we have a 'plutonomy,' " Mr. Dix explained. "We've had a discussion between the creators of wealth, who are the rich and powerful, and the consumers of wealth, who are the rich and powerful. And that hasn't worked very well in economic terms."

Yes, a wonderful sounding insight. But Mr. Dix is less eloquent and assured on the subject of what he would do about the problem. He concedes an NDP government wouldn't solve inequality in the first four years in office, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't at least begin to address it – whatever that entails.

At last weekend's NDP convention the mood was ebullient. Polls put the party well ahead of the Liberals. But Mr. Dix, wisely, understands that a seven-point lead 18 months ahead of an election is meaningless.

"There's only a billion sports analogies for our situation," said Mr. Dix, a sports enthusiast. "We won three times in the 20th century and we're zero for three in the 21st. So any reason for overconfidence is largely unjustified."

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