Election day in Canada's colonial province of British Columbia. Currently, the Liberal Party has 43 seats, the New Democratic Party has 41 seats and the Green Party has 3 seats. The NDP/Green coalition has held power for the past three years, but the NDP are tired of it.
As expected, a debate between the three parties was arranged. But rather than breeze through it, the NDP leader, on the question of "white privilege", claimed "colour blindness", while the Liberal leader, who is a medical doctor, boasted of having babies named after him in some of northern B.C.'s Indigenous communities (nations). For her part, the Green leader led off with an equally frightening line -- "All people are not equal" -- but quickly qualified it by acknowledging systemic racism and what steps need to be taken to dismantle it.
Tone is everything at a time of extremes, and the B.C. Green leader's tone was, in contrast to her barking male counterparts, slow, soft and steady. Just how many votes her debate performance will earn her party will not be decided by tonight's vote but by the 478, 000 ballots cast through the mails (B.C.'s total population is 5.071 million). A pencil sketch, with colours to come.
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