Tuesday, we saw the first step toward something B.C. hasn’t seen for awhile, a chance for change.
In an afternoon announcement, B.C. Green leader Andrew Weaver and NDP leader John Horgan announced the two parties have come to a working agreement, a first step to forming a NDP-led minority government.
It’s probably wishful thinking, but there is a possibility a minority government with the Greens supporting the NDP could drag our government into the 21st century.
Without getting on the bandwagon of whether or not Liberal governments have done a good job over the past 16 years, there is one truth that is hard to argue with; there have been fundamental changes to society since Gordon Campbell led the B.C. Liberals to power in 2001, or even since Christy Clark took over in 2011, and conservative governments don’t respond to change quickly.
There are the social factors. On one hand, our population is aging, and on the other, millennials are coming into their own, and demanding changes in how business and society operates.
Some of the changes are caused by technological expansion. After all, in 2001, you were probably still using a 56k dialup to access the internet if you were online and thinking it was blazing fast. Now, broadband connections are near universal, and the phones most of us carry in our pockets are more powerful than 2001 era computers, changing the way we deal with and react to the world around us.
The level of communication accompanying technological growth has made the world a smaller place, and helped make us more aware of the problems facing our world and what the environmentalists have been telling us for years, that we can’t keep on ignoring the effect humans are having on the environment.
After all, how many of us were aware of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 2001, or the damage being done by plastic building up in the environment?
New challenges require fresh thinking. We live in hope of a better tomorrow.