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Opposition is finally hitting its stride

As the legislative session heads into the homestretch (after this week there are 16 sitting days remaining) it's worth noting the NDP Opposition appears to have finally hit its stride.

As the legislative session heads into the homestretch (after this week there are 16 sitting days remaining) it's worth noting the NDP Opposition appears to have finally hit its stride.

The psychological trauma of that brutal and unexpected election loss in 2013 seems to be ebbing. And the NDP caucus has been able to find enough issues to land a few body blows on the B.C. Liberal government.

The current controversy over the sale of Crown land is a good example of an Opposition party getting its teeth into something juicy and not letting go.

A couple of years ago, there was widespread skepticism that Finance Minister Mike de Jong would be able to deliver balanced budgets, given the shaky state of government revenues and the voracious appetite of the health-care system when it came to tax dollars.

A key part of de Jong's plan to balance the books was the sell-off of hundreds of millions of dollars of government-owned assets (mostly land). There was criticism, at the time, that this was no true way of balancing the budget and in any case, it was doubtful the sales targets could be reached.

Well, de Jong delivered the goods. He successfully held the line on health-care spending, he was able to reach his goal of asset sales and he produced budgets with healthy surpluses.

But the NDP, armed with some internal documents gained from freedom of information requests, has been able to make a legitimate case that, in at least some instances, the government may have disposed of land at prices that were much too cheap.

Earlier in this session, the New Democrats scored a home run when they exposed the newly-created Auditor General for Local Government office as a dysfunctional workplace run by someone who appeared to be in over her head.

The resulting furor saw the auditor-general replaced, thus giving the NDP the proverbial "trophy" that all Opposition parties are constantly on the hunt for. There was irony, of course, in the fact that the New Democrats had originally opposed the creation of an office that actually turned out to be political rewarding for them, but no matter.

The NDP has also, for the most part, successfully steered clear of the kinds of issues that magnify potential rifts within the party. The debate over how much support there should be for the resource extraction industry versus how much support there should be for environmental protective measures will one day play out, but it hasn't (yet) emerged as an ugly, messy internal fight.

To be sure, the NDP still faces enormous challenges ahead if it ever wants to get back into government. But for now, all it has to do is to concentrate on the immediate future, which is the legislature session itself.

Being an effective Opposition party is a difficult and often thankless task. The Opposition has no real power ­­­­­– it can't pass legislation, or determine what gets debated in the house, and its positions on various issues usually have little or no impact on what a government does.

When I arrived at the B.C. legislature in the late 1980s, the NDP Opposition at the time feasted on the comic soap opera that was the provincial government. But it was easy to score political points because the government was so inept and so deeply conflicted internally.

And it was much easier for the NDP to get the public's attention back then than it is now.  For example, daily newspapers in the ’80s would publish a half-dozen political stories a day (usually featuring the Opposition hammering the government), but the number these days is much lower.

Throw in the coming of the digital media age, combined with a public that appears to pay less and less attention to politics, and it's easy to see how hard it is for an Opposition party to be heard over the din of noise that surrounds us.

And the B.C. Liberal government, with its modest, low-key legislative agenda, provides few targets for the NDP to aim at.

Nevertheless, the Opposition's job is to "hold the government's feet to the fire,” as the saying goes. Judging what we've seen the past few weeks, I suspect some members of the B.C. Liberal government are starting to feel a bit warmer in their shoes.

Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global B.C.