I missed this a week ago, but Gazetteer didn’t.

With the Globe’s business section baffled by the possibility that Gordon Campbell could actually lose the next election, UVic-quitous Professor Norman Ruff rode to the rescue with the suggestion that economic growth has backfired on the Liberals.

See, if our economy is growing, Prof. Ruff says, then people start to think “Hey, maybe we can afford the New Democrats again!”

It’s a, um, interesting hypothesis, given that the Liberals ran B.C.’s highest deficit ever, following successive balanced budgets from the NDP. But as Gazetteer suggests, there’s a simpler explanation that the Globe and Prof. Ruff are missing:

Are these people insane?

Or is it just that they don’t know any sick people, or poor people, or homeless people, or handicapped people, or underemployed people, or students, or teachers, or hospital workers, or ferry workers, or ferry builders, or ferry takers or on and on and on and on……..

This is a government that broke promises, treated large portions of the province like something unpleasant that had somehow become stuck to the heels of their wingtips, and spent the past four years researching new and exciting frontiers in callousness and bullying.

Whatever tax cut most of us saw was quickly clawed back with massive increases in health premiums and other fees, a PST hike, tuition fee increases, and an awe-inspiring range of cuts to services that left us well behind where we’d started.

British Columbians have witnessed botched privatizations, criminal investigations — we’ve had Mounties raiding the Legislature, fer crying out loud — and a hideously wasteful advertising campaign that mainly managed to remind every TV viewer in the province, six or seven times a day, that Gordon Campbell was burning their tax dollars to keep his rapidly sinking balloon aloft.

So forgive British Columbians if not everyone is dazzled by an economic recovery that has more to do with commodity prices and the business cycle than with the Liberals.

When Ontario kicked out Ernie Eves and the Mike Harris hangover, it wasn’t because of dissatisfaction with their economic performance. It was because the Conservatives were seen, rightly, as uncaring, unfair and unfit to govern. And a very similar fate could well befall their ideological brethren in B.C.

Edited to add:

Paul Willcocks’ superb post today on long-term care serves as one more reason British Columbians are less than thrilled with the Campbell record:

Bond says the government has created 4,300 new spaces, but had to close 4,200 because the facilities were outmoded. But those facilities had served for years; communities pleaded with the health authorities to keep them open until replacement beds were created; and most could have been maintained until the promised 5,000 additional beds were delivered.

Even acknowledging the challenges, the issue has been badly mishandled with no clear plan, inadequate funding and a refusal to listen to the legitimate complaints of seniors and communities and government MLAs.

It’s a broken promise that has hurt us all.