The Jas Johal Political Happy Hour

Welcome to the show, welcome to the show. The week keeps talking, so we keep it going. Welcome to the jazz show, our political happy hour. Where the sharpest takes keep their second round. Each week we pour the best debates and interviews from the table. Smart drink, long week. Now let the talk go down. Pull up a chair, fire up the expense account. If the week was heavy, we could laugh it out. Political happy hour. Political happy hour. Happy hour. The best political conversations keep going.

Let's talk about politics.

Thank you, Honorable Speaker.

The right-hand side and the left-hand side of the political spectrum.

Would the House please make them all feel very welcome? Now, time for Inside the House on the Jazz Joe Hall Show.

Joining me now is GlobalBC's legislative bureau chief, Keith Baldrey. Hello, Keith. Hey, Janice. Happy Friday. Well, let's talk a little bit about gaffes. Political gaffes happen all the time, but when you have veteran politicians, you think they'd be able to perhaps maneuver around that, but certainly so far, not the case. When you think of David Eby and his comments about Jimmy Patterson, what did you make of that?

Again, I think a tone-deaf type of comment. I think Eby's committed a couple gaps in this campaign. One was calling the election in the first place. He has yet to get out from under that sort of cloud of criticism that I think people are finding on the campaign trail. And then there's out-of-the-blue criticism and attack on Jimmy Patterson, who's a billionaire philanthropist known for building hospitals. Again, sort of a disconnect where I think the public is, and sort of an overreach of in trying to tackle the affordability issue by somehow claiming to be able to change grocery prices, attacking a company that Jimmy Patterson owns that is unionized, headquartered in D.C., and gives food to the food bank. It just seems a puzzling move by me. And also, again, back to the original Gaffer's call on this thing in the first place, which according to polls right now, he may well regret because every poll has the NDP behind it. some by a significant amount, others by more narrow margins. But unless he can pick up his game or unless Dirksen makes more gaps himself, this is an election that's going to be hard for the NDP to actually prove victorious in.

Part of the problem, one could argue, is perhaps his team, his key members, aren't as, you know, they don't know BC history as well, especially with Jimmy Patterson. If there's ever a business leader that's iconic, it would be him. Sure, younger people may not know him, but there's a lot that still do. And even Mr. Eby, I mean, he knows who he is, but he's originally from Ontario. One would argue even he may not have figured that out in regards to if there's some people you don't go and attack, Jimmy Patterson's probably one of them.

Yeah, that's true. I think he doesn't not have a long history here in this province. He doesn't have a long knowledge base of the political history and the political players. He probably doesn't know that Jimmy Patterson saved Expo 86, which a lot of people do remember. So again, I think you just saw Jimmy Patterson as this billionaire guy