If BC New Democrats win Saturday’s election, they’ll need to send Chip Wilson a thank-you card and some sort of edible flower arrangement.
The billionaire founder of Lululemon has in the final days of the campaign become the cartoon villain of the NDP’s dreams — an arrogant, condescending rich dude who lives in a gated mansion in Point Grey, thinks working-class people are lazy, and happens to be supporting the BC Conservative party.
Wilson bumbled into the election campaign a couple of weeks ago when he erected a large sign outside his mansion calling the NDP “communists.” He later doubled-down in a remarkably tone-deaf newspaper op-ed.
NDP Leader David Eby has seized upon the opportunity, tying Wilson and Conservative Leader John Rustad together.
“There's a reason why Chip Wilson is supporting John Rustad, because he sees his values reflected in the B.C. Conservative Party cutting taxes for those who are already at the top, like Chip Wilson, while everybody else is struggling with the cost of daily life,” Eby said Thursday.
“As he says, let them figure out how to contribute to society, they shouldn't get tax breaks. Well, I just disagree.”
Watching Eby throw haymakers at Wilson has re-energized the NDP campaign in the final days of the race.
But more importantly it has allowed the NDP to paint Rustad as an ally of the ultra-rich — which has been difficult up until now because Rustad is about as far from the wealthy downtown Vancouver business elite crowd as you can get.
Rustad is a forest landscape planner from the rural north who lives in a modest rancher in the middle of nowhere (an hour outside of Prince George), where he chops wood, mows his lawn and lives a quiet life with his wife and his parrot. He’s more working-class than Eby (a lawyer) by a country mile.
But along came Wilson, planting signs outside the gate to the most expensive house in the province, supporting the Conservatives, and suddenly Rustad is guilty-by-association of being rich.
“He knows who is on his side,” Eby said. “This guy’s a Rustad man.”
Wilson was a popular punching bag for Eby at a rally in Yaletown on Thursday night. The NDP leader was able to dig deep into one of the NDP’s favourite playbooks: Class warfare.
It’s not really something that has featured prominently in the 2024 BC election. Whereas a typical campaign would see the NDP lean into the “wealthy elites” versus the “working class,” in this election it has been the Conservatives who’ve categorized the “elites” as those “woke” New Democrats in government and politics.
Wilson was able to let the NDP reset into a much more traditional frame in the critical final week of the campaign.
That messaging was aided Thursday night in an extraordinary moment when Kareem Allam, who was leadership campaign director for BC United Leader Kevin Falcon, threw his support behind the NDP and Eby.
“After 25 years of running Conservative and BC Liberal campaigns, for the first time in my life last week I cast a ballot for the NDP,” Allam said at an event in the campaign office of Vancouver-Yaletown candidate Terry Yung.
“Never has a campaign been more important than this one. And never has a choice been more stark. From the beginning of the campaign David Eby has been going out and fighting for workers, he’s been going out and fighting for students and seniors, and this whole time John Rustad has been fighting for Chip Wilson.”
The speech drew enthusiastic cheers from the 50 or so people crammed into the campaign office (mostly NDP war room staff who were given the night to attend the rally).
Across Metro Vancouver, in Surrey, Rustad packed a ballroom with several hundred supporters, where he accused Eby of continually lying about his campaign positions and promises.
The two parties are set to finish this particularly vicious election campaign Saturday.
Then it’s up to voters. The next government of British Columbia is in their hands.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
