Adrian Dix
Adrian Dix - BC NDP
Adrian Dix was voted leader of the B.C. New Democrats in spring 2011.
The Vancouver-Kingsway MLA inherited a party that was plagued with enough infighting to force the resignation of his predecessor, Carole James, but he managed to rally support under a hard-left platform aimed at setting the NDP apart from the increasingly unpopular BC Liberals.
Among other initiatives, Dix advocated for increasing B.C.’s minimum wage and creating a provincial child care system.
Within a year, as the governing Liberals suffered continuing backlash from the implementation of the harmonized sales tax, the NDP surged to become the most popular party in the province.
Dix, the 48-year-old son of British and Irish immigrants, was born in Vancouver and attended Point Grey Secondary School before studying political science at the University of British Columbia. He moved to France as a young man and became fluent in French, and later moved to Ottawa to work under NDP MP Ian Waddell in the 1990s.
Dix returned to B.C. to serve as Chief of Staff to Premier Glen Clark, but was forced to resign in 1999 under the notorious “memo to file” incident, a scandal BC Liberal supporters have recently tried to resurrect in hopes of derailing the NDP’s daunting lead in the polls.
He was forced to admit he wrote a memo and backdated it on behalf of Clark, who’d recently had his home raided by police over the so-called “casinogate” case. He left office and spent years working as a journalist and commentators before returning to politics as an MLA in 2005.
As opposition leader, Dix was accused of coasting on his party’s powerful lead in the polls and shying away from making major policy announcements.
That changed in the lead up to the 2013 campaign season, however, as Dix revealed plans to ban political donations from unions and corporations, boost tax credit for B.C.’s foundering film industry, and end taxpayer-funded partisan advertisements.
Dix, who lives with his wife, poet and writer Renee Saklikar, has also publicly pledged to avoid airing attack ads against his main rival, Christy Clark.
His party’s financial platform promises to generate roughly $1 billion over three years by extending the carbon tax to the oil and gas industries, cancelling the Liberals’ Registered Education Savings grant program and increasing taxes on corporations and individuals earning more than $150,000.
Polling released the day before the campaign officially began pegged Dix as the man to beat on May 14, but he’s still got to withstand what promises to be a bare-knuckle brawl of a debate on April 29.
