B.C. Election Results: Plenty of what-ifs on the road to an inconclusive result

Vaughn Palmer: Missteps by all three major party leaders played a hand in a result that leaves people to wonder who will govern B.C.

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Published Oct 20, 2024  •  4 minute read

John Rustad and wife Kim at the Conservative after-election event inside the Rocky Mountaineer Station in Vancouver. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNG

VICTORIA — With an election result as close and inconclusive as this one, speculation turns to what might have been.

For New Democrats, driven to the brink by a party that barely existed two years ago, the big what-if involves David Eby’s decision to forgo an early election.

He was advised to go for the snap vote on taking over as leader at the end of 2022.

He had no mandate of his own. Opponents were in disarray.

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Plus the issues he was proposing to tackle — housing affordability, health-care waiting lists, cost of living, public safety — were too complicated to allow much progress in the time remaining in the four-year mandate.

But Eby knew better. He repeatedly ruled out an early election.

Never lacking confidence in himself, Eby vowed to govern until the scheduled election date and show results people could see, feel, touch and experience.

“How’s that working out?” One imagines more than a few New Democrats saying that as they saw their party once again thrown into the arms of the Greens to preserve its hold on power.

The second thing that some might question is Eby’s take-no-prisoners personal attacks on Rustad and the Conservatives.

He took it to the point where it overshadowed any defence he might have mounted of the NDP record.

Much of his ammunition came from social media posts, some of them dated by many years. Yet several of the candidates he denounced most vociferously got themselves elected.

Eby never seemed to allow that voters might have greater concerns — crime, the drug crisis, housing prices, overcrowded emergency rooms — than a seven-year-old social media posting, however appalling.

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Had he toned down the moral superiority, he might have done better with voters who were wanting change.

Yet after presiding over a campaign dominated by vicious, personal attacks, on Saturday night he proclaimed himself “a premier to bring us together, not drive us apart.’”

Can Eby, having done so badly, survive as leader of an NDP that has done in leaders that disappointed it in the past?

Some eyes will turn to Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West, who is on many short lists as a future premier of B.C.

On the Global TV panel last evening, West offered a preliminary take on what went wrong for the NDP.

The government “lost” the B.C. public on the issues of public safety and drug decriminalization.

But was it the government that lost the public? Or the controlling premier, the former author of the book How to Sue the Police?

For the Conservatives, come from nowhere to the brink of majority government, some are asking whether they made the most of the opportunity for a change election.

Public discontent with the government’s record on key issues like health care, housing and public safety had long been evident in the opinion polls.

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Those same polls indicated that people still intended to vote for the NDP because they did not see a plausible alternative.

Kevin Falcon never really connected under either the B.C. Liberal or B.C. United name.

Falcon made some big mistakes but shutting down B.C. United wasn’t one of them.

The Conservative brand did take off under John Rustad, with more than a little spillover help from Pierre Poilievre and the federal party of the same name.

Rustad rightly focused his platform on the issues where voters wanted change.

But he fumbled the merger with what was left of B.C. United.

Last night’s returns indicated that several disgruntled ex-B.C. United candidates, running as independents, split the vote with the Conservatives and handed victory to NDP candidates.

Also, some Conservatives have to be asking why Poilievre decided not to make an appearance with Rustad, whose campaign ads targeted the Eby-Trudeau alliance.

As for the Greens, the obvious might-have been involves party leader Sonia Furstenau and her choice of seats.

She gave up Cowichan Valley and moved to the provincial capital, where she now lives.

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She made a good effort to win the seat in Victoria-Beacon Hill and for a time the New Democrats were worried.

But she lost decisively to cabinet minister Grace Lore.

What if Furstenau had instead switched and run in Saanich North and the Islands, the seat vacated by two-term Green MLA Adam Olsen?

The Greens did win there with newbie Rob Botterell. Furstenau could probably have done the same.

She’d then have a seat in what could well be a repeat of 2017, when the Greens made the power-sharing agreement that allowed the NDP to take office under John Horgan.

Furstenau expressed personal contempt for Rustad during the leader’s debate, branding him a relic of 1950s thinking. Most likely the other Greens would gravitate to the NDP as well.

What would the Greens ask for in a new power sharing agreement? Olsen argued it should be an immediate move to proportional representation, without a referendum.

But that is several what ifs down the road.

Elections B.C. has to certify the results, including recounts.

Not likely will that be sorted out for a few days, perhaps longer.

So, there’s plenty of time for recriminations.

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