Could unexpected twists lead to another B.C. minority government?

Vaughn Palmer: Two years ago, no one could have imagined the 2024 B.C. election campaign would look like this

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Published Sep 20, 2024  •  4 minute read

From left, Conservative Party of B.C. Leader John Rustad and current B.C. Premier and NDP Leader David Eby. Photo by Jason Payne PNG files /PNG

VICTORIA — NDP Leader David Eby and Conservative Leader John Rustad are facing off in an election campaign matchup that neither of them could have imagined two years ago.

In September 2022, Eby was out of cabinet, having given up the posts of attorney general and minister of housing, for a clear run at the party leadership being vacated by Premier John Horgan.

He would have had a lock on the post were it not for the upstart presence of Anjali Appadurai. The former candidate for the federal NDP surprised the provincial establishment with a surge of memberships.

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Eby purported to welcome her presence in the race. Behind the scenes, his supporters helped to gather the evidence that led the provincial party to disqualify Appadurai.

He was then installed as party leader and premier by acclamation.

At about the same time as Eby launched his bid for the NDP leadership, Rustad was contemplating his future as a B.C. Liberal MLA, unsure if he had one.

“So 2022 was a tough year,” he told Rob Shaw of the Orca online news service recently. “My dad passed away in January. My father-in-law passed in February. I had shingles in April. And my mother passed in July.

“I was talking about retiring quite frankly — because I thought there was no way Kevin Falcon was going to win and I didn’t want to waste any more time sitting in Opposition with him.”

Then in August of that year, Falcon dumped him from what was then, still called the B.C. Liberal caucus, over a social media posting that questioned the science of climate change.

“That sort of created the door of OK, now what?” says Rustad. Most notably his wife Kim encouraged him to seek a leadership role, after almost 20 years as an MLA and cabinet minister

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Rustad briefly considered switching to the Social Credit party, which governed the province for most of four decades between the 1950s and the 1990s. He found that route was blocked.

Then in early 2023, he settled on the B.C. Conservatives. The party that hadn’t formed a government in the province for going on 100 years and it took less than two per cent of the vote in the last provincial election.

Today, at the outset of the four-week official phase of the 2024 B.C. election campaign, opinion polls suggest Eby’s NDP is in a virtual dead heat with a party that barely existed when he assumed the leadership two years ago.

If that weren’t enough to rank this election as one of the most unusual in provincial history, there is also the presence of a half dozen incumbent MLAs seeking re-election as Independents.

Five were elected as B.C. Liberals in 2020, then stranded when the B.C. United successor abandoned operations last month.

The sixth MLA-turned independent, Adam Walker, was dumped from the NDP caucus for alleged misconduct a year ago.

The premier refused to provide details of the offence, except to say it wasn’t criminal or sexual harassment but still not forgivable. The rumour mill suggests Eby sided with the union representing NDP staffers in a personnel dispute involving the MLA.

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Only one person, Vicki Huntington, has been elected to the legislature as an independent in modern times and she did it twice. But there’s no recent precedent for this many independents who also have profiles as incumbent MLAs.

The Greens are also a significant presence in the campaign and Leader Sonia Furstenau will have a seat in the televised leaders debate scheduled for Monday, Oct. 7.

Furstenau gave up the Cowichan Valley seat she won twice as a Green and is instead running in Victoria-Beacon Hill in the provincial capital. That puts her in a three-way fight with cabinet minister Grace Lore and lawyer Tim Thielmann, running for the Conservatives.

The Greens, like the Independents, provide an option for voters who don’t like either of the main parties.

Some observers envision a serves-them-right scenario where neither the New Democrats nor the Conservatives win a majority of seats, then have to bargain for support from a half dozen Greens and Independents.

The latter scenario recalls the 2017 election, the closest in provincial history.

B.C. Liberal leader Christy Clark lost her legislative majority by fewer than 200 votes in one seat — Courtenay-Comox. Had she managed to eke out a win there, she could have held on as premier at the head of a bare majority government until there was an opening to call another election.

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Instead Clark was out as premier and Horgan formed an NDP government with the support of the Greens.

The polls at the outset of this campaign suggest another close result. But campaigns matter and this one is just getting underway.

The New Democrats have been shaken out of their complacency in recent weeks and they still have considerable advantages in organizers, funding and the expanded membership of the public sector unions.

Yet a Conservative win is also possible. If I’d written that at the outset of this year, some readers would have told me to get my head examined.

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