BC election unlikely to end well

On September 22 BC NDP Premier David Eby called an election two years into a four-year term. His stated reason for the election is that “Trump is coming after us.” However the extreme chaos and disorder in the opposition BC Conservatives seems like a much more likely reason.

 

In the 2024 provincial election the BC Conservatives went from only 2% of the vote in the previous election to winning 43% of the vote and 44 of the 93 seats in the legislature. The NDP lost 10 seats (down to 47) and the Greens stayed at 2.

 

This new version of the BC Conservatives has adopted far-right “freedom convoy” politics including climate denial, anti-indigenous racism, and transphobia. Before the election the official opposition was the BC Liberal party, in the hopes of unseating the NDP no matter what, party leader Kevin Falcon unilaterally suspended the party’s election campaign in August 2024 and merged his party with the BC Conservatives.

 

Some of the Conservatives electoral success came from sharing the name with Poilievre’s federal Conservatives, but much of it came from the combination of the dire state of housing, healthcare and the affordability crisis combined with seven years of the NDP making right-wing policies and arguments respectable. The NDP approved the Site C dam despite the objections of nearly every Indigenous organization in the province, they refused to implement rent controls; as the opioid crisis intensified they steadfastly opposed safer supply; they increased the previous government’s tax cuts and subsides to bring fracked gas terminals to the province and arrested nearly 1,200 people to force through old-growth logging on Vancouver Island. In defence of profits for fossil fuel companies they sent the racist RCMP armed with machine guns and attack dogs into Wet’suwe’ten nation to force through a natural gas pipeline. This attack on Indigenous rights sparked occupations and shut downs across so-called Canada.

 

After the election Premier Eby continued his campaign to make Conservative convoy politics respectable. He has proposed imprisoning people with addictions, making it harder for people to be on bail while waiting for trials, and he lead a racist attack on Indigenous rights.

 

In 2025 the Supreme Court of British Columbia reached a decision, after the longest trial in Canadian history, that land that the colony of BC stole from the Quw’utsun (Cowichan) Nation in the 1850s still belonged to the Quw’utsun Nation. Even though much of it had been sold and re-sold over the years. Instead of negotiating with the Quw’utsun Nation as directed by the court, Eby denounced the decision, declared that it ignored “real people,” and is appealing the decision. He then went on to try to suspend the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act because the courts were applying it, as intended, to BC laws. Only the behind the scenes refusals by a few NDP MLAs combined with the government’s one-seat majority stopped him.

 

Despite all this assistance by the NDP government, after the election the Conservatives descended into chaos. By the middle of September this year, they had lost 19 caucus members who went on to create three new parties. In the week leading up to the premier’s well publicized election call: the former leader John Rustad, who nearly won the 2024 election was expelled from the party; the leader of the Conservatives resigned; and the leader of one of the splinter parties was appointed as leader of another, only to abandon it a few days later to rejoin the Conservatives. (Which, as hard as it may be to believe, is only a sampling of the nonsense the Conservatives were up to.) After the election call many of those who had quit and/or were expelled quickly rejoined the Conservatives.

 

The first polls after the election launch had the NDP dropping from a previous 10 point lead to the Conservatives leading by 2 percentage points, which is a tie within the uncertainty of the polls.

 

The only bright spot in this election is the BC Green party platform. They are running on a platform that includes building permanently affordable housing, proper rent control, $10 a day childcare, a new tax on those with more than $100 million in wealth, a windfall tax on corporations, and no new fossil fuel development. But even the Greens seem to accept the current oil and gas frenzy and would content themselves with greater taxes and loyalties while suspending future projects.

 

There are no good outcomes to this election. If the Conservatives win they will pursue attacks on the public sector, indigenous rights, and their right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.

 

The NDP has spent decades transforming itself into a neo-liberal party. If they win a majority, like all other pro-business parties, they will launch a new round of attacks in the hope that resistance will be limited and people will come to accept the damage over the four year mandate. A majority NDP government would also mean that the small number of MLAs who still have principles would not be able to occasionally hold the rest of the party back, like they did in defence of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.

 

Defending Indigenous rights, public spending, the climate and our own standard of living requires action beyond voting. Whoever wins the election we must build the solidarity needed to keep them in check.