BC Conservatives supporters gather at their provincial election night headquarters in Vancouver on Oct. 19.Chris Helgren/Reuters
British Columbia’s election ended after a bitter 28-day campaign just as it began, with the governing NDP and the upstart Conservatives locked in a dead heat that could potentially send voters back to the polls to determine who will form government.
After the initial counting of ballots Saturday night and Sunday, a hung parliament is a strong possibility, and the manoeuvring to create a minority government has begun.
Pending a change on recounts in tight ridings, there is no majority party in the 93-seat legislature. The NDP tentatively holds 46 seats, but it won two with fewer than 100 votes each, automatically prompting recounts. Elections BC has confirmed that the recounting of ballots in those ridings will take place Saturday to Oct. 28, as part of its final vote count.
The Conservatives have 45, with at least one close enough that a judicial recount could be conducted by a B.C. Supreme Court justice. The Greens landed back where they started, with two seats. An estimated 57.4 per cent of registered voters participated in the election.
One of the parties needs at least 47 seats to form a majority government. Failing that, if the Greens offered to support either the NDP or the Tories, the resulting minority government would be precarious. The last time a B.C. election resulted in a hung parliament, in 2017, the government promptly fell on a failed confidence vote, which came close to forcing another election.
NDP Leader David Eby, who remains Premier while the election is in limbo, wasted no time wooing the two elected Greens who may hold the balance of power.
“There are many values that we share in common with the Green Party, and I’m committed to working with them,” he told his supporters late on Saturday night. “We know there was a clear majority for progressive values.”
However, Mr. Eby will have to account to his party for his decisions that squandered a 20-point lead in the polls. The NDP’s strong majority from the 2020 election is gone, the party has lost a majority of the crucial Surrey ridings, and Mr. Eby failed to adequately address voters’ desire for change.
“To British Columbians who voted for change, I hear you and the serious message you have sent. We have not done enough and we must do better,” he said in a Sunday statement.
Mr. Eby rejected the opportunity to call an election when he was coronated leader by his party two years ago. At that time, the NDP could map out a comfortable path to victory, as their political opponents were divided and in disarray.
His decision to wait provided time for the centre-right to coalesce – in a stunning fashion. The Conservative Party that earned less than 2 per cent of the popular vote in 2020 emerged in the past year as the sole contender to take on the NDP. Even if the Conservatives end up in opposition, Leader John Rustad has secured a place in the history books.
Mr. Rustad, like Mr. Eby, has not conceded the election.
On Sunday, Mr. Rustad said the results showed that people are looking for change, and that he remains optimistic that the final counts could put his party ahead.
In the meantime, the Conservative leader said his party will be reaching out to a number of MLAs, including Green MLAs, to have conversations about “what some options could look like.”
“Despite the fact that the Green Party, for example, and us obviously don’t have a lot in common, in terms of our agenda, there are some things that we can work on together, so I’m looking forward to being able to have those conversations,” he told The Globe and Mail in an interview.
He is also open to forcing another election.
“Nobody in the province wants to have that, but I think, quite frankly, the majority of people in the province are not interested in what the NDP are offering, and so more of the same is, in my opinion, unacceptable,” he said.
“If that means we have to trigger an election right away, that’s what we’ll do.”
The Green’s campaign chair, former MLA Adam Olsen, said all 93 newly elected MLAs should respect the wishes of voters.
“The people of British Columbia delivered this parliament, and now it’s up to this parliament to find a way to make it successful. It’s very, very cynical for anyone to be standing up and saying that they are not going to accept this outcome and they are not going to try to make it work.”
The outcome parallels the 2017 provincial election results, which took British Columbia to the edge of a constitutional crisis when then-lieutenant-governor Judith Guichon was forced to decide who would form government.
That election left the government in a state of paralysis. Christy Clark’s Liberals, having governed for 16 years, were reduced to 43 seats − one seat short of a majority. The NDP under John Horgan won 41 seats, leaving three Green MLAs holding the balance of power.
After weeks of negotiations, the NDP and Greens announced a pact and toppled Ms. Clark’s government with a vote of non-confidence. Upon losing the vote, Ms. Clark asked the lieutenant-governor to dissolve the newly elected Legislative Assembly and trigger another election.
For a head of state to reject the advice of their first minister, under Canada’s constitutional monarchy, is no minor matter.
Ms. Guichon instead called on Mr. Horgan to form a government. The drama continued for months because the NDP-Green alliance needed to appoint one of their members to sit as Speaker of the House, losing a critical vote in the chamber. But four months after the election, Liberal MLA Darryl Plecas shocked his colleagues crossing the floor and taking on the role of Speaker, sealing the minority government’s grip on power.
The pact held for more than three years before the NDP pulled the plug and called a snap election.
Mike McDonald, a former key BC Liberal official, was at the table for the party in the 2017 negotiations with the Greens. On Sunday, he said the numbers are once again so close, that current Lieutenant-Governor Janet Austin may not see any government in waiting.
“Another election might clear the air,” Mr. McDonald said in an interview Sunday. He also noted that the Greens may be skeptical about doing another formal deal with the NDP, after being betrayed in 2020.
Today, pending a shift in the numbers in the recounts, the Greens will likely find themselves once again holding the balance of power.
Neither of their incumbents is returning to the legislature so the Greens will be sending two rookies to Victoria. Rob Botterell, who won in Saanich North and the Islands, is a former senior bureaucrat who led the team responsible for developing the province’s Freedom of Information law. Jeremy Valeriote, who took West Vancouver-Sea to Sky, is a geological engineer and former municipal councillor.
With a report from The Canadian Press