The B.C. business community had been muted in its criticism of the New Democratic government over its seven years in power – until earlier this summer when Glen Clark, onetime NDP premier and former president of the Jim Pattison Group, took the government to task.
Mr. Clark, who stepped down from Canada’s largest private-sector company last year, says he is still a supporter of the BC NDP. But he argues that Premier David Eby needs to move from wealth redistribution to wealth creation.
And economic growth has been hampered, he says, by a series of policy changes that are having a devastating impact on the province’s major resource industries.
“Stop making changes,” Mr. Clark, premier from 1996 to 1999, urged the NDP during a business forum in June. “Let business catch up and adapt. We need a lengthy period of stability.”
Mr. Clark’s advice to his party was a clear signal that the political climate going into the Oct. 19 provincial election has changed.
On Saturday, British Columbia’s election campaign formally begins. B.C. voters have not faced such stark political choices in at least a generation. The NDP, seen as relatively moderate, has become a far more activist, big-spending government in the past year, and that has awakened the opposition of some powerful economic interests.
Voters have also grown disaffected with the NDP on key issues – access to health care, the high cost of housing and the opioid crisis, to name a few.
On the other side of the political ledger, the province’s Official Opposition party has suspended its election campaign, leaving the field open for a single alternative to the current government that is, according to public opinion polls, in a statistical dead heat with the NDP.
Mr. Eby had a promising opportunity to call a snap election when he was anointed premier by his party in late 2022, when the NDP was riding high in the polls. But he chose to stick to the province’s fixed election date, saying he needed to work on a health care system coming apart at the seams, and a crisis of confidence in public safety because of the street chaos tied to mental health and drug addictions.
Now, B.C. voters are looking at a hotly contested, two-way race that could prove to be a bellwether for the coming federal election, as it will test the strength of the Conservative brand in the polling booth.
The changes to the political landscape emerged early this year, when the NDP’s commanding lead in the polls began to evaporate, for two main reasons.
First, there has been a seismic shift in the fortunes of the once-dominant BC Liberal Party, which was rebranded as BC United in 2023. Public support started to collapse and moved to the BC Conservatives, a moribund party that was revived by MLA John Rustad after he was tossed out of the BC Liberal caucus for questioning the science of climate change.
Mr. Rustad’s timing was perfect – the Conservative name was ripe to be exploited, and he has unabashedly hitched his wagon to the federal Conservatives with his promise of “common-sense change.”
BC United Leader Kevin Falcon suspended his party’s election campaign on Aug. 28, leaving the NDP with only one main opponent. An Angus Reid poll immediately following Mr. Falcon’s announcement showed that the BC Greens, which have sapped NDP support in the past, are far behind in third place.
Then, there’s the NDP’s performance on the economy and other voter issues such as health care.
This spring, the legislative agenda included a record budget deficit that damaged the province’s top-tier credit rating. Just before the campaign officially started, B.C.’s first quarterly financial report showed that the deficit for the coming year has grown to nearly $9-billion – $1.1-billion higher than forecast – in large part because of declining corporate revenues.
A broad backlash to the province’s failed experiment with decriminalization of illicit drugs undermined Mr. Eby’s promises to address public safety concerns. Meanwhile, out-of-the-blue changes to Crown land management created panic for property owners and resource companies. (This was one of the moves that prompted Mr. Clark’s public castigation of his party’s current leadership.) The government was forced to backpedal on both policies.
Pollster Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, expects the campaign to turn on both leadership, and top issues such as the economy and health care. Her company’s latest survey shows that Mr. Eby is viewed more favourably than Mr. Rustad, but when it comes to key issues, the governing NDP has some problems.
Affordability – particularly around housing – is a top concern for voters. British Columbia’s NDP government has poured billions of dollars into new home construction as part of its effort to improve the affordability of housing. It has passed legislation to rein in short-term rentals, and to prevent municipal governments from blocking densification in neighbourhoods.
Despite those measures, the cost of living remains stubbornly high. When Mr. Eby took his oath as Premier in November, 2022, Vancouver had the highest rents in the country, with the average monthly cost for a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver running at $2,576, according to the online listing agency, Rentals.ca. In August of this year, that average climbed to $2,708. Vancouver is still the most expensive jurisdiction in Canada, while its neighbour Burnaby has climbed to second place.
The Conservatives promise that if elected, they will roll back the NDP’s housing laws, while at the same time promoting the development of new housing supply.
Carolyn Whitzman, a senior housing researcher with the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, noted that B.C.’s housing crisis is not unique – affordability is a problem across the country – and there are no easy fixes.
When the NDP took power in 2017, it faced a major challenge: an absence of federal leadership on home building and roadblocks at the municipal level. Today, British Columbia is regarded as a national leader in its plans to create more affordable housing, she said – even though supply has not increased quickly enough.
“The B.C. government has been pretty good at pulling the right levers,” she said. “It’s been by no means enough. It’s still ridiculously difficult to find an affordable rental in B.C., let alone affordable home ownership.”
The public’s faith in the NDP to manage the opioids crisis has also withered.
In July, a paramedic was assaulted and police swarmed in downtown Victoria near a large homeless encampment where increasingly violent incidents have heightened public safety concerns. The 900 block of Pandora St. has been the epicentre of the city’s street disorder because many of the support services to help the unhoused and those struggling with addiction and mental-health issues are located there.
Police ramped up enforcement over the summer, making dozens of arrests and seizing a battery of weapons and large amounts of fentanyl, cocaine and crystal meth.
Mr. Rustad has wasted no opportunities to attack the NDP over public safety and drug policy. From free crack pipes being dispensed in vending machines at hospitals, to random stranger attacks by repeat offenders, the Conservatives are telling voters that they are not safe in their communities – and that Mr. Eby is to blame.
The province’s harm-reduction drug policies been shaped by a health crisis: With unregulated, toxic drugs killing hundreds of British Columbians each month, the province won approval from Health Canada to launch a pilot project in early 2023, to decriminalize possession by adults of small amounts of certain illegal drugs most commonly associated with overdoses.
The experiment began with broad support but it led to widespread consumption of illicit drugs in public places, including inside hospitals. The backlash was fast and strong. The NDP government had to cancel the pilot project before it could run its course. The loss of public support for harm reduction will have a lasting impact on policymaking.
In the fall of 2023, retail and pharmacy chain London Drugs declared a crisis over escalating violence and theft in and around their stores. Seeking allies, the company ended up sparking the creation of an advocacy group, Save Our Streets.
Jess Ketchum, a co-founder of the coalition of business associations and community groups, said the province needs more measures to keep repeat offenders off the streets, and to bring more resources to a justice system that is stretched thin. But the biggest change can be achieved with significant investments in detox, treatment and recovery for those dealing with mental health and addictions.
“If we had the resources, a lot of the problems would go away,” he said in an interview.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the health care system to the brink of collapse, and capacity remains extremely tight.
Over the Labour Day long weekend, five hospitals in B.C.’s Interior closed their emergency rooms because of staff shortages. Such service cancellations have become a chronic issue across the province, and just one of the reasons that health care remains a top issue for voters in B.C.
The NDP has offered physicians a 54-per-cent raise (as a salary rather than fee for service) and have put $237-million into recruitment and retention for nurses. It’s spending billions to expand and improve existing hospitals around the province. According to the B.C. Ministry of Health, waiting lists for surgery have declined overall as a result of a surgical renewal plan that has expanded hours for operating rooms.
But British Columbians see emergency-room closings, long waiting times for diagnostics and treatment, ambulance delays and a persistent shortage of family doctors.
There’s an insatiable demand for more resources, and Prof. Kevin Milligan, director of the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of B.C., said those pressures will only escalate in the coming years, no matter who wins the coming provincial election.
“Baby boomers are just starting to hit the ages when they use health care the most,” he noted. “Whatever problems we have now are going to be multiplying very quickly.” While the NDP is under fire for deficit spending, the Conservatives are promising to cut taxes and balance the budget. The demands for more health care spending will put those promises to the test.
Pollster Angus Reid was out in the field immediately after BC United bowed out of the race, and it found that the NDP and Conservatives are starting the campaign in a statistical dead heat. Even voters who supported the NDP in the past election are disillusioned by the government’s response to the opioid crisis, she noted, and that has created an opportunity for the Conservatives.
But Ms. Kurl noted that on the question of leadership, Mr. Rustad remains an unknown factor. “There’s been almost like a UFO tractor beam that was on the BC Conservatives, pulled up by the branding of the federal Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre,” she said. Yet a majority of voters couldn’t identify John Rustad. Those leadership questions will be decided in the coming weeks.