Kirk LaPointe: The B.C. election is over—but everything is still a mess

“The British Columbia election on October 19 is too close to call.” Me, October 17.

“The British Columbia election on October 19 is too close to call.” Me, October 21.

We have entered a miasmic week of waiting following a manic week of campaigning that ends nothing in the way of an awful period of B.C. politics that has no sign of a cease-fire.

Elections BC’s initial count of Saturday’s election suggests the incumbent BC NDP has 46 seats, the rejuvenated Conservative Party of B.C. has 45, and there are two Greens who have every opportunity to act like they are 47 in number. They seem to be the new kingmakers.

But of course, it being B.C. politics, it’s never that simple. Skip past this next paragraph if it’s too early in your day to get into the weeds.

First, there are a couple of squeaker results within 100 votes (one within 20, one within 96, both led by the NDP) to properly recount, even though we’re now in a machine-reading era of balloting. Second, there are mailed-in ballots that were received only after advanced voting closed, along with ballots cast by out-of-district voters that have yet to be counted—all told, 49,000 of them. Third, once those late-coming ballots are tallied—on average, about 725 per riding—it could prompt another wave of judicial recounts if the results of the top two candidates are within 0.2 percent and the runner-up applies within six days. Oh, and the recounts aren’t trusted to the machines—they’re hand-counted.

The whole thing should take us until October 28, but could, with judicial recounts, run longer. At some point, one presumes, before the November 17 Grey Cup in Vancouver, either the NDP’s David Eby or the Conservatives’ John Rustad go to see Lieutenant Governor Janet Austin to get permission to form a government.

It’s also necessary to find in the ranks a procedural wonk to serve as Speaker, depleting the ranks dangerously and perhaps fatally by one. No party wants an adversarial party to get the Speaker role, no matter the perception of impartiality. But it is likely that the theatrical dragging of the electee to the chair will be more realistic this time because who wants to be neutral all of a sudden in this mud bowl?

What is clear, regardless of who holds power, is that the NDP and particularly its leader are on borrowed time. A tenuous hold on power is usually temporary in term. What would have been a walkover when Eby assumed the leadership in 2022 from an ailing John Horgan became a walk over—to the edge of a cliff. The inherited goodwill of a more centrist, budget-balancing, mostly likable gaggle curdled under a less affable, more ideological spendthrift warrior who incited an arrogant campaign that demeaned his opponent, smeared him at times, and condescended throughout. Eby summoned the Tim Walz “weird” word to describe Rustad’s candidates; at any moment I thought he might call his supporters “despicables.”

Even with the NDP’s enormous advantages of electoral finances, of incumbent experience, of party data, and of the organizational machinery to identify and get out the vote, about the best one can say of its outcome is that it was saved not by its brethren but by Liberals and Greens who wanted to stop Rustad at all costs. That is not a sustainable strategy.

If the recounts install Rustad as premier, or if Eby cannot keep the indefinite confidence of the legislature, the NDP leader will be eaten alive by his caucus and dispatched by his party. He had so many options to keep power yet chose so many paths to risk it: provocative legislation and policies on land ownership, on municipal housing authority, on drug decriminalization, on forestry management, and on street safety, among other things.

Eby has not to date been a leader who sets aside self-esteem easily, so it would be a shock to discern differences in tone or tack in his time ahead, or a personality transplant. Nor will we see any plan to raise the standard of living, the “wealth creation instead of wealth redistribution” former NDP premier Glen Clark called for during the campaign, to radio silence. If it wasn’t a campaign pledge, it isn’t likely a governing priority. Today it is doubtful he will be party leader in four years.

That being said, it is doubtful Rustad will run his party in four years, either. We tend to forget that he has been campaigning for nearly 20 months now. The result Saturday might have put some spring back in his step, but he was running on fumes for weeks. Had he won decisively, he would have been happy to hand the reins over before his term ended. Had he lost decisively, he was likely ready to declare on election night that he would depart. But the ambiguous electoral situation puts him in an awkward spot—he has to stay and fight now, even if it is unclear for how long.

The Greens are in an even more awkward spot. Their well-regarded leader, Sonia Furstenau, chose to run where she lives in Victoria, rather than where she’d first been elected in Cowichan Valley in 2017 and 2020. She lost Saturday, the other Green MLA had already retired, and the two new Green MLAs have no experience on the legislative stage, so they’ll be reading cue cards and listening to prompters for some time.

Some remember 2017 and see a similar scenario to the Greens’ then deal with the NDP, a confidence and supply agreement (CASA) on shared policy objectives that maintained Green independence on non-confidence votes. It’s more likely any deal now will be less CASA and more MIA, a selfish kind of Bloc Québecois/Liberal deal of issue-by-issue hostage-taking. A formal coalition is unlikely, given the Green’s distaste of the NDP’s willingness in the campaign to entertain killing the consumer portion of the carbon tax if Ottawa would permit it. That said, memories in politics can be as short as those of a goldfish.

Some might remember, too, that in 2017 it was the BC Liberals who had the edge in seats but not the majority. The CASA combo overtook their numbers. But it’s highly unlikely the Greens nestle into the Conservative bosom, principally because Rustad and many of his candidates have been skeptical of climate science—even if the leader himself believes in climate change. Rustad had the endorsement of former Green leader Andrew Weaver, a climate change scientist who contributed to the work of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and shared in its 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

It was thought for a time that Weaver might even re-enter politics under Rustad or write the party’s policy on the issue. It never happened, but it makes one wonder whether Rustad’s exceptional rekindling of the Conservatives—five percent a year ago, 43.6 percent Saturday—might have punched through a poll ceiling of a few months and secured the prize through some sanding of the more jagged edges.

The Conservative campaign was a moonshot, so it should not surprise that some of the passengers on the voyage would be residents of outer space. But it was evident early, and confirmed as the campaign ensued, that the party didn’t have even an elementary vetting process for examining the social media history of its candidates. Day after day, Rustad found his policy announcements downplayed by media—who became more and more the adversary—in favour of questions about this candidate and that candidate and this racist post and that homophobic tweet of old. That it did not sink the ship is less a credit to Rustad than an indictment of Eby and the antipathy many voters had in their willingness to look past the values of some they were prepared to elect for the sheer sake of change. Man, what we won’t do for it at times.

Now, it is true that Rustad turfed a couple of problem children from the ticket when the BC United party—the presumed next government at one point not long ago—suspended its campaign and threw what meagre political currency that remained in uniting the right over to a leader who had himself been turfed from its ranks two years earlier.

Trouble was, by late August there were too many policies, too many pronouncements, and too much of a hardened Conservative team to either make room in the tent for the more electable BC United candidates, or contemplate less strident ideas for the province.

I’ve heard many in the party say that this had to resemble a Danielle Smith 2.0 campaign if it stood any chance, but I’d suggest that its failure to court and elect even a few centrist conservatives opens a flank that in four years might again split Right-of-centre votes, if anyone chooses to rekindle the brand between the two braying principals.

For the time being, the resurgent party can pound its chest, even if ultimately in the most modest defeat. No one, not even its leader, could credibly claim to have envisioned how far it could come—nor, now, how far it will go. We will learn more by next week, and month, and then beyond.