If you’ve been paying attention to British Columbia politics lately, this will be a familiar story. The Liberal-Conservative alliance collapses, and subsequent attempts to thwart the left fail, leading to the emergence of a moribund party.
That was the 1952 election in this state, but it also gives you a quick rundown of next week’s vote. And the ensuing election was full of twists and turns that reshaped British Columbia politics for decades.
Ties between federal and state branches of political parties are often weak. The BC Liberal Party made this abundantly clear in 1987 when it formally severed ties with the Federalist Party. At that time they had no seats in parliament.
But the state party benefited in 1991 when then-premier Bill Vander Zalm resigned over a conflict of interest scandal over the sale of a Christian theme park he owned. His Social Credit Party collapsed. Liberal voters who had been reluctant to vote for the New Democratic Party reemerged by joining forces with most of the province’s conservatives to support the BC Liberal Party.
The party became an official opposition party that year and was in power from 2001 to 2017. But when the party took power, its leaders “were not liberals at all,” said David J. Mitchell, an author, historian, university administrator, and author. A former Liberal member of B.C.’s parliament told me.
When Kevin Falcon took over as leader of the BC Liberal Party in 2022, he reignited long-simmering discussions about changing the party’s name. A year later, the party rebranded to BC United.
The party name change would have prevented growing dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberal Party of Canada, and perhaps given it an advantage over the ruling center-left New Democratic Party. That wasn’t the case.
Instead, more voters told pollsters they supported the British Columbia Conservative Party, which hasn’t elected anyone since 1986, and fewer voters backed BC United. Conservative Party leader John Rustad has left the BC Liberal Party to change his name after refusing to delete social media posts suggesting climate change isn’t real. Recently, a video was released in which Rustad said he regretted taking the “so-called vaccine” for COVID-19.
Other polls indicate possible causes for BC United’s collapse. Many voters were unaware of the name change and believed the Conservative Party was the only option for the centre-right. In late August, Mr. Falcon gave up and announced that BC United would not field a candidate in this election to avoid splitting the right-wing vote.
A week after the vote, polls show that the Conservative Party, until recently a shell of a party, will emerge as the second-largest party, and Prime Minister David Eby’s New Democratic Party will once again form a government.
For 11 years until the 1952 election, the Conservatives and Liberals formed a coalition government, with MPs from both parties working together to fill cabinet positions. It was ostensibly a show of solidarity during World War II. But Mr Mitchell said it was primarily aimed at keeping the New Democratic Party’s predecessor, the Co-operative Union, out of power by avoiding splitting the centre-right vote.
When this arrangement violently collapsed before the election, the coalition government quickly passed legislation. Mitchell said the bill was also intended to keep CCF on the sidelines. British Columbia has moved to a ranked-choice voting system, which is unusual in Canada. Voters rank candidates based on their election ballots, and when the votes are counted, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated first, and then voters’ voting preferences are determined until the candidate with the fewest votes emerges. It has been moved. Mitchell said both parties assumed the Liberals would choose the Conservatives as their second choice and vice versa.
They were so wrong.
“There were a lot of unintended consequences,” Mitchell said. “One of them was that the Liberals and Conservatives hated each other so much that they didn’t give each other a second vote.”
Instead, they chose social credit candidates. At that point, Soclez, as he was known, had not won a seat or even an electoral vote in British Columbia. The party was campaigning without a leader.
Similarly, many CCF supporters made Socredo their second choice.
“They weren’t a big deal in this state at this point, so it seemed harmless to make them a second choice,” Mitchell said.
After six weeks of vote counting, the Sokrez party won the most seats, one more than the CCF. Starting with WAC Bennett as leader, the party will govern British Columbia for all but three of the next 39 years. Mr. Bennett, a hardware store owner known to friends and foes alike by his eccentric nickname, led the state in its postwar economic transformation. He also abolished the ranked-choice voting system after an election in which Soclez gave decisive control to Congress.
Mr. Mitchell, who wrote Mr. Bennett’s biography, said that compared to previous British Columbia political leaders, such as Mr. Bennett and the once-ousted New Democrat Dave Barrett, Mr. Eby and Mr. Rustad were “bland.” He said that he felt that he was a “no” person. Soclez holds power.
“These were wild animals that expressed the gorgeous nature of this region,” he says. “The situation has calmed down a lot lately.”
trans canada
We took a look at Newfoundland’s most troublesome invasive species, the moose. While elk hunting is a food source for many people in the state and a cultural event for thousands more, elk are also a menace to highways and destroyers of forests. Times Insider also asked me to write about a reporting trip to the island with photographer Ian Wilms.
TD Bank, the US subsidiary of Toronto-Dominion, has been fined $3 billion and faces restrictions on the size of its operations in the US after pleading guilty to violating anti-money laundering laws. Prosecutors argued that the bank made it “convenient” for criminals to open accounts, transfer money, and even deposit seven-figure sums of cash.
A 30-year-old Toronto woman has been charged with murdering three people in quick succession. Officials said the motive for the killings was unclear, noting that two of the victims were targeted at random.
In Travel, Megan Davidson Radley takes us on a tour of Toronto’s canyon network.
The Athletic is focusing on Connor McDavid’s next season after the Edmonton Oilers’ Stanley Cup disappointment.
Ian Austin, based in Ottawa, reports on Canada for the Times. He covers Canadian politics, culture and people, and has reported on the country for 20 years. Contact him at austen@nytimes.com. Learn more about Ian Austin
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