British Columbia’s reputation for wild provincial politics is well earned and this provincial election surpasses even those expectations.
In the past two years, John Horgan stepped down as premier, David Eby became premier amidst a controversial leadership race, John Rustad was booted from the BC Liberal caucus, the BC Liberals changed their name to BC United, Rustad became the Conservative leader, and BC United quit the provincial election campaign.
Officials at Elections BC expect votes to be counted faster than ever before due to the use of new vote-counting machines.
Elections BC says 222,907 voters voted on the last day of advance voting alone. In total 1,001,331 people voted during the advance voting period, the most ever in a provincial election in B.C.
B.C.’s Electoral Boundaries Commission also determined the province needed additional ridings to support significant population growth. There are 93 ridings in the upcoming election, an increase from 87, including four new seats in Metro Vancouver, one in the Capital Regional District and one in Kelowna. There are 70 ridings with new boundaries and 41 with new names.
All of this may have left your head spinning or left you tuning out from politics altogether. This last-minute voter’s guide is aimed at helping the spinning stop and making it a little simpler to make a decision on October 19.
Polls are open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday. Find your candidates and riding here.
The leaders
David Eby was sworn in as B.C.’s premier on Nov. 18, 2022 after being named the BC NDP leader the month before.
Eby previously served as attorney general in John Horgan‘s cabinet from 2017 to 2022. Eby’s only opponent in the leadership race, Anjali Appadurai, was disqualified for breaking membership rules during the campaign.
Eby has served as the MLA for Vancouver-Point Grey since 2013.
John Rustad was acclaimed BC Conservative leader on March 31, 2023.
Rustad was removed from the BC Liberal caucus by leader Kevin Falcon on Aug. 18, 2022, for refusing to remove online posts suggesting carbon dioxide emissions were not contributing to climate change.
Rustad sat as an independent before joining the Conservatives.
He was first elected in 2005 and is running again in Nechako Lakes.
Sonia Furstenau was named BC Green leader on Sept. 14, 2020, weeks before the 2020 provincial election.
Furstenau was first elected as a Green MLA in 2017, and won re-election in 2020, in Cowichan Valley.
After the riding boundaries were redrawn, Furstenau moved to Victoria and is running in Victoria-Beacon Hill.
She was on the negotiating team for the Greens that agreed to a Confidence and Supply Agreement that lifted the NDP to power after the 2017 election.
The parties
The BC NDP has been in power in British Columbia since 2017, having formed government following a Confidence and Supply Agreement with the BC Greens. The party won re-election in 2020 under the continued leadership of John Horgan. Horgan announced plans to step down in 2022, after guiding his party to a record-breaking 57 seats in the 2020 election.
The BC Conservative Party ran just 19 candidates in the 2020 election, getting 1.9 per cent of the popular vote. The party last elected an MLA in a 1978 by-election and last formed government in B.C. in 1928. The BC Liberal party won 28 seats in 2020, then changed their party name to BC United and announced in August 2024 that they would not be running candidates in this upcoming election. There are eight former BC Liberal MLAs running for the Conservatives.
The BC Green Party won two seats in 2020, down from the three seats the party won in 2017. The party secured 15.1 per cent of the vote in the last provincial election.
Election headlines
The provincial election was turned on its head after BC United Leader Kevin Falcon decided to pull his party out of the race.
When Falcon quit, it led to an electoral scramble with 14 former BC United MLAs and candidates now running for the BC Conservatives.
This includes four incumbent MLAs who left before the party collapse, and three more joining after the collapse.
There are 18 former BC United MLAs and candidates running as either an independent or unaffiliated.
This includes five incumbents who had served as MLAs: Tom Shypitka (Kootenay-Rockies), Coralee Oakes (Prince George-North Cariboo), Mike Bernier (Peace River South), Dan Davies (Peace River North) and Karin Kirkpatrick (West Vancouver-Capilano).
The BC Conservatives kept many candidates that they nominated while the party was running fourth in the polls.
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Surrey South candidate Brent Chapman was forced to apologize during the campaign for a social media post describing Palestinians as “inbreds” and a post questioning the reality of mass shootings at a Quebec mosque and at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The policies
Affordability and cost of living
British Columbia currently has the highest gas prices, housing prices and, in many places, grocery prices among Canadian provinces. There is a prevailing sense inflation has deeply affected the cost of living for everyday British Columbians.
The BC NDP have attempted to tackle cost-of-living pressures through rebates from ICBC and bolstering rebates for lower-income British Columbians.
The new BC NDP affordability tax measure is a plan to exempt an additional $10,000 of individual income from tax every year – providing a tax cut of over $1,000 for households and over $500 for individual British Columbians.
In 2025, Eby’s middle-class tax cut will be provided through a direct rebate to 90 per cent of British Columbains. The party says it will also end the consumer carbon tax if the federal government drops the requirement to have one.
The Conservatives have already promised to get rid of the carbon tax. This is only possible if the federal government gets rid of a national carbon tax backstop.
The Conservatives are also promising what they describe as the “largest tax cut for renters and homeowners in B.C. history.”
The ‘Rustad Rebate’ will allow British Columbians, starting in 2026, to exempt $1,500 per month of mortgage or rent payments on B.C. income tax.
The exemption limits would increase by $500 per year to the full level of $3,000 per month by 2029. The Conservatives estimate a person would save about $1,700 on their income taxes in 2029. There will be no rebate in the first fiscal year.
The BC Greens are making a commitment to end poverty in the province and will commit to raising social and disability assistance rates to above the poverty line. The party is also promising free transit for all British Columbians.
Housing
David Eby unveiled his ‘Opening Doors to Homeownership’ plan providing financing of 40 per cent of the purchase price of a program-built home. Land and pre-construction contributions from the provincial government will allow people to buy units at 60 per cent of market value.
To be eligible homeowners must currently be renting and be first-time home buyers. The provincial contribution is repaid along with a share of the appreciation when the owner sells the unit, or after 25 years, financing the next generation of homeowners. The NDP has committed to $1.29 billion a year in financing to support up to 25,000 homes.
This is tacked on to the measures the NDP has already put in place on housing, including increased density in municipalities, restrictions on short-term rentals and increases to the Speculation and Vacancy Tax on empty homes.
Experts have published a paper showing the NDP plan will lead to 300,000 new homes built in the next decade.
The NDP has also promised to double the Speculation and Vacancy Tax from 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent for Canadians and to increase it from two per cent to three per cent for foreign owners.
The ‘Rustad Rebate’ is a big part of the Conservative plan here, along with gutting a lot of the NDP’s current housing legislation to provide more flexibility for municipalities.
The Conservatives committed to mandating rezoning and development permit approval within six months, and building permits within three months.
If cities fail to issue permits within these timelines, the provincial government will step in and issue them.
The Conservatives have also committed to working with cities to “pre-zone” areas in advance, eliminating delays caused by rezoning for each individual project.
This would replace the NDP’s automatic up-zoning. Rustad will also get rid of the Energy Step Code policy and net-zero mandate.
To address concerns from municipalities, Rustad is promising a Civic Infrastructure Renewal Fund to provide $1 billion per year to municipalities that allow viable small-scale multi-unit housing on at least two-thirds of their residential land.
The BC Greens are committing to prevent landlords from dramatically increasing rents after a tenancy ends by implementing vacancy control measures and creating province-wide minimum standards for tenant protection to safeguard renters from renovictions and other forms of displacement.
The housing priority is non-market housing, and to provide $1.5 billion annually to construct 26,000 new units of non-market housing each year, with 3,000 units dedicated specifically for Indigenous Peoples.
Health care
One of the NDP’s signature commitments in 2017 was to remove Medical Service Plan (MSP) premiums, the tax previously applied to British Columbians to access health-care.
The party contends 248,000 people have been connected to a family doctor or nurse practitioner since July 2023, and says 160,000 more will be matched in the next six months. With this pace, the NDP says everyone who wants a family doctor or nurse practitioner will get one by the end of 2025.
There are still more than 600,000 people in the province without a family doctor.
The NDP has committed to adding more medical school seats this year and adding 48 new residency positions. B.C.’s second medical school at SFU-Surrey will be accepting its first students in 2026.
The BC Conservatives have promised a wait time guarantee for select diagnostics and surgical procedures.
If diagnostic or medical procedures exceed medically recommended wait times, patients would be able to access care at a pre-approved facility out-of-province and be reimbursed according to a set fee schedule.
The Conservative plan on health-care includes more reliance on the private sector, including opportunities to partner with non-government health-care facilities.
The party suggests in its platform this will include operating rooms and diagnostic clinics for services like MRIs and priority surgeries.
The party is promising a change to a funding model that will see hospitals, regional health authorities, and/or other non-government facilities funded based on their output.
The BC Greens are committing to establish an integrated community health centre in every riding in the province as part of the ‘Dogwood Model.’
The plan has easy referral models, so patients can receive care from needs-based experts. The plan places the administrative burden on the administrative professionals, rather than the health staff.
The Greens are promising to make all vaccines available to all people, at no cost to the consumer.
Public safety and mental health
Pre-election the BC NDP made two significant changes to the approach around addressing ongoing concerns linked to the ongoing illicit drug crisis in the province.
The party, while in power, asked for significant changes to decriminalization including stopping drug use in public places.
The NDP also indicated it would bring in a measure of involuntary care for those with severe mental health issues combined with addiction issues and brain injuries.
The BC Conservatives have spent significant time focused on this issue, including a commitment to cut wait time to voluntary addiction treatment by making the largest-ever investment in care capacity and integrating treatment into the correctional healthcare system.
As part of this, the party has promised to remove financial barriers to detox and treatment and close the gap between detox and care.
If elected, the Conservatives will ban tent cities and modify supervised consumption sites to make them intake facilities. The party is also commuting to enact “Christian’s Law” for compassionate intervention introducing involuntary treatment legislation for individuals with addiction who are unable to make life-saving decisions on their own.
The Conservatives have promised to fire Dr. Bonnie Henry for her stance on regulated drugs and for her management of mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The BC Greens are promising to integrate mental health as the fourth option in 911 emergency services to accommodate mental health crises that do not align with the traditional ambulance, fire or police options.
The party is planning to create an Independent Office of the Mental Health Advocate.
The big commitments around the drug crisis include immediately enhancing accessibility to supervised consumption services and overdose prevention sites.
The Greens are also pledging, supported by former chief coroner Lisa Lapointe, to provide regulated, pharmaceutical alternatives to the illicit drug market to reduce fatalities associated with substance use.
Economy
The BC NDP deficit is currently projected at $9.6 billion for the 2025/26 fiscal year.
This includes economic growth projections, loss of revenue from the middle-class tax cut and new spending on various initiatives including new housing.
The deficit is projected to shrink to $7.6 billion in 2026/27.
The BC Conservatives are planning a $11 billion deficit in the first year, which it projects would be offset by $10.4 billion in additional annual revenue by 2030 due to its forecast economic growth of 5.4 per cent a year.
The platform promises more than $4 billion in tax cuts, including the elimination of B.C.’s carbon tax if approved by the federal government.
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