Two months from today, at 9pm on the chilly mid-autumn evening of Saturday, October 19th, British Columbians will be apprised of who will form government in the coming four years, from November 2024 through October 2028.
According to David Coletto’s August 16th Abacus poll, David Eby’s BC NDP maintain a comfortable 5-point lead over John Rustad’s noviceBC Conservative Party. BC United leader Kevin Falcon and BC Greens leader Sonia Furstenau remain in the also ran category, with no hope of forming government post October 19th.
VanRamblings has been told that Quitto Maggi will release his latest Mainstreet poll later this week, weighing in on British Columbia’s provincial election, following an in-the-field survey of 2000+ prospective voters across the province.
Mainstreet gives John Rustad’s BC Conservative Party a 5-point lead over David Eby’s BC NDP — which reads to VanRamblings as more of a push poll, commissioned by the BC Conservative Party and designed to influence prospective voters still sitting on the fence as to who they will cast a ballot for this upcoming October.
Back to David Coletto’s, more credible, Abacus August 16th poll.
According to Mr. Coletto, David Eby’s BC NDP maintain an even more comfortable 9-point lead over John Rustad’s upstart BC Conservative Party in the vote rich Metro Vancouver region out to Chilliwack, where there are 52-seats up for grabs, which will constitute 58% of the 93 seats in the next session of the British Columbia Legislature.
Further, David Eby’s BC NDP maintains an almost insurmountable lead of nine points over John Rustad’s woefully unprepared BC Conservative Party across the entirety of Vancouver Island, where 17 seats are up for grabs, all but two of which are currently held by BC NDP incumbents.
VanRamblings has been told the BC Conservatives are polling better north of Nanaimo, and could very well pick up Courtenay-Comox and the North Island.
John Rustad, leader of the upstart British Columbia Conservative Party, which is currently polling well.
Although John Rustad’s BC Conservative Party holds an 11-point lead over David Eby’s BC NDP outside of the Lower Mainland — in the Okanagan, the Interior and in the North — there are only 24 seats that the BC Conservatives could possibly win. Nathan Cullen, currently the wildly popular BC NDP Member of the Legislative Assembly representing the Stikine, and current Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship and Minister Responsible for Fisheries in David Eby’s BC NDP government hardly constitutes a winning seat up north for the BC Conservative Party, so John Rustad would likely be denied a sweep of the ridings outside of Metro Vancouver.
All is not lost for John Rustad and the BC Conservative Party, though, which VanRamblings will write about later in the week.
Kevin Falcon, the beleaguered leader (at least for now) of the down in the dumps BC United Party.
Apropos of nothing in particular, VanRamblings has also been told by a generally reliable source that BC United leader Kevin Falcon will tender his resignation as party leader later this week or early next week, and most certainly before month’s end.
We don’t find the information respecting Mr. Falcon’s pending, apparent, resignation to be credible. In tomorrow’s VanRamblings, we’ll express why, while going into some detail as to why we believe Mr. Falcon is not faring better in the lead-up to the 43rd BC provincial election.
Government House, home of BC Lieutenant Governor Janet Austin, where Premier David Eby will visit September 14 to ask Ms. Austin to dissolve the Legislature and call for B.C.’s 43rd provincial election.
As we wrote last week, the Writ will be dropped on Sunday, September 14th, at which point what is sure to be an uncommonly “pointed” (read: vicious and unsettling) 35-day election cycle will commence, with the four main British Columbia political parties fighting hammer and tong for victory, whatever the nature of that “victory” might mean— for BC United, survival and six seats would suffice to keep the party alive, as would be the case with the BC Greens, who would be thrilled were they to secure two seats in the next session of the Legislature.
ABC Vancouver, the upstart Vancouver civic party that only 22 months ago ascended to super majority status at Vancouver City Hall, with mayoral candidate, businessman and novice politico Ken Sim achieving a record number of votes on election night, Saturday, October 15th, 2022, carrying seven Councillors on his coattails to victory, to dominate civic politics, in August 2024 is a municipal party — although once celebrated — very much in freefall and worrisome disarray.
In a recent conversation with a long serving, retired Vision Vancouver City Councillor, the Councillor told us of her many conversations with ABC Vancouver’s electeds, who have expressed to her — as has been the case with VanRamblings’ conversations with various ABC Vancouverelecteds — a distress and a mournfulness at the goings on at Vancouver City Hall, in the main emanating from the Mayor’s office and his “bullying staff”, an unfortunate and disconcerting arbitrariness, a lack of consultation, respect and engagement (not to mention prior notice) involving a series of “surprising” dictums by Mayor Ken Sim.
None more surprising, of course, than the arbitrary and unilateral reversal by Mayor Ken Sim of ABC Vancouver’s commitment to, and support of, a much cherished Vancouver institution, the 135-year-old elected Vancouver Park Board.
Following a week-long sojourn in ABC Vancouver founder Peter Armstrong’s luxurious, well-appointed yacht up British Columbia’s west coast, Ken Sim arrived back in Vancouver in early December of 2023 to announce — with the shortest possible notice to his fellow ABC Vancouver electeds — of his intention to ask the province to change the city charter, to shift Park Board’s responsibilities to Council, in the process unilaterally eliminating our cherished 135-year-old elected Park Board.
Where else has Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver gone wrong, losing the support of a Vancouver populace who elected the civic party with so much hope for better?
Shuttering the Rental Office at Vancouver City Hall, established by the previous Council to help renters. Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver promised to transfer the funds allocated to the Rental Office to TRAC — the Tenant Resource & Advisory Centre — in the process committing, as well, to move TRAC into a newly renovated, City-owned building on Howe Street, neither of which commitments have been fulfilled to date;
In the most unconscionable manner, scrapping Vancouver’s Livable Wage Programme that certified employers who provide services and supplies to the City of Vancouver pay a living wage of $25.68 per hour to their employees;
Increasing property taxes by the highest amount ever, in December 2022 by 10.7%, and in December 2023, by 7.5%. Note should be made that in Port Coquitlam, Mayor Brad West’s City Council raised the 2022 property tax by 3.55% and in 2023, by 5.58%, all while providing supportive and affordable housing, and a new community centre;
Restricting public access to Council decision-making by allocating only 3 minutes rather than 5 minutes to citizens addressing their concerns to Council, while disallowing Councillors the opportunity to ask clarification questions to speakers;
Committing to hiring 100 police officers, and 100 public health nurses for an expanded Car 87 mental health programme, fulfilling only the first part of ABC Vancouver’s commitment to the citizens of Vancouver.
More concerns about Ken Sim, in particular: Mayor Ken Sim has missed a full one-third of Council meetings during his 21-month tenure as Mayor. As of March of this year, Sim had been marked absent 222 times, including during the vote on one of his most significant campaign promises.
As Stewart Prest, a lecturer in political science at UBC, told CTV Vancouver …
“I think when we start to get to the range of missing one vote in three, it’s worth asking the question of whether the Mayor is actually showing up to do the job that he was primarily elected to do,” Prest said.
“The Mayor is elected, first and foremost, to represent Vancouverites at Council and if the Mayor is missing in action for a significant amount of those deliberations – even apart from casting the vote – if the Mayor is not there to offer his perspective, then there may be the appearance, if not the reality of not doing a crucial part of his job,” Prest told CTV News.
Concern was expressed recently when, presiding over an emergency Council meeting that would effectively stop the work of Vancouver City Hall’s Integrity Commissioner, Lisa Southern, Mayor Sim wore a baseball cap, T-shirt and light running shorts to Council, lessening the dignity of the office, as if somehow Mr. Sim is not the Mayor of Canada’s third largest city, but an interloper at City Hall.
Lisa Southern, Integrity Commissioner, City of Vancouver
Of course, attempting to shutter the office of the Integrity Commissioner, disallowing Commissioner Southern from investigating and weighing in, purportedly, to complaints leveled against the Mayor and members of his ABC Vancouver Council contingent, is only the latest “scandal” to befall Vancouver’s inept, part-time, decidely unserious, and let’s face it “not fit for the job” baseball cap wearing Mayor.
Former Vancouver Sun Managing Editor / publisher-editor of Business in Vancouver / 2014 candidate for Mayor of the City of Vancouver, Kirk LaPointe, weighs in on the Southern fiasco …
“What appeared to be a routine motion to get a third-party review of the mandate was amended at the meeting to propose freezing Southern’s work for an indefinite period until the review was complete. This isn’t standard practice while mandates are reviewed — usually, it’s just business as usual while the amendments are assembled — and critics immediately wondered if Council was just trying to silence the Commissioner and the complainants. (The Mayor’s chief of staff insists the review would be done swiftly.)
The amendment passed, but Council needed another recent meeting to amend the bylaw for its measure to take effect. Meantime, Southern got busy writing and releasing two reports arising from complaints. One complaint (from a Park Board Commissioner) alleged Sim and his officials tried to influence Park Board decision-making and leadership, and a second complaint (filed by Sim’s senior advisors) alleged two Park Board Commissioners contravened the City’s code of conduct by recording and sharing phone calls they made to one of them. Southern dismissed both complaints, but her reports on them splayed open the discordant municipal political culture.
It appeared we were headed for a work freeze, but on the day before the meeting, another complaint about the ABC Councillors landed with the Integrity Commissioner from an opposition Councillor, the Green Party’s Pete Fry (son of Liberal MP Hedy Fry). Details of the complaint aren’t yet public, but Fry decided to inform Councillors and the city manager of his complaint as it was filed. In doing so, he stymied Councillors from voting on the freeze of Southern’s work. After all, in being named in the complaint, they would have been conflicted and have to recuse themselves at least until the Commissioner’s office could investigate and rule on it.
Out of caution, Sim adjourned the meeting until late September, but not before chiding Fry and insisting again that his goal was an improved Integrity Commissioner’s office. Two things were most evident at the meeting: Sim’s frustration, and the surprising absence of two of his own ABC Councillors (ed. clearly unhappy, Lisa Dominato and Rebecca Bligh) from a meeting where one would think solidarity and attendance would be a whipped must.”
LaPointe raises further concerns, in writing …
“Last week, the ABC Vancouver Chair of the School Board, Victoria Jung, quit ABC Vancouver to sit an an Independent over the integrity issue; she may not be the last to leave, and each departure further fritters the momentum of the 2022 mandate most everyone thought would be so empowering.”
For some time now, there’s been a movement afoot to create a Unity Slate for the 2026 Vancouver municipal election that would be backed by the Vancouver District & Labour Council, such Unity Slate that could include Melody Ma, Council candidates from COPE (think Tanya Webking, Derrick O’Keefe), TEAM (Colleen Hardwick, Cleta Brown or Sean Nardi), former Vision Vancouver electeds (Overdose Prevention Society founder, Sarah Blyth and/or former Park Board Chair, Aaron Jasper), One City Vancouver (Dulcy Anderson and/or Tessica Truong), Green Party electeds (Pete Fry and/or Adriane Carr), and former ABC Vancouver electeds, now Independents (Scott Jensen, and/or Laura Christensen / Brennan Bastyovanszky).
Unity Slate Mayoral candidates: BC NDP MLA Mable Elmore, or NDP MP Don Davies.
L-r, Premier David Eby; Kevin Falcon, BC United; John Rustad, BC Conservatives; Sonia Furstenau, Green Party BC
One month from today, on Saturday, September 14th, Premier David Eby will visit the Lieutenant Governor, the Honourable Janet Austin, and ask her to dissolve the Legislature and arrange for a Saturday, October 19th B.C. provincial election.
The latest compilation poll from 338.com has David Eby’s BC NDP, and John Rustad’s surging BC Conservatives in a statistical dead heat.
Of course, we’re still 67 days away — which is to say, a lifetime in politics — from knowing the outcome of the October 19th B.C. provincial election. All indications at this point suggest the coming election will be hard fought, the results close.
Unless …
William John Bowser, the 17th Premier of British Columbia & last elected Conservative Party Premier
The BC Conservatives sweep the election, riding on the popularity coattails of federal Conservative Party leader, Pierre Poilievre, causing not just a wave election, but a tsunami of support for novice party leader John Rustad, resulting in a Conservative Party of British Columbia forming majority government in the province for the first time since 1915, when William John Bowser swept to power for a near one-year period, from December 15, 1915 to November 23, 1916.
Here’s the bottom line: the coming election will be hard fought, it’ll be a tight race for government between David Eby’s well-funded BC NDP, and the B.C. Conservatives (now, surprisingly) well-organized campaign, the latter about which we will write next week.
Chances are that Kevin Falcon’s B.C. United will be all but wiped out, although some polls have B.C. United winning as many as six seats.
As for the Green Party: leader Sonia Furstenau is running in the riding of Victoria Beacon Hill, currently held by Grace Lore, Minister of Children and Family Development, the riding held by former BC NDP leader Carole James from 2005 through 2021, when Ms. James resigned from government for health reasons.
We predict Sonia Furstenau will lose in Victoria Beacon Hill. Well-respected B.C. Green Partyincumbent Adam Olsen has indicated he will not run for re-election.
The B.C. Green Party post October 19th could be no more. Sad. But there it is.
Over the course of the next month, we’ll cover the coming B.C. election’s pre-Writ period — for instance, we intend to write about the closely fought races that will occur in the new provincial ridings of Vancouver-Yaletown, and Vancouver-Little Mountain — while delving into Vancouver municipal politics and the sorry state of Ken Sim’s ABC Vancouver civic party, what’s going on federally with Justin Trudeau’s beleaguered federal Liberal Party, and Pierre Poilievre’s ‘certain to form government’ post the 2025 federal election Conservative Party (we’re not a big fan), while addressing any number of other topics which catch our fancy.
Want to know what’s going on in federal politics? You’ll want to watch …
See you here tomorrow, and often we hope after that, and for the next 67+ days …
On Saturday, October 17, 2009, Danielle Smith was elected leader of the fledgling, right-of-centre Wildrose Alberta political party. At the time, Ms. Smith was one of four elected WildroseMLAs to sit as a Wildrose member in the Alberta Legislature.
Three years later, when the Writ was dropped on Sunday, March 26th, 2012, the 2012 election date was set for twenty-eight days later, on Monday, April 23rd.
With a tired and increasingly unpopular Alberta Progressive Conservative Party in power for 41 consecutive years, and an ascendant Wildrose Party set to form government — if the polls were to be believed — a decidedly far-right-of-centre 41-year-young Danielle Smith looked forward to becoming Alberta’s 14th Premier.
Alas, that was not to be.
Although the 2012 campaign Danielle Smith and her Wildrose Party had run managed to increase their seat count from 4 to 17 seats, garnering 34.28% of the vote, it was Alison Redford — who succeeded Ed Stelmach as Alberta Progressive Conservative Party leader on Sunday, October 2nd, 2011 — who would be elected Premier, securing 43.97% of the vote, winning 61 seats in the Alberta Legislature.
Liberal leader Raj Sherman (9.89% of the vote, and 5 seats), and Brian Mason’s Alberta NDP (8.5%, and 4 seats) were little more than electoral afterthoughts.
Entering the 2012 Alberta electoral campaign, Danielle Smith was riding high in the polls, registering in the mid-50s, while Alison Redford was polling at around 34%. Again, the Alberta Liberals, NDP, and Alberta Party were electoral afterthoughts.
So, what happened to the 2012 “winning” Wildrose Party campaign?
It is a surefire rule of politics that at any given moment, somewhere in Canada a bozo is about to erupt.
Just as a political campaign is looking to flip the script, or turn the corner, or recapture the narrative, some bozo will ruin it for them, prompting damage control, tearful apologies, or, in the most severe cases, a resignation.
The bozos simply can’t stop themselves from erupting.
Conservative strategist Tom Flanagan, who ran Smith’s 2012 campaign, oversaw one of the most memorable stretches of bozo eruptions in Canadian political history: Smith wanted a big tent party, and open and unvetted candidate nominations.
Two days after the 2012 election was called, a Wildrose candidate’s year-old blog post was unearthed declaring that all gays were destined for a “lake of fire”. Smith refused to rebuke her candidate, saying the party “accepts a wide range of views.” And the hits just kept on comin’ for the Wildrose campaign, as day after day after day, a new candidate bozo eruption garnered front page coverage, and the lead story status on the evening news.
Danielle Smith’s dreams of becoming the Wildrose Premier were dashed, the party 20 points behind their polling on Election Day.
What does the above have to do with British Columbia’s upcoming Saturday, October 19th provincial election, and the outcome of the election?
Kevin Falcon’s B.C. United Party has gathered disturbing information on several of the B.C. Conservative Party candidates running for office, including …
4/ Courtenay-Comox candidate Damon Scrase compared child vaccinations to Mayan sacrifices as recently as 2021. Does John Rustad also believe that? pic.twitter.com/ZsKI6lLVe9
5/ Surrey-Cloverdale candidate Jody Toor calls herself a doctor but holds a degree from a pseudo-science degree mill university in Hawaii called “Quantum University”, linked to a US federal fugitive. https://t.co/SGH5cUHLGC.
Need we say that the 38th British Columbia provincial election hasn’t even begun, and already John Rustad’s B.C. Conservative Party is experiencing unfortunate and devastating candidate destroying “information” aka “bozo eruptions”.
Now, this is not VanRamblings’ first rodeo.
We’ve worked on and written about municipal, provincial and federal campaigns for office for the past 61 years, and we’re here to tell you that the unvetted, looney tunes grab bag of B.C. Conservative Party candidates for office will from the day the Writ of Elections is dropped on Saturday, September 14th, through until Election Day on Saturday, October 19th, be subject to one B.C. Conservative Party-destroying bozo eruption after another.
Doesn’t mean to say that the B.C. Conservatives won’t win a handful of seats, mostly up north, or if British Columbians continue to dislike the cut of B.C. United Party leader Kevin Falcon’s jib, that the B.C. Conservatives could form the official opposition. But form government post October 19th?
Never. Not in a million Sundays.
The final projected popular vote count heading into 2013’s British Columbia election, giving Adrian Dix’s BC NDP a comfortable majority government couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead the final seat count on Election Night looked like this …
So, what happened that changed Adrian Dix’s political fortunes from projected Premier to also run status, and Opposition party leader?
Three things …
Maple Leaf Strategies pollster Dimitri Pantazopoulos. The longtime Stephen Harper pollster sent his team out to British Columbia six months in advance of the 2013 election. Here’s what Mr. Pantazopoulos advised Premier Christy Clark, and her campaign manager, Mike McDonald … “Focus on the 50 winnable seats. Ignore the 35 ridings where BC Liberals will neverwin a seat. Run a riding-by-riding campaign in each of those 50 ridings, where we’ll do intensive polling each evening, such that at the outset of each day, the candidate in the riding can speak to the issue of the day, the one that will get her or him elected to Victoria on voting day. Pour all of the party’s resources into those 50 ridings, and come Election Day, the BC Liberal Party will form government for the fourth consecutive time.” When Mr. Pantazopoulos made the suggestion, with some reluctance — given that the party was mired at 26% in the polls, a full 21 points behind the BC NDP — Ms. Clark and Mr. McDonald adopted Mr. Pantazopoulos campaign strategy;
On Earth Day, April 22nd, 2013 while on the campaign trail in Kamloops, BC NDP leader Adrian Dix arbitrarily and unilaterally announced a new environmental platform, reversing a decade of BC NDP environmental policy, stating “Under my leadership, the BC NDP reaffirms our party’s opposition to the Northern Gateway Pipeline and offshore oil exploration.” The announcement made environmentalists in the party ecstatic, but disappointed and angered BC NDP shadow environment critic John Horgan, not to mention whole swaths of the party’s union supporters. The BC Liberal Party used this reversal of BC NDP environmental policy by running a series of hundreds of weathervane ads that devastated the BC NDP campaign;
Although in 2013 BC NDP leader Adrian Dix campaigned with vigour, Mr. Dix performed poorly on both the province-wide televised debate, and the subsequent Leaders’ Debate on CKNW, appearing confused and unprepared, his style halting and uncertain, in contrast to a vibrant and schooled Christy Clark. So, yes, campaigns count, and can impact on an election outcome. As can an effective campaign strategy, and a well-experienced campaign team. And money, of course, for those saturation radio and TV ads, particularly in the latter two weeks of the campaign.
In some ways, the coming provincial election is a crapshoot. Anything could happen. Who knows what will transpire during the 35-day election campaign?
The above said, the campaign strategy, experienced campaign team, the well-vetted candidates for office running in the 93 ridings across the province who won’t be given to bozo eruptions that will devastate their campaign for office, and the flush with money ads to saturate the airwaves throughout the campaign that the BC Conservative Party simply does not, and will not, have … well …
A lack of resources hardly makes for a winning BC Conservative election campaign, whatever the outcome of the election on October 19th.
