B.C. Liberal leader quitting
PARTY’S ELECTION LOSSES GAVE NDP A MAJORITY GOVERNMENT
British Columbia Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson is quitting the party’s top job, saying he’ll step down as soon as a replacement is selected. Wilkinson says the party is beginning the challenging and exciting process of rebuilding.
The Liberals lost about a dozen seats in Saturday’s election, although there are still 525,000 mail-in ballots yet to be counted.
The Liberal party’s losses gave John Horgan’s New Democrats a majority government.
Wilkinson took on the job as Liberal leader in 2018, replacing Christy Clark, who stepped down when the Liberals lost power after the 2017 election.
Wilkinson, who is 63, served in several cabinet positions when in government, including justice and advanced education.
Horgan says his majority New Democrat government is open to exploring new ideas that can help shape British Columbia regardless of their political or geographic origins.B.C. followed New Brunswick on Saturday, becoming the second province to hold an election during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Voters in Saskatchewan went to the polls on Monday.
The NDP’s election win in B.C. will see a government guided by strong ideas, not politics, Horgan said.
“I’ll be influenced by good ideas wherever they come from,” said Horgan at his first news conference following the election result. “I don’t care where an idea comes from, if it makes sense we’re going to implement it. That’s how I will approach working with all members of the legislature.”
More than 500,000 mail-in ballots and 75,000 absentee ballots must still be counted. But the results on election night gave the NDP 53 seats, the B.C. Liberals 27, and the Greens three. Four ridings remain undecided.
Voter turnout in the election dropped to just 52.4 per cent, the lowest participation rate in more than 90 years.
Statistics from Elections BC going back to 1928 show the second lowest voter turnout was 55.14 per cent during the 2009 election.
The elections agency says in a statement the calculation this year includes ballots cast in advanced polls and on election day, as well as estimates of the numbers of absentee and mail-in ballots returned.
It says fewer people voted on election day that those who voted in advanced polls.
While there were more than 700,000 requests for vote-by-mail packages, about 525,000 people returned those ballots in time to be counted.
Elections BC won't be counting the mail-in ballots for several weeks, although the outcome of Saturday's election that delivered the NDP a majority government is not expected to change.
On Sunday, Wilkinson sent out a statement on Twitter saying he had spoken to Horgan on the telephone and “congratulated him on his win. The people of B.C. have spoken.”
The results show a geographically divided province with Liberal victories in many rural ridings and the NDP winning primarily in urban areas, a division that Horgan acknowledged.
Horgan credited the NDP win with the party’s political vision, saying that mainstream values are New Democrat values.
But political experts said Horgan’s election win was more about the government’s handling of the pandemic, which largely involved leaving critical health decisions to provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.
“I’m not surprised that they got the incumbent COVID-19 bump,” said Prof. Kim Speers, a Canadian politics expert at the University of Victoria.
“People are tending to vote for the incumbent government if they have done well handling the pandemic.”
She said the election result appears to forecast brighter days ahead for the Green party despite winning just three seats, but a period of turmoil and introspection for the Liberals.