THE SHIFTING SANDS OF B.C. POLITICS
The NDP victory may signal a new era in provincial politics, writes Philip Resnick.
For many decades, a simple rule seemed to explain the dynamics of B.C. politics.
With the NDP and its CCF predecessor representing a leftof-centre challenge to the status quo, the forces of the centreright would coalesce to block the left from coming to power.
Between 1941 and ’52, this led to a formal coalition between the Liberals and Conservatives, which finally broke up over conflicting policy priorities. In 1952 the province saw an experiment with a new electoral system — the single transferable vote — but the surprise winner under this short-lived arrangement was a newcomer to the political arena, Social Credit.
Under the leadership of W.A.C. Bennett, it became the flagship party for the anti-left forces in the province, dominating the political scene for the next 20 years. When Social Credit was ultimately defeated in 1972 by the NDP, it was in good part because of a split in the ranks of the centre-right, with the Liberals and Conservatives draining votes from a premier and a party which had become long in the tooth.
The NDP government under Dave Barrett only lasted one term and was defeated in 1975 by a revitalized Social Credit Party under Bill Bennett, which had won over key Liberals and Conservatives. Through successive elections between 1975 and 1991, Social Credit was a de facto coalition of the centre-right, and was able to defeat the NDP time and time again. Then came 1991.
Bill Vander Zalm had proven a polarizing figure in the Social Credit, leading to the emergence of the B.C. Liberals as a serious contender for office. In a threeway split, the NDP, led by Mike Harcourt, won its way back to power, with the Liberals as their main opposition. The year 1996 might have seen an NDP defeat — the Liberals won a plurality of the popular vote — save for the short-lived appearance of the B.C. Reform Party, which siphoned off enough of the vote in northern and Interior ridings to enable the NDP to win a slim legislative majority.
By 2001, the B.C. Liberals under Gordon Campbell had clearly established itself as the coalition party of the centreright, winning an overwhelming majority. They were re-elected with little difficulty in 2005 and 2009.
The backlash over the introduction of the harmonized sales tax led to the first citizen-initiated referendum in the province and Campbell’s resignation. This led many observers to assume that the NDP would have an easy time of it in defeating the Liberals in 2013. But, through astute political campaigning, Christy Clark was able to keep the centre-right coalition intact and retain power.
So what happened in May, 2017? Complacency had set in among the Liberals. Party financing by rich donors was one source of public concern. Others included cost overruns on the Site C dam, pipeline expansion, transportation bottlenecks, and the spiralling cost of housing in the Lower Mainland. The centreright coalition which had kept the B.C. Liberals in power for 16 years began to fray, but not quite in the same way as in 1991, 1972, or 1952.
This time, the third party on the scene was the B.C. Greens. While not a party of the left like the NDP, they were also not a party of the right. Their strong environmental stance made them just as critical of an unregulated market economy as the NDP. This, more than anything else, opened the door to an alliance of the centre-left. To that extent, the traditional mould of B.C. politics, based on a coalition of the centre-right, may have been broken and a new era in provincial politics may have begun.