B.C. RESULTS WILL BE KEY

There’s no getting around the fact that 2015’s key electoral battleground is Ontario, but B.C. is also a critical catch for any party seeking to form a government. With the number of B.C. seats increasing to 42 from 36 in 2011, Tory leader Stephen Harper

1. Burnaby North-Seymour: While 44 per cent of people in the areas covered by this new riding voted Conservative in 2011, compared to 35 per cent NDP, both threehundredeight.com — which makes projections based on recent polling — and a separate Vancouver Sun analysis of current poll numbers suggest the New Democrats stand a good chance of winning in this classic bellwether riding.

Residents are close to ground zero in the debate over whether to dramatically boost oil tanker traffic as a result of the proposed $5.4-billion Kinder Morgan expansion. 2. West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country: West Van, like its neighbour North Vancouver, is a high-income riding that tends to vote Conservative.

If Trudeau’s bid to revive his party in B.C. is to have any hope of success, these are the kind of seats his party must take.

Trudeau can also claim legitimate roots in West Vancouver as a member of the Sinclair family. But Tory incumbent John Weston took the riding by 22 points in 2011. 3. Fleetwood-Port Kells: Surrey is sure to be a national media magnet given the large number of ridings in and around the city.

While the NDP shouldn’t have trouble hanging on to Jasbir Sandhu’s Surrey Centre riding, and Jinny Sims stands a solid chance of holding off a serious challenger in former Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal in Surrey-Newton, the real battle could be in Fleetwood-Port Kells.

Nina Grewal is the Tory incumbent defending a riding that voted by a 15-point margin in favour of the Conservatives against the second-place NDP in the last vote.

But Grewal is weighed down by the family name. Her husband, ex-MP Gurmant Grewal, was told by the party he couldn’t make a bid to return to Parliament this year. Son Liv recently had a nomination vetoed due to alleged irregularities in his sign-up of voting members.

And Grewal is facing a strong NDP challenger in Garry Begg, a former RCMP inspector. Gang crime is a huge issue in Surrey, and Begg’s presence will make it difficult for the Tories to portray New Democrats as soft on crime. 4. Courtenay-Alberni: Tory cabinet minister John Duncan is running in a riding that voted Tory by just a 4.2 percentage point margin over the NDP in 2011. Unless polls change, Duncan is doomed and the NDP is headed for a near-sweep of Vancouver Island, with only Green leader Elizabeth May’s Saanich-Gulf Islands expected to survive an Orange Tsunami. 5. Victoria: NDP incumbent Murray Rankin, a bilingual lawyer and environmentalist, is facing a serious challenger in Green candidate Jo-Ann Roberts, a former CBC host. The NDP breezed to victory here in 2011, but the Greens almost beat Rankin in a 2012 byelection. 6. Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo: With a few exceptions the B.C. Interior has been a wasteland for the NDP since 1993, when the party lost its role to Reform as the populist vehicle for ordinary British Columbians angry with Ottawa.

Polls suggest a number of ridings in the Interior could return to the NDP. The obvious breakthrough is Kamloops, a traditional bellwether, along with Kootenay-Columbia, Skeena-Bulkley Valley and South Okanagan-West Kootenay. 7. Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge: Current polls suggest NDP candidate Bob D’Eith could take this riding now that area incumbent Randy Kamp is retiring. But the Conservatives had a 20-point advantage here in 2011, so this is another measuring stick riding to determine if the apparent NDP popularity is genuine. 8. Vancouver South: The Tories took this seat from Ujjal Dosanjh and the Liberals in 2011, but polls suggest Tory incumbent Wai Young could be vulnerable. The Tory margin here in 2011 was less than nine percentage points, making it a natural seat for Trudeau to win.

But that might not be so easy despite Young ’s brushes with controversy, including her June speech in which she compared the Conservative anti-terror legislation to the work of Jesus Christ, and gave an inaccurate portrayal of events leading up to the 1985 Air India terrorist bombing.

While the Liberals have a supposed star candidate in decorated Afghanistan veteran Harjit Sajjan, his messy nomination drove some into Young’s camp. 9. Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam: Harper’s B.C. lieutenant, James Moore, stunned the political world with his recent announcement that he wouldn’t seek re-election

Provincial Liberal MLA Doug Horne, who is seeking the nomination, might not have Moore’s profile. But he and the national campaign would have to perform poorly to lose this seat. 10. South Surrey-White Rock: The Vancouver Sun’s model has this seat remaining very comfortably in the Tory camp. The Conservatives won here by a massive 34-point margin in 2011, and that was with a relatively weak candidate named Russ Hiebert, who is retiring. Now they have a genuine star candidate in former Surrey mayor Dianne Watts.