“What if creating maximum confusion during both provincial and local elections is the game plan?”
There was a moment last week when David Eby’s failure as a leader crystalized, revealing with clarity a party that puts its own survival as government ahead of the public interest.
Eby was on stage in Vancouver, having just delivered the keynote closer of the Union of BC Municipalities annual convention.
Outgoing president Cori Ramsay was leading a Q and A session on behalf of the roomful of mayors and councillors from across the province. Ramsay referenced the highly unusual emergency resolution these elected leaders had passed the day before, imploring the premier not to call an election in the middle of their race.
Would Eby hold off on a provincial election for 30 days until the local government campaigns were complete? Ramsay asked.
“The issues faced by local governments are crucial for the future of the province. It’s important that they have the attention that they need, and I understand why local leaders would be concerned about overlapping elections,” Eby said, his voice and facial expression sympathetic.
“We’ll certainly consider the resolution and the advice. Just like we consider all resolutions that come forward from local governments.”
[A splatter of polite applause. Some people boo-ed.]
Because this wasn’t some humdrum motion. It was a once-in-a-generation emergency resolution passed by 95 per cent of representatives present, who immediately galvanized against the intrusion a provincial election would have on the democratic process of local government.
Ramsay tried again.
“Can you please explain to us how calling an election prior to the local general election on October 17th, just four weeks from now, will make a measurable difference in trade with the United States?”
And then came the moment.
“So we haven’t made any decisions yet, Cori,” Eby answered.
[First untruth]
“We’ll take the resolution under advisement,” he added.
[Second]
“But I can say that there is no question that we are in an existential moment for our province and for our country.”
[Number three]
Eby’s answer was at once empathetic, uninformative, vaguely promising, dismissive and, as it turns out, completely disingenuous.
Because four days later, he did exactly what Ramsay and the elected reps at UBCM had entreated him not to do—he called a snap election smack-dab in the middle of local government campaigns.
Stop, drop and roll comms strategy
In one interaction, Eby revealed the recurring crisis management strategy that has become a hallmark of his administration.
When confronted on a tricky issue, the first line of defence is to pretend the decision hasn’t been made. If pressed, the next stage is to make vague statements that could be taken for promises (that will never be kept), while simultaneously dismissing conflicting concerns as less important, ill-informed or untrue. Last stage, bulldoze ahead on government’s agenda in secret.
It is a well-used smoke and mirrors series of manoeuvres utilized by the BC NDP government across multiple controversies since Eby was acclaimed premier in November 2022.
The strategy goes like this: deny, deflect, dismiss, then do it anyway.
Long before he deployed contrived wildfire narratives and belaboured firebreak analogies to justify an unwarranted election as a guard against the NDP’s favourite fall guy, U.S. President Donald Trump, Eby and his team were sharpening their obfuscation skills on everything from decriminalization and safe supply diversion, to prolific offenders and rampant downtown crime, to deteriorating provincial finances and spiralling debt, and more.
Perhaps nowhere have British Columbians seen this strategy play out more audaciously than on the reconciliation file. The list is too extensive to cite, but includes the Haida agreement and covert court declaration, secret Tahltan negotiations, the obstensibly reworked but covertly unchanged Heritage Conservation Act amendments, and the de facto veto enabled by government’s wildly permissive implementation of DRIPA that is paralyzing industries, municipalities and entire sectors, to name but a few. There are many contenders for the most egregious application of Eby’s deny, deflect, dismiss, do-it-anyway strategy but the proposed Land Act amendments deserve special mention.
In early 2024, word leaked to the press the B.C. government was working on amendments that would give Indigenous groups joint or sole decision-making (effectively, a veto) over Crown land. Officials initially denied and downplayed the changes. But the opposition pushed back hard, the public was incensed, and officials soon shelved the changes.
Or so it seemed.
Eight months later, when asked about the Land Act changes during a live televised election debate, Eby said government needed “the confidence of British Columbians,” implying his government would not proceed without it. Except when he uttered those words, he knew his government had secretly signed an agreement two months earlier that conferred exactly those decision-making powers to the Shíshálh Nation. Then the premier waited a further three months after the election before his government told the public.
Municipal democracy is at risk
Even without a provincial government imposing its own election on top municipal campaigns, local democratic processes are vulnerable.
Municipal elections have the lowest voter turnout with the biggest slate of candidates (Richmond has seven mayoral contenders and 55 candidates vying for eight councillor spots). Layer on regional district and school board contests, and the field and ballots are over-flowing, never mind the streets are a jammed-packed jumble of campaign signs.
Municipal candidates also tend to be the least known and their issues tangled up or buried under the higher-level concerns of senior governments. Holding a concurrent provincial campaign could confuse voters to the point of interrupting the municipal democratic process. It will undoubtedly change some of the outcomes as local candidates are mixed up with provincial and must try to compete for citizens’ bandwidth and media airtime.
Hundreds of local elected officials warned, clearly and publicly, that overlapping provincial and municipal elections would create real operational and democratic problems. They asked for a delay. David Eby refused.
That refusal makes little sense on the calendar alone. The government is already calling an election two years short of its four-year mandate. One extra month would have meant almost nothing administratively to the province, but it would have given local governments breathing room to run their own contests unfettered by competing provincial campaigns.
Haste and chaos bring a partisan advantage
The one benefit of haste is obvious. It allows the Eby government to avoid a return to the legislature and what would surely be daily pounding by the opposition.
Fractured though the Conservative ranks might be, they had become quite effective forcing attention on issues Eby and his team would prefer to duck. Namely, on the topic of the abandoned DRIPA amendments he’d previously promised to deliver to protect against the “significant legal lilabilities” bearing down on the province. He dumped those in April in the face of Indigenous threats of collective action. Instead, he conjured up a new promise: his team would negotiate with First Nations leadership elites over the summer, and he would present a resolution to the legislature in the fall.
No mention of that in his snap election campaign kick-off notes.
Another obvious reason to forge ahead with a concurrent election is partisan advantage. Every day of delay diminishes the surprise, giving the BC Conservatives another 24 hours to recruit candidates, raise money, and get their act together as a fighting force. Even a snap election takes weeks or months to prepare, and the whole point is to catch the opposition on its back foot. The Eby government would hardly be alone in seizing this opportunity.
But it is a thin reason to ignore a unified request from the heads of almost all local governments within its jurisdiction. It follows that dismissing such a forceful plea must be a purposeful, calculated choice. Logic dictates the NDP expect to gain benefit from the confusion of two elections running at once.
It’s cynical and self-serving enough to call an election two days after the leader of the Official Opposition resigned, on the improbable pretext of a Trumped-up “existential moment,” when the government already enjoys a reasonably safe majority, but what if it’s more ruthless than that?
What if creating maximum confusion during both provincial and local elections is the game plan?
Or worse yet—a deliberate tactic to confuse voters to manipulate voting patterns to favour the NDP.
Not to be alarmist, but that sounds dangerously like subverting the democratic process, also known as, election interference.
The government of Canada webpage focusses on foreign interference, when other countries are doing the interrupting, and doesn’t even run domestic scenarios. But it describes “interference activities,” in part, as “interfering in Canada’s democratic institutions and processes, such as elections, to advance their interests” and “manipulating the information environment.”
What if a party deliberately interferes with a democratic process expressly to confuse British Columbians into voting (or not) the way the government wants?
At what point does a cunning campaign strategy devolve into pre-meditated, unlawful election interference?
Chaos and snap elections favour incumbents
Past experience and research shows snap elections and chaos privilege the governing party.
Quick elections allow the opposition less time to recruit candidates and volunteers, raise money and coordinate campaign messaging. Municipal incumbents have an even greater advantage over new candidates than their provincial or federal counterparts. Fewer citizens make it to the ballot box for local elections and those that do tend to rely more on name recognition. Increasingly, municipal candidates run as partisan teams, and party supporters are coached to vote for the block. In a chaotic voting environment, this would again favour the NDP, which is better organized on this front.
All of which could alter the election results. New candidates who might have been elected, aren’t. Incumbents who would’ve been tossed out, slip back in for another term. And blocks of politically aligned candidates take over municipal councils.
According to research, election chaos may have the greatest effect on a party’s ability to “get out the vote,” an aspect of the election campaign at which the NDP machine arguably does much better than the Conservatives, a party that only revived itself four years ago after decades of near-dormancy.
With two elections ongoing, the best organized party has another edge. The same volunteers tend to work elections at all levels. The deeper the volunteer pool, the better the party is at mobilizing supporters and reminding them, or even facilitating them one-by-one, to get to the voting station.
The BC NDP may have one more leg up in a chaotic situation.
Polling after the 2020 provincial election revealed the majority of NDP supporters voted for the party, whereas about 75 per cent of those who voted BC Liberal (the major right-of-centre party at the time) said they did so as a message against another party.
Voting motivation may have changed somewhat since then, but it stands to reason, there is relative consistency in that data. Which may mean, those who are casting a vote for a party will have more patience, tenacity and institutional support to cut through the noise of a chaotic environment and get themselves to the ballot box, versus people motivated to vote against the ruling party.
That being said…
Snap elections in chaotic situations have been known to backfire on governments when voters view them as illegitimate, unnecessary or self-interested. If elections are perceived as opportunistic—and this B.C. election certainly is—the governing party will take a hit.
An academic review of the federal 2021 snap election called by Justin Trudeau’s government less than halfway into its mandate, found the timing likely cost him his majority position.
Because no one likes to feel duped.
In a month, we may find out that British Columbians like election interference even less.