The erasure of the BC NDP in much of the north and interior, as well as the breach of their Vancouver Island fortress, reveals a growing frustration – if not alienation – with the rapidly urbanizing NDP
Small town and rural B.C. sent a stark message to Victoria with last month’s election and many suburbs joined in – the rural-urban divide has cemented itself in B.C.
Right-of-centre parties have traditionally performed better in rural ridings, but under former premier John Horgan’s government, the BC NDP maintained substantial blue-collar support in rural BC, making it unique among counterparts elsewhere in Canada.
No longer. Or perhaps, not for the foreseeable future.
Regions that depend on resources for their lifestyle and livelihoods – such as forestry towns on Vancouver Island, or northern and interior communities that embrace oil and gas – turned sharply away from the NDP. Many incumbents, including cabinet ministers such as Nathan Cullen, were turfed out of office.
The Oct. 19 election didn’t just confirm the rural-urban divide in B.C. politics, it expanded it.
The NDP’s rural caucus shrank to its smallest in a generation. While the BC Conservatives skyrocketed from zero MLAs elected under the party banner in 2020, to 44 ridings won last month. The Conservatives succeeded in capturing, and capitalizing on, the frustrations of voters who rely on resource industries to feed their families, pay their mortgages, and send their children to university.
Within rural towns and cities, resource projects in forestry, mining, or fossil fuel extraction promise not just jobs but the communities’ economic survival. In the suburbs surrounding Vancouver, voters were understandably swayed by the price of gas when they fill up their cars, among other cost-of-living considerations.
The BC Conservatives campaigned hard on removing the carbon tax and doubling down on fossil fuel infrastructure. Finally completed in May, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX) has helped reduce gas prices by freeing up capacity and increasing the supply of energy. Savings at the pump directly reduces household expenditures, easing the onerous cost of living.
In areas surrounding Vancouver, such as Langley, home to thousands of work commuters, projects like TMX can truly make a difference. In the Lower Mainland, the price of gas dropped from $2.30 per litre to $1.54, before and after the pipeline was completed, which some attribute in large part to the TMX expansion.
Resource development runs counter to BC NDP policies
Maximizing development of the natural resource industry runs counter to BC NDP government’s environmental policies, particularly those related to ecological protections and reducing carbon emissions, with the carbon tax and emission caps among the most notable.
In resource-dependent regions, the carbon tax has a direct impact, as automobiles – often larger and more fuel-intensive than those found in the cities – are far more prevalent.
The BC Conservative endorsement of more resource projects and the promise to remove the carbon tax did not hurt them in the rural ridings they won, often by surprisingly large margins.
The most significant of these was Bulkley Valley-Stikine in northern B.C., which, until October, was held by Nathan Cullen, who was most recently minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. Cullen comfortably won the riding by more than 25 points in 2020, only to lose it by about 14 points last month.
Although northern B.C. has been the site of numerous resource projects, it has also become a hotbed of anti-resource activism that occasionally turned violent.
In 2022, workers on the Coastal GasLink pipeline were attacked during the night by masked assailants, causing millions of dollars in damage. Eight months later, four police vehicles were deliberately torched following a call-out to anarchists to obstruct construction of the pipeline.
Under the NDP government, no prosecutions or other punitive actions have taken place following the attacks. The Conservatives meanwhile promised to change course and protect workers on resource projects, ultimately sweeping all but two seats in the province’s north.
Forestry turmoil fuels support for Conservatives
Other industries, especially forestry, have faced turmoil during the past eight years, serving to weaken NDP support in regions that rely heavily on logging and timber manufacturing. Old issues, such as the softwood lumber dispute with the US and the NDP’s regulations on old-growth logging, have contributed to mill closures and job losses in “Stump Belt” regions.
In the Vancouver Island ridings of North Island and Courtenay-Comox, where forested patches are visible on the slopes of nearby mountains, the BC Conservatives broke through the NDP’s Vancouver Island stronghold, home to some of the party’s most reliable ridings.
While the NDP pledged to support the transition from mass timber to a value-added forestry sector, these initiatives have not lived up to their promise. Further attempts to enforce even stricter environmental regulations have only deepened rank-and-file resentment.
While past BC Liberal governments always strove for moderation when it came to the resource economy, the BC Conservatives made their support for these sectors nearly unconditional.
It resonated.
Whether it be terminating the carbon tax, throwing full support behind resource projects, or slashing regulations, rural B.C. decided the upstart, renewed Conservative party offered a better option than status quo.
Conservatives, party of rural and suburban discontent
The erasure of the NDP in much of the north and interior, as well as the breach of their Vancouver Island fortress, revealed the growing frustration—if not alienation—of the rapidly urbanizing NDP, who swept all but one of the ridings in the City of Vancouver.
David Eby barely pulled off a majority in this election, and his path back to a more secure government runs through either the suburban – and now mostly Conservative – ridings south of the Fraser River in the Lower Mainland, or through rural B.C. Both are heavily depend on the resource sector, either for their paycheques or for fuel to power their vehicles on the daily commute.
For now, the freshly sworn-in BC Conservative caucus is the party of rural and suburban discontent.
Whether the NDP can bridge that divide will determine if they can extend their already historic run in government.