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British Columbia is now headed towards an unnecessary election. The current NDP government has a majority and would have been stable for another two years, when an election would normally take place under BC’s fixed election law.
This will now be BC’s fourth election in a decade: the razor-edge 2017 election that brought the NDP to power under a power-sharing agreement with the Green Party; a 2020 COVID election that allowed Premier John Horgan to snatch a majority government; and another close election in 2024 with David Eby as Premier.
The timing of the 2026 BC election is good only for an NDP government taking advantage of an opposition in disarray. A premier who was ranked with Doug Ford for unpopularity in the polls just a few months ago has had a surge of support as the opposition Conservative party tears itself to pieces from within. Voters may be angered at the opportunism at play in the election call, but probably not likely to roll the dice on whatever is offered up by the political right.
In its will to power, the BC election also steps on the toes of local governments. The BC election will land exactly one week after municipal elections and will distract voters from decisions they need to make on their local mayors and city councils. New public dollars will be spent holding this unnecessary election.
Perhaps the timing so close to the last election will help smudge the lack of progress made on the government’s own platform. Many of the big promises made by the NDP in 2024 have barely made it off the page. Meanwhile, the government appears rudderless, unable to articulate a clear vision for the province apart from ever more mining and fossil fuel development.
If Premier Eby was to lose this election, what would voters remember as his legacy? I can’t think of anything, either. Unfortunately, David Eby is no longer the lawyer who fought for the rights of the homeless in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, nor the politician who had concerns about climate change and fossil fuel development.
In effect, the NDP has ceded these core social and environmental justice issues to the Green Party. It will be an interesting storyline to see if the Greens, facing the electorate for the first time under leader Emily Lowen, can capitalize in these areas.
The other story line will be whether there is enough time for a unite-the-right campaign that could challenge the NDP, under the Conservative banner or Centre BC or whatever. With such a short writ period it seems unlikely that a coherent right wing opposition would come together. Notwithstanding the logistics and in-fighting, the Conservatives have been plagued by its anti-Indigenous sentiments and other far-right elements.
For his part, the premier is rolling back commitments made earlier this year to bring in an expanding base for the Provincial Sales Tax and rescinding cuts to capital spending announced in February’s budget. This has echoes of the 2024 election when Eby announced the repeal of the consumer carbon tax (leaving a big hole in the budget) and rollback of drug policy measures.
Besides the Conservatives, the NDP‘s best ally has been Donald Trump. Like Prime Minister Carney and other premiers, David Eby has benefitted politically from Trump‘s belligerent war on Canadian trade. Eby took American booze off the shelves but has stopped short of earlier threats to ban trucks heading to Alaska from going through BC.
In David Eby’s speech launching the election, he used the metaphor of a “fire break” that his government would provide to insulate the province from Trump’s trade antics. Ironically, some 100 actual fires are still burning in BC after a terrible wildfire season.
Meanwhile fiscal hawks have been screaming fire about BC’s growing debt and budget deficits. But it’s those deficits and capital spending that have been important in shoring up the BC economy during the trade war. As a result, BC has held up reasonably well over the first year and a half of the trade war.
The economy is also facing major headwinds due to the ongoing crash in housing. The downturn is starting to hit in terms of new construction, and the trend is likely to be negative for construction-related work in the next couple years. This is a big factor related to the widely-panned BC condo bailout announced in June, and for which a rent-to-own program was in the works.
All are reasons to call the election now because things can always get worse.
Despite the democratic deficit in this unexpected election, there are a number of big issues facing the province: affordable housing; AI data centres; LNG and energy sector development; health care; education; and the polycrisis of homelessness, mental health, and addictions on the streets of BC cities.
Elections are a time when public policy comes to the fore and citizens need to make decisions about which party best represents their interests. It’s not a lot of democracy, but it’s all that we have.
About the author
Marc Lee
Marc Lee is a Senior Economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Marc joined the CCPA’s British Columbia office in 1998, and is one of Canada’s leading progressive commentators on economic and environmental policy issues. From 2009 to 2015, Marc led the CCPA’s Climate Justice Project (CJP), which published a wide range of research on fair and effective approaches to climate action through integrating principles of social justice. Marc continues to write about climate and energy policy, strategies for affordable housing, federal and provincial budgets and macroeconomics. Marc has an MA in Economics from Simon Fraser University and a BA in Economics from the University of Western Ontario. Marc is a past chair of the Progressive Economics Forum, a national network of heterodox economists. He also served as a Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy in 2024 to 2025.
