Weekly Writ 5/7: How the BC Conservative leadership could play out — and why it matters
Now leading in fundraising, a new poll puts the B.C. Conservatives ahead of David Eby's NDP.
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By the end of the month, the B.C. Conservative Party will have a new leader and the province, just maybe, will have a new premier-in-waiting.
While it’s clear that the Conservatives appear to have some momentum against David Eby’s B.C. NDP government, figuring out who will actually win the leadership race isn’t very straightforward.
Let’s start with the slate of candidates. The list was as long as 11 at one point in this race to replace John Rustad, who led the party to 44 seats and official opposition in the 2024 provincial election. It has since been whittled down to five candidates: Iain Black, Caroline Elliott, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Yuri Fulmer and Peter Milobar.
Milobar is the only sitting MLA among the field, Black is a former B.C. Liberal MLA and Findlay is a former Conservative MP. Fulmer ran for the party (unsuccessfully) in 2024 and Elliott was involved with B.C. United before it collapsed ahead of the election. To simplistically profile these candidates, Milobar and Black are more typical centre-right politicians, Findlay and Fulmer are running to the right of the field (Fulmer boasts an electoral pact with the very right-wing OneBC party), and Elliott is somewhere between them. One of the major themes of the contest has been fighting over who is the “real” Conservative — which is an awkward debate to be having, considering that most of the party’s voter base used to vote for the B.C. Liberals.
For the time being, it does seem that this contest has largely been an internal fight with a greater focus on what the Conservative membership prioritizes vs. what the broader electoral cares about. That’s not unusual for a leadership race, but the heavy weight given to arguments over issues like DEI and Indigenous reconciliation do not seem well-attuned to the pocketbook issues that top polls in British Columbia.
That it’s an inward-looking race is also reflected in the polls. British Columbians simply don’t have strong views about these five contestants.
A recent poll by Research Co. suggested that most voters in the province either were unsure of their opinions of or did not recognize the candidates. The most recognized were Elliott and Milobar, but even for those two 64% of respondents drew a blank. There was also no big difference among British Columbians when it came to their views of the candidates — Elliott had the best net score at +2 (19% favourable to 17% unfavourable) while Black had the worst net score at -4 (14% to 18%). This does not suggest that any of these candidates have broken through.
This extends to the B.C. Conservative voter base. Among people who voted for the party in the last election, no candidates registered more than 45% recognition. Elliott had the highest favourable ratings among past B.C. Conservative voters at 27%, but there were only a few points separating her from the other four. No candidate is all that divisive, either, with Milobar have the highest unfavourables at 20%.
Polling of the general population can give us some signals in a leadership contest, but normally only when there is a clear frontrunner. When a candidate has mass appeal, that appeal often extends to the membership or, at the very least, gives that membership a very clear indication of who is the most electable candidate. Party members rarely ignore those signals entirely.
But polling of the general population gives us no such clues in this case. The candidates are still largely unknown and none is way ahead of the others. Research Co. tested voting intentions with each of the candidates and found no significant difference. Elliott gave the Conservatives a two-point lead. Findlay and Fulmer put the party behind by two points. It’s all marginal stuff.
More useful are polls of those party members. Polling for Elliott’s campaign, Pallas Data conducted a survey of 1,253 members of the party, using the membership list and weighting the results by region, which replicates the B.C. Conservative leadership system that gives each riding an equal weight (as long as they have 100 members).
Of course, being a poll commissioned by a campaign raises some cautionary flags — it seems like every poll that has been published throughout this campaign has shown the commissioning candidate in the lead. But the results are nevertheless worth diving into, as this is a poll drawn from the membership list and Pallas does good work.
The poll finds that Elliott leads with 31% support, followed by Findlay at 24%, Black at 18%, Milobar at 9% and Fulmer at 7%. Another 12% were undecided.
It’s hard to know if this matches the vibes of the race, though it does seem that Elliott is considered the frontrunner. Regardless, the results suggest that there are a few paths to victory for the top three candidates.
Elliott is the second choice of enough members to help her keep growing from one ballot to the next. Her combined first and second choice support is 42%, higher than any other candidate. She does particularly well among Black and Milobar supporters, suggesting that she should get a significant boost from the elimination of these two candidates. But it could be a problem if Black is on the final ballot with her, rather than eliminated on the penultimate ballot.
Black has a lot of opportunity for growth. He ranks second to Findlay among Fulmer supporters and then gets a third of Milobar’s second choice, which could be enough to boost him beyond Findlay and put him on the final ballot with Elliott. At that point, Findlay’s second choices seem more likely to go his way than Elliott’s, which could crown him the winner.
For Findlay, she looks likely to grow from the elimination of Fulmer. But her path is tougher than that of either Elliott or Black, because Elliott and/or Black ranks ahead of her for second choice support among all the other camps.
One other factor here could be ballot exhaustion. Members aren’t required to rank any candidates second (or third). Pallas found that those who say they have no second choice comprise a significant portion of the membership, running from a low of 25% among Fulmer supporters to a high of 43% among Elliott’s. In all, 37% of members say they have no second choice. For these members, if their candidate is eliminated on one of the ballots their vote will no longer be active.
By simply lowering the denominator, ballot exhaustion always benefits the frontrunner. If Elliott is the leading candidate then she will be the beneficiary. (Here’s a simple way to explain it: imagine if Elliott has 41% of 100% of active ballots and then 20% of those active ballots disappear. Without gaining a single vote, she now has 41% of 80%, a majority, and wins.)
If this poll is an accurate reflection of the ballot, we would likely see one of the following two scenarios play out:
Elliott vs. Black
Fulmer is eliminated on the first ballot and Findlay is the biggest beneficiary, keeping her in second but not boosting her enough to surpass Elliott.
Milobar is eliminated on the second ballot and enough of his support goes to Black to boost him past Findlay. Elliott also gets a big chunk and moves closer to victory, aided along by ballot exhaustion.
Findlay is eliminated and her support goes predominantly to Black, but it might not be enough. The final ballot might be either a relatively clear Elliott win or a toss-up that could go to Black.
Elliott vs. Findlay
Fulmer is eliminated on the first ballot and Findlay is the biggest beneficiary, keeping her in second but not boosting her enough to surpass Elliott, who will continue to be the biggest beneficiary of ballot exhaustion.
Milobar is eliminated on the second ballot but it does not boost Black enough to push him past Findlay.
Black is eliminated on the third ballot and the combination of his second choices and Milobar’s third choices gives Elliott the win.
In order for Findlay to come out ahead, she would need to perform much better on the first ballot and would need Fulmer to do far better than the 7% in this poll. It’s hard to see a path for her unless her and Fulmer do far better than the combined 31% in this survey.
While the Research Co. poll suggested that none of these leaders do head-and-shoulders above the others in the match-up against the B.C. NDP, a new poll from the Angus Reid Institute suggests that the prize up for grabs is a good one — because the Conservatives have moved ahead of the New Democrats, and comfortably so.
The poll gave the Conservatives 46% support, a gain of two points from the previous ARI poll conducted in March. The NDP was down six points to 36%, putting them well back. Much of that support appears to have gone to the Greens, who were up four points to 13%. Support for other parties was down three points to 4%.
The survey showed the NDP and Conservatives effectively tied in Metro Vancouver and on Vancouver Island and along the North Coast, with the Conservatives leading in the Fraser Valley and the B.C. Interior. That would easily deliver the Conservatives a majority government.
But it seems clear that it is not necessarily the B.C. Conservative leadership race that has boosted the party — we’ve already seen that it hasn’t resonated to the broader public. Instead, it’s the performance of the NDP government that has put wind in Conservative sails.
The recent debate over DRIPA has been a flashpoint in the B.C. Conservative leadership race but it has also been clumsily handled by Premier David Eby, who had to back down on his plan to hold a vote on DRIPA in the legislature when it wasn’t clear that he get his own caucus entirely behind him. The ARI found that 55% of British Columbians feel Eby has done a bad or very bad job “balancing the land rights of Indigenous peoples with private property rights”. Only 22% think he has done a good job on this.
The premier’s approval ratings have dropped. It’s no surprise that the NDP’s support has dropped along with it. And it isn’t just the polls that have indicated softness in NDP support, as first quarter fundraising also corroborates these poll numbers to some extent. Elections BC reports that the Conservatives raised $1.1 million over the first three months of the year, outpacing the NDP’s $700,000. This is only the second time the Conservatives have raised more money than the NDP in a single quarter, the first being in the run-up to the 2024 election.
So, the stakes are high in the B.C. Conservative leadership race. The next leader, whoever it is, will take over a party that is very well-placed to defeat the New Democrats in the next provincial election. That’s only scheduled for 2028, but the NDP has the slimmest of majorities (47 seats in a 93-seat legislature) and it is by no means guaranteed that the government can survive for another two years.
B.C. Conservative party members have an important choice to make on May 30. Parties often claim that leadership races are to choose the next premier or prime minister. This time, it might be truer than it usually is.
Now, to what is in this week’s instalment of the Weekly Writ:
News on party fundraising for the first three months of 2026 and another upcoming vacancy in the House of Commons that spotlights Avi Lewis’s refusal to run for a seat. Plus, the Alberta separatists submit their petition signatures and the Saskatchewan NDP loses an MLA.
Polls show little change at the federal level, but suggest increased confidence in Carney’s negotiating skills. Plus, another poll in Quebec puts the Liberals and PQ in a tie.
#EveryElectionProject: The electorate polarizes (again) in the 1979 B.C. election.
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NEWS AND ANALYSIS
Party fundraising remains high one year after election
While the last election is now in the rear-view mirror and the next election could be years away, that doesn’t mean political parties have stopped fundraising. Indeed, the four parties that file quarterly combined for $18.3 million in fundraising over the first three months of 2026. Only in the first three months of 2025, when parties were gearing up for an election and the campaign began, have the four parties ever combined for a bigger start to a year.
The Conservatives led the way for the 17th consecutive quarter with $9.4 million raised from just over 40,000 contributions. That’s down slightly from the last non-election first quarter (Q1) in 2024, but is still more than the party raised in Q2, Q3 and Q4 of 2025. It’s actually quite rare for parties to raise more money in Q1 than in Q4 of the previous year, but the Conservatives did just that, and for the first time since 2022.
While the Liberals haven’t been able to match the Conservatives’ fundraising juggernaut, they have certainly upped their game from the end of the Justin Trudeau era. With $6.8 million raised from about 36,000 contributions, the Liberals registered their best Q1 on record with the sole exception of last year’s election Q1. Like the Conservatives, they also saw growth between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, the first time they’ve managed that outside of an election.
The New Democrats had a good fundraising quarter by their more modest standards. The party raised $1.7 million from about 28,000 contributions, making Q1 2026 the party’s best Q1 since 2015, when the NDP was in the official opposition role, with again the sole exception of Q1 2025. The NDP’s leadership contestants also combined for an additional $1.5 million in fundraising. The combined $3.2 million that went into the broader NDP pool would rank Q1 2026 as the NDP’s best quarter (wherever it falls on the calendar) since the 2021 election.
It was a more typical Q1 for the Bloc Québécois, which raised $330,000 from about 2,000 contributions. In the non-election Q1s of 2022, 2023 and 2024, the Bloc raised between $323,000 and $353,000, putting this most recent quarter comfortably within that range.
These fundraising numbers suggest that the landscape remains competitive between the Liberals and Conservatives. Though the Conservatives out-raised the Liberals by about $2.6 million, the gap averaged $5.6 million between Pierre Poilievre’s arrival as Conservative leader and the end of 2024. In that last year of Trudeau’s leadership, the Conservatives out-raised the Liberals by a total of $26.6 million. While they still have more cash sloshing around party coffers than do the Liberals, the Conservatives simply don’t have the same crushing advantage they once had.
(Since the Greens and People’s Party did not hit the threshold of 2% of the vote in the last election, neither party is required to file quarterly. As with other small parties, the Greens and PPC only need to file annual reports. These are usually available during the summer.)
Jonathan Wilkinson to vacate seat this summer
As was long rumoured (though it seemed to have been put on ice earlier this year), Liberal MP and former cabinet minister Jonathan Wilkinson will be appointed as Canada’s ambassador to the European Union. He says he will take the post and vacate his seat likely in July.
Wilkinson was first elected in the riding of North Vancouver (now North Vancouver—Capilano) in the 2015 election and served stints as the minister of energy and natural resources, environment and climate change and fisheries, oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard in Justin Trudeau’s government. He was left out of cabinet in Mark Carney’s first post-election shuffle.
His departure sometime in July will set the clock ticking on a byelection to fill the vacancy. With once-NDP, now-Independent MP Alexandre Boulerice expected to vacate his seat of Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie late in the summer ahead of Quebec’s provincial election, and Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith also slated to resign his seat of Beaches—East York as part of his bid for the Ontario Liberal leadership, we appear set for a trio of byelections sometime this fall.
The Liberals might try to rush these byelections earlier (or hold them separately). But if they intend to hold them at the same time, the municipal elections in British Columbia and Ontario and the provincial election in Quebec, all scheduled to be held in October, could complicate matters.
We don’t have a clue just yet who might run in these byelections, let alone when they will be held. But we do know who won’t be on the ballot: NDP leader Avi Lewis.
Lewis says he wants to tour the country to speak to voters and to build the party — a laudable goal. But it is surely no coincidence that Lewis would struggle to win any of these three byelections. While he would argue otherwise, it is hard to make the case that the NDP is better served by not having a leader in the House of Commons. Lewis has often been in Ottawa when Parliament is sitting anyway. And, though fundraising is up, the New Democrats can ill-afford to use any of its resources to pay Lewis a salary (which, according to The Globe and Mail, Lewis is not yet receiving from the party). Lastly, it is hard to make the case that voters should send more New Democrats to the House of Commons, and that they have an important role to play there, when the leader is not making it a priority.
It’s not as if these aren’t plausible seats for Lewis.
Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie is an NDP seat, and it is natural for a seatless party leader to seek their seat in a riding formerly held by the party — as Jagmeet Singh did in Burnaby South in early 2019 and as Pierre Poilievre did in Battle River—Crowfoot last year.
Beaches—East York was won by the New Democrats in 2011 and was won by the Ontario New Democrats in 2018. In addition to its modern NDP roots, Lewis’s father Stephen represented the adjacent riding at Queen’s Park in the 1970s.
And North Vancouver—Capilano is across the Burrard Inlet from Vancouver Centre, where Lewis ran in 2025, and is right next door to (and, after the last redistribution, contains part of) West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, where Lewis ran in 2021. Most of the federal riding was won by the provincial NDP in the 2024 B.C. provincial election.
But the reality is that two of these seats are near-certain holds for the Liberals, and the third is a potential pick-up. I’ve discussed before how the Liberals stand a good chance in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie with the departure of Boulerice. The Liberals beat the NDP in Beaches—East York by their fourth-largest margin in Ontario. And the NDP managed just 4.2% of the vote in North Vancouver—Capilano in the last election. The last time the New Democrats even finished second in the riding was in 1965.
So, it makes sense for Lewis to not run to fill any of these vacancies — but primarily because of his odds of winning them, not because his time is better-served elsewhere.
When it comes to the timing of these byelections, the Liberal majority in the House, which now stands at 174 to 169, will be reduced to 172 to 168 when these three seats are vacated. The party might be willing to live with a four-seat majority and wait to hold these byelections in late November or early December to keep them out of the way of the provincial and municipal campaigns. Or, they might just want to secure those seats as soon as they can. Tick-tock.
ELECTION NEWS BRIEFS
ALBERTA REFERENDUM PETITION - The organizers of a petition asking for a referendum question on Alberta separation say they have 301,620 signatures, surpassing the 178,000 threshold set by the province for consideration. The signatures need to be verified, a process that will await a court ruling on the proposed referendum question. An earlier petition organized by Thomas Lukaszuk, a former PC minister, on Alberta staying in Canada gathered more than 400,000 signatures. One way or another, it seems likely that a 10th question on Alberta independence will be added to the nine (largely related to immigration) already slated to be on the ballot in a referendum to be held on October 19.
SASK NDP LOSES CAUCUS MEMBER - Citing disagreement with the leadership of Carla Beck, Saskatoon Centre MLA Betty Nippi-Albright has left the Saskatchewan NDP caucus and will sit as an Independent. Nippi-Albright was first elected in the 2020 provincial election.
POLLING HIGHLIGHTS
Federal polling update
Not much to report on the polling front this past week, with new polls from Liaison Strategies, Nanos Research and Léger showing the same portrait we’ve seen for weeks. The Liaison and Nanos trackers were nearly identical at 45% for the Liberals, 32-33% for the Conservatives and 9-11% for the NDP. Léger, however, had the NDP at just 6% support — fairly typical for Léger and a reminder that some of those polls showing the New Democrats in the low-teens might be on the higher side of the range.
These three polls show no statistically significant change from when they were last in the field with independent samples. That both Nanos and Léger had the Conservatives gaining (within the margin of error) might serve to give the party hopes that they’ve hit bottom and might be bouncing back somewhat. But it’s thin gruel.
This week’s Nanos poll puts Mark Carney ahead on the preferred prime minister question with 51%, a small recovery after a few weeks of trending downwards. Pierre Poilievre sits at 24%, followed by Avi Lewis at 5%.
Has the arrival of Lewis on the scene changed much? It doesn’t seem so. The last Nanos poll conducted before Lewis won the NDP leadership had support for interim leader Don Davies at 2.6%. Lewis has increased that by 2.5 points. That is a statistically significant shift, even if it isn’t all that big. But it isn’t clear where it came from. Compared with that poll, Carney is now down 3.4 points. But those who responded “unsure” are also down 2.1 points. So, it’s possible that Lewis took away a tiny portion of Carney’s support, but it’s also possible that Lewis gained from those who were previously unsure, as all the other leaders are also up (though marginally).
POLLING NEWS BRIEFS
CANADIANS ON NEGOTIATIONS - Polling by the Angus Reid Institute shows that confidence in “Canada’s negotiating team, including Prime Minister Mark Carney” to land a good deal in negotiations with the United States has increased from 42% in September 2025 to 51% in April 2026, with those saying they are “very confident” jumping from 11% to 17%. Those who are not that confident or not confident at all have dropped from 53% to 42% over that time. Of those who are not confident, nearly half of them say it’s because “the Trump administration is too unpredictable.”
TIED IN QUEBEC - In its first poll of voting intentions in Quebec, Liaison Strategies puts the Parti Québécois and the Liberals in a dead-heat at 32% apiece. The Coalition Avenir Québec follows with 16%, while the Conservatives and Québec Solidaire close out the list with 11% and 7%, respectively. Despite the close race provincewide, the PQ remains the favourite to win the most seats thanks to its 18-point lead over the Liberals among francophones. Liaison gauged support for independence at 36%, the highest registered in any poll since April 2025.
12-MONTH ELECTORAL CALENDAR
May 11: Municipal elections in New Brunswick
May 30: British Columbia Conservative leadership
Candidates: Iain Black, Caroline Elliott, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Yuri Fulmer, Peter Milobar
October 5: Quebec provincial election
October 17: New Brunswick Progressive Conservative leadership
Candidates: Daniel Allain, Don Monahan
October 17: Municipal elections in British Columbia
October 19: Alberta referendum
October 26: Municipal elections in Ontario
October 28: Municipal elections in Manitoba
November 2: Municipal elections in Prince Edward Island
November 9: Municipal elections in Saskatchewan
November 21: Ontario Liberal leadership
Candidates: Dylan Marando
November 28: Nova Scotia Liberal leadership
Byelections yet to be scheduled
ON - Scarborough Southwest (to be called by August)
PE - Cornwall–Meadowbank (to be called by September)
MB - The Pas—Kameesak (to be called by September)
NS - Chéticamp–Margarees–Pleasant Bay (date TBD)
CA - Beaches—East York (potential resignation pending)
AB - Calgary Shaw (resignation pending)
CA - Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie (resignation pending)
CA - North Vancouver—Capilano (resignation pending)
Party leadership dates yet to be set
Federal Greens (Elizabeth May announced on August 19, 2025)
(ALMOST) ON THIS DAY in the #EveryElectionProject
B.C.’s politics polarizes even more
May 10, 1979
This was originally published on May 10, 2023.
At the end of a whirlwind three years in office, Dave Barrett’s quick-moving, reforming and often unfocused B.C. NDP government went down to defeat at the hands of Social Credit, which had galvanized the right-of-centre vote behind a familiar name: Bill Bennett, son of former premier W.A.C. Bennett.
The Socreds had succeeded in eating into the Progressive Conservatives’ vote and stealing away the right-wingers that were still backing the B.C. Liberals.
Nearly four years later, Bennett aimed to keep his electoral coalition together.
A day after announcing what his government called a “sunshine budget” “crammed with benefits for every taxpayer”, Bennett pre-empted the television and radio networks to make his announcement. He promised the networks it would take five minutes, but it took him 20 minutes to declare that British Columbians would be going to the polls on May 10, 1979.
That set the date just 12 days before the federal election — a coincidence that worked very well for Bennett’s Social Credit Party. The federal campaign would divide the attention and resources the New Democrats and PCs could dedicate to the provincial battle. Bennett’s party had no such complication.
The central plank of Bennett’s campaign would be the giveaway of five shares of the B.C. Resources Investment Corporation, each worth around $60, to every British Columbian. The BCRIC was a holding company that invested in B.C.’s resource industry, and the government encouraged British Columbians to invest some of their own money, too. It would eventually go bust and people would lose a lot of their investments, but in 1979 it didn’t turn out to be the campaign issue Bennett had hoped it would be — especially after Dave Barrett said that the giveaway was irreversible.
Despite his drubbing at the polls in 1975, Barrett was still leader of the B.C. NDP. He hoped to make a comeback.
The New Democrats had learned their lesson, though. While Barrett ran against the Socred record of austerity measures, he also ran against type: he was calmer, more moderate. He admitted his government had made mistakes and had tried to move too far too quickly.
The NDP had went “from the wilderness into power,” Barrett said. “It’s had a taste of power. It doesn’t like the wilderness any more. The party is more realistic. I’m more realistic.”
The move to the centre was part of a broader drift in B.C. politics. The PCs and Liberals had been decimated over the last few elections, and with the Liberals running only a handful of candidates the NDP targeted their remaining voters, especially those that could swing results in the suburbs around Victoria and Vancouver.
Bennett, whose style The Globe and Mail’s John Clarke called “heavy, sometimes inarticulate and generally humorless”, attacked the record of the single-term NDP government, claiming it had ruined the province’s finances and that any future government would be just as radical, despite Barrett’s new approach.
“Don’t be fooled,” Bennett warned. “They haven’t changed their spots; they have just put on a cloak to cover them up.”
“Before the election,” he added, “they act like Groucho Marx; it’s only after the election they act like Karl Marx.”
A key factor deciding Social Credit’s re-election would be the state of the Progressive Conservatives. Party leader Victor Stephens couldn’t gain any traction, instead garnering the most attention when he complained about the lack of support he was getting from Joe Clark’s federal Tories. There were claims the PCs had a secret deal with the Socreds, ensuring the federal party would provide no assistance to the provincial party in exchange for some funding for federal Tory candidates from Social Credit coffers.
One anecdote related to the PC campaign that was reported in the Globe and Mail was how “two Tory candidates decided to ‘come out’ as homosexuals at a Vancouver public meeting after an NDP candidate cracked that he’d ‘rather be gay than Tory’.” In a sign of how things have changed since the 1970s, the reporter used this anecdote as a reflection of how the Tories, rather than the NDP, lacked candidates who were “clear winners”.
As election day approached, the race looked tight. The NDP had run a smooth campaign and set the narrative on most days, but the increased chances of an NDP victory also ensured that reluctant Socred voters would cast a ballot, doing some of Bennett’s work for him. Social Credit also outspent the NDP by more than two-to-one, spending $2.4 million, worth roughly $9.5 million today.
Bill Bennett and the Socreds needed every advantage they could get (and, later on, their campaign would be tarred by charges of ‘dirty tricks’ involving phoney letters to the editor and unaccounted-for slush funds). The party lost four seats but secured a small majority government with 31. The party’s share of the vote dropped slightly to 48.2%, but it was enough.
The New Democrats took 26 seats, with gains in northern B.C., Victoria, Surrey, Coquitlam and Burnaby. With 46% of the vote, the NDP had jumped nearly seven points from 1975 as more than 94% of British Columbians backed one of the two big parties.
The PCs took just 5.1% of the vote and lost their only seat, while the Liberals dropped 0.5 points, with nearly all of their lost support going to the New Democrats.
It was the first time in British Columbia since the turn of the century and the beginning of partisan politics that no Independents or third-party MLAs won a seat. B.C.’s politics had polarized in a way that wouldn’t change until the final collapse of the country’s last Social Credit government in 1991.