B.C. Premier David Eby answers questions from the media after speaking at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in Vancouver, Sept. 18.Rich Lam/The Canadian Press
B.C. Premier David Eby’s snap election call Tuesday may go down as a cynical but savvy decision that kept his government in power for another four years.
Or it will be judged as a too-cute-by-half move that disastrously misjudged the mood of the electorate, leading to one of the most epic political blunders in the province’s history.
Almost at the same time Mr. Eby was calling the vote, decisions were being made among his rivals that have radically changed the calculus of the race. A conservative opposition that was in disarray leading up to the call – a fact that almost singularly led to the Premier’s decision – was maneuvering to rally into a single potent force.
Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s brief, apocalyptic reign as leader of the B.C. Conservative Party ended on the weekend. The Conservative board chose the low-key, no-nonsense but well-liked rural MLA Lorne Doerkson as interim head of the party. He will lead the Conservatives into the election.
Almost immediately, Mr. Doerkson started rebuilding a party which had splintered badly under Ms. Findlay. MLAs who were kicked out of caucus or left to sit as independents have come back to the fold. And then on Tuesday several former Conservative MLAs who left the party to join the upstart CentreBC party – largely formed as an antidote to the far-right swing the Conservatives had taken – consummated talks to rejoin forces with their old party and its more established brand.
So instead of Mr. Eby’s NDP facing a divided opposition, they are now staring at a reinvigorated and united enemy that will likely campaign on a more traditional centre-right, pragmatic agenda devoid of culture-war hysterics.
The election dynamics have completely changed.
After meeting with Lieutenant-Governor Wendy Cocchia, Mr. Eby told reporters he was calling the election because of the existential threats to the provincial economy posed by U.S. President Donald Trump and the tariff war he has initiated against Canada. “By the hour we are seeing new threats from the White House,” said the NDP Leader.
In a stunning display of mind over matter, Mr. Eby didn’t even turn red as he uttered the ridiculous defence of his actions.
The Conservatives have any number of NDP failures to choose from in this campaign: rampant drug use and street disorder around the province; the disastrous rollout of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; controversy-laden housing-density targets; hospital ER closures. The list goes on. But no target flashes as brightly as the alarming level of debt Mr. Eby’s government has racked up in a relatively short period of time.
Lt.-Gov. Wendy Cocchia meets with Mr. Eby as they walk back into the assembly for the throne speech at the legislature in Victoria, B.C., on Tuesday.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press
Provincial debt in the fiscal year 2022-23 – when Mr. Eby succeeded the much-loved John Horgan as Premier – stood at $89.4-billion. At the end of fiscal 2025-26 it had ballooned to $154.8-billion – a shocking 73-per-cent increase. The projected deficit for this year is $13.8-billion.
Few, if any, premiers in the province’s history have shown the ability to spend money as blithely as Mr. Eby. Or to put it another way, the NDP Leader has never met a tough choice he couldn’t turn into an easy way to spend money the government doesn’t have.
In a shockingly short period of time, Mr. Eby has eradicated all the hard work his predecessor put in to shore up the NDP’s fiscal bonafides. With a series of balanced budgets, Mr. Horgan managed to reverse the party’s long-held reputation as irresponsible profligates. His successor has destroyed all that in a span of just under three years and 10 months.
In the run-up to the election call, Mr. Eby and his ministers went on a spending spree of announcements, fast-tracking projects that were paused only months earlier, allegedly because of a lack of funds. Now the money for them has appeared out of nowhere. It’s hard to reconcile how such reckless governing could somehow be rewarded by voters.
It needs to be mentioned that the NDP’s snap call now ensures a provincial election will overlap with municipal election campaigns currently happening around B.C. ahead of an Oct. 17 vote. At a recent annual meeting of the Union of B.C. Municipalities, the group pleaded with Mr. Eby to hold off on any election call until after the municipal votes were over to avoid chaos and confusion.
Nope.
The NDP Leader’s decision says a lot about how he and his government view themselves. Going to the end of their four-year mandate would have made it even harder for the NDP to defend an utterly dismal record.
Mr. Eby’s snap election is a political hail mary. Whether his prayer is answered is far from certain.