Provincial election call so much horsefeathers
Voters on the South Island are facing unprecedented democratic whiplash.
Thanks to Premier David Eby and the NDP, residents are being forced to navigate parallel elections simultaneously. On top of sorting out 13 municipalities, the CRD, and local school boards, they must now sort out seven provincial ridings and a sudden influx of candidates.
Critics, including the municipal advocacy group Grumpy Taxpayer$, view the provincial decision as an unnecessary attack on democracy. Justifying an election two years early on the basis of an ‘existential’ tariff war is laughable, and frankly, so much horsefeathers.
What is certainly horsefeathers as well, is the political opportunism at play as a result of the chaos and leadership resignations among opposition parties.
The election call ignores the reality that local communities are struggling with an endless array of immediate issues. Those must be urgently discussed and debated fully by civic candidates and residents over the next few weeks, not sidetracked by the current provincial morass. The election could easily have waited a few weeks.
While legal and within the rules, calling an Oct. 24 election is arguably unethical and reinforces the cynical view of politicians in general. Instead, this unprecedented snap election has raised a lot of troubling questions that local residents want to fire right back at the government.
Chief among those questions is how local governance is being disregarded. While final counts for clear majorities aren’t done, the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) described their call for the province not to hold a competing election as “overwhelming”. There are an estimated 3,500 candidates currently running for election across 161 municipalities whose platforms are now fighting for oxygen.
History shows that voters do not take kindly to this brand of opportunistic political gambling. When the Ontario provincial government tried a similar snap election maneuver in 1990, voters viewed the Liberals as arrogant and the election as entirely unnecessary. The government was resoundingly tossed from office, and even the premier lost his seat.
Eby’s gamble is particularly reckless given the fragile state of provincial finances. British Columbia’s credit rating has already faced five consecutive downgrades by major rating agencies thanks to record entrenched deficits and rising debt levels.
Most recently, the province’s first quarterly report projected the 2026-27 deficit to reach an astronomical $13.8 billion. A mere $450 million increase from February’s budget projection partly because of a government calculation error in natural gas revenue projections. Because downgrades greatly impact provincial borrowing costs, adding more debt right now is fiscal malpractice.
Yet, taxpayers are being left to foot a massive, unbudgeted bill for this snap vote. Back in February, BC Elections requested $50-million in supplemental funding to start getting ready, which was denied. That request had to be made again earlier in September, and that massive cost will be tacked directly onto our growing debt.
BC Elections put the cost of the 2024 election at $82.4 million, so $100 million this time around is within the realm of possibility.
Taxpayers will also be on the hook for indirect costs; BC’s generous 75 per cent tax credit for the first $100 donated to a political party means that millions in tax dollars will be diverted away from the public treasury and straight into partisan war chests.
Perhaps most concerning is whether BC Elections is even equipped to handle this rushed timeline. Chief Electoral Officer Shipra Verma explicitly warned the Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services that her office requires at least four to six months of lead time to be safely “election-ready.” The consequences of denying them that time, she noted, include “significant challenges in election delivery and ensuring integrity of the democratic process.”
In this moment of manufactured uncertainty, has there been a more breathtaking act of partisan political interest in the modern history of BC? That’s hardly what the Premier characterizes as a ‘firebreak’ against the challenges facing the provinces.
Calling a provincial election now takes political cynicism to its finest moment. It proves once again that power is the only thing that matters—not local government candidates, not municipalities, not voters, and certainly not taxpayers.
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