British Columbia is my homeland, and it is routinely described as one of the most politically unusual places in Canada. The following is a somewhat brief history of the politics of the province and how it relates to progressive politics.
British Columbia formally became a province of Canada in 1871. From that point up until 1903, there were no provincial political parties, though the federal parties competed in federal elections. Due to the Parliamentary system used, this created interesting Cabinet situations in which informal alliances between individual legislators were used to craft legislation, as opposed to the strict party line votes that are now commonplace in North America.
Between 1903 and the early 1930s, Government routinely passed between the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals, with a small handful of independent socialist and labour MLAs (Member of Legislative Assembly) serving as part of the opposition. This began to change in the 1930s, with the advent of the Commonwealth Co-operative Federation, which was the precursor to the modern day New Democratic Party.
The Liberal government of the Depression period was replaced in the Second World War by a coalition of Liberals and Progressive Conservatives, with the CCF in permanent opposition. It should be noted that at this time, the CCF was the strongest individual party, but due to the single member plurality vote system used, the Coalition was able to win enough seats to retain its majority through the decade.
The Coalition worked in an unusual way, in that each party fielded its own candidates in each constituency, and only came together to form government after each election and the candidates had won election. Cabinet seats would be divided between the two partners based on their success in the election.
Prior to the 1952 general election, the Coalition became aware that it would not be strong enough to win against the CCF, at least according to the voting system used. So just prior to the election, the coalition enacted a new voter system, similar to preferential balloting. The Coalition’s goal was to have predominantly Liberal supporters put Conservative candidates as their second choice, and Conservative supporters placing Liberal candidates as their second choice as a means of denying victory to the CCF.
The electoral system change was a disaster, and led to the near destruction of both the Liberals and PCs. In their place rose Social Credit, a similar right-wing party that governed from 1952 to 1972, and again from 1975 to 1991. As this party served as the replacement to both the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives as the bulwark against the ‘socialist’ CCF and later the NDP, support for the original two parties dropped, to the point that both lost major party standing and ran few candidates for office.
Like any two-party system, support for the CCF/NDP remained strong, obtaining a similar share of the two-party vote in every election. Seat distribution made victory difficult, as British Columbia did and continues to have a higher rural representation than the urban areas. The exception to this was the 1972 election, in which Dave Barrett defeated Social Credit after sixteen years in power. This government lasted only three years before being defeated again, and led to an additional sixteen years out of power for the NDP.
The only other time the NDP has won power in British Columbia was in 1991 and 1996, with the governments of Mike Harcourt and Glen Clark. The victories coincided with sharp divisions on the centre-right, with the Liberals becoming a resurgent centrist body in 1991, and Social Credit finally collapsing in on itself under the weight of its series of scandals.
Between the 1991 and 1996 elections, the BC Liberal Party underwent a leadership election that elevated former Vancouver mayor Gordon Campbell to the leadership. With him came a stronger emphasis on right wing ideology, which eventually helped dissipate Social Credit and re-consolidating the left-right battle between the NDP and the not-NDP. 1996 was similar in that there was a split vote, but this time occurring on the left, with the NDP earning a lower share of the vote, but winning a slightly larger number of seats than the Liberals.
The rise of the CCF changed the dynamic of politics within British Columbia; no longer was there a competition of sorts between the centre and centre-right for governance. It became more important for Liberal and Progressive Conservative supporters to ensure that the CCF was blocked from forming Government, even if that meant co-operation with former electoral opponents. This created the formation of a two and a half party system, between the NDP, the not-NDP of the era, and the Green Party, which consistently receives an appreciable share of the vote, but is not concentrated enough to win seats.
Progressive victories in British Columbia have often come as the result of a divided right wing, and not through any strength of the left, which routinely can count only 42% of the vote, and not much more or less than that in normal circumstances. With one year to go before the next provincial election, there are concerns that even with the BC Liberals disintegrating and losing support to the newly reborn BC Conservatives, that the NDP will hit its traditional ceiling and fail to fully capitalize on the right wing split. However, recent public polling shows that while the right-wing split is debilitating and will create an NDP government, the NDP itself is gaining credibility and support, currently sitting at or near 50% in the polls, a first in the history of the party for provincial polling. Whether this signals a growing trend towards progressive politics or simply a backlash against the right-wing provincial and federal governments won’t be determined until Election Day.