British Columbia New Democratic Party
The New Democratic Party of British Columbia is a social-democratic provincial political party in British Columbia, Canada, which currently governs the province. It previously governed from 1972 to 1975 and from 1991 to 2001. Following a hung parliament as a result of the 2017 election and the BC Liberal government's failure to win a confidence vote in the legislature, the BC NDP secured a confidence and supply agreement with the BC Green Party to form a minority government. The BC NDP is the British Columbia provincial arm of the federal New Democratic Party.
The party won the largest number of seats in three provincial elections, 1972, 1991 and 1996, but was reduced to two seats in the 2001 before rebounding in 2005 and returning to government in 2017. Six leaders of the NDP have served as Premier of British Columbia: Dave Barrett, Mike Harcourt, Glen Clark, Dan Miller, Ujjal Dosanjh, and John Horgan.
History
Founding the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (British Columbia section)
The party was formed in 1933 as the British Columbia section of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation by a coalition of the Socialist Party of Canada, the League for Social Reconstruction, and affiliated organizations. In August 1933, the latter two organizations merged to become the Associated CCF Clubs. The new party won seven seats in the 1933 provincial election, enough to form the official opposition. A further merger with the SPC took place in 1935. In 1936 the party split as its moderate leader, Reverend Robert Connell was expelled over doctrinal differences in what was called the "Connell Affair". Three other CCF members of the Legislative Assembly in what had been a 7-member caucus quit and joined Connell in forming the Social Constructive Party, leaving only Harold Winch, Ernest Winch and Dorothy Steeves as CCF MLAs. The Constructivists nominated candidates in the 1937 election but failed to win a seat. The CCF regained their former contingent of seven MLAs but lost official opposition status to the reconstituted British Columbia Conservative Party.Harold Winch succeeded Connell as CCF leader and guided the party until the 1950s.
The two-party system in Canada was challenged with the rise of the CCF and the Social Credit movement in western Canada during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The CCF first took power in 1944 in Saskatchewan under Premier Tommy Douglas, and made major inroads in British Columbia.
In order to block the rise of the CCF in BC, the provincial Liberal and Conservative parties formed a coalition government after the 1941 provincial election when neither party had enough seats to form a majority government on its own. For the ten years that the coalition held together, the CCF was the Official Opposition in the legislature.
Solidification as opposition party
After the coalition fell apart in 1951, the government introduced the alternative vote electoral system, with the expectation that Conservative voters would list the Liberals as their second choice and vice versa. In introducing the measure, the government hoped to prevent the CCF from winning in a three party competition. What they did not contemplate was that there was a new fourth party on the rise: the BC Social Credit League.In the election on 12 June 1952, the Liberals and Conservatives were decimated. The Social Credit League was the main beneficiary of the new voting system as many non-CCF voters chose Social Credit as either their first or second choices. Social Credit emerged as the largest party, with one more seat than Winch's CCF. Social Credit then chose a new leader, W. A. C. Bennett.
When Social Credit lost a motion of no confidence in the legislature in March 1953, Winch argued that the CCF should be allowed to try to form a government instead of the house being dissolved for an early election. The Liberals, however, refused to support the CCF's bid to form a government and new elections were called.
In the 1953 election, Bennett won a majority government, and both the Liberal and the Conservative parties were reduced to fringe parties. Throughout the 1950s, Bennett's new electoral movement was able to keep the CCF at bay. As this was during the height of the Cold War, Bennett was able to effectively use the scare tactic of the "Red Menace" against the CCF, referring to them as the "socialist hordes".
Creation of the BC New Democratic Party
In 1960, the CCF's name was changed nationally to the New Party, then in 1961 to the "New Democratic Party", reflecting the national party formed from an alliance of the CCF and the Canadian Labour Congress. Bennett was able to keep the CCF and the NDP out of power throughout the 1960s through four successive general elections. Each time, Bennett was able to effectively use the "Red Menace" tactic against the NDP and its leaders during this time, Robert Strachan and, in the 1969 general election, against Thomas Berger.Barrett government
The BC NDP first won election in 1972 under Dave Barrett, who served as Premier for three years. The BC NDP passed a great deal of legislation in a very short time. Among lasting changes were the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, the Agricultural Land Reserve, and additions such as Question Period to the legislature. The BC NDP drove the small BC Liberal caucus to abandon their leader David Anderson for the Social Credit Party, as did one of the two Tories elected in 1972. The BC NDP introduced capital taxes, slashed funding to universities, but suffered the most for bringing clarity to the accounting Social Credit had used, and showed that BC was significantly in debt.In the 1975 election Social Credit, under W. A. C. Bennett's son Bill Bennett, won a snap election called by Barrett. The Barrett government had initiated a number of reforms in the areas of labour relations, the public service and social programs, most of which endured through to the restraint budget of 1983.
The BC NDP peaked in popular support in the 1979 election with 46% of the vote. And after a minor decline in the party's vote share in 1983, Barrett retired as leader.
Riding high in the polls, it appeared that the party was poised to win the 1986 election against the unpopular Social Credit government of the day but due to a minor verbal gaffe by its new leader Bob Skelly during the campaign and the surprising charisma and telegenic performance of the Socreds' new leader William Vander Zalm, the party failed to score its anticipated breakthrough.
Harcourt government
The New Democratic Party governed BC for nine and a half years, winning two back-to-back general elections in 1991 and 1996 before being defeated in 2001. Although the party's majority was reduced in 1996, it was nevertheless able to triumph over the divided remnants of the Social Credit Party. In 1991, due in part to Social Credit's scandal-plagued final term in office under Premier William Vander Zalm and in part to the stellar performance of then–British Columbia Liberal Party leader Gordon Wilson in the televised leader's debate, the old Social Credit vote split between the BC Liberals, which garnered 33% of the vote and BC Social Credit Party with 25%. This allowed the BC NDP, under the leadership of former Vancouver mayor Mike Harcourt, who had succeeded former leader Bob Skelly in 1987, to win with 41% of the popular vote.Whereas Harcourt's first two years in government were characterized by a notably social democratic policy agenda, which included increases in welfare spending and rates, the government took a dramatic turn to the right in 1993 with Harcourt's famous province-wide televised address in which he lashed out against "welfare cheats, deadbeats and varmints". This speech inaugurated a set of welfare reforms enacted between 1993 and 1995 similar to those adopted by new Progressive Conservative provincial governments elected in Alberta and Ontario in the same time period. These cutbacks were, in part, a reaction to a dramatic reduction in federal transfer payments by the federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and concomitant repeal of the Canada Assistance Plan bill of rights which included a right to food and a right to shelter. Unlike the reforms of the Harris and Klein governments, the BC Benefits package of cutbacks and restrictions in social assistance eligibility was bundled with a childcare bonus paid to low- and medium-income families. The changes were unpopular with the province's anti-poverty movement and the then-marginal BC Green Party, and were condemned by a motion at the party's 1997 convention.
Three months before BC Benefits was introduced by the Harcourt government, a protracted conflict began with the elements of the province's environmentalist movement. Harcourt's "Peace in the Woods" pact which brought together traditionally warring environmental groups and forest workers' unions began to collapse when Harcourt's cabinet exempted an environmentally-sensitive area of Vancouver Island, Clayoquot Sound, from its province-wide mediation process for land-use conflicts, CORE. This touched off logging road blockades in which over 800 people were arrested and alienated of some key environmental leaders such as David Suzuki and Colleen McCrory who shifted their support to the Green Party in the 1996 provincial election.
Although low in the polls for much of his term in office, Harcourt and his newly appointed Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh succeeded in regaining substantial public support by taking a hard line against a fringe aboriginal group's occupation of a farmer's field in the Cariboo region of the province. The Gustafsen Lake siege, led by Dosanjh became the largest-scale police operation in British Columbia history, in which armoured vehicles provided by the Canadian military were used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for protection. The military strongly rejected attempts by the RCMP to have them take over control of the situation, and ultimately it remained a police operation. Anti-vehicle mines were deployed and thousands of rounds of ammunition were shot at protesters.
However, less than 72 hours before a planned election call, with the BC NDP riding high in the polls for its hard line against welfare recipients and aboriginal and environmental radicals, the party's provincial office was raided by RCMP officers as part of an ongoing investigation of illegal use of charity bingo money, coined "Bingogate" by the media, by former provincial cabinet minister and member of parliament Dave Stupich. Although Harcourt was not implicated in either the raid or the probe and was later fully exonerated, he resigned nevertheless and the party was led into the 1996 provincial general election by Glen Clark.
Clark years
Clark, who entered the 1996 election far back in the polls, proved an excellent campaigner who succeeded, at least for the duration of the election, in re-unifying the party's traditional coalition with the slogan "On Your Side". He effectively portrayed the BC Liberals' new leader, former Vancouver mayor Gordon Campbell, as a pawn of big business and a dangerous right-wing extremist. Clark was aided in delivering this message by Jack Weisgerber, leader of the BC Reform Party, and Wilson, by then leader of the Progressive Democratic Alliance after being deposed by Campbell as leader of the BC Liberals. Although the BC NDP won only 39% of the vote to Campbell's 42%, it managed to secure 39 seats to Campbell's 33.Although largely continuing Harcourt's policy agenda, Clark's government appeared rudderless with the campaign behind it and the Premier's scrappy style began to further alienate parts of the BC NDP coalition outside of the core group of labour activists who had masterminded Clark's campaign. It was also discovered, shortly after the election, that the balanced budgets for the 1995–96 and 1996–97 fiscal years on which Clark had campaigned were not, in fact, balanced but actually small deficits of approximately $100 million. This was termed the "fudge-it" budget fiasco. Further, large debt was shifted onto Crown Corporations so as to create a perception of "surpluses".
During these years, the BC NDP began to bleed support and activists to the BC Greens who reached 5% in the polls in the fall of 1997 and 11% by the fall of 1998; however, by far the majority of the BC NDP's former voters deserted the party for the BC Liberals. New scandals also surfaced, this time appearing to implicate Clark in using his influence to win a casino licence for a neighbour, Dimitrios Pilarinos, who had helped him with some home renovations. Another blunder was the botched construction of the PacifiCat BC Ferries, which would later become part of the fast ferry scandal; the project, designed to speed transportation between Vancouver and Nanaimo, was plagued by cost over-runs and poor technical decisions. By mid-1999, an obvious rift had appeared in the administration as Attorney General Dosanjh and Finance Minister Joy MacPhail challenged Clark's legitimacy. The party and province endured a few chaotic months of government with frequent cabinet shuffles, following a police raid on Clark's home before the premier stepped aside. In 2002 Clark was acquitted of breach of trust and corruption charges in the Pilarinos case; Pilarinos was convicted of six charges.
Dan Miller, the longest-serving member of the legislature stepped-in as premier and interim-party leader during an acrimonious leadership race between Dosanjh, maverick West Kootenay MLA Corky Evans and Wilson, who had been persuaded to fold his stalled PDA in 1998 and join Clark's cabinet. Despite clear favouritism from Clark, Wilson finished last with Dosanjh winning a majority of votes at the convention, despite Evans winning the support of over two-thirds of the party's constituency associations.
Dosanjh's leadership and out of power
Having bottomed out at 15 percent in the polls, the Dosanjh government attempted to capitalize on the new Premier's high personal approval rating with their remaining year in power. The government made a number of concessions to the party's anti-poverty and environmental wings in an attempt to reforge the coalition but the party would not budge in the polls. Halfway through his mandate, Dosanjh seemed to lose interest in governing and left for a lengthy tour of his native Punjab.Dosanjh waited as long as possible to call the next election, finally doing so in April 2001. By this time, the party had risen to 21 percent in opinion polling – a slight improvement from the nadir of a year earlier. Nonetheless, it became obvious that the BC NDP would not be re-elected. Midway through the campaign, Dosanjh conceded defeat in a pre-recorded message and asked the electorate to give the BC NDP a chance as a strong opposition party. De facto leadership passed to MacPhail, who managed to reinvigorate the campaign. The BC NDP's popular vote dropped to 22 percent, while its seat count dropped to only two – MacPhail and neighbouring Vancouver-Mount Pleasant MLA Jenny Kwan. They were also the only surviving members of the previous Cabinet; even Dosanjh lost his seat. All 77 other seats were captured by the BC Liberals who won 58 percent of the vote. It was the second-worst defeat of a sitting provincial government in Canada. Despite the severe defeat, MacPhail was credited for saving the party from being completely wiped off the electoral map.
Shortly after the election, Dosanjh resigned as leader and Joy MacPhail was appointed interim leader.
Opposition and recovery
MacPhail and Kwan were initially not granted official party status by Campbell on the grounds that the legislature's rules stipulated a party must hold four seats, though that claimed rule is not in the law and was widely panned in the media. However, the Speaker of the Assembly, former Social Credit cabinet minister-turned BC Liberal Claude Richmond, recognized MacPhail as leader of the Opposition. Ultimately, Richmond's position gradually won out, and he was able to ensure that the remains of the BC NDP were provided the resources of an official party.Given the high level of support within the party for her leadership, MacPhail surprised many by choosing not to seek the full-time leadership in 2003. The low-key leadership campaign was contested by establishment favourite and former Victoria School Board chair Carole James, Oak Bay City Councillor Nils Jensen, former MLAs Leonard Krog and Steve Orcherton, and a few minor candidates. First ballot results had James first followed by Jensen, Krog, and Orcherton. James won on the second ballot.
In late 2004, the party won an upset election victory in the constituency of Surrey-Panorama Ridge. Jagrup Brar became the third member of the party's caucus, winning a riding that had supported the NDP in 1991 before falling to the Liberals in 1996. Brar beat a locally popular BC Liberal candidate and Adriane Carr, the BC Green Party's leader, winning an absolute majority of the vote.
In the 2005 provincial election, James came closer to forming a government than even the BC NDP had predicted, winning 33 seats to Campbell's 45 and receiving a vote share 5% higher in suburban Vancouver than any pollster had predicted. The BC NDP also exceeded 40% of the vote for the first time since 1991.
In 2008, the BC NDP won two key by-elections in Vancouver-Fairview and Vancouver-Burrard.
In the 2009 provincial election, the BC NDP came a close second to the BC Liberals, with a 45%–42% popular vote, with 35 New Democrats elected to the BC Liberals 49. Despite the popular vote, only 3,500 votes separated the party from forming government.
The NDP under Adrian Dix was widely expected to win the May 2013 provincial election as the NDP enjoyed a 20-point lead in the polls prior to the election campaign. However, the Liberals gained four seats, while the NDP lost two, in an election that returned the Liberal government under Premier Christy Clark. In September 2013, Dix announced his intention to resign as party leader once a leadership election was held.
Horgan government
Following Dix's resignation, John Horgan, MLA for Langford-Juan de Fuca, was acclaimed as party leader in the 2014 party leadership election, and subsequently became the leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. In the May 2017 provincial election, the NDP under Horgan occasionally led the Liberals in polls. The May 9 election returned 43 Liberal MLAs, 41 NDP MLAs and a record 3 Green MLAs. This was one of the closest elections in BC's history, exemplified by the popular vote breakdown: 40.36% for the Liberals, 40.28% for the NDP, and 16.84% for the Greens. The Liberals won the popular vote by a razor-thin margin of just 1,566 votes province-wide. Following the election, the Greens entered into negotiations with both the Liberals and NDP to decide which party they should support in the minority parliament. On May 29, Horgan and Green leader Andrew Weaver announced that the Greens would support an NDP minority government in a confidence and supply agreement. This meant the Greens are obliged to vote with the NDP in matters of confidence – keeping the government from falling – but were allowed to vote freely on legislation brought forward by the NDP government. On June 29, the minority Liberal government of Premier Christy Clark was defeated 44–42 by the NDP-Green alliance in a confidence vote, leading Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon to ask Horgan to form a government, making him British Columbia's 36th premier and first NDP premier in 16 years; the NDP formed a minority government, the first time the NDP has had such a government in provincial history.Leaders
"" denotes acting or interim leader.CCF
NDP
Election results
Results shown are for CCF from 1933–1960, NDP since 1963.| Election | Leader | Seats | +/- | Place | Votes | % | Change | Position |
| 1933 | Robert Connell | n/a | 2nd | 120,185 | 31.53% | n/a | ||
| 1937 | vacant | 3rd | 119,400 | 28.57% | 2.96% | |||
| 1941 | Harold Winch | 7 | 2nd | 151,440 | 33.36% | 4.79% | ||
| 1945 | Harold Winch | 4 | 2nd | 175,960 | 37.62% | 4.26% | ||
| 1949 | Harold Winch | 3 | 2nd | 245,284 | 35.10% | 2.52% | ||
| 1952 | Harold Winch | 11 | 2nd | 236,562 | 30.78% | 4.32% | ||
| 1953 | Arnold Webster | 4 | 2nd | 224,513 | 30.85% | 0.07% | ||
| 1956 | Robert Strachan | 4 | 2nd | 231,511 | 28.32% | 2.53% | ||
| 1960 | Robert Strachan | 6 | 2nd | 326,094 | 32.73% | 4.41% | ||
| 1963 | Robert Strachan | 2 | 2nd | 269,004 | 27.80% | 4.93% | ||
| 1966 | Robert Strachan | 2 | 2nd | 252,753 | 33.62% | 5.82% | ||
| 1969 | Thomas Berger | 4 | 2nd | 331,813 | 33.92% | 0.30% | ||
| 1972 | Dave Barrett | 26 | 1st | 448,260 | 39.59% | 5.67% | ||
| 1975 | Dave Barrett | 20 | 2nd | 505,396 | 39.16% | 0.43% | ||
| 1979 | Dave Barrett | 8 | 2nd | 646,188 | 45.99% | 6.83% | ||
| 1983 | Dave Barrett | 4 | 2nd | 741,354 | 44.94% | 1.05% | ||
| 1986 | Robert Skelly | 2nd | 824,544 | 42.60% | 2.34% | |||
| 1991 | Michael Harcourt | 19 | 1st | 595,391 | 40.71% | 1.89% | ||
| 1996 | Glen Clark | 12 | 1st | 624,395 | 39.45% | 1.26% | ||
| 2001 | Ujjal Dosanjh | 37 | 2nd | 343,156 | 21.56% | 17.89% | ||
| 2005 | Carole James | 31 | 2nd | 694,978 | 41.43% | 19.87% | ||
| 2009 | Carole James | 2 | 2nd | 691,342 | 42.14% | 0.71% | ||
| 2013 | Adrian Dix | 1 | 2nd | 715,999 | 39.71% | 2.43% | ||
| 2017 | John Horgan | 7 | 2nd | 795,527 | 40.28% | 0.57% | ||
| 2017 | John Horgan | 7 | 2nd | 795,527 | 40.28% | 0.57% | ||
| 2021 | John Horgan | TBD | TBD |
Current MLAs
, the following individuals serve as NDP MLAs:| Member | District | First elected | Notes |
| Anne Kang | Burnaby-Deer Lake | 2017 | Minister for Citizens' Services |
| Raj Chouhan | Burnaby-Edmonds | 2005 | |
| Katrina Chen | Burnaby-Lougheed | 2017 | Minister of State |
| Janet Routledge | Burnaby North | 2017 | |
| Selina Robinson | Coquitlam-Maillardville | 2013 | Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing |
| Ronna-Rae Leonard | Courtenay-Comox | 2017 | |
| Ravi Kahlon | Delta North | 2017 | |
| Mitzi Dean | Esquimalt-Metchosin | 2017 | |
| Katrine Conroy | Kootenay West | 2005 | Minister of Children and Family Development |
| John Horgan | Langford-Juan de Fuca | 2005 | Premier of British Columbia |
| Bob D'Eith | Maple Ridge-Mission | 2017 | |
| Lisa Beare | Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows | 2017 | Minister of Tourism, Arts, and Culture |
| Scott Fraser | Mid Island-Pacific Rim | 2005 | Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation |
| Sheila Malcolmson | Nanaimo | 2019 | |
| Doug Routley | Nanaimo-North Cowichan | 2005 | |
| Michelle Mungall | Nelson-Creston | 2009 | Minister of Jobs, Economic Development, and Competitiveness |
| Judy Darcy | New Westminster | 2013 | Minister of Mental Health and Addictions |
| Jennifer Rice | North Coast | 2013 | |
| Claire Trevena | North Island | 2005 | Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure |
| Bowinn Ma | North Vancouver-Lonsdale | 2017 | |
| Mike Farnworth | Port Coquitlam | 1991 | Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General |
| Rick Glumac | Port Moody-Coquitlam | 2017 | |
| Nicholas Simons | Powell River-Sunshine Coast | 2005 | |
| Lana Popham | Saanich South | 2009 | Minister of Agriculture |
| Doug Donaldson | Stikine | 2009 | Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development |
| Jagrup Brar | Surrey-Fleetwood | 2004 | |
| Rachna Singh | Surrey-Green Timbers | 2017 | |
| Garry Begg | Surrey-Guildford | 2017 | |
| Harry Bains | Surrey-Newton | 2005 | Minister of Labour |
| Jinny Sims | Surrey-Panorama | 2017 | |
| Bruce Ralston | Surrey-Whalley | 2005 | Minister of Energy, Mines, and Petroleum Resources |
| George Heyman | Vancouver-Fairview | 2013 | Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy |
| George Chow | Vancouver-Fraserview | 2017 | Minister of State |
| Shane Simpson | Vancouver-Hastings | 2005 | Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction |
| Mable Elmore | Vancouver-Kensington | 2009 | |
| Adrian Dix | Vancouver-Kingsway | 2005 | Minister of Health |
| Melanie Mark | Vancouver-Mount Pleasant | 2016 | Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Training |
| David Eby | Vancouver-Point Grey | 2013 | Minister of Justice and Attorney General |
| Spencer Chandra Herbert | Vancouver-West End | 2008 | |
| Carole James | Victoria-Beacon Hill | 2005 | Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance |
| Rob Fleming | Victoria-Swan Lake | 2005 | Minister of Education |