The first provincial by-election in more than three years will likely be held this fall and depending on its outcome it may signal whether we may be headed to a general election earlier than currently scheduled.
The next provincial vote is currently set for October 2028, but the by-election result in the riding of Abbotsford-Mission may open a spring election window for Premier David Eby (or firmly close it).
The riding is now vacant with the surprise resignation of first-time MLA Reann Gasper, who approached newly elected BC Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay with the offer to give up her seat to provide Findlay with a path to potentially gain entry to the legislature.
I’m not sure how many folks had Gasper on their bingo card when it came to MLAs willing to give up their seat for Findlay. After several MLAs turned down her request to give up their seat, it seemed entirely possible that Findlay could find herself shut out of the legislature for quite a long time.
But now Eby must call a by-election within the next six months. I suspect he will wait a bit before doing so because Gasper’s sudden resignation effectively increases his government majority in the house because the BC Conservatives will be down one.
The legislature fall session is set to begin October 5th and is scheduled to adjourn Nov. 26th. I suspect Eby will set an election date that will allow the victor to take his or her seat before it adjourns, likely in that last week. So perhaps he’ll be looking at a vote in late October or early November.
If history is a guide, the odds favour Findlay winning the seat. In this province, a sitting government usually loses more by-elections than it wins. Of the more than dozen by-elections that have occurred in this century, the government has won just five of them.
And the NDP has only won once in an Abbotsford riding. That happened in 2020, when the party took advantage of a five-candidate field and won with just 41 per cent of the vote as the combined BC Liberal/BC Conservative vote was more than 46 per cent.
In the 2024 election the NDP lost the seat because it went head-to-head with just one party – the BC Conservatives. Even though it increased its vote from 2020, the party lost by more than 2,600 votes.
However, the upstart CentreBC party is expected to field a candidate. It is positioning itself as a viable alternative to both the NDP and the BC Conservatives, and any votes its candidate picks up will come more from the Conservatives than the New Democrats.
And if a vote-split can occur once, as it did in 2020, it can certainly happen again.
Even if the NDP does not win the by-election, any evidence that shows CentreBC (and perhaps even OneBC, if it runs a candidate) eating into the BC Conservative vote may tempt Eby to take advantage of that kind of scenario and pull the election trigger in the spring.
Keith Baldrey is Global BC’s legislature bureau chief.
Keith.Baldrey@globalnews.ca
