The Conservative Party of B.C. owes outgoing NDP premier David Eby an eternal debt of gratitude, not for his governance, but for saving their movement and paving the way for the party to win a commanding majority Saturday night. The Conservatives are projected to win 62 seats to the NDP’s 29 as of 9 p.m. local time.
In September, Eby looked at a bitterly divided and demoralized Conservative opposition. He liked what he saw, and decided to call an election two years ahead of schedule. His own NDP caucus was rebellious, with many MLAs fed up with his approach to “reconciliation , ” among other files. One NDP candidate even confessed that Eby’s razor-thin majority before the election meant every MLA held a potential veto over the premier.
The NDP leader decided he would show everyone who the boss was, and went to the voters early. In effect, British Columbians were made into pawns in the premier’s performance review. By doing so, he seems to have solved nearly everybody’s problems except his.
Now, instead of a strengthened NDP majority, there will be a Conservative majority when the legislature resumes business in Victoria.
The Canadian right badly needed this win. After the 2025 federal election, many Conservatives remain haunted by their shattering defeat at the hands of Mark Carney’s Liberals. This came after they had already been denied the chance to deliver Justin Trudeau a well-deserved reckoning after he stepped down before facing voters a fourth time.
Young Conservative activists, clever staffers and loyal volunteers must have wondered whether their efforts would ever be rewarded. There was always another week of knocking on doors, manufacturing hope for a favourable poll and coming up with explanations to cope with the latest setbacks. People can only take so many defeats before it all becomes too much. Not this time, however.
Two days before Eby called the early election, then-Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay resigned after her leadership had sent poll numbers into a nosedive and driven MLAs out of caucus. Interim leader Lorne Doerkson was tapped to lead the chaotic Conservatives into the contest. Within 48 hours, nearly all recently departed MLAs returned to the fold, and the Conservatives were more or less united.
Eby forced them up against the wall, and the Conservatives became a tenacious fighting force, shelving their bickering to rally around their new leader. A few fringe third-party candidates continued to air their personal grievances, but it made little difference. Their former colleagues discovered that swallowing their pride and working together with discipline was preferable to further infighting. As many pundits like to write, the Conservatives saw an opportunity, and “pounced.”
Experienced organizers and frustrated federal talent converged on the West Coast. Former Poilievre staffers and local veterans helped unite the movement in B.C. around defeating the NDP.
Eby seemed almost eager to help them the entire time. When his attacks on U.S. President Donald Trump fizzled out, he turned on billionaire and B.C. legend Jim Pattison, the owner of Save-On-Foods, despite Pattison’s popularity in the province. Given Eby’s “B.C. Strong” campaign slogan, Pattison was a strange target, as the magnates is famous for philanthropy and dedication to the province.
When that attack failed, Eby decided to demonize personal-injury lawyers, who, he suggested, might make a buck from Conservative pledges to reform the insurance system. Not exactly a sound strategy when the NDP depends upon white-collar votes more than ever.
Then Eby discovered that British Columbians, annoyed by his early election call, were warming to the B.C. Greens and Emily Lowan, their energetic young leader. The premier repeatedly warned that voting Green instead of NDP would only split the vote. It turned out that Green voters had no issue with this proposition and resented being treated as unserious people whose only value was their votes.
Not content with that, the premier decided to question Doerkson’s patriotism in the final stretch of the campaign, because some of the Conservative leader’s staff belonged to controversial Facebook groups that included Alberta separatists. It was a classic guilt by association attack, which also failed to sway voters.
Eby tried to link the controversy to the deaths of four Canadian servicemen in a training accident at CFB Wainwright. Needless to say, standing on the graves of dead soldiers for partisan gain was an interesting move.
By the end of the campaign, the premier had made it clear just how many people he had a problem with: lawyers, businessmen, Albertans, Greens, Conservatives and more. Much like the failed campaign of ABC Vancouver in the local elections a week ago, the NDP seemed determined to make enemies wherever they could, rather than campaigning on their record. It paid off in spades for the Conservatives, including a generation that came of age in the post-Stephen Harper decade, an especially bleak period for the right.
Now, conservatives can walk with true swagger, having decisively defeated a powerful progressive government outside the traditional conservative heartland in the West. They have learned which quarrels can wait, how a coalition recovers and what happens when the desire to govern finally outranks the desire to police each other.
It has hopefully set an example for their friends across the country.
From the bottom of our hearts in B.C., thank you, Mr. Eby. You have served your purpose and may have just saved the conservative movement, and nobody will ever let you forget it.
May you return home to Kitchener and enjoy your retirement from politics in Ontario. British Columbians and Conservatives can take it from here.
National Post
Geoff Russ is a National Post columnist and a co-founder, with newly elected B.C. Conservative candidate Caroline Elliott, of opinion site Without Diminishment.
