Despite the new digital technology employed this time by Elections BC, we’re not going to know the official results of the provincial election for another week, as the “official count” needs to be conducted to verify the outcome in a pair of closely-contested ridings, which will determine who will take up government seating in Victoria.
The initial results following the general election on Saturday show the NDP leading by less than 100 votes in the ridings of Surrey Centre and Juan de Fuca-Malahat, which is too close to call at this stage, as all the absentee and mail-in ballots may not have been included in the initial count.
The official count of these, and every other riding, will take place starting Saturday, October 26th, and run for three days.
The final results are expected on Monday, October 28th.
Initial results show the New Democrats leading, or have won, 46 seats, one seat short of a majority.
The BC Conservatives are directly behind the NDP with control of 45 seats.
Of the 93 seats in the forthcoming Legislative Sessions, the BC Green Party holds two — meaning that Party will hold the “balance of power” when it comes to party-line voting in the House, should neither the NDP or the BC Conservatives capture a majority following the “official count.”
Kamloops-area ridings go Conservative
Saturday did see a ‘blue wave’ roll over Kamloops and the ridings adjacent to the city.
Incumbent MLA Peter Milobar, who ran as a BC Conservative after his BC United Party decided to back out of the election, took Kamloops Centre.
Barriere Mayor Ward Stamer was able to secure a solid victory in Kamloops-North Thompson.
Stamer says regardless of which side of the Legislative Assembly the BC Conservatives take up, the issues which resonated during the election are still there to be debated and worked on.
“Accessibility to health care. We’ve got a serious issue when it comes to housing. We’ve got a serious issue to affordability. We’ve got the opioid crisis. That’s not going to change whether we’re Official Opposition or government,” argued Stamer in speaking with Radio NL following his election victory on Saturday.
He does admit the prospect of a minority government is something which hangs in the air at the moment.
“One of the guys says, ‘Hey, do you want me to save all the [campaign] signs just in case?'” said Stamer. “I said ‘Well, we may have to!’ I really don’t want to have to go into another election in the next six months or a year.”
In the other ridings surrounding Kamloops, the BC Conservative momentum carried the day as well.
Lorne Doerkson, who was first elected as a BC Liberal in 2020 and was one of the original BC United candidates to switch allegiance to the BC Conservatives before the electoral collapse of BC United, easily held the redrawn Cariboo-Chilcotin riding, defeating his NDP challenger by a nearly 70-30 margin.
Cariboo-Chilcotin now encompasses communities west of Kamloops city limits, including Savona, Ashcroft and Cache Creek.
To the south of Kamloops, former Merritt councillor and mayoral candidate Tony Luck will be sworn-in as the new MLA for Fraser-Nicola, which was also redrawn this year to include Logan Lake. That riding was held by long time BC Liberal/BC United MLA Jackie Tegart, who decided not to run after BC United pulled out of the race.
East of Kamloops, David L. Williams will represent Salmon Arm-Shuswap in Victoria as a BC Conservative, despite being relatively unknown in local political circles in the riding.
In the North Okanagan, there was one closely-watched riding which the BC Conservatives failed to capture.
New Democrat incumbent Harwinder Sandhu will serve a second term in office, after narrowly defeating one-time Kamloops Centre BC Conservative candidate Dennis Giesbrecht by a a few hundred votes in the redrawn, and renamed, Vernon-Lumby riding.
Giesbrecht was tapped by the BC Conservatives to run in Vernon-Lumby, after the Party shifted him out of the Kamloops Centre campaign to allow Peter Milobar to contest the riding.
Sandhu, who was handily defeated by her BC Liberal opponent in her first attempt as an NDP candidate for provincial office in 2017, was able to flip the former Vernon-Monashee riding to the NDP in the 2020 election.
