B.C.’s advanced polls open as Conservatives say a costed platform is coming soon

British Columbians have started voting in the provincial election without the release of a costed platform from the B.C. Conservatives, whose leader says it will be announced “imminently.”

Interim leader Lorne Doerkson said at a Metro Vancouver campaign stop on Friday that he has seen the platform but wants to make sure they’re aren’t going to promise anything the party “can’t make happen.”

“We’re working on it, but I want it to be right,” Doerkson said while in Port Moody, B.C.

“I want the numbers to be right and I want to know with an absolute clear conscience that the things that we are promising British Columbians in that platform, we will be able to achieve.”

Doerkson said earlier this week that British Columbians would see a “fulsome plan” from the party before voters go to the polls, although advance polls opened Friday through to Wednesday before election day on Oct. 24.

The provincial New Democrats led by David Eby and Emily Lowan’s BC Greens both released their costed platforms earlier this week.

Doerkson said he wants to avoid what Eby’s New Democrats did by breaking promises after the last election, such as a doctor for every resident who wants one and giving people a $1,000 rebate.

“None of those things happened, and our deficit is now $14 billion,” he said, explaining the delay on his party’s costed platform.

The B.C. campaign is entering its last full weekend before the election, and all three major party leaders made pitches to voters on Friday to secure votes in key swing ridings.

Doerkson’s stop in Port Moody included doubling down on his party’s plans to build a women’s and children’s hospital in Surrey, along with scrapping the Massey Tunnel replacement between Delta and Richmond in favour of a bridge.

The Conservatives have also pledged to cut income taxes by up to $1,000 a year “for nearly every working British Columbian,” Doerkson said, as he criticized the former NDP government on a range of topics, from emergency department wait times and affordability to small businesses being “strangled by taxes and red tape.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way, you guys,” Doerkson told the gathering at the campaign stop. “David Eby has a record of devastating this province. We have a plan to build British Columbia, and we have a plan to build it back so that people can afford to make life in this place where we are so lucky to call home.”

Eby, making an NDP campaign stop nearby in the Metro Vancouver city of Coquitlam, said Friday that the Conservatives are unwilling to share their plans to make cuts by not releasing a costed platform.

The New Democrat Leader said the Conservatives’ promises would cost $5 billion and they have not explained how they would pay for it.

“Now, you might think to yourself, ‘Well, that’s weird, why wouldn’t he explain it?'” Eby said, referring to Doerkson.

“It’s not that he doesn’t know the answer. He knows the answer of how he’s going to pay for that $5 billion. He is going to pay for it the same way that conservative parties in B.C. have always paid for these promises, by cutting the services that you and your family depend on.”

The NDP made a series of promises Friday on what a re-elected Eby government would do, including bringing in urgent primary care centres in Greater Victoria and Port Hardy, expanding involuntary care to the Okanagan Correctional Centre in Oliver, and building a new middle school in Coquitlam’s Burke Mountain neighbourhood.

Eby also criticized a Conservative candidate in the swing riding of Juan de Fuca-Malahat for comments about B.C.’s treaties with First Nations.

Video appeared to show Mike Hicks saying “in law, we have to conquer or sign a treaty with the First Nations.”

“We just arrived, we settled in, and we didn’t do any of it,” he appeared to say, explaining the need for treaties.

Hicks said his comments were being taken “out of context.”

The Conservatives had one day earlier removed another candidate, Jordan McIntosh in Vancouver-Strathcona, for alleged online comments about Hitler and the Holocaust.

Eby said Hicks’ comments show Conservatives’ extremism, with Hicks responding that he “inartfully” explained B.C.’s need “for developing modern treaties” as time was running out on his answer.

Green Party Leader Emily Lowan scored a major endorsement on Friday as Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip stated his support for her in the Saanich North and the Islands riding.

Phillip’s wife Joan was elected and served as an NDP member of the legislature before she died this summer, and he had been a strong supporter of the New Democrats in the 2024 provincial campaign.

Later in the day, Phillip announced he is endorsing Eby as “the best choice as leader of this province.”
“I’m deeply honoured to have the support of my friend Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, one of our strongest champions for justice,” Eby said in a statement.

“I look forward to continuing our shared work toward a future rooted in respect, true partnership, and meaningful reconciliation.”

Lowan also became the first major party leader to vote in the race, casting her ballot in the Vancouver Island community of Saanichton, B.C., on Friday.

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