David Eby's BC election gamble

Frequency podcast network. Stories that matter. Podcasts that resonate. British Columbians are heading back to the provincial polls. David Ebe, B.C.'s incumbent NDP Premier, is pulling the trigger two years ahead of schedule, framing his choice to call a snap election as a response to threats from the U.S. But his main opposition is

in chaos. Turmoil within B.C. conservative ranks has led to an exodus of MLAs in recent months and the sudden resignation of recently elected leader Carrie Lynn Finley over the weekend, raising questions about E.B.'s motives. I'm Karen Seolin and today on The Big Story I'm joined by Shannon Waters, B.C. politics and

environment reporter at the narwhal to discuss why the NDP says an election is justified, whether the BC Conservatives have a fighting chance and if David E.B.'s big bet will pay off. Shannon, welcome to the big story. It is about to be a very busy time for you, so really appreciate you taking time out of your day for this.

Happy to do it. It seems like BC politics is almost always having an interesting time, So and this week is definitely one of the more remarkable ones that I have ever covered. So David Ebe's already got a majority. He has two years left on a mandate.

How is he explaining right now to British Columbians why in the world he's calling an election? The justification mostly has to do with U.S. President Donald Trump. And when he lashes out at another Canadian industry, whatever it is, we will stand

shoulder to shoulder, because this isn't happening far away anymore. It is right here at home. There were multiple mentions of, you know, threats to Canadian sovereignty, as well as the sort of specter of American-style politics making their way into Canada and B.C., and an explicit effort to sort of tie B.C.'s conservative parties. There are now a few of

them operating on the right side of BC's political spectrum to tie those parties to Trump. He said that BC's conservatives have been cozying up to Trump, that they would, you know, concede to the president's demands, and basically that British Columbians have a choice to make. They can either be satisfied with giving in to the demands and threats that the US president has made,

the implication being that a BC Conservative government or a Conservative party getting into power in BC would do that. Or they can pick the NDP who plan to continue working with the federal Canadian government and with Prime Minister Mark Carney and standing up for BC and Canada's interests and pushing back on sort of this American trade aggression that we've been experiencing.

I just want to quickly follow up on one point you made there, the fact being that there are now several parties that could fall under that BC Conservative umbrella. For those of us who may need a refresher, could you just get us up to speed on the unraveling of the BC Conservatives and the state right now of that splintering caucus? I can try with the caveat that a lot has

happened in the past week, and given that this is pre-recorded, there may have been some changes by the time listeners are hearing this. So the BC Conservatives very nearly formed government here in BC in 2024. They were under Leader John Rustad at the time, and it was a young party, a party that, you know, sort of surged in the polls and really gave the NDP a run for its money. There was

a very bare majority government that came out of that 2024 election. Since then, John Rustad has exited the party as leader. He resigned in December and there was a leadership race earlier this year. Now, Carrie Lynn Findley, who has served as a federal conservative cabinet minister as well as a conservative MP here in BC, won that leadership race at the end of May. Her leadership

was quite brief and it was very chaotic. Multiple MLAs from the conservative caucus left or were ejected by leadership in the, I think it was 113 days that she spent as leader and they lost somewhere around a dozen MLAs. It was kind of fluid over that period of time. And just last week, on Thursday, Findlay was adamant that she was not going anywhere. She was staying on as leader

despite calls for her resignation from members of her caucus. And then on Sunday, she resigned. So the Conservatives were going into a looming snap election call that came to fruition on Tuesday. Leaderless, they have since pulled in an interim leader, Lauren Dirksen. He's the MLA for caribou, Chilcotin. He's seen as sort of a milder, less incendiary, shall we say, leader,

and since Dirksen came in as leader, several of the MLAs who had either exited or been ejected from the caucus have come back. But not all of them. So when the BC conservatives formed, another party in BC has been sort of sitting on the sidelines for a while, center BC. They're They're kind of the remnants of the BC Liberal, BC United party that the Conservatives superseded,

shall we say, in the last election. They haven't had any sitting MLAs. The members who have been sort of moving in and around the party have been former BC United MLAs, people who served as BC Liberals.

But on Friday, several of the MLAs who had left the BC Conservative caucus announced they were joining Center BC, including one who was going to take over as leader Peter Millibar. So they made this announcement in Vancouver, hey we're going to run if there's a snap election under the Center BC banner, and then Findley resigns. And then we hear that almost all of the

MLAs who said they were going to run for Center BC are going back to the BC conservatives except for one, Eleanor Sturco. She actually left the conservatives before, or before Carrie Lynn Findley became their leader. She's kicked out by John Rustad. And she is now serving as the leader of Center BC. So we have Center BC with a incumbent MLA as leader. We have the BC

Conservatives with an interim leader, also an incumbent MLA, and several members who have returned to the Conservative fold. And then we also have the existing One BC party,