A Tale of Two Provincial Elections: Saskatchewan and BC

Saskatchewan: A Long Term Shift to the Right?

There will be provincial elections held imminently in two western provinces, British Columbia on Saturday October 24, followed by Saskatchewan on Monday October 26. Historically, the two jurisdictions have been of great importance to the New Democratic Party. Saskatchewan was home to the breakthrough election of 1944 that brought Tommy Douglas to office and would eventually produce Canada's first public health care plans. 

Map of 1944 Saskatchewan Election

The CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) and NDP have held office for 47 of the 76 years since that win in 1944, while three parties with different names but all representing the political right have held office for just 29 of those years. However, over the past several elections support for the NDP has been steadily declining while the conservative Saskatchewan party has won overwhelming majorities of the constituencies in the Saskatchwan legislature. 

The polls in the current campaign so far suggest that while the NDP can expect some improvement in vote share, and could pick up some seats, the Saskatchewan Party remains headed for an a big victory. Originally the CCF represented agrarian socialism (as the map suggests) but the party soon shifted to the cities. 

A new Saskatchewan Party win would mean that Saskatchewan would be headed for 17 consecutive years of small 'c' conservative governance, far exceeding the length of previous right-wing regimes. It has been a complicated multi factor process but in part it reflects the consolidation of the conservative support in almost all of rural agricultural Saskatchewan except the far north, and Saskatchewan's shift to becoming an oil province (probably a sunset industry later in this century) and conscious of its status as such - it is among the provinces vigourously challenging the federal carbon tax. Conservative parties also hold sway in rural parts of Canada elsewhere.

Results of federal elections in Saskatchewan have paralleled the provincial results, with the Conservatives under the prevous Saskatchewan-based leader Andrew Scheer winning a share of votes and seats similar to Alberta in last year's federal election. 

The NDP may well turn a corner upward in this election but, given that all governments accumulate grievances, that is to be expected. However, the Saskatchewan of Dream No Little Dreams (a book I highly recommend) seems in the distant past. Indeed it seems more likely at the moment that we will see a new NDP government in Alberta before we see one in Saskatchewan.

British Columbia: Becoming a Canadian California?

About fifty years ago a book chapter on British Columbia was sub-titled The Politics of Class Conflict. BC's history is of an economy based on natural resources such as mining and fisheries that has been characterized by strong class-based conflicts between strong unions and antagonistic employers. The unions have supported political parties on the left expressing their interests. 

The old CCF never won office in BC - it was not until 1972 that the NDP won office for a single term. However, the political right was sufficiently terrified of the electoral prospects of the left to have formed a coalition government of the Liberals and Conservatives in the 1940s to keep them from winning. The Social Credit governments that followed were that same coalition reconstituted along slightly different lines. The most recent expression of the same coalition can be found in the B.C. Liberal Party governments that followed the defeat of the first two term NDP government, albeit winning elections under two different leaders (Mike Harcourt in 1991 and Glen Clark in 1996). Notably, although Glen Clark lead the NDP to victory in 1996, the party actually won a smaller share of the popular vote than the BC Liberals.

While the NDP has had limited success in BC compared to Saskatchewan, the 21st century is providing brighter prospects for the party. In part the older class-based politics has given way to a politics that reflects the multiple and overlapping strains of modern political culture, marrying traditional concerns about social and economic inequality to emerging issues like climate change and the demands for recognition and respect for the range of peoples that compose our increasingly diverse society. While these social trends matter enormously, one can never underestimate the importance of leadership.

John Horgan

The NDP in BC is poised to win the election and form a second consecutive government under the same leader for the first time on Saturday night. A key reason for this is that the BC NDP has one of the most talented political leaders on this continent in the person of John Horgan. I am increasingly of view that when it comes to politics experience matters most when it comes to picking leaders (we have just had a demonstration in the New Brunswick election of what happens when a party chooses a politically inexperienced neophyte as leader). Horgan brought to the job not just years of direct political experience dating from his first election in 2005, but also deep experience working as both a political advisor and public servant in the BC NDP governments of the 1990s. The people I know in B.C. who have had dealings with him have the utmost respect for him.

The BC NDP continue to lead the opposition Liberals and the Green Party in opinion polls: based on the latest numbers I have them winning at least 52 seats in the 87 seat legislature. Beyond Saturday's result we can see that BC has a coastal politics similar to the US states of Washington, Oregon and California, a politics that trends to the left. I wrote about this in 2017 when I said:

The blue state-red state trend in the U.S. is of relatively recent vintage (until the mid-nineties Republicans were strong in California), but the trend to more left of centre views (and growing green consciousness) is clearly characteristic of the coasts in both places. Can it be too many more years before the trends evident south of the border become typical of B.C.?

In contrast, the politics of the plains province of Saskatchewan are beginng to appear similar to American states directly to its south. The last election in BC produced a close overall result between the BC Liberals and the NDP but the Greens produced a stronger showing than before. There was a dramatic increase in the combined NDP-Green vote from the prior election in 2013. The Green Party do have roots in both left wing and more conservative politics, but in BC overall they lean much more left. That jump in the combined vote from 2013 to 2017 and continuing in 2020 is something we should expect to be a theme of politics in the 21st century. As for Saskatchewan, while the analogy is far from perfect, their US neighbour North Dakota, now a highly conservative Trump voting state, was once ruled by the Non-Partisan League, a left of centre radical agrarian politcal formation that captured the state's Republican Party.