New Brunswick, BC Voted for Change. How Will That Bode for Saskatchewan’s Election?

People enter a polling station in Vancouver to vote in the provincial election on Oct. 19, 2024. The Canadian Press/Ethan Cairns

The New Brunswick election saw the governing Conservatives trading places with the Liberal Opposition. In B.C., the governing NDP may have lost its majority government and it’s still unknown who will form the next government.

It remains to be seen what will happen in Saskatchewan’s Oct. 28 election.

In B.C., polls indicate it was kitchen-table issues and health care that were top of mind for voters, while public pressure ahead of the Oct. 19 election had led to reversal on some governmental social policy items such as drug decriminalization. Even incumbent NDP Premier David Eby said the rise of the Conservatives spoke to the “frustrations of a lot of British Columbians” on such issues as affordability and public safety, and he is vowing to “do better.”

Similar affordability concerns were present in the New Brunswick election as well, along with a focus on avoiding debt from both leading parties. Winning Liberal Leader Susan Holt’s first comments on her upcoming tenure as premier was noticeably about fiscal responsibility, making a commitment to deliver balanced budgets and to “watch the bottom line,” even as ahead of the election campaign her party had been distinctly vocal against the Progressive Conservative government’s school pronoun policies.

Incumbent New Brunswick Premier and PC Leader Blaine Higgs led a low-key campaign and lost his own seat in the Oct. 21 election. The election campaign also saw a clear divide between English and French voters, as francophones threw their support behind Holt’s Liberals.

Saskatchewan Party Leader Scott Moe (L) and Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck look on before a televised leaders’ debate in Regina, on Oct. 16, 2024. The Canadian Press/Heywood Yu

In Saskatchewan, many of the same cost-of-living and health-care issues as in the other two provinces are getting attention, while similarly some federal politics dynamics are also at play.

Royal Roads University associate professor David Black told The Epoch Times that in the case of B.C., the provincial Conservatives were buoyed by the popularity of the national Conservative brand.

“They have been elevated very clearly by what’s happening federally,” he said in an interview.

In Saskatchewan, where the incumbent Saskatchewan Party has been in power since 2007, leader Scott Moe has focused on building a reputation of standing up to Ottawa, including when his government stopped collecting carbon taxes on home heating last January. The two-term premier is vying for a third term after being sworn in six years ago.

Meanwhile, the Saskatchewan NDP has also made efforts to show itself as a party that will stand up to Ottawa for the province’s benefit, and has opposed the federal carbon tax. Leader Carla Beck is emphasizing to voters that it’s time for change, hoping to bring her party back to power after 17 years. The province is divided politically along rural and urban areas, with the former mainly supporting the Saskatchewan Party and the latter backing the NDP.

Simon Fraser University senior lecturer Sanjay Jeram says voters sometimes look at what’s happening around them and simply want change, spelling trouble for the incumbent.

“I don’t think people really know what the solution to their problems is,“ he said in an interview. ”They just want something different when they feel frustrated, which usually happens after a period of time when there’s one government and there are always problems. The perception of reality is never that ‘things are great.’”

New Brunswick Liberal Party Leader Susan Holt, holds the door for volunteers leaving her headquarters to knock on doors in her riding in Fredericton, N.B., on Oct. 19, 2024. The Canadian Press/Darren Calabrese

But fatigue with the status quo is just one of the elements in the Saskatchewan election, with a number of other issues at play, including proposed policies on key issues, party record, as well as how federal politics may influence the fortunes of provincial parties.

“Sometimes what happens federally really does matter, and there’s a kind of synchronicity, there’s a kind of affinity. And sometimes, as we see in New Brunswick, I think there is just a lot of dissatisfaction,” Black says.

Advance Polling

Advance polls in Saskatchewan began on Oct. 22, and if New Brunswick and B.C. are any indication, there could be sizeable numbers voting before election day. In B.C., a record 28 percent of registered votes were cast early. In New Brunswick, it was 24 percent.

The scholars are trying not to read a lot into those figures, saying that much of the change in voting behaviour comes down to convenience.

“I think it’s just people adapting to the fact that traffic is heavy and their weekends are busy, and advanced voting just makes good sense,” Jeram said.

Black agrees. “In Canada, voting has become more convenient, more accessible, easier to do,” he said, attributing it to “the complexity of people’s lives, where you can’t just stop everything on election day and go into a polling station.”

What Will Happen in BC?

The razor-thin outcome in B.C. has that province awaiting the results of recounts this weekend in the ridings of Juan de Fuca-Malahat and Surrey City Centre. And even though the NDP currently leads by one seat, B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad is hopeful, saying he is trying to form the next government in the belief that British Columbians want change.

But if the current seat distribution of 46 for the NDP, 45 for the Conservatives, and two for the Greens remains the same, it’s more likely that the NDP will reach an agreement with the fellow progressive Greens to remain in power, albeit with a minority government.

Jeram predicts “a reasonably stable agreement” between the NDP and Greens, with the NDP “very constrained” in its agenda “because of that Green influence.”

(Left) B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad. (Right) B.C. NDP Leader David Eby. The Canadian Press/Ethan Cairns

If so, the path ahead in the short term will be “not a lot of change, more or less the same,” he says.

On the other hand, he says, “the reality of the landscape is that if those two [recount] seats turn and the Conservatives get a majority, … we’re in for an interesting ride because we have a party that almost didn’t exist [that] is going to form a majority government.”

Besides the recounts in two key ridings, Elections BC said about 49,000 absentee and mail-in ballots have not been counted and will be included in the final count.