North Island offers a case study for upcoming BC election

This article is part of a series by Canada's National Observer that will take a look at Vancouver Island's "ridings to watch" in the upcoming election. 

The North Island may well be a long held NDP stronghold but the recent spike in support for the BC Conservatives suggests a tight two-way race is in the making in the upcoming provincial election. 

With Campbell River acting as the main hub for several more northern rural communities, the riding is struggling with a housing crisis, emergency room closures, a high rate of toxic drug deaths and ongoing political tug-of-war over the fish farm and forestry industries. 

In a number of Vancouver Island ridings, it’s still murky who remains on the ballot. Many former BC United candidates have yet to declare a course of action after leader Kevin Falcon sacrificed his party to the Conservatives on Aug. 28, while others have opted to switch teams to run as Conservatives, dropped out, or even offered qualified support to NDP opponents. 

In the North Island riding, a BC United candidate wasn’t nominated before the party’s collapse, leaving the field to NDP incumbent Michele Babchuk, Conservative candidate Anna Kindy, and Green Nic Dedeluk. 

Election battle threatens NDP hold on North Island 

The North Island has been a stronghold for the provincial NDP since the 70s — save the unprecedented BC Liberal (later renamed BC United) sweep of the province under Gordon Campbell in 2001. Last election, Babchuk won handily with 51 per cent of the vote, while the BC Liberals garnered 24 per cent and the Greens secured 19 per cent. 

However, in the past, the race between the NDP and BC Liberals has been competitive; less so for the BC Conservatives. On occasions when BC Conservatives candidates made the ballot, their voter share topped out at 7 per cent. 

That is expected to change in this election. The province’s political landscape has radically shifted with the Conservatives’ ascent, said Michael MacKenzie, Vancouver Island University’s Jarislowsky chair in Trust and Political Leadership. Some of that support is based on the popularity of the federal party (which is not directly linked to Rustad’s provincial party), he explained.

“There is a legitimate concern that a lot of voters don't know exactly what the new BC Conservatives stand for, so I don't know how to interpret that support,” he said. 

All the candidates in the riding will try to pick up the sizeable contingent of now-stranded BC United supporters in the riding, MacKenzie said, but polls suggest a surge of support for the BC Conservatives following their rival’s implosion. 

The Greens garnered 20 per cent of the vote in the last election — a historical high point for the party with well-known fish farm opponent Alexandra Morton on the ballot. However, Green support typically ranges between about 7 and 11 per cent of the vote. 

It’s unlikely the Green Party will secure the seat given its support is strongest in the Island’s southernmost ridings, MacKenzie said. But they could potentially be a spoiler for the NDP in an extremely tight race, he added. 

“Now that BC United is not even an option for most voters, it's going to really affect the way that the votes are distributed between the parties,” he said. 

Rustad a threat to reconciliation: NDP

A former Campbell River city councillor and school trustee, incumbent MLA Michele Babchuk is running for a second term under the NDP banner. 

Babchuk said she’s not taking any voter support for granted and election results will be based on hard work by candidates.

“I’m not making any assumptions,” she said. “I’m just rolling up my sleeves and making sure that the constituents of this riding know what [the NDP] is doing and what we're continuing to do.” 

Housing, healthcare and affordability are top issues in the riding and rest of the province, she noted. 

However, continuing to advance the NDP’s 2019 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), the province’s rights and reconciliation framework, is critical in a riding that includes a significant number of First Nations communities, Babchuk said. 

BC Conservative Leader John Rustad has stated he’ll repeal DRIPA calling it an assault on private property rights, an assertion that Indigenous leaders the NDP and other political parties have lambasted as false and inflammatory. 

The Conservatives’ threat to repeal DRIPA in favour of a policy of “economic reconciliation” has the potential to unleash “chaos” in Indigenous communities, Babchuk said. She questioned how any notion of economic reconciliation could successfully be achieved by Indigenous people by repealing an act to define their rights and title. 

 “How, if you're not recognizing those individual rights and title and their ability to self-govern, do you expect to get to any sort of economic reconciliation?” Babchuk asked. 

The NDP has also made progress on housing, homelessness and healthcare in the riding and Babchuk warned the party’s progress and plans would be undone if the BC Conservatives were elected.

Through the B.C. government’s rental protection fund, eight apartment buildings, totalling 278 units in Campbell River and Port Hardy were recently purchased to protect affordable housing in the riding. A new primary care clinic was also recently opened in Campbell River to alleviate doctor shortages in the community. 

Healthcare and housing crisis intertwined: Greens

However, ongoing hospital emergency room closures continue to plague the ridings northernmost communities, particularly in Port Hardy, Port MacNeill, and Alert Bay, newly announced Green Party candidate Nic Dedeluk noted.  

While the hospitals in all three communities used to provide round the clock ERs, the long-term staffing crisis has left Port Hardy and Alert Bay without any overnight services for well over a year, forcing people from both communities needing urgent care to travel further to Port McNeill.  

The healthcare and housing crises are interlinked in the riding’s northern communities, Dedeluk said, noting the lack of available housing discourages medical professionals from practicing in the rural areas. 

The toxic drug crisis is also severely impacting North Island communities, added Dedeluk. Vancouver Island has the second highest toxic drug death rate in the province to date in 2024, the B.C. Coroner’s latest data shows. 

Island Health had an overall rate of 53 deaths, compared to 41 deaths at the provincial level. The rate of toxic drug deaths in North Island is even higher, with 78.7 deaths in the region per 100,000 people so far this year. 

In March, the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Nations declared a state of emergency on their reserve north of Port Hardy after 11 people died as a result of toxic drug and alcohol use. 

The removal for open net fish farms and forestry practices are hot button topics in North Island communities. Dedluk supports the ongoing removal of open-net fish farms to preserve threatened wild salmon stocks, and said she wants restorative forestry practices to be established. 

“We need to preserve highly productive, intact ecosystems within the forests,” Dedekuk said, adding it's necessary to regrow more forests to ensure ecosystems and the forestry industry thrive into the future. 

She’s aiming to convince wayward BC United voters to support the Greens, which has a strong track record of acting collaboratively with other parties and holding the government accountable, Dedeluk said.  

BC Conservative candidate MIA

BC Conservative candidate Anna Kindy did not respond to Canada National Observer’s repeated requests for an interview. 

Kindy’s profile describes her as a physician and addiction specialist who is a “a tireless advocate for the marginalised and stigmatised populations of the North Island.” 

Kindy, a public opponent to Covid-19 public health mandates and supporter of the “freedom convoy” movement, spoke at rallies in front of the Legislature in Victoria and conferences organized by the We Unify group, which regularly hosts contentious far-right figures for speaking engagements. 

Kindy also spoke at a protest outside the BC College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C. (CPSBC) along with doctors Stephen Malthouse and Charles Hoffe, both of whom have run afoul of the province’s regulatory authority for medical practice. 

Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer