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Ninety-Eight Years Later the Conservatives Return and Victoria City Hall Loses Its Patron


By Arthur McInnis
Oct 28, 2026

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The Last Time

On August 21, 1928, Simon Fraser Tolmie became premier of British Columbia. He was a veterinarian and farmer born in Victoria, a genial and popular figure, and he sat for Saanich. His Conservatives had just taken 35 of the legislature’s 48 seats.

The Depression finished him. The party had never been bound by much beyond office and the rewards of office, and when those ran thin it split. By 1933 it did not even field candidates under its own name. Tolmie’s supporters ran as Unionists, and William Bowser, the leader Tolmie had replaced, led a separate non-partisan group. Duff Pattullo’s Liberals took power. Tolmie died in Victoria in 1937, the last Conservative premier BC would have in the twentieth century.

From 1941 to 1952 the Conservatives sat as junior partners in a coalition with the Liberals, an arrangement that kept the CCF out of government. When the Liberals dissolved the coalition in 1952, Social Credit won that year’s election, and under W.A.C. Bennett it took over the free-enterprise vote.

For roughly seventy years after 1953 the Conservatives never won more than two seats, and from 1979 to 2020 they won none at all. The right in this province belonged first to Social Credit and then to the BC Liberals.

Revival and Civil War

In 2024 that changed. BC United, the renamed Liberals, suspended its campaign and stepped aside for John Rustad’s Conservatives. A party that went into the election with eight seats came out with 44, and David Eby held on with a one-seat majority.

Then the Conservatives repeated 1933.

On December 4, 2025, Rustad resigned after 20 of his 39 MLAs said they had lost confidence in him. In May 2026 the membership chose Kerry-Lynne Findlay, who ran on “faith, family and freedom” and beat Caroline Elliott by about two percentage points in the final round.

Findlay lasted 113 days. Thirteen MLAs left or were thrown out of caucus, some of them to a new party called CentreBC. On September 18 she expelled Rustad, former interim leader Trevor Halford and MLA Claire Rattée. Two days later she resigned.

The party board turned to Lorne Doerkson, MLA for Cariboo-Chilcotin. He had been a newspaper publisher, financial planner, Rotary president and rodeo announcer, and as a young man a bareback rider, which cost him broken bones and a dislocated shoulder. He was elected as a BC Liberal in 2020 and joined the Conservatives in 2024. The party constitution barred an interim leader from running
for the permanent job.

Eby’s Catastrophic Gamble

With the opposition in pieces, Eby moved. On September 22 he called an election for October 24, less than two years into his mandate, and framed it as an existential moment in the face of Donald Trump’s trade war.

I argued at the time, in the Times Colonist and in a letter to the Lieutenant Governor, that a provincial writ dropped into the middle of 160 local campaigns would drown them out. Local voting day was October 17, and the provincial vote came one week later.

The election did not unfold as Eby planned. On the day he called it, Findlay’s husband, MLA Brent Chapman, left the Conservatives for OneBC. That same day seven CentreBC MLAs returned to the Conservative caucus. Doerkson stood in front of a reunited party and called Trump “the bully south of the border.” The NDP spent much of the campaign pointing out that its opponent was only an interim leader.

On election night the preliminary count gave the Conservatives 64 of 93 seats, the NDP 27 and the Greens two, with about 48 per cent of the popular vote going Conservative. The final count is in November. Doerkson walked out to Fleetwood Mac and told his supporters the province was “definitely blue.” Eby rightfully resigned as premier and NDP leader in the same speech. He had called the election hoping for a stronger mandate and lost government instead.  This is his legacy.

The last Conservative majority in British Columbia was won in 1928. The next one came 98 years later handed to them by Eby and the NDP.

Victoria Votes the Other Way

Victoria hardly moved. On October 17 it re-elected Mayor Marianne Alto, returned five incumbents to council and added three newcomers.

A week later every provincial riding that takes in part of the city stayed NDP. Victoria-Beacon Hill, Victoria-Swan Lake, Oak Bay-Gordon Head and Esquimalt-Colwood. The Greens’ two strongest second-place finishes anywhere in the province were here, with 40 per cent in Beacon Hill and 35 per cent in Swan Lake. The nearest Conservative gain was Saanich South.

The capital is now represented entirely by the opposition, in a legislature that sits within its own boundaries. Not ironic at all. Unsurprisingly there may be more to it than we know. One hopes time will tell.

The Loop is Broken

For two years I have written about what Gene Miller called the Ebycrats; namely, a council majority whose agenda and personnel ran straight into the provincial government. The Mayor’s spouse has been a deputy minister in Social Development and Poverty Reduction, the ministry whose downloaded responsibilities Victoria kept agreeing to absorb. The Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, Christine Boyle, is married to Seth Klein, whose “wartime mobilization” economics I traced through our reserve draws and a proposed 10.44 per cent tax increase. In 2022 the BCGEU and the Victoria Labour Council endorsed an identical slate of seven, and six of them won. In Vancouver you could see the money. In Victoria you could only see the results.

That arrangement depended on both ends. On Saturday the provincial end was cut. Boyle is no longer a minister, and the whole cabinet is being replaced. Deputy ministers serve at the premier’s pleasure, and Doerkson did not appoint any of them. The BCGEU no longer has allies in cabinet, although its local election machinery is untouched.

What Changes

Council loses its cover on housing

Its new Official Community Plan allows four to six storeys across most of the city, well beyond the Province’s small-scale multi-unit rules of up to four units on most lots and six near frequent transit. In 2024 the Conservatives promised to repeal Bill 44 unless a municipality wanted to keep it. If the new government follows through, council can no longer dishonestly say the Province made it do this. It will have to defend those heights as its own decision, which they always were.

Street disorder becomes a dispute between governments

Doerkson campaigned on ending open drug use in BC’s towns and cities and on amending the Mental Health Act so that police can connect people with involuntary care. Victoria’s council has been moving toward day spaces for unhoused residents, the subject of its October 8 motion. Expect provincial money to come with conditions council will not like.

Downloading gets harder

For years the City took on provincial responsibilities and paid for them out of your property taxes, with a sympathetic ministry on the other end of the line. That is over. Either the Province takes those files back and runs them its own way, or it stops paying for Victoria’s version. If it stops, council can raise taxes again, draw down reserves it has already drawn down, or cut.

The restraint arrives here first

The new government inherits a forecast deficit of $13.8 billion, against the $5.7 billion surplus projected when Eby took office in 2022. Any trimming of the public service lands hardest on the city that houses it, in its downtown, its office buildings and its assessment roll.

The region drifts too

Saanich South has gone Conservative and Stew Young is back as mayor of Langford. Victoria’s directors may find themselves outvoted more often at the CRD on who pays for what.

The Bill Comes Due

For nine years this council governed as though the Province would always be there to absorb the consequences. It downloaded provincial problems onto local taxpayers, mortgaged its reserves to an agenda it did not have to answer for, and mistook proximity to power for a mandate. That proximity is gone. What remains is a $13.8 billion provincial hole, a government in the legislature that owes Victoria nothing, and a council that will now have to explain its choices in its own name. This council did not have provincial costs forced on it. It volunteered for them, without objection, almost eagerly, then sent the bill to Victoria’s property taxpayers. It can keep volunteering, but it will no longer be doing a favour for friends.

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See also:

Ebycrats by Arthur McInnis – CRD Watch Homepage