Could change in B.C. municipal elections echo in provincial vote?

It was a night of change for many municipalities across B.C. on Saturday night as incumbent mayors and most of their slates were voted out of office.

Former Surrey councillor Barinder Rasode said it appeared to be an election driven by a desire for change, not an ideological shift.

“It was a real indication and need for change on issues that matter to community around public safety, affordability and housing,” she said.

But for some, the unexpected results have them wondering if it is an indication of what might happen during the provincial election this Saturday.

“The shelf life of a successful government in Canada now is about 10 years,” Hamish Telford, University of the Fraser Valley political science associate professor, said.

Telford points out that civic voters made a change, but they went with familiar options.

“Pete Fry, longtime councillor in Vancouver, Doug McCallum, of course, former longtime mayor of Surrey, they were changing to what they perceived as a safe pair of hands,” he added.

“And I think some people still have question marks about the Conservative Party, if not about Lorne Doerkson himself.”

The results from Saturday still seem hard to predict, but Telford said, as voters saw with outgoing Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, it can backfire to run a negative campaign.

“You have someone right now who is denouncing police in this province,” Doerkson said at last Wednesday’s leaders debate.

On Sunday, BC Green Party leader Emily Lowan said: “David Eby called this snap election two years early for nobody but himself.”

On Monday, he called out three BC Conservative candidates – Brian Tepper, Heather Moss and David Williams – who Eby said are members of a separatist Facebook group called the BC Prosperity Project.

“They are enabling and legitimizing a fringe political project in British Columbia to try to separate us from Canada,” Eby said.

Telford said the negative attacks by the BC NDP may work in their favour.