A Liberal-Conservative coalition could foil B.C. NDP

B.C. New Democrats are leading in the polls. The ruling B.C. Liberals are in trouble. Resurgent B.C. Conservatives are splitting the centre-right vote. If all this holds until next year’s general election, the NDP coasts to victory.

It’s a neat narrative that may work out that way. But if history repeats itself in May 2013, there could be a huge wrinkle. Think 1941.

Political scientist Dennis Pilon revisited B.C.’s electoral past when he contributed a chapter to a pan-Canadian academic book expected to be out sometime in the fall. In it, the former University of Victoria faculty member demonstrates how politics in the province has been largely defined by how the right has formed coalitions to keep the left out of power.

“In 1941, the Liberals and Conservatives joined together into a coalition government, and they ruled the province in a coalition from 1941 to 1952,” Pilon recalled in a phone interview with the Georgia Straight from Toronto’s York University, where he is now an associate professor.

Unless Adrian Dix’s New Democrats win a majority of the 85 seats in the legislative assembly, 1941 could happen again.

If Premier Christy Clark’s B.C. Liberals and John Cummins’s Conservatives have enough seats to form a majority, “no question, they’ll govern,” Pilon said.

In the 1941 election, the left-leaning Co-operative Commonwealth Federation won the popular vote with a 33-percent share. However, neither that precursor of the NDP nor the B.C. Liberals and B.C. Conservatives at that time won a majority of the 48 seats up for grabs.

“The various ruling elites said, ‘Holy Toledo, what’s going on here?’ ” Pilon said. “And they very quickly put together a coalition. They ran as a coalition in 1945 and 1949 and easily won both elections.”

Cummins’s Conservatives acknowledge 1941, devoting an entire subsection to it in the party’s history posted on its website. According to this material, the Conservatives got three cabinet posts to the Liberals’ five in their shared government.

Pilon explained that coalitions like these took the form of either alliances between parties, like the one that took shape in 1941, or, mostly, single parties like Social Credit and the modern-day B.C. Liberal Party. According to him, these coalitions won 17 of the 20 elections fought between 1941 and 2009.

Poll results released in December by Forum Research Inc. show that the B.C. Conservatives are tied at 23 percent with the B.C. Liberals. Both centre-right parties trail the NDP, which is at 34 percent.

B.C. Liberal woes may go from bad to worse in the two by-elections expected this year.

The NDP recruited a popular politician, Joe Trasolini, former mayor of Port Moody, to represent the party in the by-election for the Port Moody–Coquitlam seat vacated by B.C. Liberal MLA Iain Black.

In another by-election, John Martin, a well-known Fraser Valley newspaper columnist and criminologist, will run for the B.C. Conservatives in Chilliwack-Hope.

John Dyck, an assistant professor of political studies at Trinity Western University, noted that a deeply divided right serves the NDP well, as the party didn’t gain much above 40 percent of the vote in B.C. the three times it won and formed a government, in 1972, 1991, and 1996.

During these years, the NDP had its biggest share of the vote, almost 41 percent, when Mike Harcourt led the party in the 1991 election, winning 51 of the 75 legislative seats in contention. In that contest, the B.C. Liberals earned 33 percent of the vote, and Social Credit 24 percent.

“As much as the Liberals and Conservatives right now are fighting for the same base, the NDP only makes an inroad into that base if, in fact, the other two parties don’t do well,” Dyck told the Straight in a phone interview. “They [NDP] have to have a split opposition in order for them to do well.”

The Trinity academic sees the same result Pilon does if next year’s election leads to a minority outcome. “It certainly would be much easier for the Liberals and the Conservatives to cooperate,” Dyck said. “It would be more likely that you could have Liberal minority government supported by Conservatives.”