BC Election: Green Has the Balance

As of tonight the recounts are fin­ished, the final results are in, and BC offi­cial­ly holds a Lib­er­al minor­i­ty gov­ern­ment along with an enor­mous tech­ni­cal win for the Green Party.

The chance of an elec­tion turn­ing out exact­ly as this one has is infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small, and yet it’s hap­pened. We’ve made history.

The Comox-Courte­nay rid­ing, which denied a major­i­ty for the Lib­er­als, went to the NDP by an ini­tial mar­gin of 9 votes, lat­er con­firmed as 13 votes dur­ing final recount, and final­ized as a 189-vote NDP lead once the absen­tee bal­lots were tallied.

With the Lib­er­als hold­ing 43 seats in the Leg­is­la­ture, the NDP hold­ing 41, and the Green Par­ty hold­ing the remain­ing 3, this puts the Greens in the unprece­dent­ed posi­tion of being the ful­crum on which any gov­ern­ing mat­ters will stand.

The priv­i­lege of being in such a posi­tion essen­tial­ly lends the Greens a huge mega­phone. Being the decid­ing vote on leg­isla­tive work brings a stronger bar­gain­ing posi­tion when it comes to doing good for this province, our res­i­dents, and our shared envi­ron­men­tal lega­cy. It also brings enhanced oppor­tu­ni­ties to build a stronger polit­i­cal track record and can­di­date port­fo­lio, shape the par­ty into more of a house­hold name, and hope­ful­ly secure addi­tion­al seats in future elec­tions if all goes well.

It’s not easy being green, but it’s an amaz­ing time to be Green … so con­grat­u­la­tions, fel­low Green vot­ers and par­ty mem­bers, wear it well!

This post also would­n’t be com­plete with­out heart­felt thanks to every sin­gle per­son who went out and vot­ed, regard­less of affil­i­a­tion. Being part of the polit­i­cal process is absolute­ly vital to the health of our democ­ra­cy and the progress of our future, and if ever there was a time to be remind­ed of the pow­er of the indi­vid­ual, 2017 has tru­ly show­cased this in the most amaz­ing of ways.