B.C. voters get a look at their options in a pivotal debate before advance voting begins

Advance voting for the British Columbia election is set to begin Thursday on the heels of a pivotal leaders’ debate that was a prime opportunity to break a deadlock between the ruling NDP and their Conservative rivals, though political observers couldn’t identify an obvious winner.

NDP Leader David Eby and Conservative Leader John Rustad traded predictable shots about issues and character in the 90-minute televised debate on Tuesday night. But the real battle was for undecided voters, many of whom were left without a political home after the abrupt collapse of the Official Opposition party, BC United, in late August.

As British Columbians digest the leaders’ performances alongside their Thanksgiving dinners this weekend, both of the main parties still face a tough slog to the Oct. 19 finish line, according to experts.

Five take-aways from the B.C. election debate

“There’s no question they are close,” said pollster Greg Lyle, president of the Innovative Research Group and a former campaign manager of the provincial Liberal party, later rebranded as BC United. He said the Conservatives did not get a lift out of Mr. Rustad’s performance and that, given the strength of the NDP’s campaign machine, the election is now Mr. Eby’s to lose.

“What the Tories had to do was up their game and establish a ballot question, and I didn’t get a ballot question out of them.”

Mr. Rustad, who has been on the defensive in this campaign about some of his controversial views on vaccines, gun control and climate science, used the debate to portray a more moderate outlook, walking back his earlier comments that he regretted getting vaccinated for COVID-19.

But most of his airtime was devoted to painting a bleak picture of British Columbia after seven years of NDP government. Mr. Rustad, whose first campaign stop used a homeless encampment in a Vancouver park as a backdrop, opened his remarks with one of the signature Conservative issues: public safety related to the opioids crisis.

“When I look at what’s going on in British Columbia today, there are people dying on the streets, whether it’s from crime or with the drugs,” he said.

“I was on my way over here, and at the corner of Robson and Hornby, there’s an individual who died, and there’s emergency people rushing to this person who died from an overdose. This is the British Columbia that David Eby created.”

Official agencies including the coroner’s office could provide no record of such a death on Tuesday.

Such grim scenarios were a theme in Mr. Rustad’s attacks throughout the debate. He portrayed B.C. as a decaying province with crumbling health care, increasing unaffordability and spiralling, drug-fuelled crime: “In seven years, can anyone say anything is better in British Columbia?”

Green Leader Sonia Furstenau, whose party can at best hope to hold the balance of power should B.C. end up with a minority government, chided the Conservatives for their negative outlook.

“I feel like I live in a different place from John Rustad,” she told viewers. “His vision of B.C. is one that is dark and gloomy. We need a vision of hope.”

Mr. Eby was prepared to parry the Conservative Leader’s attacks on open drug use that spiked when his government introduced decriminalization of illicit substances. He said he cancelled the policy trial when it was apparent that it wasn’t working as intended, but insisted that Mr. Rustad’s commitments to gun owners will put public safety at risk.

“He will direct the police not to enforce federal gun laws that prevent abusers from accessing guns, that prevent gangsters from buying and selling handguns and semi-automatic weapons. It’s ridiculous. Now he says he’s going get tough on crime? Give me a break,” the NDP Leader said.

Gary Mason: In the B.C. leaders’ debate, Rustad failed to reverse the NDP’s momentum

On fiscal management, the two main rivals duelled over deficit spending. The NDP’s budget plan this year forecasts a record $10-billion deficit, and its promises in this election will boost that figure higher still.

Mr. Eby reminded voters that the Conservatives have yet to put a price on their campaign promises: “Where is your costed platform,” he asked Mr. Rustad. “How can we debate when you won’t say what you will cut?”

Mark Marissen, a long-time organizer for the BC Liberals, said that, with just a little more than a week until Election Day, Mr. Rustad has painted himself into a corner.

“They have been busy talking culture-war rhetoric, but they haven’t landed anything on Eby about the NDP’s fiscal management,” he said in an interview.

The NDP’s fiscal record should be a soft target, but with the expensive promises made during this campaign by the Conservatives, he said, that’s hard to exploit.

Sanjay Jeram, senior lecturer at Simon Fraser University’s department of political science, said he was surprised to see Mr. Eby stick with negative attacks on the Conservatives. But it seems to be working, he said, because the NDP appear to have more momentum at this point in the campaign; he predicts that the Conservatives will be running to catch up in the final days before the election.

“I’m not sure anyone won the debate,” Prof. Jeram said. “But Rustad was certainly not the winner.”