Conservative Party of British Columbia
The Conservative Party of British Columbia, commonly known as the BC Conservatives and colloquially known as the Tories, is a provincial political party in British Columbia, Canada. Since 2024, it has been the main rival to the governing British Columbia New Democratic Party and forms the Official Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.
In the first half of the 20th century, the Conservatives competed with the BC Liberal Party for power in the province. During this period, three party leaders served as premier of British Columbia: Richard McBride, William John Bowser, and Simon Fraser Tolmie. Royal Maitland and Herbert Anscomb served as deputy premiers, both during the coalition governments of the 1940s. The party's influence diminished in the second half of the century, with the Conservatives having only a minor presence in the legislature after the 1950s, not having elected a member of the Legislative Assembly in a general election from 1975 to 2024. The party saw a resurgence under John Rustad's leadership, who was originally elected as a British Columbia Liberal Party MLA in 2005 before being expelled from the Liberal caucus in 2022. In the 2024 provincial election the party won the second-most seats in its best electoral performance in 72 years.
History
Founding and early years
The Conservative Party of British Columbia was formed in 1900 as the Liberal-Conservative Party, before the province officially embraced partisan politics. The party selected Charles Wilson as its first leader. Several opposition factions contested the 1900 general election against the non-partisan government, but these were generally loose affiliations. In 1902, the Conservative Party convention passed a resolution to stand candidates in the next election.Party government was introduced on June 1, 1903, by Premier Richard McBride, when he announced the formation of an officially Conservative government. McBride believed that the system of non-partisan government that the province had until that point was unstable and inhibiting development. His Conservatives won the 1903 election, the first fought on the party system, earning a two-seat majority in the British Columbia Legislative Assembly over their rivals, the Liberal Party, as well as various Socialist and Labour MLAs. The Conservatives generally implemented policies mirroring the priorities of the national Conservative Party, which at the time favoured government intervention to help develop industry and infrastructure.
The Conservatives under McBride and his successor, William John Bowser, held power for 13 years until they were defeated by the Liberals in the 1916 election. In November 1926, the Liberal-Conservative Party formally changed its name to the Conservative Party.
Tolmie government and crisis
The Conservatives returned to power in the 1928 election under the leadership of Simon Fraser Tolmie, winning 35 of 48 seats in the Legislature. The Tolmie government was confronted with the Great Depression, and was wracked by infighting and indecision. The party was in such disarray that, despite being in power, the Conservative provincial association decided not to run any candidates in the 1933 election. Instead, each local association was left to act on its own, endorsing some candidates who ran as Independents, some as Independent Conservatives, and so on. Those supporting Premier Tolmie ran under the 'Unionist' label, while others grouped around former premier William John Bowser and ran as part of the 'Non-Partisan Independent Group'. When Bowser died and the elections in Vancouver Centre and Victoria City were postponed, four Non-partisan and two Unionist candidates withdrew.The Conservative Party rebounded under Frank Porter Patterson to run a near-full slate in the election of 1937, however they were only able to elect eight MLAs, just one more than the growing Co-operative Commonwealth Federation caucus. In the election of 1941, the Conservatives were able to win 12 seats, compared to 21 for the Liberals and 14 for the CCF. Members of the province's business community, who feared the growing strength of the democratic socialist CCF, urged the Liberals and Conservatives to form a wartime coalition government to ensure stability. Then-Conservative leader Royal Maitland agreed, while then-Liberal Premier T.D. Pattullo was opposed; however, Pattullo was forced to resign by his own party in late 1941. John Hart replaced him as Liberal leader and premier on the promise to form a coalition, and did so, making Maitland Deputy Premier and Attorney General shortly thereafter.
Coalition years
In 1942, the BC Conservative Party rebranded as the BC Progressive Conservative Party, following the lead of the federal party. Maitland and Hart served throughout the remainder of World War II and continued their partnership past, running a joint ticket in the 1945 election and winning a majority government of 37 out of 48 seats. However, Maitland died suddenly in 1946 and was replaced by Herbert Anscomb, who became Deputy Premier and Finance Minister in the coalition government. When Premier Hart retired in 1947, the Conservatives pushed for Anscomb to succeed him as Premier, but the Liberals, who had more members in the coalition caucus, insisted that the role remain with a Liberal. Byron Johnson was appointed Premier a short time later, but the conflict strained relations between the two parties and leaders going forward, and caused internal divisions to open up within the Conservatives.The PCs were riven into three factions: one led by Okanagan MLA W.A.C. Bennett, who called for the Liberals and Conservatives to fuse into a single party; a second faction that supported the status-quo; and a third that wanted Anscomb to simply lead the PCs out of the coalition. Meanwhile, the Liberals were beginning to doubt that they needed the fractious Conservatives to govern. The coalition was re-elected in the 1949 election, winning 39 seats against nine for the CCF opposition, but despite this, growing divisions within the Conservative Party resulted in Anscomb's leadership being challenged at the 1950 party convention. Bennett, who had moved over to the anti-coalition faction, quit the party and crossed the floor to sit as a Social Credit League of British Columbia member, eventually forming the BC Social Credit Party.
In January 1952, the Liberals decided to dissolve the coalition, with Johnson summarily dismissing his PC ministers, including Anscomb; they continued forward as a minority government. The Conservatives properly re-founded their party and went into the 1952 election with the goal of unseating Premier Johnson.
Decline
Prior to the 1952 election, the coalition government, whose entire reason for being had been to keep the CCF out of power, introduced an instant-runoff voting system. The assumption behind the change was that business-oriented voters would keep the democratic socialist party out of power through their secondary choices, regardless of the split between the former coalition partners. However, the Social Credit League, led by Albertan Ernest George Hansell, won the most seats in the election, while the two former coalition partners fell far behind. The PCs won only four seats, not including Anscomb's Oak Bay constituency. Two months later, former Tory W.A.C. Bennett would take control of the Socreds; he dropped the party's social credit monetary reform policy in favour of traditional and populist platforms.It was clear to those who wanted to keep the CCF out of power that only the Socreds would be able to accomplish that task; as such, business-oriented voters left the old parties behind. Having a majority government following 1953, the Social Credit government changed the electoral system back to first past the post in order to cement its base. Social Credit became, in effect, the new centre-right coalition party, and both the Liberals and the Conservatives became marginalized.
Wilderness years
Between the 1956 and 1972 elections, the Conservatives won no seats in the Legislature; as a result, the party began to dwindle. After 1960, the party would not run a full slate of candidates again until 2024. Deane Finlayson served as leader from 1952 until 1961, eventually handing the reins to federal Member of Parliament Davie Fulton. Fulton led the party to a brief surge of relevance in the 1963 election, winning 11% of the vote but no seats, with even Fulton falling far behind his Socred opponent in the Kamloops constituency. Fulton left soon after, returning to federal politics while the BC Conservatives collapsed into ruin. The Party ran only three candidates in the 1966 election, and just one, then-party leader John de Wolf, in the 1969 election.In 1971, former Socred MLA Scott Wallace, who represented Oak Bay, crossed the floor to join the PCs; he became the party's first MLA in 15 years. The PCs earned nearly 13% of the vote in the 1972 election and two seats—Wallace's and Hugh Curtis in Saanich and the Islands, both in the Victoria area. The election was won by the CCF's successor party, the New Democratic Party, who took advantage of the split between the Socreds, Conservatives, and resurgent Liberals to form a majority government.
Wallace was elected leader of the party in 1973. However, in 1974, his caucus mate Curtis left to join the Social Credit caucus, answering a call by new leader Bill Bennett to reunite the 'pro-business' vote. Wallace was able to win his own seat in the 1975 election. However, he resigned in 1977 and returned to his medical practice shortly after. Wallace's successor in Oak Bay and the party leadership was the last Tory MLA to be elected. Vic Stephens won the seat in a 1978 by-election, but lost in the following year's general election campaign.
During this time, with most of their voters in BC supporting Social Credit, the federal Progressive Conservative Party kept its distance in order to avoid alienating Social Credit Party supporters. When the federal and provincial election campaigns overlapped in 1979, federal leader Joe Clark made obvious efforts to avoid any contact with Stephens. The Conservatives returned to the political wilderness in the following years. For a brief stint in 1986, former NDP MLA Graham Lea crossed the floor to sit as a PC MLA, but quit politics altogether following the dissolution of the Legislature for the 1986 election.
In 1991, the party changed its name back to the BC Conservative Party. However, the party was unable to gain traction during the collapse of the Socred government in the 1991 election and the subsequent re-alignment of BC politics. The party ran only a handful of candidates between 1991 and 2005, as the pro-business voters of the province moved en masse to the BC Liberals.