BREAKING: Eby drops the writ for Findlay’s Abbotsford-Mission by-election

PENTICTON - Premier David Eby called a by-election Saturday in Abbotsford-Mission, setting final voting day for September 26 and giving Conservative Party of BC Leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay a four-week campaign to win the seat Reann Gasper resigned for her a week ago.The Office of the Premier posted a bare information bulletin at 10:30 a.m. It named the riding, the date and the vacancy. It offered no quote from the premier..Findlay has been leading the Official Opposition from outside the House since she won the party leadership on May 30. She was acclaimed as the Conservative candidate on August 25. If she wins, she would be in a position to take her seat when the legislature returns this fall.Gasper, the riding’s first-term MLA and former deputy whip, informed the Speaker of her resignation on August 22. She said the choice was hers alone..“This is my decision. No one asked me to make it,” she wrote. “We need to defeat the NDP and form government.” She has since been named deputy chief of staff in Findlay’s office. Her salary has not been disclosed..Abbotsford-Mission was carved out in the 2008 redistribution from pieces of Abbotsford-Clayburn, Chilliwack-Sumas and Maple Ridge-Mission. It first went to the polls in 2009. The map straddles the Fraser: northeastern Abbotsford neighbourhoods including Clayburn and Ridgedale on the south bank, and the City of Mission plus Hatzic on the north.Statistics Canada counted about 59,300 people in the district in 2021 across only 88 square kilometres. It is dense by Interior standards and mixed by Fraser Valley standards — family subdivisions, agricultural edges, Mission’s older urban core, and a large daily commute out of Mission toward jobs down-valley and into Metro Vancouver.The electoral history is short and it has already flipped twice.Randy Hawes, the former Mission mayor, won it for the BC Liberals in 2009. Simon Gibson held it for the same party through 2013 and 2017. Pam Alexis, another former Mission mayor, took it for the NDP in 2020 with 41.07% against Gibson’s 38.12%, with the Greens at 10.57% and the then-tiny Conservatives at 7.88%.Hawes, who had come back as president of Gasper’s riding association, quit the party on August 24. He called Findlay’s demand that MLAs surrender seats “very wrong,” noted that Findlay lives in South Surrey and did not ask her husband — Surrey South MLA Brent Chapman — to step aside, and described the new leadership as “a huge step to the far right.” He said he would work to keep her from becoming his MLA and hoped a centre vehicle would appear..The Conservatives won 44 seats on October 19, 2024. Since Findlay’s May 30 victory the sitting caucus has been cut to the low 30s by resignations, removals and floor-crossings, with Gasper’s vacant seat counted separately. Peter Milobar left August 14. Paton left August 24. Bird left August 25. Teresa Wat and Brennan Day left August 26. Bruce Banman, in neighbouring Abbotsford South, left August 27.Eby called the by-election seven days after Gasper’s letter reached the Speaker — well inside the six-month window the law gives him, and on the shortest practical 28-day calendar. Final voting day is a Saturday, as required.No other party had named a candidate by Saturday afternoon..The NDP’s obvious conversation is a rematch with Alexis, who still lives in the area and remains the last person to have won the riding for the government. She has not said whether she will stand. The Greens took more than one in 10 votes here in 2020 and sat the 2024 race out; they have not signalled a 2026 candidate as of publication..OneBC holds a single seat in Vancouver-Quilchena and has no announced Fraser Valley project at this time either.Prospective independent candidates can file a standing nomination with Elections BC before the election is called. The formal ordinary nomination period begins once the writs are issued and runs until the statutory nomination deadline..The exceptionally and atypically transparent voting data provided from the BC Conservative leadership race offers some early insights into Findlay's electability in the riding.In the May 30 Conservative leadership vote, Abbotsford-Mission cast 290 ballots. Findlay took 98 of them — 34.03 points on the party’s 100-point riding scale — ahead of Caroline Elliott (68 / 23.61), Iain Black (53 / 18.40), Yuri Fulmer (52 / 18.06) and Peter Milobar (17 / 5.90). Across Fraser Valley North she led on the first ballot with 37.1% of points.There will be challenges, nonetheless.Findlay has to introduce herself in a riding she does not live in, on a compressed calendar, while her remaining MLAs keep answering questions about who is leaving next.The NDP, meanwhile, has to decide whether to spend a month trying to knock off the opposition leader in a seat the party lost by 2,629 votes 22 months ago, or treat the date as a chance to bloody her without expecting to win.

BREAKING: Eby drops the writ for Findlay’s Abbotsford-Mission by-election

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