VANCOUVER — Friday marks the 25th date of the BC provincial election, and the very last day of the province's municipal elections, as 'election-mania' enters its final stretch.
For those seeking to bring an end to it all a bit early, advance voting places open at 8 a.m. local time Friday and stay open until 8 p.m. through next Wednesday. Elections BC confirmed that voters do not require a specific reason to vote early and may cast their ballot at any advance voting place in the province, regardless of their home riding.
All three major party leaders have a set itinerary Friday.
NDP Leader David Eby opens the first day of advance voting with a stop in Coquitlam at 9:30 a.m., while interim Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson is in Port Moody at 10 a.m. Both ridings are NDP-held. Green Leader Emily Lowan is casting an early ballot in Saanichton at noon.
A Saturday double-header for civic junkies
If one ballot isn’t enough to satisfy your democratic appetite, Saturday offers a rare double feature. As municipal elections for mayor, council, and school board wrap up across the province, Vancouver election officials are already reporting a record-breaking 103,000-plus advance votes cast — obliterating 2022's total of 65,127.
Because provincial advance polls run straight through the weekend, several Vancouver polling stations will host both municipal and provincial voting under one roof on Saturday.
McIntosh, the second drop
The Conservative Party of BC announced Thursday afternoon that its candidate in Vancouver-Strathcona, Jordan Zheng McIntosh, will no longer be recognized as a Conservative candidate and will not sit in caucus if elected.
The party’s statement did not explicitly name McIntosh, but followed social media posts by the NDP's Vancouver-Quilchena candidate Callista Ryan sharing screenshots linked to McIntosh’s account.
The shared content included material referencing Hitler, the Holocaust, and a list of dates documenting slurs.
Following the announcement, the party’s online page for McIntosh returned a 404 error.
However, because official nominations closed on October 3, McIntosh’s name remains on the ballot unless Elections BC officially registers a formal withdrawal.
This marks the second candidate removed from caucus consideration by the Conservatives during the campaign, following a similar development involving Joachim Agou in the Victoria-Beacon Hill riding.
Both Vancouver-Strathcona and Victoria-Beacon Hill are amongst the safest NDP ridings in the province, meaning the ouster of Agou and McIntosh are, in and of themselves, likely to have a minimal outcome on the electoral results of those ridings.
Robinson asks why Eby was so emphatic about training that never happened
Former NDP cabinet minister Selina Robinson said Friday morning she has been trying to figure out why the premier chose to "lie" about antisemitism training for his MLAs. She called the question rhetorical. A Jewish community voice said she checked with the organizations that would have delivered it. They said the training was discussed and never took place.
Robinson posted at 7:52 a.m. PDT that she has been trying to figure out why David Eby “chose to lie about antisemitism training for all his MLAs.” She said he was emphatic about it and that the claim is easy to confirm as a lie. She called the “what was he thinking” part a rhetorical question.
The post quoted her own earlier one from Thursday morning: “Uh oh …. No one went through antisemitism training - I have been asking for this for years.”
Robinson left the NDP caucus in March 2024 after she said antisemitism inside it was one of the reasons. She had earlier resigned from cabinet over remarks about the land on which modern Israel was founded. At the time she said she had pitched antisemitism and anti-Islamophobia training for the caucus and that the idea was rebuffed. She has repeated the request since.
Lana Pulver posted Thursday evening that she had personally confirmed with the organizations involved that the training was discussed but never took place. She wrote that everyone in BC’s Jewish community needs to know Eby lied during the leaders’ debate when he claimed NDP MLAs had undergone it.
DRIPA has 'nothing to do with private property,' until you read it
Richard Zussman, the NDP candidate in Saanich South, posted Thursday that Green Leader Emily Lowan "is right" and that the BC Conservatives continue to push misinformation on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples' Act, more commonly referred to as DRIPA.
“DRIPA has nothing to do with private property,” he wrote unequivocally.
X’s Community Notes wasted no time applying a reality check.
Alternatively, anyone skeptical of Zussman's claim could simply read the legislation itself.
Article 26 of DRIPA plainly states: "Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired."
Article 27, meanwhile, says: "States shall establish and implement, in conjunction with indigenous peoples concerned, a fair, independent, impartial, open and transparent process, giving due recognition to indigenous peoples' laws, traditions, customs and land tenure systems, to recognize and adjudicate the rights of indigenous peoples pertaining to their lands, territories and resources, including those which were traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used. Indigenous peoples shall have the right to participate in this process."
The actual text of DRIPA is reasonably brief, and a reader can comfortably finish it, its attached UN schedule, and the relevant court files in a single afternoon. Conspicuously missing from the Act is any nice, tidy section explicitly carving out an exemption for private property.
To be clear, nothing in the Act creates a magical "cancel button" for your registered fee-simple land title. But common sense, and several impactful court decisions citing the legislation, point out that when you bind provincial law to a UN declaration that guarantees land restitution, private property will inevitably fall under the purview of the legislation (as it already has).
In the landmark Gitxaala decision, the BC Court of Appeal ruled that DRIPA incorporates UNDRIP directly into provincial law with "immediate legal effect," striking down BC’s mineral claims regime as inconsistent with the declaration.
Even Premier David Eby acknowledged the ruling’s heavy legal fallout saying it has "serious implications for the province."
Meanwhile, the Cowichan Tribes decision, which declared Aboriginal title over land that includes privately held fee-simple properties in Richmond, has all three levels of government scrambling to appeal.
Campaign soundbites like Zussman’s and Lowan’s offer a tidy, black-and-white narrative and absolute declaration that DRIPA has "nothing to do with private property."
However, the actual legislation, the UN declaration, and the court rulings that validated said legislation offer a far noisier and more complex reality that doesn't survive a basic reading of the law.
