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VANCOUVER — British Columbians used to grumble - presumably many of them still do - that elections are decided well east of the province.
Once the votes were tallied in Quebec and Ontario, Canadians knew the coloration of their government, and roughly the size of its majority.
No longer. With Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives striving for a majority, but apparently still slightly shy of one as the leaders' debates begin tonight, B.C. might well play the role of heart-breaker or king-maker on Oct. 14.
Not many seats are in play outside the Lower Mainland, where the Conservatives and NDP both have strongholds they are unlikely to yield. But in and around Vancouver and the suburban municipalities - and in places on Vancouver Island - a bunch of seats are up for grabs.
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These seats, or most of them, are available for the Conservatives or NDP because the federal Liberal vote has collapsed, crushed by a combination of Stéphane Dion's leadership and his Green Shift proposal that includes a carbon tax in a province where an unpopular one is already in place.
Liberal seats on Vancouver's north shore, Vancouver Quadra, and even those in heavily multicultural ridings such as Richmond are all vulnerable. So, too, is Vancouver Centre, once again among the most fascinating in Canada.
Liberal MP Hedy Fry has never in Ottawa fulfilled the lofty expectations she brought in 1993, her first of five consecutive electoral victories. No matter. In Vancouver Centre, she's been unbeatable. Every election, she is deemed to be in trouble, only to confound the skeptics. Last time, she saw off Svend Robinson, the high-profile former NDP MP.
This time, though, she's running in the teeth of ill winds from the national campaign. And she's got two experienced politicians against her: two-term and popular Liberal MLA Lorne Mayencourt for the Tories and the Greens' deputy leader Adriane Carr. Michael Byers, a university professor, is the NDP candidate.
If things look generally bleak for the Liberals in B.C., luck just might hand them a seat they did not expect to win.
In Saanich-Gulf Islands, NDP candidate Julian West was forced to resign after allegations he had exposed himself to a group of girls 12 years ago. This riding belongs to Conservative Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn, who carries the can with environmentally conscious voters for the Tories' dilatory record on carbon emissions reduction.
With Mr. West's votes now up for grabs, Liberal Briony Penn, a well-known environmentalist, thinks enough of them will flow to her to beat Mr. Lunn. Here's a dilemma for NDP voters. Do they vote for their candidate, whose name is on the ballot even though he has withdrawn, or do they vote Liberal to defeat a Conservative minister?
Additional Conservative seats in B.C. might be what the party needs to get a majority. They took 18 seats last time with 37 per cent of the popular vote, and are thinking that 23 or 24 seats would be a good score in 2008. The NDP is trying to pick up enough disaffected Liberals to increase their score from 10 seats with 28 per cent of the vote in the last election. The Liberal vote, a respectable 26 per cent last time, has apparently been halved in this election.
As elsewhere, no one quite knows how big the Green vote will be, where it will come from and which party it will hurt the most. The Greens only drew 5 per cent of the popular vote in the last election. They will surely do better this time, what with the party being better organized, receiving more press and showcasing its leader, Elizabeth May, in the televised debates.
For Conservatives, parts of the Lower Mainland will provide an electoral test for the government's efforts to woo multicultural Canadians, especially Chinese-Canadians. The apology for the head tax imposed on Chinese-Canadians and the reduction in immigration processing fees are expected to help. Even more useful in these communities, Conservatives believe, will be their tough-on-crime and family-friendly policies of little tax credits for children, sports equipment and arts classes.
On Day 2 of the campaign, Mr. Harper flew all the way to Richmond for a photo-op in the backyard of a Chinese-Canadian family. The targeting of that riding, and the symbolism of that family, were quite deliberate.
