B.C. election campaign officially begins

Last Updated: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 | 2:34 PM PT

CBC News

NDP Leader Carole James and MLA Spencer Herbert spent Tuesday morning in Vancouver. (CBC)

The campaign for the May 12 provincial election in B.C. officially got underway Tuesday afternoon after Premier Gordon Campbell visited Government House in Victoria to ask Lt.-Gov. Steven Point to dissolve the legislature.

But the two main parties have not been waiting for the official election call: campaign ads for the BC Liberals and the NDP have been running since the new year, and many aspiring politicians spent the Easter long weekend campaigning.

This will be the second time Campbell and NDP Leader Carole James have faced off in an election, following the BC Liberals' win in the 2005 election.

A veteran observer of the B.C. political scene said the traditional right-left polarization that has characterized the province's politics for decades is disappearing, and the two major parties have both moved to the political centre in the run-up to the election.

Retired professor Norman Ruff of the University of Victoria said both the BC Liberals and the NDP have been quietly moderating their stands on key issues over the last four years.

"We tend to characterize B.C. politics as being sort of highly, highly polarized, and you know, still traces of an old ideological division," Ruff told CBC News on Monday.

BC Liberal party supporters were out in Vancouver on Tuesday morning as Premier Gordon Campbell prepared to visit the lieutenant-governor in Victoria to officially launch the provincial election. (CBC)

"But both parties have become more small 'p' pragmatic than their activists give them credit for," said Ruff.

In fact, the parties have been trying to outflank each other on key issues such as violent crime. The NDP, which traditionally has talked more about attacking the root causes of crime, now wants more police on the streets and more prosecutors in the courts and have denounced the BC Liberals for closing courthouses and jails.

The BC Liberals, who were once very skeptical about the Kyoto Protocol, have since embraced the idea of fighting climate change and aggressively cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The BC Liberals also fought the Nisga'a treaty when they were in opposition, but now after eight years in government Campbell has proposed entrenching aboriginal title in law.

"It's quite remarkable the U-turns we've seen with the Campbell administration," noted Ruff.

Greens propose B.C. police force

The move to the political centre by the two main rivals in B.C. politics has left some room on both the right and left sides of the political spectrum for smaller parties and dissidents, Ruff noted.

The Green party launched its election campaign into the centre of the political debate this election, with a call to replace RCMP detachments across the province with a new B.C. police service.

Green Leader Jane Sterk said the RCMP E Division contract, which covers B.C., should be scrapped because the recent deaths of Ian Bush and Robert Dziekanski while in RCMP custody show the Mounties are not accountable to the public, operate outside of civilian oversight and cannot self-assess complaints.

Sterk also believes the federal and provincial governments should not support funding for a new $80-million RCMP E Division headquarters in Surrey, just three years before the province's contract with the federally run police force is up for renewal in 2012.

More seats and 2nd referendum

Electing a new government won't be the only task facing B.C. voters on May 12. There will also be another chance to vote in a referendum on the proposal to adopt a single transferable vote (STV) system of preferential balloting for the next election.

The STV concept was narrowly rejected in the 2005 general election, prompting the government to agree to hold another referendum in this election.

Supporters say a preferential voting system provides a more accurate result, but detractors believe it will replace accountable, locally elected MLAs with less accountable regional representatives.

In addition, during the last election there were 79 seats in the B.C. legislature, but redistribution has created six new ridings for a total of 85 across the province for the coming election.