British Columbia New Democratic Party - The 1990s

The 1990s

The New Democratic Party governed BC for nine and a half years, winning two back-to-back general elections in 1991 and 1996 before being defeated in 2001. Although the party's majority was reduced in 1996, it was nevertheless able to triumph over the divided remnants of the Social Credit Coalition. In 1991, due in part to Social Credit's scandal-plagued final term in office under Premier William Vander Zalm and in part to the stellar performance of then–British Columbia Liberal Party (BC Liberals) leader Gordon Wilson in the televised leader's debate, the old Social Credit vote split between the BC Liberals, which garnered 33% of the vote and BC Social Credit Party with 25%. This allowed the BC NDP, under the leadership of former Vancouver mayor Michael Harcourt, who had succeeded former leader Bob Skelly in 1987, to win with 41% of the popular vote (one percentage point lower than the share the party had lost with in 1986).

Whereas Harcourt's first two years in government were characterized by a notably social democratic policy agenda, the government took a dramatic turn to the right in 1993 with Harcourt's famous province-wide televised address in which he lashed out against "welfare cheats, deadbeats and varmints". This speech inaugurated a set of draconian welfare reforms enacted between 1993 and 1995 similar to those adopted by new Progressive Conservative provincial governments elected in Alberta and Ontario in the same time period. These cutbacks were, in part, a reaction to a dramatic reduction in federal transfer payments by the federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and concommitant repeal of the Canada Assistance Plan bill of rights which included a right to food and a right to shelter. Unlike the reforms of the Harris and Klein governments, the BC Benefits package of cutbacks and restrictions in social assistance eligibility was bundled with a childcare bonus paid to low- and medium-income families, similar to that recently enacted by the Harper government. While unpopular with the province's anti-poverty movement and the then-marginal BC Green Party, Harcourt's reforms were well received by the vast majority of British Columbians.

Three months before BC Benefits was introduced by the Harcourt government, a protracted conflict began with the elements of the province's environmental movement. Harcourt's Peace in the Woods pact which brought together traditionally warring environmental groups and forest workers' unions began to collapse when Harcourt's cabinet exempted an environmentally-sensitive area of Vancouver Island, Clayoquot Sound, from its province-wide mediation process for land-use conflicts, CORE (the Commission on Resources and the Environment). This touched off logging road blockades in which over 800 people were arrested and alienated of some key environmental leaders such as David Suzuki and Colleen McCrory who shifted their support to the Green Party in the 1996 provincial election.

Although low in the polls for much of his term in office, Harcourt and his newly-appointed Attorney-General Ujjal Dosanjh succeeded in regaining substantial public support by taking a hard line against a fringe aboriginal group's occupation of a farmer's field in the Cariboo region of the province. The Gustafsen Lake siege, led by Dosanjh became the largest-scale police operation in BC history, in which armoured vehicles and anti-vehicle mines were deployed and thousands of rounds of ammunition were shot at protesters.

However, less than 72 hours before a planned election call, with the BC NDP riding high in the polls for its hard line against welfare recipients and aboriginal and environmental radicals, the party's provincial office was raided by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers as part of an ongoing investigation of illegal use of charity bingo money, coined "Bingogate" by the media, by former provincial cabinet minister and member of parliament Dave Stupich. Although Harcourt was not implicated in either the raid or the probe and was later fully exonerated, he resigned nevertheless and the party was led into the 1996 provincial general election by Glen Clark.