- Incumbent: Michele Babchuk (2020)
- Candidates:
- NDP: Michele Babchuk
- Conservative: Anna Kindy
- Green: Nic Dedeluk
- Results:
- NDP – 51%
- Liberal – 24%
- Green – 19%
- Conservative – 6%
- Description:
- Despite her crushing 27-point win in 2020, one-term MLA Michele Babchuk may be the NDP’s most vulnerable incumbent on the Island. Encompassing the northern tip of Vancouver Island and a sliver of mainland BC in the Mount Waddington Regional District, the federal Conservatives edging out the NDP for first on the provincial boundaries is an ominous sign for the Dippers this go-around.
- Anchored by the forestry town of Campbell River, North Island has always been close, but no cigar for the BC Liberals. Federally, however, the seat has been traded back and forth between the NDP and whatever incarnation of the right dominates, be it Reform, the Canadian Alliance, or the Conservatives.
- What makes the seat so precarious for the NDP is that the BC Liberals always were somewhat rooted in the tradition of patrician urban intelligentsia, not the rough-and-tumble politics Rustad represents. In fact, the NDP got its highest share of the vote since the turn of the century in 2009, when then-leader Carole James ran a populist campaign based on axing Premier Campbell’s carbon tax while promising relief for resource sectors hard-hit by the Great Recession.
- Most ominously for the NDP, the Conservatives notionally won this portion of the federal North Island-Powell River riding in 2021. Furthermore, the NDP would have lost the entire federal riding outright in that election if you added the PPC’s votes to the Conservative total.
- The federal Conservatives smell blood too, and tapped content creator Aaron Gunn as their star candidate here last year. Known for his slick videos on Youtube where he highlights drug decriminalization and public disorder, his campaign surely has had some professional spillover provincially as well, boosting his counterpart, Dr. Anna Kindy.
- To oust Babchuk, Kindy will have to translate growing federal Conservative strength in smaller resource and fishery towns like Port Hardy and Port McNeil, and make sure not to just scrape by in Campbell River, but give the former city councillor for the area a good drubbing.
- As for Babchuk, she’lll have to hope her municipal experience still counts for something provincially, and make sure to recoup support from the Greens on Quadra Island and Cortes Island. Their fielding of Nic Dedeluk, a marine Coordinator for the Namgis First Nation, could slash into her margins on the reserves and make her task even more of an uphill battle. If North Island flips, it’ll be a harbinger of just how high the federal blue wave could crest.
Hugh Chan is a second year student at UBC studying International Relations and Data Science. You can find more coverage of the 2024 BC election as well as politics across East Asia and the Anglosphere at https://x.com/shxnhugh.
