For every winner in politics, there are always multiple losers, and not all of them are political parties.

Indeed, in the Oct. 24 provincial election it was clear that not only were multiple political parties on the losing side of the ledger – the B.C. Liberals being chief among them – but also that significant aspects of public-policy debate were crushed under an avalanche of “woke”-era political correctness.

Discussion of current affairs close to the heart of practising Catholics, including assisted suicide, taxpayer-funded abortion, contraception as a new social program, and gender identity, was either completely absent or deemed beyond the pale.

The most notable example of the latter was the dismissal by the B.C. Liberals of Chilliwack-Kent incumbent candidate Laurie Throness. The episode bears close examination.

Speaking about the New Democratic Party’s pledge to provide free contraceptive drugs to the public, Throness told an all-candidates  meeting, “It contains a whiff of the old eugenics thing where, you know, poor people shouldn’t have babies. And so we can’t force them to have contraception, so we’ll give it to them for free.”

Lost in the political class’s unanimous condemnation of his observation was any examination of its veracity. The truth is, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger did advocate the use of birth control to limit the population of the lower classes.

“Birth control does not mean contraception indiscriminately practised,” she once wrote. “It means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society.” This is clearly an argument for eugenics.

Throness ended up running as an independent and at press time narrowly trailed NDP candidate Kelli Paddon with a large number of ballots still to be counted. 

Throness’ rationale for staying in the race is telling, especially in light of the uncertain future of the B.C. Liberals. “Chilliwack-Kent voters deserve a viable small-c conservative MLA who is unafraid of the freedoms of speech and religion, who embraces the thousands of social conservatives in this riding as well as social liberals,” while advocating for “free-market and affordable government solutions to public-policy issues,” he said.

Essentially what Throness was arguing for is the classic big-tent, centre-right coalition that was first assembled in B.C. in 1941 by way of a formal Liberal-Conservative coalition, then reanimated by the Social Credit Party, and finally manifested by the B.C. Liberal Party.

However, under leader Andrew Wilkinson, the B.C. Liberals have clearly veered left on social issues, leaving social conservatives with no viable party to place their allegiance – the minuscule B.C. Christian Heritage Party (CHP) and the moribund B.C. Conservative Party both playing an inconsequential role in the election results.

B.C. Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson voting in the Oct. 24 election. Under Wilkinson, “the B.C. Liberals have clearly veered left on social issues, leaving social conservatives with no viable party to place their allegiance,” writes Terry O’Neill. (CNS photo/Jennifer Gauthier, Reuters)

Little wonder, then, that voters such as Marc Vella, the president of the Christian Civic Affairs Committees of Canada felt as if his vote was deliberately suppressed by the major parties. “So I, myself, didn’t vote B.C. Liberal for the first time in my life,” the St. James, Abbotsford, parishioner told The B.C. Catholic. “Nor did I vote, obviously, NDP. I actually spoiled my own ballot. I just didn’t feel there was a viable option.”

Political scientist John Redekop, a Mennonite who is past president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and a current adjunct professor at Trinity Western University in Langley, observed that many Catholics and Protestants felt as Vella did and decided not to vote – hence a record-low voter turnout of just 52 per cent in the election. “They weren’t happy with either of the major parties, and that’s why the turnout was so low,” he said in an interview.

Prominent B.C. Liberal Rich Coleman, who represented Langley for 24 years until his retirement last month, agrees that the B.C. Liberals need to rebuild their centre-right coalition. “I think the important thing, now that the election is over, is we take a breath,” Coleman, a parishioner at St. Nicholas in Langley, told The B.C. Catholic. 

“We go and reach out again to our conservative friends and – I’m a conservative, so it’s not hard – so people will have this realization, and I think we’ll make it back together.”

Long-time B.C. Liberal MLA Marvin Hunt, who finished second to an NDP candidate in Surrey-Cloverdale in the election, believes meaningful discussion about issues important to social conservatives is still important and needs to be addressed in the party’s renewal process.

“The issues haven’t changed, and the importance of the issues hasn’t changed,” Hunt, an ordained Christian minister for a Foursquare Gospel congregation, told The B.C. Catholic. “But what has changed is how the media and society are dealing with them, because in today’s counterculture you can’t raise an alternative perspective. Or if you do raise an alternative perspective, you are about to get run off the planet. 

“I believe there’s lots of people that still hold those positions but keep quiet about it now. They don’t fight because they know there’s such a barrage of – I have to use the word ‘hate’ – that’s going to come after them, so they just keep their mouth shut.”

But for every person calling for a commitment by the B.C. Liberals to renew the centre-right coalition by making the party more welcoming to conservatives, there are at least as many – including party members – arguing the opposite. Leading the way has been Jas Johal, a former broadcaster and defeated one-term MLA from Richmond, who told reporters that the party needs to become more diverse, more urban, and more supportive of the rights of homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, and others.

Left-wing political commentators were of similar voice. Writing for The Tyee, Tom Hawthorn declared, “A party that is too male, too white and too clearly uninterested in the life of people without stock (whether in a safe deposit box in the city or on the range in the Cariboo) took a shellacking. Rebuilding will be hard, as the Liberals are saddled with out-of-touch social conservatives. Is there a conversion therapy capable of making Laurie Throness love all God’s children?”

Raising the spectre of a permanent division of the centre-right, NDP loyalist Bill Tieleman told the same website that in the wake of Wilkinson’s post-election resignation as B.C. Liberal leader, the party “will have to find not only a new leader but a new approach if they wish to govern again – and avoid a significant split into two factions: federal Liberals versus federal Conservatives, or alternatively, fiscal conservatives vs. social conservatives.”

As always, the future is uncertain. For faithful Catholics looking to see their core beliefs reflected in a viable political party’s policies, many variables exist. The B.C. Liberals’ leadership race and its “renewal” certainly hold some promise. The CHP could develop into a meaningful alternative, perhaps by dropping the word “Christian” from its mantle while maintaining its core values. It’s an option that Vella says he has heard discussed in CHP circles. And then, with an eye to similar developments throughout the Western world, there’s always the possibility of a populist conservative party arising from the margins.

The Christian Heritage Party could develop into a meaningful alternative, perhaps by dropping the word “Christian” from its mantle while maintaining its core values, says Terry O’Neill. (Christian Heritage Party)

For now, though, British Columbia will be governed for the next four years by a majority NDP government led by a TV-friendly leader who is widely seen to have led the province well during the COVID-pandemic crisis – even if, in calling the snap election, he did break a solemn power-sharing commitment to the Green Party, bulldoze through the province’s fixed-election-date law, and dissemble about the need to go to the polls during the pandemic.

Welcome to B.C. politics.

Terry O’Neill is a journalist and a parishioner at St. Joseph’s, Port Moody.