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In the last fundraising quarter before the snap British Columbia election, the Conservative Party of BC raised nearly three times as much money as the then-governing BC NDP.
In the three months that ended Sept. 30, the total for the Conservatives was more than $2.7 million.
That dwarfed the $986,093 the NDP raised and the $345,803 the BC Greens raised in the same period.
The reporting period includes the summer months but also the first nine days of the provincial election campaign.
Former premier David Eby visited Lt.-Gov. Wendy Cocchia on Sept. 22 to ask her to call the provincial election two years ahead of the fixed election date. Two days earlier, former Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay had resigned and the official Opposition was scrambling to get organized.
Nearly 90 per cent of the money came in to the Conservatives after Findlay departed and Cariboo-Chilcotin MLA Lorne Doerkson became interim leader.
“Once Lorne was leader the money started pouring in,” said Andrew Reeve, a senior consultant with the government relations firm Earnscliffe and a former BC Liberal press secretary.
The increase in donations after Findlay’s resignation is striking, Reeve said, adding that he understands the money kept flowing in through October. “That shows Conservatives made the right choice in ousting Kerry-Lynne Findlay. It brought them not only electoral success, but also fundraising success right off the bat.”
With the final count not due until Nov. 18 and some ridings still close, preliminary results have given the Conservatives 63 of the legislature’s 93 seats.
The fundraising numbers also show “a massive wipeout for the NDP,” Reeve said.
In the comparable period in 2024 ahead of that year’s fixed election date, the two main parties each raised more than $3 million. While the Conservatives came close to matching that figure this year, NDP donations dropped sharply.
“The [election] results show what can happen when people come together for a common purpose,” Doerkson said Monday to open a caucus meeting in a Victoria hotel ballroom.
The campaign is over and the focus is now on governing and representing everyone in the province, he told the MLAs. “The people who voted for us, of course, the people who voted against us and the people who didn’t vote at all, we represent every one of them.”
Priorities he cited include fully funding public health care, no new taxes, PST exemptions for small businesses, repealing the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, building infrastructure, encouraging LNG development and supporting forestry.
“People don’t expect perfection from government,” Doerkson said. “They expect honesty, they expect effort and they expect their government to do what it said it will do.”
MLAs will be sworn in on Nov. 19 and the cabinet will be announced on Nov. 20. There is talk of a short legislature session in early December, but it is so far unconfirmed.
Doerkson has appointed Kim Henderson, the deputy minister to Christy Clark when she was premier, to head the transition to government.
His chief of staff will be Dimitri Pantazopoulos, who served as deputy campaign manager and has previously worked in Clark’s office, as well as for former prime minister Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day, Preston Manning and Rob Ford. ![[Tyee]](/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png){kind=small}
Read more: BC Election 2026, BC Politics
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