Elections BC has released the full list of candidates running in the B.C. provincial election, which will be held October 24.
Candidate nominations closed October 2. There are a total of 332 candidates running for 10 political parties, and 24 independents.
Only the NDP and BC Liberal Party are running a full slate of candidates in all 87 ridings. The Green Party is running candidates in 74 ridings.
For the first time since the 1950s, it appears the Social Credit Party, which once dominated B.C. politics, is fielding no candidates.
The full list of candidates came out Saturday, the day after the NDP published its full slate of candidates, which the party says reflects its commitment to diversity and gender equality.
Fifty-three per cent of the NDP candidates are women, a quarter are “persons of colour,” five are Indigenous, three disabled, six from the LGBTQ community and four are youth.
Fringe parties running a handful of candidates in the election include the Communist Party of BC, Christian Heritage Party and Wexit BC, a western separatist party.
The Green Party is fielding no candidates in a number of rural, resource-dependent ridings, like Peace River and Peace River South, Skeena and the Stikine.
In three urban ridings, it will be a two-way race, with only Liberal and NDP candidates running: Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows, Richmond South Centre and Surrey-Green Timbers.
For the first time since the 1950s, Social Credit Party, which once was B.C.'s main conservative party in B.C., is fielding no candidates, and appears to be officially defunct.
The party dominated government from the 1950s to the early 1990s, when it collapsed and never really recovered. It did at least manage to register and field candidates in provincial elections, including in 2017. But it is fielding no candidates in the fall election.
The full list of candidates can be found here.
