Provincial Election 2020: Our Activities and Where Candidates Landed

While many called the Provincial Election “not necessary” or a “bad idea” during a global pandemic, the potentially record-breaking mail-in ballot requests and the high level of scrutiny placed on individual candidates for their views on everything from housing to policing to taxes to transportation to free contraception and how they feel about other candidates, seemed to tell a different story. Fraser Valley Realtors were there for all of it.

During the election campaign, volunteers on the Board’s Government Relations (GR) committee found themselves as much a part of the election as the candidates themselves. The group of Fraser Valley Realtors joined 10 virtual all-candidates’ meetings hosted by local chambers and the Surrey Board of Trade over a span of only three weeks. On some days, there were three election meetings in one day. Thanks to our volunteers, FVREB’s presence was felt in each meeting, through the delivery of opening remarks and questions on topical real estate issues directed at the candidates.

Hopefully, you were able to join them in one of the virtual events to help you decide on the candidate to support.

Preliminary FVREB area election results:*

Here are the key changes in our 16 ridings:

• Two of the Abbotsford ridings (Abbotsford-West and Abbotsford-Mission) look like they will remain BC Liberal territory, although there’s a close race in Abbotsford-Mission, where the BC Liberals’ Simon Gibson is leading the NDP’s Pam Alexis by less than 200 votes.

• The Abbotsford-South riding formerly held by independent MLA and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly Darryl Plecas looks like it will be filled by former City of Abbotsford Mayor Bruce Banman, representing the BC Liberals.

• The two Langley ridings are leaning NDP, with the BC Liberals’ Mary Polak poised to lose her seat to challenger NDP candidate Andrew Mercier in the Langley riding and Megan Dykeman of the NDP leading BC Liberal candidate Margaret Kunst by less than 800 votes.

• The Surrey ridings will continue to be represented by NDP MLAs except for the Surrey-South and Surrey-White Rock ridings, which remained with the BC Liberals. The Surrey-Cloverdale riding formerly held by incumbent BC Liberal candidate Marvin Hunt, will be represented by Mike Starchuk of the NDP.

* Here’s a list showing where the top three candidates in each FVREB area riding stand as of October 28, according to Elections BC. Please note that the successful candidate in some of the closer races (e. g. Abbotsford-Mission and Langley-East) could change once the final ballots (e. g. mail-ins) have been counted. The final election results are expected by the middle of November.

What’s next:

In the coming weeks, the GR volunteers will be preparing to hold the MLAs’ “feet to the fire” as noted by Joel Schacter, Director and Chair of our GR committee.

Source: FVREB Communications