The Conservatives ran on faster approvals, lower taxes and more LNG, and a lot of business leaders have been asking for exactly that. But the new government hasn’t said concretely yet what it thinks it was elected to do, and the province’s finances are going to push hard on that answer over the next few months. I think the first year will reward the organizations that come in with answers to the government’s two biggest problems, what it’s for and how it pays for it.
The result
The Conservatives won a majority, 63 of 93 seats on Elections BC’s initial count, but they didn’t get there by winning over new voters. The NDP drew about 274,000 fewer votes than it did in 2024 and its share fell seven and a half points, while the Conservatives drew slightly fewer votes than last time, with mail and absentee ballots still to be counted. The Conservatives held their base and a big piece of the NDP’s stayed home or went elsewhere, and that’s what handed the Conservatives 20 NDP seats, most of them in Surrey, Burnaby, the Tri-Cities and Vancouver.
What they promised business
The platform is clear about where the government wants to go. It promised to approve major projects in 120 days or less, eliminate two regulations for every new one, and take the PST off business investment in machinery, tools and software for three years. It promised no new taxes for the life of the government and a $1,000 income tax cut for working British Columbians. It promised to double LNG production by 2032 and triple it by 2035, build a new Massey bridge and a new hospital in Surrey, and repeal DRIPA.
Companies in resources, energy and construction should expect a government that wants to say yes. What I’m less sure about is the order things happen in, and that comes down to the mandate.
Whose mandate is it?
Talk to ten people who voted Conservative this month, and you’ll get ten different reasons, public safety in Surrey and Richmond, costs and permitting for the business community, jobs in the interior, and for plenty of people just being done with the NDP. All of those are real, and they don’t add up to one mandate.
My colleague made a point this week that I keep coming back to. Governments elected on a wave like this often forget to declare what they think they were elected to do, and they lose the first six to twelve months working it out after the fact. There’s a second problem underneath that one. The Conservatives’ own platform costing has the province still running a $10.8 billion deficit in 2030. Add a tax cut and a pledge of no new taxes, and the first briefings from the finance ministry are going to say there isn’t much room to move. Nobody voted for austerity, but if the government doesn’t name its own mandate quickly, the books will name it for them.
For business, that makes the sequence important. A government under fiscal pressure moves first on things that cost little or bring in revenue, permitting reform, regulatory cuts and resource approvals, and it moves slower on anything that needs new provincial money.
How it pays to build
The infrastructure promised in this campaign, hospitals, schools, roads and transmission, doesn’t get cheaper because the government changed, and the province can’t borrow its way through it the way it has. I expect public-private partnerships back on the table quickly, after years of the NDP moving away from them, along with a lot more time spent chasing federal dollars. Putting Kim Henderson, a former deputy minister to the premier, in charge of the transition tells me the professionals are running the handover and the relationship with the feds will be a working one.
For companies in infrastructure, construction, energy and resources, that’s a real opening. It also means the government is going to want partners who come in with a financing model and not just an ask.
Permitting, and the DRIPA question
The 120-day approval target is the commitment clients ask me about most, and it’s the one I’d be most careful about planning around. Faster provincial timelines help, but the Crown’s duty to consult First Nations comes from the Constitution, and repealing a provincial statute doesn’t change it. A repeal without a replacement framework could send more disputes to the courts and slow projects down. I think the companies that get through permitting fastest under this government will be the ones that already have strong agreements with the Nations whose territory they’re working in, much the way major projects got built under the BC Liberals.
Who steers
This is a much bigger tent than it was in 2024. It holds former BC Liberals, people who joined to get away from the BC Liberals, and a business community that’s very excited to be in the room, and those groups won’t always agree on what comes first. The first cabinet will tell us a lot about where the power sits, who gets the economic portfolios, and how the metro MLAs who delivered the majority are rewarded.
What to do now
For companies with business in front of the province, a few practical things:
- Get to know the caucus now, the backbench included. The MLAs who took NDP seats in Surrey, Burnaby and the Tri-Cities will carry weight in a caucus that knows how it got its majority.
- Expect decisions to slow down before they speed up. New ministers need time to get briefed, and Budget 2027 in February will be the first real read on priorities.
- Frame your file around the government’s problems. If your project helps it build without new borrowing, brings in federal money, or creates jobs in a region that just elected it, lead with that.
None of this is a prediction that it goes badly. I think there’s a real window for companies that show up with solutions to the government’s problems rather than a list of their own, and the ones that help this government define what it was elected to do, and how it pays for it, will have a much easier four years.
Riding-by-riding results and the full Conservative platform are on BCPoliTracker, at bcpoli.gremble.io.
