A full head trans­plant is the most chal­leng­ing polit­i­cal oper­a­tion per­formed in a par­lia­men­tary sys­tem of gov­ern­ment, one in which a par­ty can exe­cute a smooth tran­si­tion in pow­er or come apart and doom itself in the next election..

The left-lean­ing New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in British Colum­bia faces a lead­er­ship con­test after pop­u­lar B.C. Pre­mier John Hor­gan announced that he is leav­ing the job he has held four five years and will not run for the Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly of B.C. in the next provin­cial elec­tion. Hor­gan, six­ty-three, has come through a bout with throat can­cer but decid­ed that he does­n’t have the ener­gy or reserves for a mul­ti-year com­mit­ment to the jobs of par­ty leader and Premier.

British Colum­bia Pre­mier John Hor­gan speaks at a press con­fer­ence in Feb­ru­ary of 2019 (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Long in oppo­si­tion, the New Democ­rats used to be a par­ty aligned with orga­nized labor, with a base on Van­cou­ver Island and in coastal pulp mill towns.

The par­ty has expand­ed that base under Horgan’s leadership.

The NDP has won leg­isla­tive seats on the North Shore above Van­cou­ver, in the Fras­er Val­ley and in sub­ur­ban Richmond.

The par­ty has a “bench” of capa­ble Cab­i­net min­is­ters to con­test its upcom­ing lead­er­ship con­test – par­ty mem­bers will select the premier’s suc­ces­sor – but must put in place a pre­mier who will con­nect with vot­ers in the fash­ion of the avun­cu­lar, acces­si­ble Horgan.

The province’s free enter­prise coali­tion, once the Social Cred­it Par­ty and now the (not very lib­er­al) Lib­er­als, have a his­to­ry of come-from-behind elec­tion victories.

A look at the front bench: The crown has put a lot of weight on the shoul­ders of David Eby. Eby, forty-four, is Attor­ney Gen­er­al and Hous­ing Min­is­ter. He was once direc­tor of the B.C. Civ­il Lib­er­ties Association.

Eby entered pol­i­tics in 2013 by upset­ting then-Pre­mier Christy Clark in her home rid­ing (the Cana­di­an term for a dis­trict) of Van­cou­ver-Point Grey. (Clark had to go through a by-elec­tion in the Okana­gan to get back in the Assembly.)

David Eby speaks with sup­port­ers prepar­ing to go can­vass­ing in the province’s best-edu­cat­ed rid­ing, ahead of the 2013 elec­tion in which he defeat­ed Christy Clark (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Eby is every­where. He has cleaned up a man­age­ment mess in the Insur­ance Cor­po­ra­tion of British Colum­bia, offered rebates to ICBC cus­tomers and moved the province toward no-fault auto insurance.

He has reformed elec­tion financ­ing, evening a play­ing field long dom­i­nat­ed by cor­po­rate Van­cou­ver. He launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into use of British Colum­bia for mon­ey laun­der­ing through the province’s casinos.

British Colum­bia recent­ly took the lead among Canada’s province’s in secur­ing a $150 mil­lion (Cana­di­an) set­tle­ment – “the largest set­tle­ment of its kind in Cana­di­an his­to­ry,” in Eby’s words – with Pur­due Phar­ma Cana­da over its man­u­fac­ture and pro­mo­tion of the opi­oid-based pain med­ica­tion Oxy­con­tin. Opi­oids, espe­cial­ly fen­tanyl, kill more peo­ple in British Colum­bia than any­place else in Canada.

Bowinn Ma, thir­ty-six, the province’s youngest leg­is­la­tor, is very dif­fer­ent from NDP mem­bers who once rose on the floor of the Leg­is­la­ture to denounce tax breaks giv­en big busi­ness, shout­ing: “The hogs are at the trough!” She is an engi­neer, a for­mer project man­ag­er at Van­cou­ver Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. She is a backer of the #MeToo move­ment who used the floor of the B.C. Leg­is­la­ture to take a cross-bor­der shot at U.S. Supreme Court nom­i­nee Brett Kavanaugh.

Ma scored a 2017 break­through for New Democ­rats on the North Shore, cap­tur­ing the North Van­cou­ver-Lons­dale riding.

In 2020 she became Min­is­ter of State for Infra­struc­ture. Com­ing from a rid­ing with patience-strain­ing com­mutes across Bur­rard Inlet, she is respon­si­ble for upgrades bad­ly need­ed in pop­u­la­tion cen­ters con­strained by geography.

Specif­i­cal­ly, Ma’s port­fo­lio includes expan­sion of TransLink Sky­train, rapid bus ser­vice from the North Shore into Van­cou­ver, the Massey Tun­nel project (due for com­ple­tion in 2030) and rebuild­ing of the aging Pat­tul­lo Bridge over the Fras­er Riv­er at New Westminster.

British Colum­bia has had two women serve as pre­mier, each from the free enter­prise side of the polit­i­cal fence. Both lost elec­tions, although Christy Clark has gone on to reap the rewards of cor­po­rate directorships.

Nathan Cullen, forty-nine, was named ear­li­er this year as Min­is­ter of Munic­i­pal Affairs. He is from the far-north rid­ing of Stikine, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed the north­west cor­ner of British Colum­bia for fif­teen years in Canada’s House of Com­mons. A week short of his fifti­eth birth­day, Cullen has been a promis­ing young man in Cana­di­an politi­cians in three dif­fer­ent decades.

Wash­ing­ton State has often sent its best polit­i­cal tal­ent to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., although Mike Lowry and Jay Inslee did come home to win elec­tions as gov­er­nor. In Cana­da, the New Democ­rats usu­al­ly cap­ture twen­ty-five to thir­ty seats in the three hun­dred and eighty-eight mem­ber fed­er­al parliament.

British Colum­bia is a province where they can (occa­sion­al­ly) govern.

Cullen has worked as a medi­a­tor between the British Colum­bia gov­ern­ment and Abo­rig­i­nal First Nations hered­i­tary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’em peo­ple, who have vehe­ment­ly opposed the Coastal Gas Link pipeline that will trans­port liq­uid nat­ur­al gas to an export port at Kitimat.

The Hor­gan gov­ern­ment has faced sit-ins along the pipeline route.

The New Democ­rats are a par­ty of labor, but also home to Abo­rig­i­nal First Nations and envi­ron­men­tal activists. Hor­gan has gone through a tricky bal­anc­ing act. He reluc­tant­ly gave a go-ahead to the $8 bil­lion (and ris­ing) Site C dam on the Peace Riv­er, a project launched under Christy Clark. The gov­ern­ment has, how­ev­er, held up log­ging of old growth forests.

More than 1,100 peo­ple have been arrest­ed at one log­ging site on low­er Van­cou­ver Island. The New Democ­rats tried but were unable to stop the Cana­di­an fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from push­ing for­ward with the Trans­Moun­tain Pipeline expan­sion, which will car­ry up to 890,000 bar­rels of oil a day to an export ter­mi­nal at Burn­a­by, just east of Vancouver.

One poten­tial con­tender, Ravi Kahlon, has bowed out.

Kahlon, forty-three, played on Canada’s field hock­ey team in the 2000 and 2008 Olympic Games, and took the “swing” rid­ing of Delta North from the Lib­er­als in the 2017 provin­cial elec­tion. He mount­ed a mod­el vol­un­teer cam­paign in a con­stituen­cy that hugs the south bank of the Fras­er River.

Kahlon did the grunt work of gov­ern­ment under Hor­gan, serv­ing as par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary in a pair of Cab­i­net min­istries, and point man for the New Democ­rats’ plan for a new tun­nel to replace the aging, over­crowd­ed George Massey Tun­nel under the Fras­er Riv­er. The tun­nel is a major route into Canada’s Van­cou­ver from White Rock, Delta and Surrey.

The reward came after the New Democ­rats’ 2020 elec­tion vic­to­ry: Kahlon was giv­en the job of Min­is­ter of Jobs, Eco­nom­ic Recov­ery and Inno­va­tion, giv­en the job of over­see­ing B.C.’s recov­ery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This morn­ing, how­ev­er, Kahlon decid­ed not to enter the lead­er­ship race, say­ing he would sup­port Eby instead. Eby has yet to offi­cial­ly declare his can­di­da­cy, but get­ting Kahlon’s sup­port is big, as Kahlon might have been his biggest rival.

“Hard to see any­one else beat­ing Eby,” tweet­ed Glob­al’s Kei­th Bal­drey.

The New Democ­rats’ lead­er­ship race will see cli­mate, resource and envi­ron­men­tal issues at play. Of great­est import, how­ev­er, who will be the face of the par­ty as it tries to hold pow­er? Who will face off with new Lib­er­al Par­ty leader Kevin Fal­con on the floor of the Leg­is­la­ture? Who will project an abil­i­ty to gov­ern one of the Earth’s gor­geous places? The answer will play a big role in the BCND­P’s future.