House of Commons

Okook pej kopa Chinook Wawa: Konaway Tillikums yaka House

The House of Commons is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of British Columbia, which is the legislative branch of the government of British Columbia.

The House of Commons at present has 91 seats, expanded from 85 in advance of the 2018 election with the addition of six new ridings in the North; its members, known as Members of Parliament, are directly elected by eligible voters in the BC populace, which each member representing a single electoral district for a period mandated by law of not more than five years.

The House of Commons is the dominant branch of parliament. Bills passed by it are sent to the Council of Chiefs for review; after a bill has been passed by both the House of Commons and the Council of Chiefs, it is sent to the Governor General, who gives the bill Royal Assent, at which point the bill becomes law.

Prior to 1903, members of parliament were not elected according to party lines; all candidates were technically independent, but blocs and associations were formed during campaigning and during the sessions of parliament.

Current Parliament
The 2018 election was a major surprise to many in the Dominion. It was called only because BC law specifies that elections must be held no more than five years apart, and since the Spintlum Ministry's approval ratings were generally favourable, and polls held six months prior to the (automatic) dropping of the writ suggested that Spintlum's Labour would win another majority.

When the Social Credit Party collapsed in the 1996 election, it still had several million pound in its coffers - which could be used only for election campaigns and official party purposes, and so sat unused over the years that the party sat moribund. Darryl Perttunen managed to revive the fortunes of the party in 2013 enough to get himself elected, but no more, and in Spring 2017 the party membership elected Annie May Bennett - daughter of Bill Bennett and granddaughter of W.A.C. Bennett - party leader. Young (36), attractive, charismatic, and articulate, she managed to resuscitate the party in a way Perttunen couldn't, and by the time writ was dropped, polls had the SoCreds ranked third.

Nobody, however, had foreseen how the SoCreds would surge ahead in the campaigning, and how much support they'd draw away from both the more conservative wing of Labour and the more progressive wing of the Liberals with the positive message of Bennett's campaign (Social Credit were the only party that didn't run any attack ads). No party managed to reach the 46 seats needed for a majority, Labour winning 33 and Social Credit 32.

The third-placed Greens announced three days after the results were confirmed and absentee votes were counted, that they would support the SoCreds in a coalition. Spintlum then opted to concede, and Annie May Bennett became Prime Minister. For the first time ever in the Commonwealth, both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition were women; not only that, but the Deputy Prime Minister, Green Party leader Élodie Desjardins, was also a woman.

Another surprise of the 2018 election came in the riding of Nanaimo where Alexander Dunsmuir, 5th Baron Esquimalt, great grandson of BC's 11th Prime Minister, James Dunsmuir, 2nd Baron Esquimalt, unexpectedly announced his candidacy - and even more unexpectedly - won convincingly in a riding that had, with two exceptions, voted Labour in every election since 1963. Dunsmuir is a particularly beloved figure in the greater Nanaimo area, and is holder of BC's only non-Native hereditary title. Dunsmuir became the first candidate to run as an independent to be elected since 1949.