John Horgan’s NDP was handed a clear mandate with a majority win on the weekend but his party’s support is in the minority once you head away from the Coast.
Both the Kamloops North and South Thompson ridings went to the Liberals as did much of the BC Interior.
While appearing on the NL Morning News, Ravi Kahlon, the NDP member for Delta North, was asked what his party will be doing to to garner more support in the Interior.
“Well, we’ve made commitments to improve health care in Kamloops and we’re going to do that. We’ve made commitments to take care of people, take care of seniors, improve senior’s care. I think that’s critically important,” he said.
He says the government elect will treat all ridings equally no matter what party people chose to send to Victoria.
“I mean that message from Premier Horgan about we can take of each other as well as bring the economy back in a strong way resonated with people and so that’s our commitment to the region,” he added.
“What we’ve shown in the last few years is it doesn’t matter if you have a NDP MLA of if you don’t, when you’re in government, you take care of everyone and we’re certainly done that in the three years and we’ll continue to do that in the next four.”
When asked why the NDP message doesn’t seem to resonate more with the rural voter, Kahlon said it was a little too early to do a deep dive analysis as there are hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots that still need to be counted.
“We have a better sense of where we’re at but certainly we’ve made improvements this election in Kamloops,” he noted. “I think people sometimes take these ridings for granted but everyone must work for every single vote and we certainly worked for every single vote in this campaign and we will work for every single vote going forward and do the best we can for the province.”
Only five of the 55 seats either won by the NDP on Saturday or where they are leading at the moment were from outside the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island – Kootenay West, Nelson-Creston, Boundary-Similkameen, Stikine, and North Coast.