B.C. NDP meeting to select new interim leader this week<\/p>\n
Published 4:52 pm Tuesday, October 27, 2026<\/p>\n
The B.C. NDP caucus is meeting this week to select an interim leader to replace David Eby, who announced he will step aside after leading his party to an ill-fated snap election.<\/p>\n
Both outgoing and new members of the legislature plan to meet.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeparately, the party will take a clear and honest look at the campaign and set the timing and process for a leadership race in the weeks and months ahead,\u201d a caucus spokesperson said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n
Outgoing Health minister Ravi Kahlon gave a few possible names for interim leader, including Mike Farnworth, who served as Eby\u2019s NDP House leader; Josie Osborne, the outgoing Finance minister; Adrian Dix, a former party leader and outgoing Energy minister; and Niki Sharma, Eby\u2019s attorney general.<\/p>\n
He also mentioned Ravi Parmar, Spencer Chandra Herbert or Jennifer Whiteside as possibilities. All served as ministers in Eby\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no shortage of very talented people,\u201d said Kahlon, adding that he doesn\u2019t expect the process to be divisive.<\/p>\n
Kahlon, who chose not to run for re-election, says he planned to focus on his family and wouldn\u2019t consider serving as interim leader.<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t rule out running for the permanent post.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never know what will happen in the future, but my focus medium-term is on my family,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Like Kahlon, Parmar didn\u2019t rule out running for leadership.<\/p>\n
\u201cToo early to say,\u201d Parmar said. \u201cI would say that I learned from my mentor in politics, [former premier] John Horgan, that before one should act, they should do a lot of listening and learning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NDP\u2019s last leadership race was contentious. Eby ran against Anjali Appadurai, but was acclaimed after Appadurai was disqualified for allegedly breaking party electoral rules by working with outside organizations.<\/p>\n
University of British Columbia political science lecturer Stewart Prest says Eby never really found his stride after that leadership race.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it cast a pall over his leadership that he was never able to fully escape,\u201d Prest said.<\/p>\n
This time, Prest expects a \u201cbroad and thorough\u201d leadership race, and for the party to take a hard look at itself to figure out how to tell its own story and better highlight its successes, such as the many infrastructure projects that will come to fruition over the coming years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NDP needs to step back, take stock,\u201d Prest said.<\/p>\n
Besides himself, Kahlon floated Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West or Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley as possible candidates for permanent leader.<\/p>\n
But Mario Canseco of the polling firm Research Co. says it may not be a \u201ccompelling or attractive proposition\u201d to take over a party facing years in opposition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably a six- or eight-year proposition unless the government fails remarkably,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s difficult for somebody who wants to make that commitment to be told the chances of you becoming premier in the next election when it happens are fairly slim.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"B.C. NDP meeting to select new interim leader this week Published 4:52 pm Tuesday, October 27, 2026 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[903,49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-948812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}