Each party lost two incumbent MLAs: the BC NDP's Jenn McGinn and Charlie Wyse, and the Liberals' John Nuraney and Wally Oppal were defeated.
The BC Liberal platform, some of it already promised in the budget, advocates hospital improvements in Surrey, Victoria, Vernon, Fort St. John and Kelowna; travel and accommodation assistance to families who must travel long distances to be with their children when they are receiving care; new measures to help remote communities get new access to fresh fruit and vegetables; provide citizens electronic access to their health records; establishing voluntary five-year-old kindergarten classes; establishing a law school at Thompson Rivers University, a medical school at UBC Okanagan, and a Wood Design and Innovation Centre at UNBC; doubling the BC Training Tax Credit; exempting the first $20,000 of seniors' pension income from income tax; legislating a Residents Bill of Rights for seniors living in residential care facilities and a registry for residential care aides; installing cameras to monitor school yards and high-risk public areas; outlaw dumping of raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and help build a new sewage treatment plan for Greater Victoria.
Among other points, its platform involved repealing the carbon tax, instituting a cap and trade plan of greenhouse gas emissions, adopting California's tough vehicle tailpipe emission standards, expanding the capacity and efficiency of public hospitals, instituting health care wait time guarantees, a 1-year small business tax holiday, freezing post-secondary tuition fees, hire more Crown Prosecutors, restoring public oversight to BC Ferries, restricting raw log exports, increasing the minimum wage to $10/hr indexed to inflation, placing a moratorium on new private run-of-the-river power projects, reinstating the Buy BC program, creating a new Rural Economic Development Fund, and promoting farm gate sales of agricultural products (including meat).
[4] Leader: Jane Sterk The Green Party ran a full slate of candidates, as it did in 2005 when it won over 9 percent of the vote but no seats in the legislature.
Amongst other points, it advocated balanced budgets, reducing taxes on industry and business while increasing taxes on pollution, creating a Green Venture Capital Fund to invest in green collar jobs, directing 1% from the PST to municipal governments, allowing municipalities to issue municipal bonds, creating a provincial police force, reducing tuition fees by 20%, increasing funding to post-secondary institutions, refunding full tuition fees to graduates who work and live in the province for five years after receiving their degree, banning use of cosmetic pesticides, expanding the Medical Service Plan (to cover chiropractic, physiotherapy, eye exams, massage therapy, routine physical exams, and counselling for addictions), creating a Guaranteed Livable Income by unifying all current income support programs, supporting harm reduction practices, regulating cannabis, halting river-based hydro projects pending a review of the environmental assessment process, re-establishing BC Ferries as a Crown corporation, halting the Gateway Program, using usage based insurance for ICBC rates, and creating a BC Legacy Fund from oil and gas royalties for municipal and rural community projects.
[6] Their platform advocated, among other points, competitive and performance-based healthcare delivery within a publicly funded system, opposing the Recognition and Reconciliation Bill with Aboriginal peoples, returning treaty responsibility to the federal government, repealing the carbon tax and opposing a carbon trading system, expanding resource development (including offshore drilling), reducing the PST by 1%, harmonizing the PST with the Federal GST, eliminating the Property Transfer Tax, rolling back salary increases of MLAs and senior government employees, permitting parents more choices in which schools to send their children to and funding the schools accordingly, repealing the Corren Agreement, reducing tuition fees for students who meet certain standards in post-secondary education, light rail transit in southern Vancouver Island and in Chilliwack, eliminating tolls on bridges (including a proposed toll on the Port Mann Bridge), work requirements on public projects for criminals serving time in jail, a new program to address small crime separately from more serious crimes, creation of a program called Communities That Care to strengthen family dynamics and reduce negative youth behaviors, publishing a Criminal Offenders Registry, creating a substantive appeal process beyond the BC Human Rights Tribunal, enact a 'Right to a Free Vote' legislation for MLAs to freely vote in the Legislature, hold votes for federal senators, and implement a preferential voting system for provincial elections.
The party mainly advocates for direct democracy based on the Swiss model, the creation of a provincial constitution, and re-negotiating with the federal government the terms of confederation.
According to its website its platform also includes the creation of a provincial police force, homogeneous schools and classes of students with similar abilities, reinstating alternative medical options (such as physiotherapy, dental, and chiropractic) into the Medical Services Plan and placing the Medical Services Plan under the jurisdiction of Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, making WorkSafe an enforcement agency only by moving its insurance component to ICBC, a moratorium on run-of-river hydro projects and fish farms, holding a referendums on the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement and the sale of Crown Corporations, and a judicial review of the sale of BC Rail.
It advocates progressive tax based on ability to pay, raising the minimum wage to $16/hour indexed to the cost of living, ending the $6/hour training wage, holding a public inquiry into the sale of BC Rail, banning raw log exports, requiring by legislation the processing of timber locally for export, banning evictions for the purpose of renovation, scrapping the Gateway Program, holding elections for the TransLink board with a $1 single zone fare for the Lower Mainland, removing guns and tasers from transit police, eliminating tuition fees, expanding the apprenticeship program, lowering the voting age to 16, withdrawing from the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement, and reintegrating BC Transmission Corporation back into BC Hydro.
[12] Leader: Charles Boylan The People's Front is the provincial wing of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) which generally advocates, among other points, increased spending on health, education and other social programs, a moratorium on the debt, hereditary rights of the Aboriginal peoples, recognition of the equality of all languages and cultures, instituting recall elections, and rights for individuals to initiate legislation.
[16] Leader: Conrad Schmidt The WLP is an anti-materialist political movement that hopes to achieve socialist and green ends through, among other things, the promotion of a four-day, 32-hour work-week.
Among other points, it advocates publishing reports explaining where every tax dollar is spent, free votes in the legislature, making all campaign promises legally binding, requiring MLAs hold public townhall-style meetings at least once every four months, labelling products sold in BC indicating environmental standards, adding generating capacity to existing dams, opening run-of-river dam project areas to recreational use, providing periodic written statements detailing the cost of each citizen's use of the health care system, provide forgivable loans to post-secondary students who continue to live and work in BC after graduation, permit more private post-secondary institutions, requiring all people serving time in jail to work to pay for the cost of their incarceration, legalization of marijuana, eliminate the property transfer tax, disallow restrictions on secondary suites and minimum home sizes, harvesting all Pine Beetle affected timber immediately, limiting the total allowable yearly fishing catch (rather than regulating length of the fishing season), require weekly educational programs for anyone receiving welfare payments, provide before and after school childcare, permitting private insurance companies to compete with ICBC.