William Richards Bennett, PC OBC (April 14, 1932 – December 3, 2015) was a Canadian politician who was the 27th premier of British Columbia from 1975 to 1986.

Bennett set about establishing a political organization modelled closely on and using staff lent by Bill Davis's Ontario "Big Blue Machine."

He embraced a new coalition of Liberals, social conservatives, and the corporate sector, unlike his father, who had appealed to the populist base.

His cabinet included politicians such as Pat McGeer, Grace McCarthy, Bill Vander Zalm, Garde Gardom, Rafe Mair, and Jim Nielsen.

[3] His government also built the Coquihalla Highway at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars[3] with non-union Kerkhoff Construction Company as the main contractor.

[5] A British Columbia Securities Commission panel imposed trading sanctions against Russell James Bennett and Harbanse Singh Doman and ordered them along with Bill Bennett to pay the commission $1 million to cover the costs of an insider trading case that spanned 11 years.