Northwest B.C. just went Conservative for the first time — what happened?

The Bulkley Valley-Stikine electoral district — a 200,000 square kilometre area in northwest B.C. that is a hotbed of resource industries, including liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects — has been a BC NDP stronghold for 15 years. For the first time in the riding’s history, it is now held by the BC Conservatives following the Oct. 19 provincial election that saw the NDP narrowly re-elected with a majority government following recounts. 

Nathan Cullen, former minister of water, land and resource stewardship, was unseated by BC Conservatives candidate Sharon Hartwell. 

“Together, we will tackle the challenges facing our families, from healthcare and education to the economy and public safety,” Hartwell wrote on social media following the election. “Your voices will guide my actions as I fight for the issues that affect your daily lives.”

Cullen, whose campaign was plagued by sign vandalism, including obscenities, violent images and the disappearance of about half his signs, served as federal MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley from 2004 to 2019, before winning the provincial riding in 2020. This is his first defeat since entering politics more than two decades ago.

“It was a surprise in some ways,” Cullen told The Narwhal in an interview. “There was obviously a lot of resentment and frustration built up, especially in rural B.C.”

Cullen was the minister responsible for widely contested Land Act reforms, which would have enabled the B.C. government to more easily enter into agreements with First Nations to facilitate consent-based decisions and avoid costly litigation. The NDP government withdrew the proposed reforms — part of the province’s commitment to upholding Indigenous Rights — following an extreme backlash, including from BC Conservatives leader John Rustad, who called the proposed amendments an “assault” on private land rights.

‘Toxic and aggressive’ politics worrying: Nathan Cullen

Like many ridings, the Bulkley Valley-Stikine district was plagued with divisive politics during the election campaign.

“I think it was, overall, a dirty campaign,” Jason Morris, a senior instructor in the University of Northern British Columbia’s political science department, told The Narwhal. “Unfortunately, in this provincial election, there were too many examples of this poor behaviour targeting all of the parties.”

One of Cullen’s signs that was vandalized saw an image of his face hung by a noose from a makeshift gallows on the side of the highway. And, as The Tyee reported, a pickup truck waving a Canadian flag circled Cullen’s campaign office in Smithers and blasted its horn during his concession speech on election night.

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Hartwell, who campaigned mostly on issues related to healthcare, did not respond to an interview request. She denounced the vandalism to Cullen’s signs on social media, noting, “this is not what we want to see in our communities.”

Earlier this year, Hartwell expressed support for a federal Conservative petition to have Canada withdraw from the United Nations, whose Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination previously singled out B.C.’s Site C dam and Coastal GasLink pipeline for criticism. Hartwell also suggested Canada withdraw from the World Health Organization, whose responsibilities include setting global guidelines for air quality, including for wildfire smoke. Her win comes as the U.S. heads into a tight presidential race — in February, Hartwell stated on social media she believes the 2020 U.S. election was rigged against former president Donald Trump. 

Roughly 2,000 more people voted in the riding this year compared to the 2020 election. Cullen attributed many of the additional votes to the “blue wave” that swept across the province this year. He said the tone of the BC Conservatives campaign had its origins with U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and has been widely used by federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

“I don’t give Mr. Rustad the credit of original thought on this,” Cullen said. “I think this is known and observed and just imitated. I’ve watched Mr. Poilievre do it [and] I’ve watched Trump do it.”

Poilievre travelled to the Bulkley Valley-Stikine district in September 2023 and held rallies in towns across the northwest to drum up support for the Conservatives. Addressing a packed room in Smithers on that trip, Poilievre was met with cheers as he slammed the BC NDP government. 

“The NDP forgot about Smithers and Vancouver Island and the people in the working class resource communities across this country…,” Poilievre told the crowd.  

Neither Poilievre nor Rustad responded to requests for comment from The Narwhal.

Cullen said the tone of the campaign had a chilling effect in some northwest communities this election. 

“I was sometimes alarmed by the toxic and aggressive nature of some people in this campaign. I just haven’t really seen it before,” he said. “In talking to a number of folks, especially in communities that had lower turnout, especially in some First Nations communities, one of the things that I’ve been hearing very consistently is a sense of intimidation — that the conversation was quite harsh a lot of times and if you’re online, it was oftentimes violent and threatening.”

Cullen earned around 40 per cent of the riding’s votes, with Hartwell taking 52 per cent. Morris noted Hartwell, who served for 12 years as mayor of Telkwa, B.C., is not a rookie politician. But he said her win in the long-held NDP riding is no small feat. 

“She soundly defeated Nathan Cullen, which is impressive given Cullen’s federal experience in senior positions and as a leadership candidate there, and of course his provincial background, including in ministerial positions.” 

The region also had a BC Greens candidate this year, Gamlakyeltxw Wil Marsden, who took 588 votes, about six per cent. The remainder went to Rod Taylor, with the Christian Heritage party.

‘Pipeline politics’ helped make northwest B.C. an election battleground

Naxginkw Tara Marsden, a Gitanyow Nation member who works with the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, said the election results are likely to change peoples’ perceptions of the riding. 

“I think we lived under a cloud of perception for a while — that this was Nathan Cullen’s riding, that we were progressive and we were all about the environment and Indigenous Rights,” Marsden told The Narwhal. (Marsden and Gamlakyeltxw, the BC Greens candidate, are first cousins.) Gitanyow is one of several First Nations whose traditional lands are within the Bulkley-Stikine district. 

But despite that notion, she said the region has never been a haven for environmental protections. For example, she noted the NDP government oversaw construction of the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline during Cullen’s leadership. As the pipeline was being built by Calgary-based TC Energy, the company broke numerous environmental laws, impacting watersheds across the north.

“There was a lot of pretending, a lot of false promises and a lot of false hope that wasted our time,” Marsden said. “The perception is now just gone.”

Nikki Skuce, director of Northern Confluence, a Smithers-based conservation think-tank, said the change in political representation could reduce government oversight on resource extraction activities in the region, especially those linked to the rush to get critical minerals out of the ground and into the market.

“It worries me that we’re going to water down regulations and monitoring and enforcement, putting communities and watersheds at risk from mining disasters,” she told The Narwhal.

She said she doesn’t think the change will have much of an effect on LNG projects that affect the riding. 

“There hasn’t been a commitment by either the Conservatives or the BC NDP to stop fossil fuel infrastructure so I don’t think things will change on that front, but divisions might increase.”

Divisions were already on the rise before the election campaign started this fall. 

In late August, Indigenous leaders denounced the region’s newest pipeline project, the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) line, and set up a blockade north of Terrace. Days later, Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups launched a legal challenge against the project and the BC Energy Regulator. Cullen admitted the battle for the riding was set against a backdrop of several sensitive issues, including what he called “pipeline politics.”

“I’m getting some remorse from some green friends who thought they could send a note of frustration with our government but didn’t actually want us to have a Conservative government or a Conservative MLA,” Cullen said. “But that’s the tricky thing about electoral politics — it’s a winner take all system.”

The new B.C. government will make a crucial decision about the future of the new pipeline project soon, when its environmental assessment certificate expires at the end of November. The new environment minister will determine whether to require a new assessment or grant a “substantially started” designation, which would lock in the pipeline’s 2014 approval indefinitely. 

Skuce emphasized policy decisions like that of the pipeline project have major impacts on communities. She said the Bulkley Valley-Stikine region has already passed 1.6 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels. The area is experiencing increasing droughts, wildfires and other extreme events as a result of climate change, which is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

“We are in a climate crisis and we saw under the BC NDP an LNG pipeline built forcefully and no commitments to end fossil fuel infrastructure despite that’s what all the science and the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] says we need to do,” she said. “We needed action two decades ago and now our riding is represented by somebody who’s with a party that denies some of the science around climate change.”

‘We’re still neighbours’: Cullen says it’s time to put aside differences and work together

Like many Conservative candidates, Hartwell advanced controversial opinions during the election campaign. In addition to her comments about the U.S. election and withdrawing from the United Nations, she falsely stated that drug use during pregnancy can cause autism during an all-candidates debate in Smithers.

Morris said riding residents may have been willing to overlook these views as they focused on issues affecting their daily lives. 

“Stikine voters had the opportunity to reject some of the positions or statements that Sharon Hartwell made but they … may not have been thinking of the controversial parts but [about] the lunch bucket issues, such as making sure that the mortgage is paid and the job is secure and the kids are well fed and they get off to their dance or hockey lessons and having enough left over at the end of a paycheque to go camping on the weekend down a forest service road,” he explained.

Morris said it’s possible day-to-day issues will trump the more controversial positions held by Hartwell and her colleagues as they take seats in the legislature.

“A lot of BC Conservative candidates, if not all of them, are community-minded people,” he said. “They do care about the region they are going to represent and the province as a whole. They’ve also not been afraid, in many cases, to tell things like they see it.”

Cullen expressed cautious optimism and put his faith in the residents of the region.

“I see us come together in a crisis in beautiful ways,” he said. “It becomes crystal clear when someone’s house is on fire and they’re a neighbour what is important: it isn’t politics and it isn’t parties — it is people. Usually the time after an election is a bit of a healing time, because we’ve just had this partisan argument and now we’re still neighbours. Let’s try to get along, because we’ve got stuff to do.”

Cullen, who will return to his consulting business, specializing in strategic planning and conflict resolution, said he wishes his opponent well. 

“The northwest is an amazing and beautiful and demanding place to represent,” he said. “I think she’s got a super tough job, but that’s no pity parade. That’s what you sign up for.”