Social Credit, B.C.'s "natural governing party," did not survive Bill Vander Zalm's disgrace. In the 1991 election, an adroit performance in the leader's debate by Liberal leader Gordon Wilson propelled his resurgent Liberals into second place with 17 seats. The Socreds, under new leader Rita Johnston, won just six. Four of them defected to B.C. Reform in 1994, and the Socreds were shut out in 1996. Further right-wing vote splitting permitted another NDP victory in 1996. B.C. Reform was reduced to two seats. The Liberals, led by another former Vancouver mayor, Gordon Campbell, who replaced the disgraced Mr. Wilson, failed to take power, despite winning a plurality of the popular vote. Mr. Campbell has since reconstituted the old right-wing anti-NDP coalition. Although B.C. Reform continues to score between 10% and 20% in the polls, its institutional collapse and the NDP's disintegration have assured the right's return to power.

.B.C.'s alienation from central Canada was demonstrated dramatically in the 1993 federal election. The ruling Conservatives, led by Vancouverite Kim Campbell, were reduced to two seats. Ms. Campbell lost hers and became a footnote to history. The Tories were supplanted by Preston Manning's Reform Party, which elected 24 MPs, drawing support not just from right-wingers but from disaffected NDPers. Reform repeated its success in B.C. in 1997 and elected enough MPs nationwide to become the official opposition. However, the same vote-splitting that led to NDP governments at home in 1991 and 1996 led to Liberal domination of Ontario and victories in 1993 and 1997, the latter with just 38% of the popular vote. Mr. Manning's response has been a "United Alternative" of the right, an idea that could oust the Liberals but could also, many fear, mean a return of Mulroney-style eastern domination. Reform's future—and Mr. Manning's—remains in doubt.

The NDP rewarded its abortionist constituency by passing the Access to Abortion Services Act in September 1995, a crushing blow not only to the pro-life movement but also to free speech. It mandates fines and imprisonment for peaceful anti-abortion activity in "bubble zones" established around abortuaries. A handful of people has been arrested under the act. The late Vancouver trucker Maurice Lewis and Nelson carpenter Jim Demers fought the act in court and lost. Lewis, arrested in September 1995 at the Everywoman's Health Centre in Vancouver, persuaded Provincial Court Judge E.J. Cronin to set aside part of the act on Charter grounds, but this decision was overturned on appeal. Mr. Demers, arrested in December 1996 at Everywoman's, cited international law in his argument. Earlier this month, he lost his B.C. Supreme Court appeal. The B.C. Liberals have pledged to maintain this gag law.

The 1996 census confirms that B.C. is being transformed waves of newcomers, primarily from Asia. Asian immigrants accounted for 44% of those moving to B.C., whose population increased by 13.5% from 1991 to 1996. Immigrants have tended to move to the Lower Mainland, while Lower Mainlanders have moved elsewhere in B.C. to find a quieter, more affordable way of life. New Canadians have tended to favour living among their own kind: North Vancouver, Pitt Meadows, Mission, Surrey, Abbotsford and Delta are increasingly dominated by separate ethnic groups. The influx, critics noted, has driven up real estate prices and forced taxpayers to pay for more roads, schools and ESL classes. While immigrant entrepreneurs have fostered much economic growth, many blame the newcomers for the growth of organized crime and social dislocation.

Indian power claimed its biggest victory since B.C. entered Canada with the 1998 signing of the Nisgaa Treaty. The deal between the federal and provincial government and the 6,000 northwestern Indians gives them land, money and a race-based third order of government. During the negotiations, there was strong support for a referendum. In an April 1996 B.C. Report straw poll, to which 1,659 of our readers responded, 97% voted for a referendum on the deal, and a further 96% opposed it outright. The deal was passed by the B.C. Legislature earlier this year and awaits federal approval. Over 50 other "First Nations" are negotiating their piece of B.C., others are boycotting the process, claiming that the Supreme Court's 1997 Delgamuukw means that the entire province is Indian territory.

B.C. led Canada in killing the 1992 Charlottetown Referendum. While 52% of Canadians opposed the treaty, 68% of British Columbians said no the deal whose constitutional revisions would have granted special status to Quebec, forever blocked a Triple-E Senate and given Indians ominously vague self-government powers. The defeat was a stunning blow Canada's political and media elites. Mel Smith's closely-argued No essay in BC Report was everywhere reprinted and proved a powerful weapon.

The fight over gay-friendly curriculum in Surrey schools that began in 1997 has become a war to decide who controls education: parents or activists. Surrey's school board, citing parental opposition, refused to sanction for classroom use three books extolling the gay lifestyle. Education minister Paul Ramsey and the B.C. Teachers Federation assailed the board, while the Gay and Lesbian Educators of B.C. (GALE) took the school board to court. That fall, parents across B.C. tried to prevent their children from gay propaganda by using a "parents rights" declaration. In 1998 GALE won in court, as B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mary Saunders ruled that board members had improperly cited the religious beliefs of Surrey parents in deciding to ban the books, a decision that effectively disenfranchises believers. The ruling is under appeal.

The breakdown of the family, the schools and social unity has resulted in an explosion of violent youth crime. Shocking and senseless killings by teenagers became so common in the 1990s as to be almost commonplace, but the 1992 murder of teenager Jesse Cadman in 1992 was one of many that energized the burgeoning victims rights movement. His father, Surrey's Chuck Cadman, was elected as a Reform MP in 1997. The cases of Williams Lake's James Ruscitti, the "adopted son from Hell" who killed his parents and two others, and Reena Virk, the Victoria teenager beaten and drowned by schoolmates, were just two that have led to reforms of the Young Offenders Act.

The NDP's 1994 Forestry Practices Code was ostensibly designed to protect the environment. Its regulations have poured sand in the gears of B.C.'s economic engine. A September 1995 Forestry Alliance study found that the NDP passed the Code despite knowing that 46,000 forestry jobs would be lost: closing mills throughout the province and turning many logging-dependent communities into ghost towns. Even green-friendly MacMillan Bloedel, which renounced clear-cutting, gutted its workforce and was sold to U.S. firm Weyerhaeuser. The industry has been further harmed by Indian blockades and treaty uncertainty, while environmentalists have plagued it with high-profile protests, such as the sit-in at Clayoquot Sound in 1993 and Greenpeace's 1997 attempt to have Europeans boycott B.C. forestry products.

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