Toxic drugs, safety key issues in Conservatives' Richmond wins

It was touted as "battleground Richmond," but in the end the B.C. Conservatives walked away without much of a fight, taking three of four seats in the Vancouver suburb.

Incumbent Teresa Wat registered a resounding victory in Richmond-Bridgeport, earning more than 58 per cent of the vote.

A long-time B.C. Liberal/B.C. United MLA, Wat defected to the Conservatives less than two months before the election was called, and less than a month before Kevin Falcon folded the B.C. United campaign.

She credits the Conservatives' tough stance on the issues of toxic drugs and public safety as the key to her big win.

"My riding has about 70 per cent Asian immigrants and the drug policy resonated with many of them," Wat told CBC News on Saturday. "Chinese Canadians are very scared of the negative impacts of the drugs on their children and, because quite a number of people are smoking drugs in Richmond, that's why this [policy] resonates well."

Acrimony around the issue reached a fever pitch in Richmond earlier this year when news spread that a first-ever supervised drug consumption site was being considered for the city in connection with the Richmond General Hospital. 

Ultimately, NDP Leader David Eby and Vancouver Coastal Health stated such a site was not appropriate for Richmond and the plan was shelved.

However, that didn't stop the B.C. Conservatives from making a meal of the issue with Leader John Rustad and Wat appearing in Richmond early in the campaign and vowing to end "David Eby's radical free drug agenda," by shutting down "every single drug den injection site in the City of Richmond." 

Pointing to the gains his party made in Richmond on election night, Rustad said it was clear the city voted against what he called the "drug culture." 

"They don't support safe supply and they don't support decriminalization," he told CBC on Sunday.

The two other Conservative wins in Richmond were direct steals from the NDP.

In Richmond Centre, political newcomer and former Fairchild television host Hon Chan handily defeated incumbent Henry Yao with 52 per cent of the vote.

Richmond-Queensborough flipped from NDP incumbent Aman Singh to another Conservative newcomer in lawyer Steve Kooner, who received more than 51 per cent of the vote.

In Richmond-Steveston, NDP incumbent Kelly Greene hung on to her seat by less than 500 votes over Conservative Michelle Mollineaux.

Former B.C. United candidate Jackie Lee, who ran unaffiliated in the riding, received almost 2,300 votes, likely allowing for Greene's victory and preventing a total Conservative sweep of Richmond.

The 2024 election results for Richmond could be seen as a community reverting to the norm. The city has a tradition of voting right-of-centre going back to the early 1990s.

Against that backdrop, the three Richmond seats that flipped from the B.C. Liberals to the NDP in the 2020 election — one by a margin of only 179 votes — may have been outliers.  

Watt said constituents were also swayed by the Conservatives' messages about growing the economy.

"My riding is comprised of the downtown of Richmond and many small businesses are having trouble," she said.