British Columbians head to the polls tomorrow and the period between election night and the first budget can be among the most consequential in a new government’s life. Over the next three to six months, the incoming government will swear in a cabinet, brief its ministers, issue mandate letters, deliver a throne speech, and table a budget covering the first full year of its term.
The results
Election night results are preliminary. Elections BC’s final count runs from November 6 to 10. Any riding where the deciding result is within a margin under one five-hundredth of the ballots automatically goes to a judicial recount. A judicial recount can only begin seven days after the final count and must finish within 15 days. Although we see this as unlikely, a close result could mean the next government isn’t confirmed until mid-November. In 2024, recounts in three ridings delayed swearing-in until those results were final.
Caretaker convention continues until a new Cabinet is sworn in
Until a new cabinet is sworn in, the province operates under the caretaker convention. Ministers remain in office with full legal authority but confine themselves to routine or urgent business and avoid decisions that would bind an incoming government. Decisions requiring a minister’s sign-off will generally wait for the new cabinet, while routine regulatory, permitting, and contracting work continues under authority delegated to deputy ministers and statutory decision makers. Communications with ministers and their staff remain reportable under the Lobbyists Transparency Act, and from the moment a candidate is elected, communications with that person become reportable as well.
Transition
The day after the vote, transition teams begin preparing for the new government on both the political and public service sides. The political transition, run by a small team around the premier or premier-designate, begins with cabinet and the staffing of the premier’s office and ministers’ offices. They also begin to sort through platform commitments into those needing immediate action and those that can wait. The public service transition is led by the Deputy Minister to the Premier. Every deputy minister has spent the campaign period preparing a transition binder for whichever minister arrives, covering the ministry’s legislation and budget, its most urgent matters, a tracker of every party’s commitment and a plan for the first hundred days. BC releases these binders publicly about 90 days after cabinet is sworn in.
Swearing in
MLAs are sworn in at the Legislature in mid-to-late November, with the premier and cabinet expected to follow at Government House a few days later. New or merged ministries are usually announced at the cabinet ceremony, typically followed by a deputy minister shuffle. Mandate letters, the Premier’s written direction to each minister (and in practice to each ministry), can arrive anywhere from swearing-in day to mid-January. In 2020, they came the same day as cabinet. After the 2024 election, they were not published until January 16.
The first budget
Normally, the budget must be tabled by the fourth Tuesday in February, but this year’s early election date triggered an exception under the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act. For this election, the deadline to table the budget is April 30, or 150 days after the premier and finance minister are sworn in, which makes April 30, 2027 the last possible date to do so. Recent precedent puts the budget anywhere in that 150-day window, with March 4 following the 2024 election and April 20 following the 2020 snap election.
The process itself moves quickly. Within weeks of swearing-in, the finance minister writes to cabinet colleagues inviting budget proposals, and ministries draft their submissions in December and January. The final decision is at the discretion of rest the premier and the finance minister, while the broader cabinet typically learns the full contents close to budget day.
First budgets rarely leave room for significant new spending, and the 2027 budget will be tighter than most. The current-year deficit has already been revised to $13.8 billion, and the province has had four credit rating downgrades in 2026.
A Conservative first budget would be even tighter. The platform commits to an independent fiscal review before the budget is tabled and keeps operating spending essentially flat in 2027-28. Of its $1.425 billion in new annual commitments, only about $173 million is booked for that year. Its $2.9 billion income tax cut would be funded through a hiring freeze, a smaller contingencies vote, a 20 per cent cut to outside contracts, and a core review across most ministries. Either way, new funding requests for 2027/28 will have a hard time unless they’re already in a party platform.
The Legislature returns
Nothing happens in the House until the Lieutenant Governor recalls it on the premier’s advice. A government with a comfortable majority and a late budget deadline will have little reason to hurry.
When the House returns, MLAs first elect a Speaker, then hear the throne speech, the government’s first public commitment to an agenda. Committees don’t exist until they’re reconstituted by motion in the opening days.
If the budget comes in the same sitting, the budget speech and debate follow, then estimates for each ministry. Estimates are often more useful than the budget speech for tracking a file, since they show what ministers have been briefed on and where the gaps are. In a minority, the throne speech and budget are both confidence votes the government could lose.
What this means
The time between caretaker convention to governing seems long and can be frustrating. But for clients it also provides an opportunity to develop an engagement plan that aligns with the priorities of the next government.
That engagement plan typically begins by beginning to reach out to the new government as elected officials, with support from the public service, start to make decisions about how to implement their plan for the province.
While organizations that have built strong relationships with all parties in the Legislature before the election are most likely to have early success, there are many opportunities ahead for those who need to build relationships with a new government.
As always, the foundation for most successful government relations remains being well-prepared, solution-focused and with plans that clearly demonstrate outcomes that are in the public interest.
Because Counsel Public Affairs is a multi-partisan firm with demonstrated success in achieving positive outcomes for clients, the firm is well positioned to continue building on that strong track record regardless of the election outcome.