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B.C. election at a glance: Hand count for most votes due to snap call's 'logistics'
B.C. election: Hand count for most votes
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns
It's the last full day of campaigning in British Columbia's election ahead of final voting day Saturday.
Here's a look at some of the latest developments on the campaign trail.
HAND COUNT FOR MOST BALLOTS
Elections BC has confirmed that votes cast on election day will be tallied manually, in a departure from 2024, when electronic tabulators were used to count paper ballots for the first time in a general election.
That was hailed as a success in Elections BC's report on the polls, but the agency says in a statement that it's going back to a manual count due to "short time frames and complex operational logistics of a snap election."
It says paper ballots cast at advance polling stations and at district electoral offices will still be counted with electronic tabulators, and it expects those results to be reported first after ballots close at 8 p.m.
Elections BC also says the election-night count will not include absentee or mail-in ballots, which will be tallied at the final count scheduled for Nov. 6 to Nov. 10.
Elections BC's report on the 2024 election says electronic tabulation allowed the first preliminary results to be reported within five minutes of polls closing, and 59 per cent of preliminary results to reported within half an hour.
It said that in past elections first results typically started to be reported around 45 minutes after polls closed.
DOERKSON RALLIES WITH CLARK AND MCCALLUM
The B.C. Conservatives held a rally in Surrey on Thursday night, with mayor-elect Doug McCallum endorsing Lorne Doerkson as the province's next premier.
Also present at the rally were former B.C. premier Christy Clark, and former Surrey mayors Linda Hepner and Dianne Watts.
McCallum told the rally that he was standing with people who had changed Surrey and it was time to change B.C.
The 82-year-old McCallum is about to embark on his third separate stint as Surrey's mayor, after defeating incumbent Brenda Locke in the Oct. 17 municipal elections.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2026.
By Canadian Press Staff | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Advocates flag contributions, not costs, of newcomers in Alberta referendum aftermath
Alberta vote raises labour shortage concerns
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
A union representative for a beef processing plant south of Calgary is warning of worsening labour shortages if immigration policy proposals that narrowly passed in Alberta's referendum are enacted.
"These are tough and high turnover jobs with few candidates lining up to fill them," said Faduma Ahmed, with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401 at Cargill's abattoir in High River, Alta.
With 98 per cent of polls reporting in Monday's referendum, a slim majority of votes were cast in favour of limiting access to or charging a fee for provincially funded services based on immigration status. Premier Danielle Smith's government had argued that the cost to provide health care and education to temporary Alberta residents amounts to $1 billion a year and that a surge in newcomers has strained affordability and services.
But critics have warned that the referendum's outcome could make Alberta less attractive to newcomers at a time when jobs desperately need to be filled.
At the Cargill plant, temporary foreign workers, refugees, permanent residents and citizens from all over the globe work side by side and all pay taxes, said Ahmed. It's back-breaking work, with staffers often having to hoist whole carcasses.
"When we sit down to eat, we rarely think about the intense and the gruelling labour it takes to get the food onto our tables, right on our plate," she said, adding that workers have come to her concerned about their ability to pay for health care and school for their children.
"They are foundational to keeping our economy moving, and they are navigating the exact same punishing affordability crisis as every other Albertan."
Ahmed said the union will draw a "hard line" if the proposals become law.
"We will fight to ensure immigrant workers receive the same services they do today, up to and including making the employers pay at the bargaining table to fund the differences."
Another sector that relies heavily on immigration is health care for seniors.
"Often we'll find they'll work in roles that maybe some Canadians may not be interested in," said Leah Lechelt, executive director of the Christian Health Association of Alberta, which represents non-profits that employ 22,000 staff across the province.
She said some college programs for health-care aides have closed or reduced their enrolment simply because there haven't been enough applications domestically.
The workforce hails from around the world, and are mostly health-care aides, but also cleaning and food-service staff, Lechelt said. They deal with vulnerable patients, so regulations largely limit those jobs to permanent residents and citizens.
"It's really a very attractive role for somebody who is fairly new to Canada and sometimes is working on some English language proficiency skills."
The association has established an apprenticeship program that enables those in entry-level jobs, like housekeeping, to train on-site to become health-care aides and pursue a better-paying career path.
"And then we can backfill those positions with other newcomers, maybe starting out in their journey in Canada."
One of the referendum proposals asked whether Albertans would support the province taking more control of immigration from the federal government.
It was an idea the Business Council of Alberta has long advocated, said president Adam Legge.
"There's a bit of a better on-the-ground intel perspective compared to a centralized decision in Ottawa," he said.
"Oftentimes there are some skills and geographic mismatches between what Ottawa approves on an immigration basis and what is needed."
For instance, he said there's a huge demand for workers in the skilled trades, like heavy-duty mechanics, welders and electricians.
He said he heard from members generally that they don't want to see anything deter people from choosing to live in Alberta.
Research by University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe commissioned by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce found immigrants paid an estimated $4.1 billion in Alberta personal income taxes in 2026.
It also found immigrants younger than 40 had a net fiscal contribution of almost $1 billion, after the cost of provincial family programs, workers' compensation and social assistance are accounted for.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2026.
By Lauren Krugel | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Canada working closely with EU on foreign aid as U.S. pulls back, Sarai says
Ottawa says it's working with EU on foreign aid
Canada's deepening ties with Europe could help fill some of the massive gaps left behind as the United States pulls back from foreign aid and embraces a "transactional" approach, says the secretary of state for international development.
"When we put all our heads together, I think the opportunities are endless," Randeep Sarai told The Canadian Press.
He said this effort includes recent talks with the European Union on leveraging private dollars and philanthropy for aid, while maintaining some government funding for the world's most vulnerable.
Sarai is overseeing a shift in foreign aid as the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney cuts back on global health spending and encourages more private funding in development projects.
Ottawa is cutting spending across government, seeking new trade partners and boosting the defence budget to make Canada less vulnerable to U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and threats of annexation.
The Trump administration shut down the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, leading to what Harvard University researchers estimate to be hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
In April, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development reported that the U.S. in 2025 accounted for 17 per cent of spending by rich countries on foreign aid, down from 30 per cent a year prior.
U.S. spending on foreign aid dropped by 57 per cent in 2025.
Most major donor states, including Canada, have cut back on aid funding. Ottawa spends about 1.6 per cent of its budget on foreign aid.
"Taxpayer dollars are very valuable. So if we can bring in the private sector along with them, the goal is (that) eventually the private sector will invest on their own. But initially, we'll use the taxpayer dollars to entice them," Sarai said.
Sarai added that Europe has looked to Carney for guidance on so-called blended finance because of his experience as a United Nations official.
Carney's UN role was to advise governments on climate finance, including ways for governments to work with the private sector and philanthropists to transition to net-zero carbon emissions.
Ireland hosted a meeting of EU development ministers earlier this month and invited Canada to attend.
Sarai said much of the discussion in Dublin was about how to leverage private capital without abandoning support for the world's most vulnerable people.
Sarai said Canada and European countries are also working with other nations with a reputation for robust foreign aid, including Japan, Korea and Gulf nations.
He said American officials have "come back, to some degree" on aid spending by funding vaccines for children in poor countries.
"Their aid has to benefit the American economy and American people," Sarai said.
"They have very clear guidelines on that and transactional nature of it, but that's their direction. So I would say it's very different from the other G7 partners, but at least we know where we're at."
The push for more private dollars in aid has many critics.
Co-operation Canada, a coalition of most Canadian aid groups operating abroad, said the sector supports innovative funding, with some caveats.
"If we are to use public funds to incentivize private capital, then there need to be some guardrails around … that we're we're using our public funds in the most efficient way possible," said Paul Farran, the group's advocacy director.
He said aid dollars shouldn't be used to subsidize endeavours that the private sector wouldn't have otherwise funded.
"Our international assistance should first and foremost be used to alleviate poverty and inequalities," Farran said.
Sarai said Canada is not going to surrender its support for the world's poorest to market forces.
He said that applies to Canada's programming in the 32 nations the UN describes as the world's least developed countries, as well as projects that focus on sexual health and reproductive rights.
He said the government has a different approach in high-growth countries, where it pursues "mutual economic prosperity" through projects that benefit Canadian companies and investors while creating jobs abroad.
"The Vietnams, Indonesias, Philippines in the world, we believe that they can now take care of those areas themselves. We don't need to invest in those particular areas for them," he said.
Sarai cited a new aid project in Thailand which will see Canada's development finance institution FinDev lend cash for microloans to women in rural areas looking to launch or expand businesses.
Canada is lending roughly $85 million, which is being matched by $280 million from the Japanese bank SMBC and the Asian Development Bank.
Last month, The House finance committee, which has a majority of Liberal MPs, called on Carney last month to provide predictable and clear aid funding in the Nov. 5 budget.
Aid groups told the committee that the federal government says its supports for refugees inside Canada amount to more than 17 per cent of its total development assistance. While that's a standard reporting practice for western countries, the aid groups said it makes it hard to tell how much Canadian cash is actually going abroad.
The MPs on the committee argued aid spending should be "guided by poverty and fragility" and should have "increasing transparency in the international assistance envelope."
The MPs also urged Canada to "reaffirm gender equality and women’s economic empowerment as drivers of poverty reduction and, therefore, as central priorities." Carney caused confusion a year ago by suggesting Canada no longer has a feminist foreign policy.
Co-operation Canada supports those calls and is urging Carney to reverse cuts to global health programs.
Farran said Canada should earmark $5.5 billion annually for "core" development aid abroad, which would boost funding for things like building schools or helping women advocate for political rights.
He also said Ottawa owes the public more clarity on how it is spending foreign aid and where it's cutting back.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2026.
By Dylan Robertson | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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