Geoff Russ: Expo 86, when British Columbia was the future

The spirit of Expo is dormant. Can the province recover it?

(Vancouver during Expo 86, photo credit to Sandra Rose-Cohen.)

This is the 40th anniversary year of Expo 86. It should remind British Columbians of a time when the province acted like the future of Canada, and Vancouver hosted a six-month carnival to prove it.

Officially titled “1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication”, it drew over 22 million visitors to a city transformed by new infrastructure, and opened to the world. When it was over, Vancouver’s days as a provincial backwater were finished. It had become a Pacific city with a vital national role, and it carried itself as such.

People spoke of the “Pacific Century” in the 1980s, when the Asia-Pacific was identified as “the most important geographical area for B.C. and Canada’s future.” That was the mood of the times. Everything seemed to be tilting west, where things were young, exciting, and unapologetic about wanting to win.

True mobility existed, and people could easily pack up and move to Vancouver. The city was not cheap compared to the rest of Canada, and never has been, but there was still a ladder that led from work to wages to a place to live and start a family.

Comparing real estate prices between 1986 and 2026 is like comparing different sovereign currencies. In 1986, the average price of a detached home was under $200,000. Today, the median value of a house is almost $1.2 million. Households spend 30 per cent or more of their income on shelter of some kind. That is a society where an ordinary life is near impossible.

This is not a scenario in which B.C. can credibly call itself a land of opportunity. As the commercial capital of the province, Vancouver has to lead by proving that it can foster stability, dynamism, and pride at the same time.

In 1986, the province was also proud of its past. B.C.’s early and colonial history, which laid the foundations of a prosperous society, was honoured during Expo with exhibitions honouring George Vancouver, the explorer who charted the land in 1792.

Publicly funded institutions and progressive politicians now treat this past as a sort of foreign occupation. They talk as if the province was founded by villains, and can only be redeemed by bureaucrats hired under a DEI regime. It receives similar treatment to how communist governments are portrayed in former Eastern Bloc countries across Europe, which is equal parts pigheaded and toxic.

Confident societies do not permit this. They do not permit the splitting of approved, modern “Canadian” and “British Columbian” history apart from the “colonial” past, as if they belonged to different countries. We have one story, inherited from an older world and forged in the new, and it is unserious to hold it in contempt.

The ambitions of 1986 did not vanish overnight. Well into the 21st century, B.C. was still a restless, entrepreneurial, and Pacific-facing province. However, it never crossed the line to become the pre-eminent province in Canada, akin to the importance of California to the United States.

Ontario remains the country’s economic and demographic engine. Today, Ontario is often called the “sick man” of North America, with a sluggish economy and a host of longstanding social and cultural declines, taking the country with it.

So long as British Columbians do not take their province by the reins, the country’s destiny will remain shackled to the Quebec City–Windsor corridor, a ribbon of rust, slush, and lethargy.

B.C. has an inner spirit of frontier possibility, currently constrained by an ideologically and intellectually bankrupt organisation called the B.C. New Democrats. Instead of the province that should be pulling Canada forward, B.C. is being managed downward.

British Columbians have an unfortunate tendency to tolerate ideological experiments, often for too long.

They did it in 1972 with the election of NDP leader Dave Barrett, who benefitted from a split of the right-wing vote. He was brutally energetic, passing more than 350 bills, from the hated government monopoly on auto insurance to the outlawing of pay toilets, helping to turn public washrooms into drug-riddled no-go zones. He did plenty of damage, and British Columbians quickly learnt from it.

The B.C. right reformed and ousted Barrett in 1975. That was not the case in the dark decade of NDP governance in the 1990s.

From the “Fast Ferries” scandal to budgetary mayhem and inept responses to economic shock, those years are still seared into the memory of British Columbians who experienced them.

In 2001, their just desserts were delivered when they lost 77 out of 79 seats to the B.C. Liberals under Gordon Campbell. It was a complete repudiation of the NDP, and it took 16 years for voters to give them another chance in 2017, to the regrets of many today.

In 2026, British Columbians are living inside the NDP’s illusion that bigger government is a substitute for true leadership. This is best exemplified by the fact that the NDP have turned the public sector into the best place to find employment, while private sector job growth is historically weak.

B.C. cannot get richer if the government is doing all the hiring itself. They spend, regulate, moralise, and impede the projects that would make B.C. stronger, wealthier, and more sovereign.

Real GDP per capita has been falling since 2023. As the average British Columbian gets poorer, people fight for scraps by sending résumés to non-existent jobs, or simply leave the province altogether.

This is a moment for judgement. Dread should fill the hearts of anybody under the age of 40, because they have been handed a province that still tries to talk like a winner and lives like a loser.

Out-migration is up and morale is collapsing. There was an interprovincial net loss of 8,600 people in 2023, and more than one-third of the population has seriously considered departing due to a lack of affordability.

B.C. is bleeding due to the wounds inflicted by this NDP government, and bleeding badly because they have neither the will nor the know-how to heal those wounds. A province that cannot keep its youth is a province that will soon stop believing in its own future.

The cupboard is completely bare. Under the NDP, there is a budget deficit of over $10 billion and nobody really knows what it is being spent on, for it certainly isn’t in aid packages or even a tax cut for middle- and working-class British Columbians. The closest B.C. got was David Eby’s promise of a large grocery rebate for families in the 2024 provincial election, which the government swiftly reneged on after barely holding onto power.

Decades of fiscal propriety have been replaced by institutionalised spendthrift ideology, without any competitiveness, or improvement in the provincial spirit to make it worth it. The only thing that has gotten bigger in B.C. is the size of the provincial government, which has curiously increased inversely to the quality of life.

Even worse, the New Democrats have dared to play with fire by meddling in the legal foundations of B.C., specifically with home ownership. With their changes to the Land Act and reaction to the Cowichan Tribes decision, British Columbians lucky enough to own a home have no idea if they hold secure title to their land any more.

Back in August, the B.C. Supreme Court declared Aboriginal title in a large section of Richmond, and found that certain fee simple interests held by the Crown and the City of Richmond were “defective and invalid,” and that Aboriginal title was senior.

There are few stable democracies in the world in which security of property is not assured. Property rights are a foundation of any middle-class, stable democracy. The response to the Cowichan decision by lenders, insurers, and homeowners indicates that security does not exist in their minds any more. We do not have a social contract if people have to guess if they truly own their homes or not.

This is all part of the NDP’s style of governance, which is to forge a regime of top-down control where they manage all they can, and put as many workers as possible under their thumb. There is a reason why most entrepreneurs, independent contractors, and small business owners don’t vote for them. The NDP do not trust citizens to run their own lives, and care little for those who try.

Using the moral language of “reconciliation” and “equity”, they have tried to browbeat their critics into submission and acceptance.

To be clear, the former B.C. Liberal government was not innocent, having allowed a red-hot housing market to run wild and drive up supply, squeezing the very spirit of “free enterprise” that they themselves espoused. There is no dynamism without youth, and they need places to live, which were already in short supply in 2017, the final year of B.C. Liberal power. But the Liberals’ failures do not excuse the NDP’s. All it does is explain how the NDP got the keys to the premier’s office.

While holding those keys, they have shown that they still do not care about opportunity, and seek only to hoard more administrative duties and to enforce economic and social compliance. Rather than unleashing B.C., they only want to expand their supervision.

By default, the responsibility to restore B.C. falls to the provincial Conservatives. No party deserves power as their birthright, but no province can thrive without a credible political vehicle to bring it back on track.

The typical B.C. Conservative offerings are already known to the public: cutting red tape, fiscal responsibility, and private-sector growth. These are perfectly fine, but what about harnessing the dormant spirit of possibility and excitement that was embodied by Expo 86?

B.C. needs its old confidence back, and the belief that Canada’s best years will be led by B.C., and that society and government should act like it.

Critics will accuse Expo 86 of bringing about massive spending and spearheading the gentrification of Vancouver, but that pales in comparison to the fearlessness and sense of possibility that it brought to the province.

Over the past decade, B.C. has become more like California in all the worst ways, and perhaps even exceeding those, from addiction, public disorder, and non-affordability.

B.C. should not aspire to be anywhere else but here. It only needs to act like itself again, and be the home of hopeful people living the good life, while having the confidence to reclaim its place as the future of the country.

The choice is simple.

Either B.C. returns to the spirit that animated Expo or it accepts the managed decline of a province that once led the nation and now cannot be home to its own people.

Geoff Russ is the Editor-at-Large of Without Diminishment. He is a contributor to a number of publications, including the National Post, Modern Age, and The Spectator Australia.