LIBERAL PARTY DEBACLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20028, 18 August 1928, Page 12

LIBERAL PARTY DEBACLE.

MAJORITY SWEPT AWAY. BRITISH COLUMBIA POLLS. [FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT. ] VANCOUVER, July 25. At the British Columbia general elections the Liberal Party, which had been in power for 12 years, was swept away, the Conservatives being returned with 35 seats in a House of 48. Labour, which supported tho Liberals, was also decimated, only one member of - that party, for the mining centre of Fernie, near tho Alberta and Washington boundary, being returned. The people wanted a change. To the Liberals fell the lot of introducing State control of liquor. The administration of liquor brought out charges of every known or imagined form of patronage,-protection and assurance, which, in less parliamentary terms, have been referred to by tho Government's critics as political cor-i ruption. A dominant issue of the election was tlibprospect of the Canadian Government taking over, through the Canadian National Railway, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, in which ten millions sterling have been sunk, and on which profits are exceedingly rare, owing to tho fact that the line ends at Squamish, 40 miles from Vancouver, and at Quesncl, 50 miies short of the transcontinental service at Prince George in tho north. Tho issuejs still unsolved. The Liberal Government at Ottawa undertook to solve it if the Liberals wero .returned in British Columbia. It to bo seen how far they will aid their political opponents in so'ving it.