The bombshell that was Kevin Falcon’s decision to suspend BC United’s campaign for the Oct. 19 provincial election and encourage party supporters to prop up the Conservative Party of B.C. has kicked up a storm of political fallout that leaves more questions than answers.
Just days before BC United and Conservative candidates were about to get on board the election train and activate their teams of volunteers to erect signs and begin blitzing the public to woo their votes, the rug was pulled out from under their feet.
That left registered candidates in both parties hanging, their political fates now in the hands of Conservative leader John Rustad while he assembles a team he thinks will be strong enough to defeat the NDP government.
“I didn’t see the dropout coming, I anticipated that BC United were done, but that’s no great look into a crystal ball,” said UNBC political science senior instructor Jason Morris.
“Since when does a party go from official opposition to dropping out in the space of one term? Since when does the party that won the popular vote in every election but one, back to 1996, just seemingly pack it in?"
It also raises the question: does Falcon have the legal right to suddenly end the campaigns of all of BC United’s MLA candidates, who now will be forced to pick a side?
“In Canada and B.C. most of our parties are hierarchical top-down organizations and it means the leader has a lot of power,” said Morris. “The leader was elected by the members of the party and that means the members can’t expel him so easily without triggering a leadership convention and there’s no time for that.
“The leader also has the authority to have the final say on nominations for the 93 electoral districts and so he can effectively cancel all of those that were nominated. The leaders of the party get the final say on who the candidates are and all I can speculate on is that behind the scenes Mr. Rustad and Mr. Falcon will be working to find spaces for everybody. The BC Conservatives had a fair number of candidates already in place and turfing them would be an issue for internal party harmony. They don’t have much time with an election almost officially underway.”
With BC United no longer in the picture that raises doubts about the political future of such popular high-profile MLAs as Shirley Bond and Coralee Oakes, who no longer have a party to represent in the October election.
Rustad already has a candidate, Rosalyn Bird, set to run against Bond in the Prince George-Valemount riding
“A person like Coralee Oakes might find themselves out of job now,” said Morris. “They’ve put a lot of effort and work into their political career and it’s just done. People like Shirley Bond, B.C’s first-ever female deputy premier, who has quite the legacy for northern B.C. in the province, effectively find themselves being forced into retirement.”
The timing of Falcon’s stunning announcement, a day after he publicly stated his vision for forestry policy reform, a plan that proposed moving the forest ministry from Victoria to Prince George, is puzzling to political analysts.
It came three months after Falcon and Rustad both rejected a proposed merger between the two parties. Their joint announcement Wednesday happened months after Rustad crossed the floor to join the BC Conservatives, following his dismissal from the BC Liberal caucus for expressing his opposing views on climate change.
“I bet that this decision was longer in the works than we will ever know, but there is just so much to figure out,” said Morris.
“It’s not a lock that all BC United supporters would automatically go to the BC Conservatives. Historically the BC Liberal Party/BC United has been an impressive amalgamation of federal Liberals and federal Conservatives. It stands to reason that those federal Liberals in that tent may find themselves more closely aligned with the BC NDP than the John Rustad BC Conservatives.”
Conservatives have caught the interest of eligible voters, largely at the expense of BC United, and public opinion polls have reflected that trend.
“Parties tend to do their own internal polling when they have the finances to do so that we never get to see the results of, so when grand decisions are made like this I suspect that the private polling mirrored what we were being able to see from the public released surveys.
“We’ve seen a steady decline for BC United support for about a year now, going to the depths of what would be considered a minor party.”
Folding the BC United tent will be expensive. Money has been spent on election signs, producing ads and training staff, and now that’s all up in the air.
“I would imagine that David Eby has TV spots ready to go that have Kevin Falcon painted all over the place, similar to John Rustad, and that will all have to be sent to the recycle bin on their computers,” said Morris.
“Lawn signs, party staff and candidate volunteers and the training they’ve done is all out the window. That’s B.C. politics for you.”
Falcon’s decision is a sign of how far the party formerly known as the BC Liberals has fallen out of favour with British Columbian voters and Morris says that certainly is not unprecedented.
“If you go back to the early days of B.C.s’ political party history, It’s not that new to have political parties have great success and then almost completely vanish,” he said.
“The provincial Conservatives won the first four provincial elections but then they last formed government almost 100 years ago. The provincial Liberals won elections until the 1950s and then became a fringe party for decades, until 2001, when people like Kevin Falcon and Gordon Campbell rejuvenated that party.
“Now they find themselves on the cusp of being fringe again, with a new name that didn’t catch on.”
Correction: This story has been updated with corrected information about the Prince George-North Cariboo electoral district. We apologize for the original error.
