If Saturday’s preliminary voting results stay the way they are now, following the count of 49,000 mail-in ballots later this week, that means only six of the 45 Conservative candidates who were elected or leading their races are incumbents.
All the rest, including the three who won their Prince George ridings – Rosalyn Bird in Prince George-Valemount, Sheldon Clare in Prince George-North Cariboo and Kiel Giddens in Prince George-Mackenzie – will be heading to Victoria as first-time MLAs.
Backed by the faith of their electorate, voters have decided they will best represent their interests in the Legislature and Prince George Mayor Simon Yu says they’re in for a crash-course in how the political game works.
“Being a party coming from two per cent of the popular vote in the last election, if they do form the government they will need a lot of advice and help from other levels of government, whether it’s federal or the municipalities, to really understand the problems and the cause of them,” said Yu.
“Hopefully they can pivot to solutions and are able to solve the problems on the ground level. We need co-operation and we need to work together, all three levels of government, and I think they will. If the people listen to everybody involved in politics, to the media, they’ll be fine. Listening is a skill to be learned.”
Yu attended Saturday’s victory party with Bird and Giddens and their supporters and he said he wasn’t at all shocked to see the overwhelming Conservative sweep of the three local ridings.
“As a candidate who once upon a time ran for the federal Liberals (Yu finished second to Dick Harris in the race for Cariboo-Prince George in 2006) I know how conservative this area is, so I’m not surprised that all three Conservative candidates won,” said Yu.
“Whether the Conservatives throughout the province will form the government, we will see.”
Yu is familiar with all three newly minted MLAs and predicts they will excel at their new jobs.
“Kiel is an exceptional person, I know him and his wife for so many years. He grew up here and has a lot of government experience so sending him to Victoria is a good thing for Prince George,” said Yu. “I taught with Sheldon at CNC for many years, he’s a solid person.”
Yu said he got to know Bird when she became a client of his when he was working full-time as a self-employed structural engineer.
“I’ve known Rosalyn for seven or eight years – she’s going to be a straight shooter and tell it the way it is,” Yu said. “She won’t beat around the bush. It might take her some time to get to know the workings of the government but I think her heart is always going to be with the people.
“At the same time, I know all the other candidates, from NDP, from independent, they ran in these three ridings, they’re all good people. Anybody that put their name forward in the exercise to form our democracy to go to the government to do things for the people, there’s no losers, they’re all winners.”
With the exception of North Coast-Haida Gwaii, which voted NDP, all other ridings in the northern half of the province elected Conservative candidates. Yu says that’s partly a reflection of the surging federal Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre and the growing dissatisfaction of Canadians with current governments.
“This is always a Conservative area and the economy always plays a super-important role in the election,” said Yu. “After the pandemic, people feel that inflation and their lifestyle is changing, not for the better economically. So people want to see if there’s another way to get things done, perhaps to have a better future for their children.
“Forestry was, is and always will be important for us and hopefully in days and months ahead, the government will see how it important it is to tailor forest policies to the local conditions, not just across the board. Hopefully they will what works for Northern BC may be different from Vancouver Island and they will make some policy changes and hopefully everybody will win again.”
