The federal election sign wars are turning dirty.
Both Todd Doherty, running for the Conservatives in Prince George-Cariboo, and Matt Shaw, the Liberal candidate in Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies, have filed complaints with the RCMP after noticing a large number of their signs have gone missing.
Doherty estimates the loss for him at about 200 signs in and around Prince George and a further 250 to 300 in the Williams Lake area, and he has his suspicions.
"It just appears that the wind has been fairly selective, to be completely candid," Doherty said Thursday. "Who knows? It could be wind, it could be kids, but there is a trend and there's one party's signs that continue to stay up and there are a couple of other parties' signs that either get knocked down or go missing."
Immediately after the writ was dropped, a forest of Doherty signs sprouted up throughout the city. After Labour Day, other candidates started their pushes in earnest, notably NDP candidate Trent Derrick, as the byways took on a strong hue of orange to match the sea of Conservative blue.
But then, in some areas, notably along main thoroughfares, signs with Doherty's name on them started to noticeably go missing while Derrick's signs remained standing.
Reached Thursday, Derrick said he hasn't noticed any correlation but also said he frowns on anyone who vandalizes or steals the signs of any candidate.
"It is one of the tools we use in the democratic process so I do not endorse in any manner anyone that would want to destroy someone else's signs, or deface or put anything on them," Derrick said.
He said a portion of his signs have also gone missing but nothing more than expected.
Doherty said his campaign still has signs in reserve which have been used to replace the missing ones. As of Thursday, the number of Conservative signs along Central and Ospika appeared to have been restored.
Shaw is not as fortunate.
He and a volunteer put up 40 signs along Foothills Boulevard, Chief Lake Road and around the Hart about 10 days ago.
"But I went up two days later and every single one of those signs was gone," Shaw said. "I had 30 more signs so I went and put those up and we went there the next day just to check on things and all those were gone, so we had approximately 70 signs gone."
He said someone found about 10 of them in a ditch and took them to Shaw's campaign office where they remain.
Each sign costs about $6 but Shaw said the real problem is they're hard to get in short order.
"They take a long time and I'm not going to get anymore before the election, so it was a little bit of a hiccup to my campaign in terms of getting name recognition out there and all of that," he said. "And of course, it's disconcerting to think that somebody is systematically taking down my signs."
None of the blue signs seemed to have been affected, he added.
"I don't think they were targeting me specifically, I just think they don't like competing signs going up, maybe," Shaw said.
Tracy Calogheros, the Liberal candidate in Prince George-Cariboo, said she's had no problem with her signs, "other than the wind knocks them down."
Doherty said he doubts the RCMP can do anything unless they catch someone red handed.
Prince George RCMP Cpl. Craig Douglass said culprits generally must be caught in the act and that's difficult to do. But he said anyone whose property is stolen should report it, nonetheless.
"At least, if we come across somebody with signs, we could look a little bit more into whether they should have those signs or not," Douglass said.
Those caught can be charged with theft under $5,000.
