It is the end of an era in British Columbian politics.
A once-mighty party that has ruled the province for two-thirds of this century will soon be no more.
In its place is a path to formally unite the political right and offer on the eve of a provincial election a much more formidable threat to the ruling BC NDP. This suddenly, and stunningly, becomes a real race to the Oct. 19 finish line.
The deal consummated early Wednesday by the BC Conservatives and directors of BC United – the renamed BC Liberals – suspends the United party’s campaign and will shutter its operations. A handful of BC United candidates will become BC Conservative candidates, but many BC United MLAs and almost all of the first-time candidates will not. BC United nominated candidates will, of course, be free to run as independents but will lack the electoral machinery of the party.
Many things can happen quickly in a campaign. Only Tuesday BC United leader Kevin Falcon was unveiling the party’s forestry strategy. Polls suggest that if an election were held today, the combined support of the two parties would be enough to form the next government.
But many things can also take time.
Falcon resisted for months the calls for the merging of his party with the ascendant BC Conservatives, who were tied or leading in polls. After all, Falcon had jettisoned Conservative’s current leader, John Rustad, from United two years ago for his views on climate change; there is no small amount of personal animus between them, which made any deal much more difficult to reach.
But Wednesday’s move means Falcon had swallowed hard and accepted that Rustad, not he, is the perceived agent of change for British Columbians who have had enough of the BC NDP. Staying put would certainly split the right-of-centre vote and very possibly help the NDP retain power.
Now it is possible for Rustad to sell himself to a province in which a sizeable cohort has yet to take his measure. It becomes very much his race to lose. At least now he can campaign without Falcon reminding people of the storied history of his party and its more centrist perspective, and without Falcon’s often visceral attacks on his policies and team. It also means BC Conservative policies won’t vie with those of BC United for the right-of-centre voter.
For Falcon, a former deputy premier and finance minister who left politics in 2012 and returned a decade later to expectations he would soon lead the province, this is a sorrowful disappointment professionally. He was unable to situate the party as the best alternative to the BC NDP, and his decision to rebrand it proved to be awkward, confusing and ineffective in signalling real change. The baggage of the BC Liberal era, in which he was a prime participant, also weighed him down. Polls indicated he was losing both small-l liberals to the NDP, and conservatives to Rustad’s party; today the party is in single-digit territory, one-third of where it was when Falcon assumed its leadership.
It must be particularly galling for Falcon to be standing aside for the man he chose to dump on his birthday and has ever since criticized. Only this week he mused that Rustad was running a party of conspiracy theorists. Many times he has refused the entreaties of party stalwarts and Rustad himself to fold the tent, insisting that polls were wrong and that he could still mount a victorious campaign. In conversation he had been withering of Rustad’s party’s ideas.
The two leaders sucked it up and said reasonably neutral things about each other Wednesday, making clear they’ve had their differences but agree on the need to bounce the NDP. That’s about as good as you can get for two bitter rivals.
What will be unclear until election day is what his party’s mixture of liberal and conservative supporters do – specifically, are the left-leaning among them going to move to the NDP or the Greens instead of the Conservatives, and are the small-c conservatives prepared to embrace a caffeinated version of the BC United?
Rustad, a former BC Liberal cabinet minister, would focus as premier on the economy and the province’s affordability. He has yet to outline many platform details, but what is known is that he’d kill the provincial carbon tax, open competition to ICBC, and encourage resource development. His health platform calls for more private-sector choices to augment the public health system. On social policy, he wants more choices for child care and education. He is opposed to the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity curriculum in schools, but it is unclear if he’d reverse it.
Those platform planks establish a true alternative to the governing NDP under Premier David Eby. Polls suggest an appetite for change among about half of the province’s voters, but it won’t be known until election day if that means mild or major change. Until election day, though, B.C. politics are again the most volatile and interesting in the country.
Kirk LaPointe is a Glacier Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism.
