BC Conservatives eye fresh opportunity amid Liberal uncertainty

Share

As candidates add their names to the ballot for the leadership of the once-dominant BC Liberal Party, each of them will have to reconcile the party's loss of support with the populist policies of the NDP. But they will all, too, have to keep a closer eye on what's happening on their right flank.

The BC Conservative Party, which has no seats in the provincial Legislature and no leader, is looking on uncertainty arising from the BC Liberal leadership race as an opportunity to bolster its political fortunes. As the Conservatives hold their annual general meeting this week, they will be aggressively noting the last Liberal Throne Speech that embraced some NDP policies as the Liberals scrambled to hang on to their minority government.

"They abandoned what they claimed to fight for for decades in the pursuit of raw power," said Scott Anderson, a city councillor in Vernon, B.C., and communications director for the BC Conservatives. Of the candidates for the Liberal leadership, Mr. Anderson said: "They are running for a dinosaur. [The party members] can't even define themselves at the moment. There's no coalition. It's sort of schizophrenia and, 'Where do we go from here?' We feel they have had their day. They're a tired party."

Appealing to Conservatives, whether supporters of the federal party or members of the provincial party, which has no links to its federal counterpart, has always been part of the formula that allowed the Liberals to stay in power for 16 years, and the most recent provincial election left the fabric in the BC Liberal tent frayed.

Former finance minister Mike de Jong, who announced his candidacy for the leadership on Monday, declared he can be the bridge to the party's full range of supporters. Andrew Wilkinson, former advanced education minister, made the same pledge as he entered the race on Monday.

"If you brought in 20 members of the BC Liberal Party today, I bet they split pretty evenly on which side of the coalition they identify me with," Mr. de Jong said in an interview. "[It] is not a bad place to be, if you are going to try to bring people together. Not all the candidates, or anticipated candidates, can legitimately make that claim."

One of the longest-serving Liberal MLAs, Mr. de Jong is taking another crack at the party leadership after being defeated in the 2011 leadership contest won by former premier Christy Clark.

Mr. Wilkinson, a BC Liberal Party president before being elected to the Legislature, said he worked in the 1990s to bring members of the former provincial Reform Party into the fold of the BC Liberals, leading eventually to the Liberal win of 77 of 79 seats in the 2001 election.

But he said, looking ahead, the party faces challenges. "We have some work to do in making sure our coalition of a whole range of party affiliations comes back together into this organization," he said when asked about the issue at his campaign launch.

Lori Ackerman, the mayor of Fort St. John and a member of the BC Liberals, is speaking this weekend to the BC Conservative meeting, offering her view on resource development after the party asked to hear it.

Asked about the BC Conservatives, she warned the provincial Liberals about being complacent. "There were a few ridings where the BC Conservatives shook things up," she noted.

Other declared candidates include Tory MP Dianne Watts, former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan and former education minister Mike Bernier.

In 2017, the BC Conservatives ended up getting less than 1 per cent of the vote after running 10 candidates. BC has 87 legislature seats.