“There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;”
- Robert W. Service
And the northern lights have seen queer sights but the queerest they ever did see... doesn’t even come close to the fraud Kevin Falcon, leader(sic) of the BC United party perpetrated last week.
Fraud is too kind a word for the duplicitousness of last week’s disappearance of a once vibrant political party. Regardless of what some pundits have said, the demise of the once powerful BC Liberal party rests squarely on the inadequate shoulders of Kevin Falcon. Destroying it is his legacy and his shame.
The way he did it says everything you need to know about the man’s missing moral compass. Less than two months from the provincial election, without warning, without consulting the men and women who had stepped forward to run for election under the party’s banner, Kevin the Knife—or is that Knave—pushed away from the table like a man who’d found an unpalatable dish set before him and “suspended” the party’s efforts to remain the official opposition or even still exist.
There is no way to blunt the complete and utter mismanagement he brought to his half-assed effort to lead the party. Ironically, his only good act as leader was to kick John Rustad out of cabinet two years ago when Mr. Rustad channelled his inner Ralph Klein, claiming climate change, assuming it existed at all, was not necessarily a man-made phenomena. Perhaps, like Klein, Rustad too believed its cause may lie in million year old dinosaur farts.
In an interview Thursday on CBC radio, Mr. Rustad dodged and weaved on the subject of climate change. “Do you believe it exists?” elicited no answer. Pressing, and bringing up his past statements to underscore his lack of belief in its existence, he finally admitted a nascent belief it may exist but not necessarily as a result of mankind’s addiction to fossil fuels.
But back to the villain of the piece. One of Kev’s first acts of “leadership” was to change the name of the party. In itself not a bad idea since the BC Liberal party—claiming the turf right-of-centre—was far from liberal and was often confused by a semi-literate electorate with the federal Liberal party with whom they shared no affiliation, political ideology or love.
But instead of choosing something snappy or at least a name that accurately captured the je ne sais quoi of the party, BC Business for example, he launched the lame and thoroughly inaccurate BC United party. Disunited may have been a better choice but as it turned out he may as well have labelled it BC Titanic.
It was all downhill from there. Rustad breathed life into the BC Conservative party, voters in increasing numbers conflated the provincial Conservatives with PP’s federal Conservative party and BC United, lacking any leadership, organization or charisma, went into a flat spin.
In the spring of this year, Kev stood before a small crowd in Squamish and promised the party would have a candidate within the next 45 days to fill the seat relinquished by Jordan Sturdy who’d announced his intention not to stand for re-election. Radio silence after that until the recent revelation there was, indeed, a qualified applicant to run in this riding and who got jerked around for the next four months by an organization operating on the level of gerbils in a wheel cage.
The honourable thing to do last week would have been to redouble his efforts toward the upcoming election. That or do anything at all to suggest he knew there was an election coming. If more voters in B.C. decided the anti-science, intolerant, conspiracy theory policies of the Conservative party were more to their liking, take the loss like an honourable man, resign and let someone with measurable leadership skills use the next term to rebuild the party.
Instead, having expressed the belief Mr. Rustad wasn’t remotely ready to be premier and on Tuesday likened the Conservatives to a “conspiracy” party, on Wednesday Kev folded his cards, fell to his knees and... threw his support behind Rustad. Make no mistake, this wasn’t a meeting of equals. Neither party had candidates in all ridings and while lip service may have been paid to selecting the “best” candidates to run in their respective ridings, the Conservatives are in charge and the BC United candidates are the water bearers.
Live in fear of your 5G connection, cellular junkies.
With no advanced warning, BC United candidates were left to wonder whether they still have a candidacy. They’re not sure how they’re going to deal with the expenses they’ve already incurred and the ones they’re on the hook for in the future. They and their backers are in the dark about contributions already made to support the effort.
Some have thrown their support behind the Conservatives. Any right is better than no right. Some have simply resigned. Some have moved their support to the NDP. Others, who haven’t had a good word to say about the Conservatives, might or might not take that tack, having had the last long weekend of the summer to chew on it.
All in all, it was a shabby, shameful way to treat members of his party and the people of British Columbia. Kevin Falcon is done in B.C. politics. Whether he’s able to head back to the private sector or simply slip into oblivion or even emerge as Rustad’s lap dog remains to be seen. There are strange things done in the B.C. sun.
So now it’s a dog fight. The far right foil-hatters versus whatever stratagems the NDP might come up with to embrace moderate conservatives suddenly left without a home and convince them David Eby isn’t the devil incarnate.
Now more than ever, the Green party stands proudly to play the role of spoiler. Currently occupying two seats in Victoria that number stands to decline by one because of its leader, Sonia Furstenau’s decision to run in the Victoria-Beacon Hill riding, an NDP stronghold since 2005. With two seats, the Greens hold the minimum number to be considered an official party in B.C.’s legislature.
That said, their smattering of support, around 10% of the vote, is and has been enough to swing sufficient ridings away from the NDP to the BC Liberals in recent elections. Liberals forming government in the past was unpalatable for “progressive” voters. Seeing the 2024 Conservatives form government would be a disaster. The changing landscape masterminded by Kevin the Knife last week has made voting Green to “send a message” even more pointless.
The strangest things may be still to come.
