FLETCHER: B.C. Conservatives gain as election challenge proceeds

Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984.As B.C. Premier David Eby struggles with a crisis in health care, where even large hospitals like Kelowna General are forced to reduce vital services, youth unemployment is soaring, rents and home prices remain out of reach and groceries keep getting more expensive.The NDP government’s reconciliation efforts are dividing people, with opaque Crown land deals and closures of provincial parks to all but indigenous citizens. The credit rating is down, and the deficit is somewhere north of $10 billion even before the province gets through negotiations with powerful public sector unions.Urban media focus on disagreements with Alberta over additional pipelines and the protests of three dissidents from the opposition B.C. Conservative party, which is embarking on a mandatory post-election leadership review vote that is expected to last into the fall..Leader John Rustad doesn’t seem too concerned about it. I spoke with Rustad this week after a caucus meeting in Surrey, which featured a talk by former premier Gordon Campbell about his experience leading a popular coalition party one step away from replacing an unpopular NDP government. A new public opinion poll has Rustad ahead of Eby by seven points to deal with what respondents chose as their top issue.Top issues vary as Rustad travels the province, from threatened resource economies to out-of-reach housing to the affordability of day-to-day existence. Almost everyone has a family connection to the health care crisis, whether it’s lack of access to a doctor or long waits for specialist procedures.Eby has another problem. His spring legislation to accelerate major projects scraped through with tie-breaking votes cast by the NDP speaker. His already slim majority could soon get slimmer, with a court challenge moving ahead on the paper-thin NDP win in Surrey-Guildford. Former RCMP officer Garry Begg won a recount by 22 votes and is now public safety minister..B.C. Conservative candidate Honveer Singh Randhawa is seeking a new vote after irregularities were confirmed in the handling of mail-in ballots for residents of a 25-bed addiction treatment facility in Surrey. Elections B.C. only allows people to assist one other voter, a rule Rustad knows well because he and his brother both had to sign up to assist their aging parents in a previous election.Coincidentally, the court challenge for votes from the addiction recovery facility deals with 22 ballots, the exact number of the NDP lead. “The lady who runs the facility in question, where a significant number of these questionable votes came from, there was a bulk package of mail-in ballots that were delivered, which Elections BC says they shouldn’t have done,” Rustad said. “You’re supposed to deliver one per request.”.It’s not the only problem Rustad has found in the hotly contested October election where his party went from two seats to 44. In Surrey-Guildford, “we had I think it was 14 or 15 people who have admitted they don’t live in the riding, that voted in the riding. Those should be invalidated.”Rustad says he hasn’t spoken much about the court challenge because evidence had to be gathered and presented to the court. He said there is more to come out that will be significant to the decision to let the result stand or hold a new vote.In his petition, Randhawa alleged non-residents of Surrey-Guildford were improperly registered to vote there, and that a number of individuals had engaged in “voter intimidation, undue influence and unauthorized use of mail-in ballots.”.The problems go beyond the Surrey-Guildford contest.“We’ve gotten so focused on wanting voter turnout, which is good, I’m all for that,” Rustad said. “But we’ve actually stopped checking for even things like Canadian citizenship. We’re just doing everything based on an honour system. How do you confirm anything when it’s a telephone vote?”Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984. He lives in Victoria.tomfletcherbc@gmail.com X:@tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: B.C. Conservatives gain as election challenge proceeds

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