FLETCHER: BC’s anti-NDP coalition tradition endures for a reason

Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.VICTORIA — After the 1952 BC election replaced a coalition government of Liberal and Conservative MLAs with a new entity organized out of Alberta called Social Credit, its 19 surprised and mostly rookie winners chose a BC Conservative from Kelowna to lead them.Hardware store owner WAC Bennett, known as Cecil to his family and friends, would go on to run the province for 20 years, creating BC Hydro, BC Ferries, and a highway network along the way. After a dramatic three-year experiment with Dave Barrett’s NDP from 1972 to 1975, voters turned to Bennett’s son Bill for another decade of highways, dams, and a world’s fair.“The socialist hordes are at the gates, my friends,” the elder Bennett would warn of the growing CCF-NDP-union coalition that even in the early days was within reach of forming government.More than 70 years later, the coalition rule of BC politics is still asserting itself, as efforts by BC Conservative leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay to end it are demonstrating.The suddenly revived BC Conservatives of 2024 were a coalition with a new name, replacing the BC Liberals that had rebranded to BC United to distance themselves from Justin Trudeau. One of the BC Liberal veterans to make the jump was John Rustad, whose leadership was disrupted first by Vancouver MLA Dallas Brodie’s demand for a harder line on indigenous relations.Former Conservative MP Findlay eked out a narrow win in the subsequent leadership vote, upending front-runner and former BC Liberal executive Caroline Elliott, the leading coalition candidate. Elliott, a one-time BC Liberal ministerial staffer, had made a name for herself with forceful opposition to Premier David Eby’s aggressive bid to settle indigenous land claims by whatever means he can use..While Elliott and others continue to argue the case for repealing BC’s unprecedented Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, Findlay’s retooled party took a more graphic approach. The latest tactic is a series of lurid social media videos, the first depicting Premier David Eby as a Soviet-style dictator, burning churches and pulling down statues.The second is a map of BC taken over by a spreading red fire of indigenous land claims, focused on the mineral-rich Tahltan territory in the northwest and extending to southern Vancouver Island where provincial parks and downtown Victoria properties are suddenly on the table.This is the top issue for provincial voters, distracted as they may be by a Trump-Carney trade war and the spiralling cost of living. The Tahltan “foundation agreement” has just this week been put out for public input, which under the Eby government means the deal is done and the cosmetic gestures are starting.Findlay, a lawyer who has experience with Aboriginal rights and title cases, has focused on purging the party board and staff of those who don’t meet her Conservative purity test. She has declared the coalition approach over.This led to an exodus of (at this writing) six sitting MLAs in the past two weeks, including some of the least Liberal of them. Prince George MLA Rosalyn Bird served with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. Delta MLA Ian Paton is a lifelong farmer and able agriculture critic.It’s been a disastrous two weeks for Findlay, punctuated by the firing of one of her party staffers accused of plotting to abuse donor funds. What was a near-majority has shrunk, with one new party started and another in the works..Paton alleged that when Findlay’s team approached him to give up his seat for her, he was offered a party job in exchange, a potentially illegal act that was hotly denied. Yet soon after, Abbotsford-Mission MLA Reann Gasper agreed to step aside, and coincidentally took a job as Findlay’s deputy chief of staff.Assuming we get to the stage of Findlay running in a by-election, one image that will get heavy play is Findlay’s celebration on winning a bare majority for the leadership. She busted out an unmistakable Donald Trump dance, with the ease of some practice.One of Findlay’s vocal critics is Christy Clark, who put aside her own lifelong federal Liberal associations as BC premier to carry on the coalition tradition. She championed completion of the Site C power dam, named a bridge after Bill Bennett, and brought in people who had served in Stephen Harper’s office, including Alberta firewall architect Ken Boessenkool as chief of staff.While Findlay has refused interviews with most conventional BC media outlets, Clark has an easy familiarity with media sound bites, honed by years of talk radio hosting like Danielle Smith.Now a pundit on CTV and elsewhere, Clark responded to Findlay’s upset win in BC by immediately predicting that Findlay can’t win an election.“She’s too kooky.”Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: BC’s anti-NDP coalition tradition endures for a reason

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