FLETCHER: Splinter parties pop up to muddy B.C. politics

Tom Fletcher grew up in the Peace River region and has covered B.C. politics and business as a journalist since 1984.B.C. now has not one but two new parties sprouting from the ashes of the 2024 election, that saw John Rustad’s B.C. Conservatives come from nowhere to within a few hundred votes of toppling the NDP.Voters were still getting used to the idea that the B.C. Liberal Party was gone after two decades at or near the top. They rebranded as B.C. United, and then abruptly folded when they discovered that their fundraising had collapsed and even their leader wasn’t going to hold onto his seat.That move sparked the first new party to register. CentreBC is led by former B.C. Liberal MLA Karin Kirkpatrick, who retired from her wealthy West Vancouver seat after serving a single term, and then mounted a comeback after what she saw as a B.C. United betrayal. CentreBC vows to fix health care, mental illness and homelessness, tackle the “climate crisis,” build a “green economy,” and work towards a “deeper, more meaningful form of reconciliation with indigenous nations.”In other words, CentreBC is a copy of the B.C. NDP without the union support..Now we have One B.C., formed by two of the three MLAs who left the B.C. Conservatives early this year in a dispute over the legacy of residential schools. The interim leader is Dallas Brodie, who won the wealthy Vancouver-Quilchena seat for the B.C. Conservatives last year. She is joined by Tara Armstrong, MLA for the North Okanagan region, another key B.C. Conservative seat.Brodie isn’t likely to be compared to the NDP. She promises to “defund the reconciliation industry,” “eradicate gender ideology” and move to a “tax-free B.C.” in 10 years.Their main advantage is that B.C. law bestows official party status on a group with two elected members, even when they leave the party that got them elected. .It was under the late John Horgan that the B.C. Green Party was granted official party status with only three members, a nod to the dark days of 2001 when the NDP was reduced to only two seats in East Vancouver. The new B.C. Liberal party had enforced the old four-seat rule, leaving a pair of NDP-ers as independents, bereft of extra public funds for staff. That horror was banned by the NDP, and now a new horror takes its place, a splintered, squabbling opposition.Premier David Eby and his NDP colleagues can’t conceal their delight at the cracks that have appeared in the upstart B.C. Conservatives. After the defection of three MLAs to independent status, Energy Minister Adrian Dix chortled that it was “the worst-kept secret in Victoria” that B.C. Conservative caucus meetings had the descended into scenes from Rollerball.(For those under 60 years old, Rollerball was a dystopian science fiction movie released in 1975, with James Caan as a star player in a violent future version of roller derby controlled by corporations. Think of it as The Hunger Games with bowling balls.).The breakaway MLAs launched an attack on the B.C. Conservatives in late May, alleging that Rustad had packed his annual general meeting with Sikh supporters bussed in to support his executive and party constitution.There are two problems with this. First, ordinary B.C. voters aren’t interested in the machinations of party internal affairs. Second, bussing in instant Sikh supporters has been a feature of B.C. politics for decades, across all party lines.Former NDP cabinet minister Corky Evans recently reminisced about his second run for the leadership in 2000. The night before the vote, he was told that rival cabinet minister Ujjal Dosanjh was about to bring in “400 people in school buses coming across the bridge from Surrey” to defeat him..As a community newspaper editor in the Fraser Valley, I saw examples of this ethnic organizing tactic in nomination battles for the B.C. Liberal Party, once it became the brand to beat in the 2000s. And in the recent federal election, veteran Abbotsford politician Mike de Jong was recruited for the nomination and then ousted at the last minute by the federal Conservative executive, making way for the 24-year-old son of a local Sikh power broker who won the seat despite no experience and an almost invisible campaign.It would be great to live in a world where this doesn’t happen, where school boards aren’t taken over by radicals dedicated to defunding the police, where city councils aren’t chosen by their unionized employees. Until the general public is engaged enough to overcome these small special interest groups, it will continue. 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.Correction: in last week’s column I referred to a large area of northwestern B.C. as being off limits to mining for a year as a land use planning study is conducted in partnership with indigenous groups.In fact the region is only off limits to mining exploration. Existing mines are operating and new mining projects are proceeding, including the Eskay Creek gold and silver project near Stewart, and an expansion of the Red Chris mine near Iskut.

FLETCHER: Splinter parties pop up to muddy B.C. politics

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