BC Conservative Leader John Rustad is probably going to wish he鈥檇 swept the broom a little harder.聽
Some more vigorous scrubbing of his dodgy candidates in the aftermath of the collapse of the BC United Party might have propelled the BC Conservatives to victory in Saturday's provincial election.聽
But seemingly out of a misguided sense of loyalty to candidates who got a BC Conservative nomination when nobody was paying attention to the party, Rustad seems likely to wake up Sunday morning as leader of the Official Opposition rather than as Premier.聽
Polls showed the BC Conservatives ahead of the governing NDP when the campaign began in late September. But the edge disappeared, and now the NDP is back on top, if only slightly. But with the NDPsa国际传媒 broader range of support across the province, particularly on government-loving Vancouver Island and parts of Vancouver, it seems poised to squeak out a third term.聽
Policies, schmolicies. I think the most likely reason for the drop in BC Conservative support isn鈥檛 what they say they鈥檙e going to do if elected. After all, everything it ever seemed likely they would promise, they did promise.聽
Cut taxes. Eliminate red tape. Get rid of the carbon tax. Exempt up to $3,000 a year in rent or mortgage interest from provincial taxes. No more handing out free drugs to addicts, and mandatory treatment for the seriously troubled. Bring back letter grades in schools, for heavensa国际传媒 sake.聽
Leftists may not like these ideas but they are well within the mainstream of small-c conservative thought. And they are appealing to vast numbers of British Columbians, especially those who don鈥檛 work in some way for government.
Ah, government. As always, it has mushroomed under the NDP. For every one private sector job thatsa国际传媒 been created in sa国际传媒 in the past five years, there have been five new jobs in the public sector聽
Honestly, thatsa国际传媒 reason enough right there for anyone not to vote for the NDP. How is that kind of wildly divergent job creation trajectory good for sa国际传媒?聽
Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, the mere mention of whose name will prompt some to stop reading if they haven鈥檛 already, probably wasn鈥檛 too far off when he opined in a Vancouver Sun piece this week that the aim of the NDP is to get so many people working in the taxpayer-dependent public sector that it has an eternal lock on power.聽
But thatsa国际传媒 the beginning of a rant, and this is not a rant. No really, it isn鈥檛, stop saying that! You鈥檙e all a bunch of . . .聽
Oops, sorry. I almost turned into a BC Conservative candidate there. What a sorry and noxious mix of anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and out-and-out nut jobs some of them seem to be.聽
Rustad belatedly realized this a few months ago, his awareness miraculously enhanced by polls showing the BC Conservatives鈥 Frankenstein-like revivification was not a blip but an ongoing political fact. That was a moment, the moment, to cut ties with the weirder candidates, like when he got rid of Alexandra Wright, who had been named the partysa国际传媒 candidate in sa国际传媒 Mission.聽
Wright had reposted a suggestion that a future BC Conservative government should 鈥渃riminally investigate鈥 NDP Health Minister Adrian Dix and provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry. The party said Wright was 鈥渘ot performing鈥 in terms of fundraising and door-knocking and gave her the boot, to hand the nomination to former BC United leadership hopeful Gavin Dew, a much more credible candidate.
So Wright was gone, along with some other BC Conservative candidates whose past was entirely likely to come up as a present and future political problem.聽
But the house-cleaning doesn鈥檛 seem to have gone far enough, and the provincial news cycle for weeks has featured BC Conservative candidates literally hiding from television cameras, not showing up at election debates, or issuing anodyne statements of regret for previous outrageous statements.聽
Rustad had many suddenly-available former BC United candidates who would have joined his team. The ouster of unreliable candidates in, say, mid-September, would have been a one-day news story, and then the issue would have faded away.聽
Instead, the extremist views of some BC Conservatives has been a gift that keeps giving for the NDP, helping no doubt to buoy them back up in the polls.聽
I voted BC Conservative anyway. My thinking, basically, is every party has kooks and the Conservatives鈥 kookier ones will be kept well away from any position of power, should the party form government.聽
Thatsa国际传媒 what I hope, anyway. But I fear the issue is going to be moot.聽
- Ron Seymour is a reporter with The Daily Courier.聽
