Rob Shaw: Whither the weirdness of British Columbia?

B.C.’s political realignment mirrors the federal, with a tired, middle-road centrist party being squeezed out by a harder-right movement

Editor’s note: The Line is back! We’ll get a dispatch out to you all shortly, but wanted to whet your appetites with this … we told you we’d have more B.C. coverage soon!

By: Rob Shaw

VICTORIA — British Columbia politics has always been weird.

This is a province in which an obese Taiwanese billionaire once bought a premier’s personal amusement park using envelopes stuffed with cash in his underwear; where the clerk of the legislature was convicted of fraud; where the Speaker claimed the legislature’s ceremonial mace was bugged by spies; and an MLA stole from a children’s charity for the disabled.

In short, the province has a bit of a reputation. So it might be tempting to view the most recent headlines about the implosion of the former dominant B.C. Liberal party — and the meteoric rise of the B.C. Conservatives — as keeping with British Columbia’s unique brand of zaniness.

Except, it isn’t.

B.C.’s political realignment mirrors one that’s already occurred in several other provinces and is playing out federally, as well, as a tired, middle-road centrist party is squeezed out by a harder-right, hungrier, more-energetic conservative movement.

At the leading edge of it all is an unlikely figure — a 61-year-old former Liberal cabinet minister with a low profile, who was booted from the B.C. Liberal caucus in 2022 by leader Kevin Falcon for sharing a social media post questioning the role of CO2 in climate change. Rather than retire quietly, John Rustad took the ejection, pivoted and joined the moribund B.C. Conservative party, which had clocked only 1.9 per cent of the popular vote in 2020. He gave the party a seat in the legislature, and a profile to grow. Since then, it has skyrocketed.

“Of course nobody thought you could do this in a year, take a political party from two to three per cent to challenge to form government,” Rustad told me. “Lots of people ask me about it and I put it down simply to people are really desperate and looking for change.” Last week — two years and 10 days after he was fired — Rustad stood in a Vancouver hotel ballroom to accept Falcon’s political surrender. The leader of the B.C. Liberal dynasty, a party that ruled the province from 2001 to 2017 under premiers Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark, announced that he was disbanding B.C. United ahead of the next election. Supporters were encouraged to flock to the Conservatives.

“This is the right thing to do for the province,” Falcon said at the Aug. 28 press conference. “I said to John: I may only agree with about 75 per cent of what you might believe in, but I do know this, that on his very worst day John Rustad would be a far better premier than (B.C. NDP premier) David Eby on his very best day. And I’ve never lost sight of that bigger picture.” The Conservatives have been within striking distance of the governing NDP for months, according to polling done by almost every firm in the country.

In the wake of the consolidation, the two parties are now in a statistical tie fewer than 50 days before the Oct. 19 provincial election, according to the Angus Reid Institute. But it wasn’t just Rustad that sparked the Conservative rise. Several other factors came together simultaneously to reshape B.C.’s political landscape. You can trace the start to October 2021, when the B.C. Liberals disqualified social media influencer Aaron Gunn from the party’s leadership race over his views about woke culture, gender issues, Indigenous reconciliation, the removal of the John A. Macdonald statue in Victoria, the far-left “indoctrination” in the post-secondary system, and more.

“Today, it became clear that conservatives, and all British Columbians who believe in common sense and freedom of speech, are no longer welcome in today’s B.C. Liberal Party,” Gunn posted online after the decision, to hundreds of thousands of followers.

It was a rallying cry to a new generation of young conservatives that no longer fit into the province’s traditional “free enterprise” big tent of liberals and conservatives that once comprised the B.C. Liberals.

Gunn’s supporters took over the B.C. Conservative party board and executive. They mirrored the federal party’s blue branding, logo, policies on crime and addictions, and language about “common sense” solutions. Many were already federal Conservative volunteers in B.C.

As Pierre Poilievre surged in the polls federally, the unaffiliated B.C. Conservatives rode the wave. Critics have noted that the deliberately blurred lines between the two parties have led to voter confusion. Regardless, Gunn won the federal Conservative nomination for North Island-Powell River. Rustad arrived in 2023, becoming the first B.C. Conservative MLA in more than a decade, and shortly after, party leader.

Around the same time, the B.C. Liberals embarked on a disastrous rebranding effort to become B.C. United. The goal was to distance the party from the unpopular federal Liberals and Justin Trudeau. But the marketing effort was clumsy. The public barely noticed. And the party started sinking in the polls. United entered a death spiral this spring, losing donors, MLAs, organizers, candidates and supporters.

The business community urged a merger between United and the Conservatives, to prevent a centre-right vote that would have given the B.C. NDP government an easy path to a third term. But Falcon and Rustad, with their bitter personal history, refused to cut a deal. Pressure mounted until Falcon, his career in tatters, blinked at the last minute, saying he’d rather quit than hand the NDP an easy win. B.C. has now returned to its traditional two-party state (the B.C. Greens, which held the balance of power in 2017 with three MLAs, are facing the real threat of extinction in October).

Yet both the NDP and Conservatives have glaring weaknesses. The NDP is struggling with baggage accumulated by seven years in power, including the worsening crises in health care, street disorder, addictions, and affordability. Premier David Eby has shown little visible progress on key areas of improvement after almost two years at the helm. His critics say his radical policies, such as decriminalization, have only made things worse.

Meanwhile, the B.C. Conservatives are suffering their own growing pains, including several vetting controversies in which candidates have backed the chemtrails conspiracy, claimed COVID-19 vaccines magnetize people, called LGBTQ people “degenerates,” and supported criminal investigations into public health officials. Rustad’s preoccupation with hot button social issues like transgendered athletes in female sports, gender-neutral washrooms and sexual orientation education in classrooms, threatens to alienate it from mainstream British Columbia voters.

B.C. history favours the centre-right party; the NDP have only won five out of 42 provincial elections. But the fight for centrist voters, mainly in urban Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island, is the future. It could go either way, with fewer than seven weeks before election day.

Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering B.C. politics. He now reports for CHEK News and writes for Glacier Media, as well as the website Northern Beat. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast and YouTube show Political Capital, and the weekly political correspondent for CBC Radio’s All Points West and Radio West programs. You can reach him at rob@robshawnews.com.

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