The Political Plot Twist That Rocked the Week

Looking back, the writing has been on the wall for BC United since Day 1.

The faction, for one thing, was never united. Days before the BC Liberals’ name change was finalized, the centre-right party split right through the hyphen. Kicked out of caucus for questioning climate science, Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad defected to the reliably irrelevant BC Conservatives, taking the right, the alt-right and, importantly, any momentum the rebrand had mustered with him.

The ensuing 15 months have been like watching a snake slowly strangle its prey.

On Wednesday, after more than a year of watching donors, supporters and high-profile candidates unite under Rustad instead, and only a week after polling put the BC Conservatives ahead of David Eby’s NDP, the end came for Kevin Falcon and BC United. Falcon suspended their provincial election campaign only eight weeks before B.C. votes.

“I got back into politics because I wanted to build a bright future for my two daughters and for the next generation of British Columbians,” Falcon said, in a news release.

“Today, I’m stepping back for the same reason. I know that the best thing for the future of our province is to defeat the NDP, but we cannot do that when the centre-right vote is split.”

A turn in the style of ‘Game of Thrones’

At a press conference Wednesday, Falcon held his head high while conceding to his bitter rival, but it felt a bit like Rustad did the same thing, Game of Thrones style. There were shades of Ned Stark at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre.

Political observers were taken aback at this unprecedented turn in the election.

“I've been studying Canadian politics for almost 40 years, and I've never seen a political party throw in the towel just before an election was about to be called,” said University of the Fraser Valley political science professor Hamish Telford. “And not just any party, right? This is the official Opposition, the former governing party of the province, just saying, ‘Yeah, we're not going to fight this one.’”

“They were going to be defeated, possibly wiped out,” Telford said. “But you would think, even still, given what Kevin Falcon had been saying about where his party was positioned, and the things that he'd been saying about BC Conservatives, that he would fight the good fight and fall on his sword after the election, not before it.”

The timing surprised University of British Columbia political scientist Stewart Prest, too.

“BC United were handing out tinfoil-plated hats with the BC Conservatives logo last week,” said Prest.

“That's not usually what you do when you're contemplating joining forces with someone.”

Typical of a hostile takeover

This development happened quite quickly, of course. Many BC United staffers and candidates had no prior knowledge of what happened Wednesday, and there was much confusion over what this meant for Falcon or BC United’s future.

But that’s typical of a hostile takeover, which is what this was, and one that’s been long in the works by the so-called conservative fringe, or alt-right. Just as we’ve seen at the national level not only in the United States but here, the conservative party has gone to the demagogues.

“In some ways, this reminds me a little bit of the story of Erin O'Toole and Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party [of Canada],” said Prest.

He noted there are “two flavours of conservatism, often at odds over important questions, Prest continued. “How do you straddle that divide between the more populist, cultural, what I sometimes call ‘skeptics of modernity’ version of conservatism, and... centre-right types who want to have a balanced budget, and want to have costs come down and those sorts of things.” The latter, fiscally conservative group is not as inclined to engage in more socially conservative battles, Prest noted.

That’s a huge distinction. And it seems notable, even concerning, that David Eby responded to Wednesday’s shift in B.C. politics by claiming there’s really no difference between the two men and their parties.

“I really don’t see a huge distinction between them except that neither of them are running as BC Liberals this time because of their record,” Eby said of Rustad and Falcon. “They are so embarrassed with how they ran the province, they both have changed their party names and want to avoid any association with the 16 years they were in government. And I understand why that is.”

The difference is clear: fiscal conservatism, long the backbone of this movement, is mostly an afterthought now. The free enterprise coalition is all but disbanded. Social conservatism reigns instead.

Climate denial and conspiracy theories, anti-immigration and dog-whistle racism, book bans for liberals and free speech for radical xenophobes and far-right figures: these things have always been part of the conservative coalition, albeit relegated to the fringes.

Now they’re the coal in the furnace.

How fringe elements found each other

How did this happen? The internet, mostly.

“What social media has allowed is for all of these fringe elements to find each other, and through this, they've been able to establish a movement,” said Telford. “I don't think we necessarily realized how many of these people were out there until social media brought them together.

“And once you realize that there's a fairly large constituency out there, you get political entrepreneurs who are saying... I'd rather them vote for me than someone else.

“They're playing with fire, in my view.”

A year ago, this was unthinkable. Then came the first poll to make us think otherwise: numbers from Mainstreet Research released in September 2023 put Rustad’s party not just in contention, but ahead of Falcon’s. The BC Conservatives, a perennial non-factor, were suddenly surging.

Days later, we saw our first high-profile defection: Abbotsford South MLA Bruce Banman crossed the floor, single-handedly doubling the size of the BC Conservatives caucus.

Fears of vote-splitting led to conversations about bringing the parties together, but Rustad could see what was coming, even if Falcon could not. A proposed non-competition framework tabled in May called on the centre-right parties “not to attack one another over the course of the campaign,” but it was too late for that.

In an eye-popping statement, Rustad claimed Falcon told him to effectively pound sand. Both men walked away from the table.

But that wasn’t quite true, especially in hindsight. Falcon wasn’t really at the table. He was on the menu.

Further defections would follow, most notably Lorne Doerkson and Elenore Sturko, who had criticized Rustad for comparing residential schools to LGBTQ2S+ education in schools and had recently been called a “woke, lesbian, social justice warrior” by Conservative candidate Paul Ratchford.

Water under the bridge. Sturko now stands as a counter to anyone who might suggest the BC Conservatives are as troublingly anti-gay as they’ve told us they are.

‘It’s time to tango’

Over the summer, as polling suggested a horse race between the incumbent BC NDP and Rustad’s Conservative Party of BC, donors began to reallocate money.

Centre-right figures who pictured or presented themselves as old-fashioned and socially liberal were forced to face facts: it was over. Right-wingers who actually wanted to win had a choice to make: switch to team Rustad or lose.

Former BC Liberal leadership candidate Gavin Dew said just that. In a National Post op-ed timed alongside the announcement of his BC Conservatives candidacy in Kelowna-Mission two weeks ago, he urged B.C.’s economic coalition to stop holding the wall.

“The increasingly frantic business community and the surging Conservatives stand awkwardly like teenagers on either side of a gym, worried about how they’ll be judged by their peers for who they dance with,” Dew wrote. “We’re running out of songs — it’s time to tango.”

On Wednesday, Kevin Falcon did the tango de la muerte. The leader who once claimed Rustad’s views were too extreme bent the knee, encouraging “all free-enterprise voters” to rally behind Rustad’s party, so as “to prevent another four years of disastrous NDP government.”

At the lectern, Prest observed, Falcon even adopted Rustad’s more polarized rhetoric, calling Eby’s NDP “extreme left,” and claiming the incumbents would “destroy this province.”

For me, that’s the story here. At one time, BC United drew a clear line in the sand. Then the tide turned and washed it completely away.

“What Kevin Falcon was calling into question with John Rustad and the BC Conservatives was not so much policy positions, but fitness to govern,” said Telford. “And Kevin Falcon said that. He said explicitly. I'm trying to paraphrase what he said: under no scenario is John Rustad up to being premier.”

You would think, Telford continued, that if you really thought the opposition was unfit, you’d put your money where your mouth is. “It’s hard to square,” he said.

But as Falcon stood before assembled media on Wednesday and rebutted consecutive questions that BC United had no money left, it became clear that he could no longer afford his convictions.

That’s free enterprise for you.

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