Michael Grindlay is a second-year political science student. He is passionate about politics and ideally wants to use it to improve the world around him. He was also an organizer with the BC Greens.
On October 19, British Columbians will vote in the 43rd provincial election. The political landscape has shifted significantly in the last few months, with the biggest change being the rise of a new party – the BC Conservative Party. And unlike the last new party that appeared on the scene, the BC Greens, the Conservatives have, according to 338Canada.com, give or take a 40 percent chance of forming a government at time of publication.
It may appear at first glance that the BC Conservatives are the new political party on the scene, but that is only half true.
They are newcomers to the modern political sphere, but are not a new party at all. Founded in 1903, the BC Conservatives will be the oldest provincial party still around when (or if?) BC United dissolves. The last time we had a Conservative majority government in charge was in 1928, under the premiership of Simon Fraser Tolmie. The party splintered before the 1933 election after failing to deal with the Great Depression, and despite reuniting in time for the 1937 election and forming a coalition with the Liberals to keep the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (a predecessor to the BC NDP) out of office in 1945, they slid into obscurity by the end of the 1950s.
So how did John Rustad take a party that has done nothing but loose for 70 years and transform it into a serious contender to form government? Surely a comeback of this magnitude would have to be orchestrated by a mastermind possessing some Death Note-esque plan, right?
No, not really.
I’m not saying Rustad is an incompetent man. But the BC Conservatives in general, and Rustad in particular, have definitely reaped the rewards of being in the right place at the right time. Whether or not you consider it a good thing or not (I think it’s not), luck and the actions of people who aren’t BC Conservatives have had more to do with their rise than anything Rustad and company have done.
First, the BC Conservatives appear to be pretty undercooked in the policy department. Of course there is no easy way to know what is going on behind closed doors. Perhaps they know exactly what they want to do in power, down to the last dollar. But the face they present to the public gives the impression their plans lack specifics. This could be attributed to the party just awakening from a decades-long coma, realizing people suddenly care about them, and as I type they have a battalion of nerds putting together a coherent platform, but still. I, personally, would prefer somebody would give us details ahead of time on what they intend to do with the power we may or may not imbue them with. And, in the interest of fairness, the BC NDP has increased their use of similar rhetoric as of late.
If you pull up either the BC NDP, BC Conservatives, BC Green or even BC United website, the parties all have a handy page for its media releases. Now, considering I have five days to write the draft for this op-ed, I’ll admit I didn’t read every press release from every relevant party. But I did peruse the headlines (which is how we consume most of our news these days anyway) and read the ones that looked like actual policy pitches and not election-isms.
If you compare the titles of the press releases, most of the BC Conservatives' are ‘slamming’ (they like that word a lot) things that David Eby, and sometimes Justin Trudeau, allegedly are responsible for. Take headlines like “being soft on crime and letting pedophiles back on our streets” (October 4) and “substandard patient care at Surrey hospital” (September 16), for example.
Without getting into how correct these statements are, it’s pretty easy to say that whatever the guy before you did or didn’t do sucks. Actually having your own plans to replace the ones that may or may not suck is harder – and in fairness it does appear that in the last couple weeks their press releases have gotten better. Maybe the nerds from before got their work done. The deconstructive tone gives me the impression that they don’t know what they actually want to do other than tear up what the guys before them did.
If you pull up any other of the NDP or Greens' websites, a lot more of the press releases are actual ideas on how to make BC a better place to live. No guarantee they’ll work, of course, but at least there's more of a vision for the future. But, also in the interest of fairness, the BC NDP has increased their use of similar rhetoric. Perhaps in politics, the factor that has the biggest part to play in winning isn’t how much people like or agree with you, but rather how much they hate the other guy.
If I had to grade the Tories’ campaigning so far, I would be feeling a C. They put out press releases on how much they don’t like X, Y or Z, they produce concepts of what they’ll actually do when they get elected and they either put out or let burn fires on a case-by-case basis. They are a campaign, but they haven’t done anything significant. They haven’t had anything like Trudeau’s appearance on The Late Show (all these late shows, late late shows and whatever really confuse me), or like Poilievre’s YouTube videos or, if we want an American example, a Harris debate performance or a Trump rally.
The BC Conservatives are running a boring campaign, just riding the waves of the actions of other entities or of broader societal trends.
Of these other entities include Pierre Poilievre’s federal Conservatives, who have done the most for the BC Conservatives. Poilievre has become so popular, and Trudeau so unpopular, that it has bled into the lower level of government.
The two parties having similar names associate the two, despite them being completely unaffiliated. In my observation, a concerning amount of people think that the federal level of government is the only level that actually exists or matters. In my experience, one time while collecting signatures to nominate a BC Green in Coquitlam, one man said he would do it if it helps get Trudeau out of office. Journalist Frances Bula posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) on September 19 that while doorknocking, a person told a candidate that she would be “voting for Kamala." If Rustad’s luck holds, he definitely owes Poilievre a bottle of wine or something.
The next person Rustad owes a bottle of wine is Kevin Falcon – the leader of BC United. His lack of spine was so severe that it may have killed a 120-year-old political party. Granted, it was on life support after a disastrous rebrand intended to separate the BC Liberals from the completely unaffiliated and incredibly unpopular federal Liberals, but they have been in worse spots before (like in 1979, for example).
The BC Conservatives were always trying to convince Falcon to merge the two parties, but Falcon was seemingly steadfast in refusing, saying things like the Tories are “becoming a conspiracy party, not a Conservative party” and that “This is insanity. We have to have common-sense people that are bringing forward common-sense solutions to the challenges we face in British Columbia”.
Less than 24 hours after making this second statement, Falcon ended the BC United campaign without the knowledge or consultation of his caucus, and asked all the free enterprise voters to “join me in helping to elect John Rustad and the Conservative Party.” I suppose the BC Conservatives encouraged this unprecedented failure of integrity, and we will probably never know what went on behind closed doors, but Falcon is almost certainly the one who made this decision. I suspect that the BC Tories are as surprised as the rest of us.
For once, the unseen trends are easier to write about than the actions of humans. Because there is only one big one that underlies every other trend; that of incumbent syndrome. The BC NDP came into power back in 2017. Now stop for a second, and think about what has happened in British Columbia, and the world, since then. The BC NDP have been in control that entire time, and regardless of how well one steers the ship of state, having that many problems on your plate to solve, or try your best to solve, eventually enough people will think you screwed something up through either too much, not enough, or the wrong kind of action. Entropy comes for us all, coming for politicians faster than the rest of us.
The BC Conservatives party is not running a remarkable campaign (at least, in my view, remarkable for the right reasons). But they did stumble into the right place at the right time. They caught the tailwinds of the federal Conservatives's success] and were given both a right-wing power vacuum and an experienced, (insert adjectives of your choosing) politician to lead them by Falcon. This stretch of good fortune isn't why I think the BC Conservatives shouldn't be elected. They are just playing the political game alongside everybody else, trying to steer society to closer align with their values. It's ridiculous to expect a politician to reject their lucky breaks. But if I was a Conservative, or the NDP traded circumstances with the Tories, I would prefer the party that represents me and my beliefs succeed on their own merits, rather than the merits and faults of others.
Rustad had a hard year in 2022. In his own words, "My father passed away in January. My father-in-law passed in February. I had shingles in April and then my mother passed in July." Then, after all that, in August he was kicked out of the party he had served since 2005, after questioning climate science. For better or for worse, it seems fate is paying him back for the hardships it served him a couple years ago. Adversity is adversity, regardless of your feelings on who suffers it. But an election shouldn’t be decided by fate, luck or anything of that nature. What fate wants to happen and what is best for Bc may not be perfectly aligned.
This is an opinion article. It reflects the contributor's views and does not reflect the views of The Ubyssey as a whole. Contribute to the conversation by visiting ubyssey.ca/pages/submit-an-opinion.
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