United BC Party Leader Kevin Falcon has come up with a new slogan that he and his party intend to use frequently in the coming weeks and months.
“We’re the mainstream, and they’re the extreme,” he told me, referring to the British Columbia Conservative Party.
Over lunch last week, Falcon told me he plans to set his party’s sights on the far-right candidate for the British Columbia Conservative Party.
He said he wanted to make it clear that not only are the British Columbia Conservatives not affiliated with the federal Conservatives, but they are ideologically closer to the far-right fringe People's Party of Canada.
BC United (and the BC NDP) have compiled a large collection of data on BC Conservative candidates who are associated with intolerant views and the alt-right.
I recently received a 54-page dossier from BC United containing more than 100 social media posts by Conservative candidates. Helpfully, the directory offers categories like “anti-trans hate” and “racist/alt-right views,” as well as “comparing vaccination passes to Nazism.”
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When first asked about the offensive posts, Rustad said everyone was entitled to their opinion. Yet within days, the candidate — Damon Scrase of Courtenay-Comox — either resigned or was ousted.
Scrase becomes the third Conservative candidate to be removed for bigotry or anti-science views. We will have to wait and see if more are to come.
As we talked, it dawned on me that Falcon had finally come to realize that he and his party were in a life-or-death battle with the British Columbia Conservatives over which party could offer the most credible alternative to the NDP.
What seems to have put things into perspective for BC United is that it was destined from the outset to have some kind of working arrangement with the BC Conservatives, and that MLA Elenore Sturko has defected from the BC United caucus to the BC Conservatives.
Sturko had been rumored to be doing this for weeks, but the move was still surprising given her numerous public condemnations of the BC Conservative Party and its leader, John Rustad. She has also sent a large number of “private” condemnations to BC United Party staff and MPs in text messages and emails, many of which may become public at some point.
Falcon felt betrayed by Stulko and considered her defection to the Conservatives to be extremely hypocritical. Other BC United Party MPs said Stulko would stand up in caucus meetings and often denounce Rustad and his party.
At the very least, Sturco's defection seems to have angered Falcon and his party. Last week, he announced two interesting policies that, under normal circumstances, would have likely been unveiled during the campaign.
But Falcon seems to realize that he can’t wait until the campaign begins and that he needs to get the public’s attention now. Two initiatives he announced last week — direct subsidies for child care programs and free shingles vaccines for people over 50 — may have already begun to influence public opinion. We’ll see.
I've heard that more major policy announcements will be made before the campaign begins; this strategy seems designed to gain an advantage over the BC Conservatives before they even begin their campaign.
“Mainstream, not extreme.”
Get used to hearing this buzzword often in the days to come.
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