How BC United (formerly the B.C. Liberals) collapsed — and what’s next

Article content

The final death knell for the B.C. Liberals came on Wednesday, as leader Kevin Falcon announced the party — now called BC United — would suspend its participation in the next provincial election, a little more than seven weeks from now.

That leaves the B.C. Conservatives, led by John Rustad, as the voice of the province’s conservative voters.

Now, the question is: which way will BC United voters go? National Post breaks down what we know about what happened and what could happen next.

Article content

Why did BC United decide to pull out of the election?

“What became apparent to me as I crisscrossed the province and heard from literally tens of thousands of people is the No. 1 major concern that they have is that, ‘If you guys don’t do the right thing and be the adults in the room and help bring together that free-enterprise, centre-right, common sense coalition, you are going to help elect an NDP government,’” Falcon said on Wednesday. “We cannot give the NDP one more day in power than they absolutely have to have, and that’s why I made the decision that I made as leader of BC United.”

Is this a merger of the B.C. Conservatives and BC United?

Nope. The right has been united — but in a fashion very much unlike what happened in neighbouring Alberta, where the Progressive Conservatives and the Wildrose Party merged together to form the United Conservative Party in 2017.

There was talk of that, though. In May, Falcon said merger talks between the parties had collapsed. He said that Rustad had rejected “a reasonable offer aimed at preventing a vote split.” But Rustad said Falcon had offered a non-competition framework, which would have protected incumbent BC United MLAs at the expense of B.C. Conservative candidates.

Article content

In the upcoming election, some BC United MLAs are expected to run for the B.C. Conservatives. But it’s unclear precisely which MLAs, and how many, might be allowed to do so. The issue is that the B.C. Conservatives reportedly have a nearly full slate of candidates already. Angelo Isidorou, the campaign director for the B.C. Conservatives, told the Vancouver Sun that it’s too early to say which B.C. United candidates may be allowed to come run for the Conservatives. 

There are 93 ridings in British Columbia. Between the two parties, 140 different candidates are vying for those ridings. It means that at least 47 people will be left out of the B.C. Conservative fold. (BC United currently has 23 elected MLAs.)

Some BC United candidates may drop out, endorsing their former rivals. Others may run as independents.

What’s up with BC United vs. the B.C. Liberals?

The B.C. Liberals, despite the name, have been British Columbia’s conservative party for decades. Prior to 1987, the party was officially linked to the federal Liberal Party of Canada, but it went independent that year, and changed its branding to reduce its affiliation with the federal Liberal party. With the slow collapse of the B.C. Social Credit Party through the early 1990s, the B.C. Liberals became the main centre-right voice in the province, drifting rightwards through the 1990s under the leadership of Gordon Campbell.

Article content

Article content

In 1979, the party got less than one per cent of the popular vote. It wasn’t until after the federal Liberal branding was ditched, that the party gained traction. In 1991, the party formed the Official Opposition to the New Democrats.

The B.C. Liberals were the dominant party between 2001 and 2017. Indeed, in 2001, the B.C. Liberals won all but two of the seats in the B.C. legislature. However, the lustre faded. After the 2005 election, the Liberals had only a seven-seat majority.

In 2017, no party managed to secure a majority. A supply-and-confidence agreement between the Greens and the NDP ousted Premier Christy Clark. And the Liberals were back to Opposition.

But the name change thing didn’t come up until later. In the 2020 election, Andrew Wilkinson led the party to a second-place finish, losing 13 seats, and NDP Leader John Horgan remained premier. Wilkinson resigned. When Falcon took over as leader in 2022, he promised to rebrand the party. Several months later, party members settled on BC United.

In retrospect, it may have been a catastrophic decision, wrecking a venerable brand and identity. Although, some analysts dispute this, pointing to other factors to explain the party’s collapse.

Article content

“It’s not a big reason why things went wrong for the party. What went wrong for the party, at the end of the day, was ultimately a fundamental realignment in the spectral politics of B.C.,” said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute.

What about the B.C. Conservatives?

Here’s the weird thing about the B.C. Conservatives: They haven’t had a serious political presence since the Baby Boomers were toddling about in rompers. In 1949, the party had 39 seats, forming a coalition government. The last time the party had any seats in the legislature, at least until Rustad came along, was in 1971, when the B.C. Conservatives had a single MLA.

In the 2020 election, the party received less than two per cent of the popular vote.

But, just like the name change that may have hurt the B.C. Liberals, the Conservatives’ resurgence could, in part, be thanks to Falcon, who booted Rustad from the B.C. Liberal caucus.

In 2022, Rustad was removed from caucus over tweets that said carbon dioxide was not causing climate change, a stance significantly at odds with the scientific consensus and the political stance of the B.C. Liberals/BC United. Rustad sat as an independent until February 2023, when he entered the leadership race for the B.C. Conservatives. In March, he became leader — the only person running for the job.

Article content

In September 2023, BC United MLA Bruce Banman crossed the floor, joining Rustad and making the B.C. Conservatives an official party.

What caused the B.C. Conservatives’ resurgence? Was it just a BC United collapse?

Over the past couple decades, BC United started to lose its identity: The B.C. NDP isn’t the hard left, worker’s party that it was in the 1990s. It’s fairly comfortably centrist, chipping away at the B.C. Liberal/BC United positioning. And the Conservatives have done the same from the other side of the spectrum.

“They were having their lunch eaten on the centre by the B.C. NDP, had their lunch eaten on the right by the B.C. Conservatives,” said Kurl. “And that ultimately left the party without a lot of recognition from voters as to what their value proposition was.”

But there’s another major factor at play, said Kurl. In May polling, Angus Reid showed respondents a photo of each party leader and asked them which party the person led. Only 46 per cent were able to correctly align Rustad with the B.C. Conservatives. So it’s not about Rustad’s brand, per se, the polling suggests.

Article content

“What changed the dynamics for the B.C. Conservatives had a lot to do with with the surge of the federal conservatives in British Columbia,” Kurl said.

In other words, the rising popularity of Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party of Canada had a transference effect to the B.C. Conservatives.

What does it all mean?

It’s a bit early to say. The big unknown is how BC United’s support will break. Will supporters flock to Rustad’s Conservatives? Or are they more moderate conservatives, who will flock to the B.C. NDP?

It was only a week ago, after all, that Falcon was saying that Rustad’s crew was “at risk of becoming a conspiracy party, not a Conservative party,” presumably a reference to B.C. Conservative candidate Rachael Weber who has posted on social media about the “5G genocide.”

Other Conservative candidates have made brow-raising comments: Paul Ratchford called an opponent a “woke lesbian, social justice warrior,” and Damon Scrase withdrew from the race after his tweets about Pride.

Pollsters haven’t yet figured out what this might mean for the next election. As of mid-August, the B.C. New Democrats were leading the B.C. Conservatives by two points in the popular vote but were still handily projected to win the election, according to the latest poll-crunching from 338Canada. BC United was more than 25 points behind.

Article content

There is some polling that suggests how BC United will break: About half of poll respondents who would otherwise vote for B.C. United say they’d support the B.C. Conservatives.

“But you may have more centrist, more moderate members of that BC United support base, who look at the B.C. Conservatives and go, ‘Whoa, we didn’t sign up for this.’ And then what happens with them?” Kurl said.

And with a narrow band of ridings to fight over, whether they stay home, or swing to the NDP, could really matter.

The B.C. election is likely to be fought in the communities circling Vancouver — a relatively narrow patch of ground, both political and geographic.

“There is no path to victory for any party without a strong showing in the City of Surrey, home to 10 provincial districts, and more prone to political swings than other major cities in the region,” says the Angus Reid Institute.

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here.

Article content