Strange summer for B.C. politics gone wild, as alliances shift ahead of fall vote

VICTORIA — A shakeup of seismic proportions is reshaping the British Columbia political landscape a little over three months ahead of this fall’s Oct. 19 election.

Former political foes are forging once unimaginable unions, an established party faces annihilation at the ballot box and heavyweights from the ruling New Democrats have waited until summer to announce their retirements.

In one of the stranger developments, climate scientist and former Green party leader Andrew Weaver said he’s now considering aligning with the B.C. Conservatives and Leader John Rustad, who says climate change isn’t a crisis.

Weaver said he had concerns about Premier David Eby, whose New Democrats he helped put in power in 2017, as well as the exit of almost a dozen New Democrat representatives ahead of the fall vote.

Cabinet stalwarts Bruce Ralston, Harry Bains and Rob Fleming have all recently announced they will not seek re-election.

“It told me something very sick is going on when literally the entire team from the 2017 to 2020 period is moving on,” said Weaver.

“It does not bode well for society when you have a tightly controlled central government.”

Eby weighed in Friday, saying it was “bizarre” Weaver might favour Rustad, who was ejected by Opposition Leader Kevin Falcon from the former BC Liberals, the centre-right party now known as BC United, because of his views on climate change.

“Yes, I don’t know, I must have, like, budged in line at the legislature dining room or something in front of Mr. Weaver,” said Eby at an unrelated news conference. “He doesn’t seem particularly happy with me.”

The premier said Rustad recently said he would prohibit teaching climate science in classrooms.

“He says that the connection between carbon dioxide emitted from human activities and climate change is a big lie,” said Eby. “And when 100 heat records across Canada were just broken and we’re facing another massive forest fire season, that’s who (Weaver) appears to be wanting to align himself with. It is extremely bizarre. I don’t understand it.”

Rustad says in a statement on his party’s website that the “changing climate is real, and man is impacting our climate,” but it “isn’t a crisis” and the party will not engage in “over-taxation, hype, scare tactics” on the issue.

Weaver, who was lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won a Nobel Prize, said his views on climate are not the same as Rustad’s, but he considers the Conservative leader a listener.

He said Rustad is in the image of former NDP premier John Horgan — who Weaver supported in a minority NDP government seven years ago — and is not like Eby, who controls power in his office.

“John Rustad’s views on climate are clearly not the same as mine,” Weaver said. “But the gaps there are not as great as some people may think. I don’t think his views are one of denial. I don’t think that’s a fair characterization.”

Another eye-opening shift on the B.C. political scene was the recent defection to the Conservatives of former BC United MLA Elenore Sturko, a champion of gay rights, who said last year that Rustad needed to “make an unequivocal apology” for calling homosexuality a “lifestyle.”

Sturko, who is gay, said after her defection in June that it was easy to ignore polls that have consistently put BC United distantly behind the NDP and the Conservatives, but it was impossible to dismiss what she was hearing from voters.

The B.C. Conservatives now have four people in the legislature — Rustad, Sturko, Bruce Banman and Lorne Doerkson, all former members of Falcon’s party who crossed the floor.

David Black, a political communications professor at Greater Victoria’s Royal Roads University, said the political manoeuvres are largely tied to the surge in popularity of Rustad’s Conservatives and the steep decline of Falcon’s BC United.

The B.C. Conservatives received less than two per cent of the popular vote in the 2020 provincial election, but it now appears they are in a position to become the official opposition or even form government after the fall vote, he said.

BC United and the Greens could be completely shut out, said Black.

“These things will change in September with the writ, and I don’t know where it’s going to go, I really don’t,” he said. “But I think we can expect some volatility because it’s going to be a very energized political environment.”

Black said he’s not as astounded by Weaver’s advances toward Rustad, judging from Weaver’s past political moves that saw him exit the Greens, sit as an independent and endorse Horgan’s NDP in 2020.

“This is Weaver exploring the outward reaches of his sometimes-contrary self,” Black said. “It is a very odd marriage of personalities and positions. It’s more of a pretext of just what Weaver, and fairly so, believes to be of a number of vulnerabilities and errors he thinks Eby has made.”

Environment Minister George Heyman, a veteran NDP minister who has also announced he’s not running in the fall election, said he can’t understand how Weaver could consider aligning himself with Rustad, “who barely gives credence to the notion that there’s climate change.”

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Andrew about this but I simply can’t believe he would turn his back on his life’s work and the work we accomplished together in government,” he said. “It simply doesn’t make sense to me.”

Heyman dismissed Weaver’s suggestions that Eby controls power from his office and said he can’t speak for his colleagues but his decision not to run for re-election came after a lengthy career in politics and environmental and union leadership.

“I’ll be 75 years old when the election’s held in 2024,” he said. “I would like to slow down a bit and spend more time with my family.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 12, 2024.

Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press