After four months of divisive bickering, attention in the last days of the legislative session turned to the potential for a miraculous coming together.
Picture this: The hard-charging Conservative Party of B.C. and the ebbing BC United Party mush together in some fashion and present a single right-oriented free enterprise alternative to the NDP.
There are countless obstacles, but the idea’s main appeal is simple arithmetic.
The Conservatives’ growing support in the polls, plus BC United’s residual support adds up to more than the NDP’s number. That could theoretically equal a vanquishing of the seven-year-old NDP government, by way of a last-ditch emergency coalition-agreement-arrangement of some sort.
It’s entirely hypothetical, but Opposition Leader Kevin Falcon went on at some length about it Thursday, after Conservative leader John Rustad entertained questions about it earlier.
Falcon’s performance was that of a polar bear whose ice floe is melting and who feels obligated to consider anything floating nearby.
BC United support has been bleeding away ever since the Conservative surge (recounted here Wednesday) began last year.
Falcon repeatedly told reporters that discussions of this nature can’t be conducted in public. But he couldn’t help himself from responding to numerous questions about the concept.
He said a couple of “trusted emissaries” were sent to meet Conservative officials two weeks ago “to see whether there was an ability to find some common ground.”
There won’t be any merger, he said, for practical reasons, but also because “many of their candidates are frankly too extreme.”
“I can’t merge with a party that has candidates that equate vaccinations with Nazism and apartheid … or candidates that say getting a COVID shot is going to turn you into magnets.”
But there are “good people who support them that we can work with and try to have a reasonable discussion to see if we can find a common ground.”
“There are lots of people that are all saying some variation of the same thing: ‘John and Kevin, can you please do the right thing for the free enterprise movement?’ ”
Falcon said the interests of the public are more important than his or Conservative leader John Rustad’s.
Each party would have to give up some things, but all those details have to be discussed privately, he said.
“John is not an unreasonable person, and I hope that we can work something out.”
But with just 156 days until the vote, he said there’s a very short time period in which to make progress before they decide whether to make a deal or stand pat.
Earlier in the week, Rustad acknowledged those talks and said they have been in the background for many months.
Notably, six months ago, it was the Conservatives reaching out to United about the concept. They got a two-word response, Rustad said then, and the last one was “… off.”
This week, he said: “All I do know is that the Conservative Party of B.C. will run 93 candidates in the next election.”
But still, the idea is being explored.
So the state of play is that both leaders are building separate teams to fight an election at the same time they are willing to listen to people urging them to come together.
New Democrats leapt at the opportunity Thursday to portray a business cabal secretly scheming to unseat them.
Government House Leader Ravi Kahlon said people “would find it offensive that you’d have bunch of lobbyists and some business leaders sitting around a board room table horse-trading.”
Premier David Eby turned the last caucus meeting of the session into an open-to-the-media rally.
He said Rustad and Falcon have now “let it slip that powerful interests are trying to arrange a marriage of convenience between downtown lobbyists working for the wealthiest British Columbians … to protect their interests.
“Either John Falcon or Kevin Rustad or whatever combination decides to show up, people will pay the price …”
The machinations are not unlike the NDP-Green talks that led to the confidence agreement the NDP used to unseat the BC Liberals in 2017. Only this time, they are occurring before the vote, not after.
It will have to be resolved in a matter of weeks and still looks like a long shot at this point. But speaking personally, I haven’t been this excited about people coming together since the last Kardashian engagement.
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