BC United Wants Your Money to Pay for Its Failures

[Editor’s note: This is the latest in an occasional series by Mo Amir called Logic Check, whose focus is explained in a sidebar to this article.]

Even after he delivered his party’s carcass to John Rustad and the BC Conservatives, BC United Leader Kevin Falcon embodies the “Flip-flop Falcon” caricature that his rivals had so mercilessly branded him with.

Now BC United, hat in hand, is asking the public for financial support, except this time without any particular value proposition.

In suspending BC United’s provincial election campaign (and supporting the BC Conservatives), Kevin Falcon was clear that his party’s campaign had reached its conclusion. “Certainly for this election, yes,” he said.

After all, it would not make sense for Falcon to give his full-throated endorsement to the Conservatives while BC United — which Falcon still leads — continues an election campaign.

Yet, days after Falcon’s decision, BC United backpedalled, just slightly, and announced that it would field a select number of candidates while still fundraising. “We’d like donations to continue,” the party said.

One last flip-flop for the road.

BC United to run token candidates

“While our full provincewide campaign for the election has been suspended, we intend on running a select number of candidates in the upcoming election,” BC United explained to its members earlier this month.

In order to maintain its status as a political party, BC United must register at least two provincial election candidates under its banner by the Sept. 28 nomination deadline.

BC United aims to accomplish this so that maybe, in the future, it can rise from the ashes of its disastrous rebranding and even more disastrous leadership.

But it’s unclear why anyone would degrade themselves to run for a party whose own leader kicked his last remaining loyalists in the teeth, especially considering how tactlessly Falcon suspended his own candidates’ campaigns. (One BC United candidate even learned that his campaign was over while out door knocking.)

According to Falcon, he and Rustad are working together “to field the best possible candidates” for the BC Conservatives. As per Falcon’s logic, that would mean that former cabinet ministers like Shirley Bond, in addition to star candidates like Dr. Claudine Storness-Bliss, were simply not “the best.” The same shade thrown by Falcon onto those candidates — BC United candidates who were not picked up by the BC Conservatives — would extend to any BC United candidate that the party fields in order to keep its party status.

Aside from winning, candidates often run in elections to raise their own profile, advocate for a particular issue, dutifully help their party achieve a full slate or, more cunningly, spoil the prospects of a rival candidate.

Yet BC United will offer at least two candidates the opportunity to run meaningless losing campaigns so that the party — which, under Falcon’s leadership, nosedived into disrepute — might potentially be salvaged later.

To be clear, BC United no longer has any policy ideas. It has no platform. It has no message, except to vote for the Conservative Party of BC. It has no campaign.

Consequently, any BC United candidate in this year’s provincial election would be a stooge, by the very definition of the word.

So far, only former BC United candidate for Richmond Centre Wendy Yuan has publicly said that she would consider running for BC United.

But why would anyone voluntarily represent a party that so publicly betrayed its own loyal candidates and campaigners while it rewarded the people — like floor-crossing MLAs Bruce Banman, Lorne Doerkson, Elenore Sturko and Teresa Wat — who first ditched the party?

Even if the spirit of the candidates is to sustain the BC United/BC Liberal party to fight another campaign in the future, the exercise would still cater to the treachery of the current party brass.

BC United: Still open for donations

Perhaps even more absurdly, BC United still wants donations from the public.

Obviously, BC United (the party) has financial obligations: wages for party staff who still need to complete accounting, administrative and other duties; office leases; accounts payable to vendors; legal costs for potential lawsuits; and uncompensated candidate expenses.

Moreover, on Monday, BC United successfully turned to taxpayers with a request to the Legislative Assembly Management Committee to cover severance pay for its caucus employees because it doesn’t have enough money to cover the costs.

This request came two weeks after Kevin Falcon’s insistence that BC United has enough cash to cover its expenses. Vintage Flip-flop Falcon.

Meanwhile, BC United has yet to publicly release any financial statements as to how its caucus funds — that should be allocated for its legislative staff — were spent.

As for its party operations, according to former BC United candidates themselves, BC United even blocked its former candidates from viewing the account balances of their local fundraising efforts.

All this would suggest that BC United’s caucus and party (two different sets of finances) are both effectively insolvent.

It’s a pitiful reality that BC United may have foreshadowed when the party asked its members to still donate to the party, in order to, quite literally, “keep the lights on.”

Since the party’s official position is to support the BC Conservatives, why is it still asking for money? Shouldn’t Falcon tell donors to fork over their money to the Conservatives? (Provincial election law prevents political parties from transferring funds to other political parties or independent candidates.)

Potential BC United donors may ask themselves why they are being asked for donations, especially considering the little financial cost to run a few candidates in losing campaigns.

Of course, there is no reason to donate to BC United, except to cover its outstanding debts.

BC United party brass seemingly mismanaged the party into financial ruin, unceremoniously yanked it off the ballot and now wants donors — and taxpayers, in the case of caucus staff severance — to pay additional alms for the burial arrangements.

It’s a pathetic nadir for a party that held power in British Columbia for 16 years of the last quarter century.

But more than that, it illustrates the brain-breaking mental gymnastics that remnants of the party are performing in order to shamelessly solicit money for its spectacular failures.

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