BC Conservative Leader John Rustad is still holding out hope he could lead a majority government but isn’t ruling out courting the provincial Green Party if the legislature ends up as a minority.
The outcome of B.C.’s contentious provincial election remains unclear. After the preliminary vote count, the NDP holds 46 seats, the BC Conservatives hold 45 and the BC Greens hold two. Forty-seven seats are needed for a majority, and in two ridings the NDP candidate holds a lead of fewer than 100 votes.
Elections BC is scheduled to count an estimated 49,000 absentee and mail-in ballots between Oct. 26 and Oct. 28, and conduct manual recounts of the two tightest races.
If the results hold, the NDP would have the opportunity to try and lead a minority government with Green support, but Rustad said he believes his party could also find common ground with the third party.
“We certainly have a lot of differences between the Green Party and the Conservative Party in many of our values and many of the things we ran on in the platform. However there are some things we put on the table, and there are some things we can actually work together on, so we are prepared to sit down and have those conversations,” Rustad said.
“Quite frankly the Green Party’s experience with the supply and confidence agreement from 2017 probably didn’t work out the way they hoped it would, certainly the NDP breaking it and calling an early election, as well as basically pushing the Green Party into irrelevancy over that course of time.”
The historic Confidence and Supply Agreement with the Greens lifted the BC NDP to power after Christy Clark’s BC Liberal Party won the most seats in the 2017 election but failed to secure a majority.
A deal between the BC Greens and the BC Conservatives, however, could be a tough sell, with the parties holding diametrically opposed positions on several key issues.
The BC Conservatives campaigned against drug decriminalization, safe supply and supervised consumption sites, while the BC Greens vowed to expand those projects. Green Leader Sonia Furstenau described Rustad as a climate change denier, and is vocally opposed to the Conservatives’ plans to expand fossil fuel development and to scrap the carbon tax.
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The Greens also oppose the Conservatives’ plans to privatize parts of health-care service delivery. And the Greens have consistently supported SOGI-123, the LGBTQ2 anti-bullying resource the Conservatives have vowed to remove from B.C. schools.
“The interesting thing will be what is it that is the Green Party’s priority?” Rustad said. “There are things we can work on together that can be achieved in British Columbia.”
Rustad, meanwhile, stood by his decision to run a number of candidates whose offensive social media comments and advocacy of conspiracy theories became an election issue.
Asked if swapping some of those candidates out earlier in the campaign could have helped deliver him a majority government, Rustad said he didn’t think the party had “that many candidates that have made controversial comments — we might have one or two.”
“The reality is that I am a very straight-up person, I am also a very loyal person, I am loyal to the team and I am loyal to the people who are running for us, so part of that means having to make decisions around what is best with those values. I wasn’t prepared to just throw people under the bus,” he said.
“Hindsight, should we have done that? Obviously, there are people in certain ridings who are very upset their riding went a different way. Going forward, however, we are going to make sure we are doing everything we can as a Conservative party to continue with the values that we have and continue with the values I have.”‘
The future of the Green Party, meanwhile, remains in question.
Green Leader Sonia Furstenau failed in her attempt to unseat NDP Children and Family Development Minister Grace Lore on Saturday and has yet to speak about her next steps.
In her concession speech Saturday night she spoke of a “passing of the torch,” adding she would “be there to mentor and guide.”
Jeremy Valeriote, who won one of the Greens’ two seats in West Vancouver-Sea to Sky, told Global News on Sunday the party was ready to serve in the legislature exactly the way it had advertised to voters.
“I think it’s the same role that we proposed to the electorate in the election campaign to moderate and stabilize and collaborate and sometimes mediate between the two other big parties,” he said.
David Eby, who remains premier pending the outcome of next weekend’s final count, was not commenting publicly on Monday.
In a statement released Sunday, he said the party won the most votes and the most seats.
“To British Columbians who voted for change, I hear you and the serious message you have sent. We have not done enough and we must do better,” he said.
“Working to fix the tough challenges people are facing is what drives me — it’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. I’m committed to working with the legislature you elected to deliver for you.”
Eby said Saturday night that he had spoken with Furstenau, and that he was prepared to work with the party on “common and shared values.”
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