B.C. party leaders spar over election war chests
NDP and Conservative leaders trade jabs over per-vote subsidy rules in province
With the provincial election campaign officially kicking off Saturday in British Columbia, things were already off to a combative start on Friday.
Speaking after his speech at the Union of B.C. Municipalities convention Friday, Conservative Leader John Rustad railed against the purportedly unfair advantage of the NDP's election war chest.
"The NDP have rigged the election rules," Rustad says. "They actually have given themselves a $2 per-vote subsidy for every vote they got in the last election every year.
"And on top of that, they got half of the money they spent in the last election back. They've started with an $8.1 million head start on the Conservative Party of British Columbia."
NDP Leader David Eby says it's another case of Rustad stealing from the playbook of former U.S. president Donald Trump.
"Well, I wonder where he got that turn of phrase from," Eby said at a rally in Surrey where the NDP unveiled its campaign bus.
"John Rustad has worked really hard to import American culture wars in British Columbia. I think it's really unfortunate. I think following the path of conspiracy theories and dividing people and Donald Trump politics is terrible."
All political parties get a per-vote subsidy from Elections B.C. as a result of reforms introduced in 2017 under former NDP premier John Horgan.
The reforms banned big union and corporate donations. Under the per-vote subsidy, the B.C. NDP will get $1.6 million from Elections B.C. this year and the Greens around $500,000. The B.C. Conservatives will get about $65,000.
That is due to the fact the B.C. Conservatives had been relegated to the political wilderness for decades, capturing just two per cent of the vote in the 2020 election — compared to the nearly 48 per cent captured by the NDP.
The political winds changed last year when Rustad became leader after being booted from the B.C. United caucus, with his former party now throwing its support behind him and the Conservatives.
Metro Vancouver set to be hotly contested
Rustad and Eby will be focusing much of their campaign on the 52 ridings in Metro Vancouver, particularly the 10 ridings in Surrey.
B.C.'s second-largest city by population has one new riding, and others have been redrawn, setting the stage for hotly contested battlegrounds.
As for the B.C. Greens, Leader Sonia Furstenau is predicting a minority government.
"I think we have a real opportunity in British Columbia in this election to not give any party all of the power, to not have a winner-take-all outcome," she said.
This election also stands out because of the number of Independents, many of them B.C. United incumbents, who were left politically orphaned after Leader Kevin Falcon withdrew the party from the campaign.
Eby and Rustad are expected to start their campaigns on Saturday in Metro Vancouver, while Furstenau will kick things off in Victoria.
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