Pierre Poileivre meeting with BC United leader Kevin Falcon.Supplied
BC United Leader Kevin Falcon, his party a distant third in opinion polls, says he’ll spend the next few months before the October provincial election seeking to educate voters who he thinks are confused about party brands.
The confusion he is talking about concerns his rivals, the BC Conservatives. He argues that they are riding a wave of support meant for the unrelated federal Conservative Party led by Pierre Poilievre.
But there is another political branding problem, and Mr. Falcon is the author of it.
Mr. Falcon took the helm of the BC Liberals after the party’s defeat in the 2022 provincial election. He promised party members that a fresh face and a new party name would help them return to power. The party has long been an alliance of federal Conservatives and Liberals, but the Liberal label was regarded as distasteful to federal Tories.
When he unveiled the BC United name and logo in April, 2023, Mr. Falcon observed that giving up the brand of a party that had a long track record of success was an unusual tactic.
“It is not often a major established party that had a name for 30 years has come forward and said we’re going to do a complete shift and a total new direction,” Mr. Falcon said at the time.
There is a reason that it doesn’t happen often: It’s a risky enterprise.
The next B.C. election is set for Oct. 19. Most polls show the governing New Democrats under Premier David Eby as front-runners, with the Conservatives, led by John Rustad, at their heels.
Mr. Rustad was kicked out of the BC Liberals and then jumped to the moribund Conservatives, a party that has not elected an MLA in 50 years and garnered two per cent of the vote in the past election. The provincial Conservatives have been climbing in the polls ever since.
“The polls are largely B.S.,” Mr. Falcon said in an interview. “I still think the vast majority of it is voter confusion, unless you buy into the belief that somehow John Rustad has captured the attention and inspired British Columbians to come over in huge numbers to support them. You know, most people on the street can’t even name who the leader of their party is.”
Mr. Falcon said B.C. voters need to understand that the BC Conservatives are not even distant cousins of the federal party.
“We know we have educate the public, to make sure they understand there is no connection between the provincial BC Conservative Party and the federal party,” he said. “They are not federal Conservatives, this is a party that unfortunately harbors candidates that have views that are far too extreme and far too outside the mainstream.
“And one thing about British Columbia, they’re not extreme, they’re mainstream, and we’re going to be that mainstream coalition. That’s going to get things back on track. I’m very confident.”
Pollster Greg Lyle, president of Innovative Research Group, suggested that the profile of B.C. voters is shifting and there may be more people outside of the mainstream than Mr. Falcon thinks.
His research indicates that more than 30 per cent of British Columbians currently fall into the category of “alienated voters” – a record high, according to his tracking. Those are people who feel angry about a system that seems to prevent them from getting ahead. And a politician that speaks their language can appeal to a significant number of swing voters.
“The federal Tories have been riding that wave and there’s an echo wave in provincial politics,” he said. “That wave is swamping Kevin Falcon and the BC United. In hindsight, it’s very clear that trying to rebrand the party in the middle of all that turned out to be a big mistake.”
Mr. Rustad’s party has planted a flag in political territory that was largely unoccupied – he touts a social-conservative agenda, opposes vaccine mandates and denies there is a climate-change crisis.
So far, he has scored three defections from BC United, including Surrey South MLA Elenore Sturko, who was a star member of Mr. Falcon’s team. The Conservatives are now re-vetting all their candidates, after acknowledging that their earlier screening process failed to weed out embarrassing characters. That could create more space for BC United defections, if Mr. Falcon’s team continues to show poor prospects.
Ian Paton, the BC United MLA for Delta South, was swift to put down rumours that he might consider jumping ship. He believes dumping the BC Liberal label made his party a more comfortable place for federal Conservatives.
“At the time, it sounded like a good idea, I still think it is,” he said in an interview. But he isn’t banking on the brand to carry him to re-election. “I say to everyone, it doesn’t matter what the party name is, look at what I have done as an MLA.”
Mr. Falcon now says the rebranding didn’t go as well as it could have. “The company that we hired could have done things better, but I think at the end of the day, what’s going to matter is what people are thinking when they start paying attention. They’re going to see two extremes, the extreme left and the extreme right, and then the mainstream BC United Party.”
With a report from Mike Hager in Vancouver