Opinion: Excuses aside, if the Conservatives can't vet their candidates well, their opponents will
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VICTORIA — B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad scored a modest coup in the legislature this week, when he introduced his latest recruit — former NDP MLA Gwen O’Mahony.
O’Mahony was elected in a byelection in Chilliwack in spring 2012, but defeated in the general election the following year when the seat reverted to B.C. Liberals.
“She says she didn’t leave the NDP party. The B.C. NDP party left everyday hardworking people like her,” Rustad said Wednesday.
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She’s also moved from her former base in the Fraser Valley to run for the Conservatives in Nanaimo—Lantzville.
Rustad repeated something O’Mahony said as a rookie NDP MLA — “I know what it is like for prices to go up because I lived paycheque to paycheque” — as the starting point for a question to the current government.
Did the New Democrats recognize “that workers and the former NDP voters like Gwen are abandoning the NDP party because they can’t afford life in British Columbia?”
NDP government house leader Ravi Kahlon sidestepped the question in favour of a personal attack on O’Mahony.
“I certainly know that, like many coming out of the pandemic, seeing things on social media and falling into that trap of seeing, supporting Freedom Convoy, thinking about conspiracies, all of a sudden becoming super anti-trans,” he fired back with some apparent gleanings of the NDP research department.
“That’s what she sees in the leader of the Conservative party, that same extreme view.”
O’Mahony explained her switch in a news release put out by her new party.
“I joined the NDP and was elected to represent the traditional ideas of the left … representing workers, fighting for what’s right and helping those most vulnerable,” she said.
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“However, after a decade of extremism from the left, I can confidently say that as a former MLA and as a woman, I can no longer remain a member of the NDP.”
She told reporters that the NDP decision to decriminalize hard drugs was a factor as well.
O’Mahony picked up an endorsement from former B.C. Liberal MLA John Martin, underscoring the fluid nature of the current political landscape in B.C.
“I can tell you personally, nobody in the political realm works harder than Gwen,” said Martin.
He ran against O’Mahony as a Conservative in the 2012 byelection, finishing third. Next year he switched ridings — and party labels — and was elected to the legislature as a B.C. Liberal, serving two terms before losing in 2020.
Now he would appear to be drifting back to the Conservatives. Then again, with the B.C. Liberals rebranding themselves as B.C. United, it’s could be a question of who is abandoning whom.
The news about O’Mahony helped Rustad recover from the previous week’s embarrassment regarding Dr. Stephen Malthouse, briefly the Conservative candidate in Ladysmith—Oceanside.
The party website described Malthouse as “a health care professional who is not afraid to challenge the status quo.”
Within a matter of hours, the candidate and his biography were deleted.
Seems his challenges to the status quo proved to be a bit — well let’s just say “too challenging” — for the Conservatives.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons put him on suspension two years ago “to protect the public.” In an open letter to Dr. Bonnie Henry, he declared that people were “rarely” becoming ill from COVID-19. He also claimed that people were being “magnetized” by the vaccines.
In reporting the Malthouse debacle in the Victoria Times Colonist, reporter Roxanne Egan-Elliott also noted that earlier in the year, the Conservatives had quietly dropped nurse Jan Webb as the candidate for Esquimalt-Colwood.
Party president Aisha Estey said the removal was in response to an online posting where Webb recommended avoiding those who’d recently been vaccinated “due to the phenomenon of spike protein shedding.”
Not true, as Esty noted. “Webb is a trained nurse and frankly she should know better than this.”
The Conservative president made excuses for the failure to weed out the two candidates before they were nominated.
“We have grown at a record pace, but some mistakes are bound to happen,” she said. “Unfortunately, we nominated a couple of candidates who ultimately weren’t the right fit for our team.”
Yet the Conservatives must know that if they don’t do a thorough job of vetting candidates, their opponents will do it for them.
The Malthouse episode is particularly embarrassing for Rustad. Last fall, he shared a platform with the suspended doctor during a rally at the legislature in defence of health care workers who were fired for refusing to get vaccinated.
Rustad initially endorsed Malthouse as candidate, only to have to withdraw his support.
The reversal continued to embarrass the Conservative leader this week when a reporter asked him to expand on the reasons for dropping Malthouse and Webb.
“I’d prefer not to do that,” Rustad replied, suggesting he has not completely lost the secretive habits he picked up as a cabinet minister in the last B.C. Liberal government.
vpalmer@postmedia.com
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