By Canadian Press

Strange summer for B.C. politics gone wild, as alliances shift ahead of fall vote

Jul 12, 2024 | 1:53 PM

VICTORIA — British Columbia’s political landscape is undergoing a shake-up of seismic proportions a little over three months ahead of this fall’s Oct. 19 election.

Former political foes are forging once unimaginable unions, an established party faces annihilation at the ballot box and heavyweights from the ruling New Democrats have waited until summer to announce their retirements.

In one of the stranger developments, climate scientist and former Green Party leader Andrew Weaver has turned his back on Premier David Eby, whose NDP he helped put in power in 2017, and says he’s considering aligning with the B.C. Conservatives and Leader John Rustad.

Eby weighed in Friday, saying it’s “bizarre” that Weaver might favour Rustad, who says climate change isn’t a crisis and was turfed from the former BC Liberals, now known as BC United, for his views on the subject.

Rustad recently said he would prohibit teaching climate science in classrooms.

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Weaver, who was lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won a Nobel prize, says his views on climate are not the same as Rustad’s, but he views the Conservative leader as a listener.

He says Rustad is in the image of former NDP premier John Horgan — who Weaver supported in an alliance seven years ago — and is not like Eby, who Weaver says controls power in his office.

Another eye-opening development was the recent defection to the Conservatives of former BC United MLA Elenore Sturko, a champion of gay rights and pride, who said last year that Rustad needed to “make an unequivocal apology” for calling homosexuality a “lifestyle”.

Sturko said after her defection in June that it was easy to ignore polls that have consistently put BC United distantly behind the NDP and the Conservatives, but it was impossible to dismiss what she was hearing from voters.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 12, 2024.

Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press