Rustad, Conservatives shut the door on potential merger with BC United

After weeks of speculation, the BC United Party and the Conservatives will not be joining forces ahead of the 2024 election.

Party leaders Kevin Falcon and John Rustad issued separate statements earlier today (Friday).

Rustad, who is also the Nechako Lakes MLA says with the Conservative sitting second in the polls at 32%, the sentiment is clear the voting public is looking for an alternative.

“The reality is people in British Columbia are looking for a political party that is going to run 93 candidates that is going to be able to take on David Eby and these radical approaches that the NDP government is doing and try to bring common sense to BC. That is what we are going to try and stay focused on.”

“People are looking for something new, people are looking for a Conservative banner and it’s not even about being Conservative, Liberal, NDP or Green – it is just a stand for what is right and to fight for the average day person.”

Rustad also mentioned both parties are pretty far apart on several key issues including the Carbon Tax where his party wants to remove while the former Liberals want to keep it around.

“We’ve had 16 years of the BC Liberals and 17 years of the NDP. We have a crisis in just about everything you look at including the resource sector and people want something different. They want change.”

Falcon said in a statement a pair of meetings between representatives of both parties took place earlier this month in Vancouver with BC United offering a ‘non-competition’ framework,’ that was rejected by the Conservatives.

“The non-competition framework was set out as follows according to BC United:

1. The parties will not merge. They are each responsible for their own leaders, fundraising and election campaigns.
2. The parties agree not to attack one another over the course of the campaign.
3. The parties will not run candidates against each other’s MLAs who are running for re-election. This is two BC Conservative seats and 15 BC United seats.
4. The BC Conservatives will run 47 seats and BC United will run 46 because BC United has more incumbents to protect.
5. The seats will be divided up between the parties in a draft format, whereby the BC Conservatives can each make three choices for each one that BC United makes until each party has picked the same number of ridings (including incumbents). From that point, the parties will alternate choices until the agreed-upon total number of seats for each party is reached.
6. If the combined seat total in the election exceeds the NDP the parties agree to form a coalition government. The Premier will be the party leader that won more seats, while the party leader that wins the smaller number of seats will be the Deputy Premier and hold a senior ministerial portfolio. Cabinet seats would be allocated in proportion to the number of seats held by each party.”

Another name that circulated who might have been able to lead a successful merger between the two parties was Port Coquitlam mayor Brad West.

Rustad told Vista Radio he and the Conservatives offered West a spot in the part as well as a riding to compete in during the 2024 vote but decided to stay in municipal politics prioritizing his family.

In addition, the Conservative party head stated that even shelving merger talks until after the election might not have been that fruitful.

“Even if we had a couple of years, I am not even sure it would come together if we could do something like that,” said Rustad.

The 2024 BC Election will be held on or before October 19th.