B.C. Conservatives may find voter anger if they force a new election too quickly
Voters are tired of politics for now, and a term in opposition would prep an inexperienced Conservative crew to govern
VICTORIA — B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad has vowed to force an early election if his party finds itself in a position to do so in the next sitting of the legislature.
“If we’re in that situation of the NDP forming a minority government, we will look at every single opportunity from day one to bring them down at the very first opportunity and get back to the polls,” he declared on election night.
Later, Rustad set down the conditions that could lead the Conservatives to take early action against an NDP minority government.
“If they’re carrying forward with the policies that they are promising to do, which have brought so much destruction and pain in this province, especially to our resource sector in B.C., then no, I cannot support that, and I will try to bring the government down at the earliest possible opportunity,” he told the CBC’s Stephen Quinn on Monday.
An NDP minority government is the most likely outcome of the final round of counting in Election 2024.
The New Democrats hope to rely on the support of the Greens. But they will probably have to do without the kind of power-sharing agreement that provided a measure of stability until the New Democrats repudiated the deal in 2020.
Nor can the Eby-led NDP government count on attracting a defector from the Opposition side to serve as Speaker, the way the New Democrats did in 2017.
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