Revived B.C. Conservatives looking for a breakthrough

Last Updated: Thursday, April 16, 2009 | 1:49 PM PT

CBC News

B.C. Conservative candidate Joe Cardoso, shown with two unidentified supporters, says he's received more than 100 letters of support from supporters after being dropped as the B.C. Liberals' candidate for the riding of Boundary-Similkameen. (B.C. Conservatives)

As the leaders of B.C.'s mainstream political parties make their high-profile first campaign stops in the B.C. Interior this week, they'll likely be running into some reinvigorated, if lesser known, political competitors.

B.C. Conservative Party Leader Wilf Hanni says his party is hoping this is the election they shed their fringe party status and make a breakthrough into B.C.'s political mainstream,

The party, which is no longer affiliated with the federal Conservatives, is running about 18 candidates in the May 12 provincial election, mostly in the southern Interior, the Fraser Valley and the suburbs around Vancouver.

But B.C.'s Conservatives, who once dominated the province's political landscape, have not won a seat in more than three decades, despite running candidates in every B.C. election since 1903.

Part of the reason for that was the rise of the Social Credit party in the 1950s, which stole the Conservatives' traditional rural vote and dominated provincial politics for 40 years.

But the Socreds disintegrated in the early 1990s, and now Hanni, who is the former leader of the B.C. Reform Party, believes the time is right for a Conservative comeback as voters search for alternatives to the Liberals.

"People in British Columbia are concerned. They don't like what the Liberals are doing and don't want to turn to the NDP, so they are looking for a real conservative party," Hanni said on Wednesday.

In particular, he said, Liberal policies like the carbon tax, which has raised the price of fuels, and the proposed reconciliation act, which would recognize aboriginal title in the province, are too left-leaning for conservative rural voters.

"The Liberals claimed to be a conservative party. With those developments they certainly are not. Voters are looking for a conservative alternative and we're giving them one," he said. Hanni himself is running in Kootenay East against Liberal incumbent Bill Bennett and NDP candidate Troy Sebastian.

Former B.C. Liberal turns Conservative

In the nearby Interior riding of Boundary-Similkameen, former Liberal candidate Joe Cardoso is also running for the B.C. Conservatives.

Cardoso won the Liberal nomination in the new riding for the 2009 election, but then the party dismissed him because of a letter he wrote to a newspaper several years ago criticizing some B.C. Liberal policies.

Undaunted, Cardoso signed up for the Conservatives, and said he's received more than 100 letters of support from disgruntled Liberals promising him their support. He next plans to open five campaign offices across the far-flung riding.

"We've got two tired parties, and the only way we are going to get out of this tennis match between the Liberals and the NDP is to have a third option," said Cardoso on Wednesday.

But given the hold the dominant NDP and Liberals have on politics in B.C., Hanni himself admits, the Conservatives will be thrilled to elect one MLA and get a foothold in the legislature.