Brooks Seeks BC Conservative Party Leadership
Saturday, July 20, 2013 @ 5:03 AM
(Vanderhoof’s Dan Brooks will be seeking the leadership of the BC Conservative Party)
Prince George, B.C. – The B.C. Conservative Party is without a leader following the resignation Thursday of John Cummins.
The 71-year-old former Reform MP led the BC Conservatives into the May 14th provincial election after managing to survive an internal revolt which sought to rid the party of what some saw as a politician well past his best before date. The Conservatives took just 4.8% of the popular vote and failed to win a single seat in the May election.
The party executive will be meeting by teleconference on Monday to hash out the details of a leadership race. And one of the contenders for the position will be Vanderhoof guide outfitter Dan Brooks, who ran for the party in Nechako Lakes and finished in third place. Brooks does not believe he will be at a disadvantage in seeking the leadership because of his rural roots. In fact, he believes that could well turn out to be a strength. “I actually think it would be very healthy for the politics of British Columbia, particularly the north and rural British Columbia, to have someone like myself as a leadership contestant provincially.”
Brooks says “we in the north are grossly under-represented and we need someone who understands these northern and rural issues. Urbanizing this province is not necessarily healthy for the province nor for its resource-based economy. I’ve sat on land use planning tables for 15 years and I know exactly what’s going on out there with the land base. It’s shameful that the Liberals have neglected land use issues for basically a decade. And if we don’t resolve those issues our economy is very quickly going to stagnate as these things become controversial and publically unacceptable. You’re seeing this sort of thing happening with Enbridge, the mines and some of the forestry decisions that have been made. We’ve got to preemptively get at those things before we’ve got another war in the woods on our hands.”
Brooks says the province needs a viable third party to break the polarization of politics in BC. “We’re the party that pulls the politics of the province to the centre-right, towards fiscal conservatism. Without us you get NDP and NDP-lite. We need an alternative to the Liberals because what you’re getting right now is people just say, look the socialist NDP they’re not an alternative, we’re not voting for them we don’t want them. So what’s the alternative? We just perpetuate the Liberal agenda? We just let them continue the corruption and all the scandals that they’ve had without any accountability? That’s not good for democracy. We have to have an alternative and that’s what the Conservatives bring to the table.”
So what does Brooks see as the BCCP’s top priority? “I think what the party needs right now is organization, so I bring that. I’ve been organizing for the party for the last year-and-a-half and that’s the main strength that I bring. They need someone young and charismatic, energetic and passionate about what he believes in. I think I bring all that to the table and more.”
Brooks says the B.C. Conservatives are a grassroots party “and we need grassroots support to make it happen and we’re going to have to have a grassroots re-building. In some areas we didn’t even have a candidate and we’ve got to get those areas up and running. There’s a lot of work to be done.”
Comments
I would like to see the party advocate for a transferable ballot so only MLA’s with a 50% plus majority for their riding’s get elected. It would change the political landscape by broadening the stakeholders politicians would need to address and be accountable to.
Proportional rep narrows the stakeholder group elected politicians are accountable to, and the first past the post is all about us verse them in dividing the electorate. BC needs politicians that work for BC and not for special interests and behind the scenes party campaigners.
Also I think each riding should have the right to choose candidates that may go against the party line… especially on issues like resource development as in Enbridge gateway. Some issues are more specific to a riding than the provincial scope likes to recognize.
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