Kevin Falcon wants to lead a political party. Just not the BC Liberal Party.
To clarify: he wants to lead the people who belong to the BC Liberal Party, just not a party that names itself that.
That name must change, he says, as must its “principles and ideas” in “an entire reboot of the party for a variety of reasons.”
It has been “weakened,” he says, left in a “devastated position” by the 2020 election in which the environmentally conscious fled for the Greens, the soft-left locked into the NDP and many to the right sat it out because they couldn’t figure it out. These should be cohorts the typically coalescing BC Liberals – or whatever they’re called – curate and claim at election time.
“We have to be a party that believes in something and stands for something. I think the party, quite frankly, has lost its way.”
Falcon, a spry 58, a star mini-
ster under Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark – he lost his first leadership bid to her in 2011 and was made finance minister and deputy premier in consolation – is revisiting the political arena after eight years making real money as a real estate investment executive at Anthem Capital. His campaign is well-financed and well-staffed, and while he left the political stage, he seemingly hasn’t stopped obsessing on it.
He is, unsurprisingly now, convinced that a giant supply of housing can tackle affordability, with municipal incentives to meet targets and penalties to fail to do so. “Everyone’s going to bitch and complain about it and say how terrible this is. But I’ll tell you … that’s how you’re going to get lower housing costs for folks trying to get into the industry.”
Falcon says he exited politics to have more time for his young family and entered again for them, too, to fight for what he says are their generation’s challenges. Governments can help, he concludes, but not this one.
Really, though, it is mirror time. His party (whatever its eventual name) has the largest challenge, and it will take all the patience of an experienced parent to guide and minister to it.
Slow motion is not Falcon’s particular reputation in government or business. He admits, and his aides concede, he can be “too candid.” Cases in point in our conversation: he is “less concerned with what people think of me” at this age and stage and his candidacy is “a stupid decision on so many levels” considering his private-sector career and its pay packet.
No matter. This is his race to lose. Mind you, a decade ago the same was said, and he did.
Graciously now, he says Clark was the better choice, and losing was the best thing for him. But losing is neither the goal nor an impossibility next February, given the rules of the contest: 100 points for each of 87 ridings divvied among the contenders, with the rank-and-file able to rank and file their choices should the vote move to second ballots and beyond. This is where campaigns can crater.
Andrew Wilkinson, whom Falcon wishes to succeed, was mostly an alternate leader choice in early ballots in 2018, but as the down-ballot contestants were eliminated he crept from fourth place into a fifth-ballot victory. Just as easily a front-runner can fade, as Dianne Watts, Maxime Bernier and Peter MacKay can attest.
Bernier, if you’ve noticed, is the first social media card New Democrats have played on Falcon. A picture their supporters have circulated portrays the two as best buds. Ancient history, Falcon argues. The photo was from the 2016 federal Conservative race. Falcon then supported fellow free-enterpriser Bernier, who later left the Tories to form the People’s Party and burrow into a bizarre rabbit hole mesmeric to bigots. The two haven’t spoken since. Falcon says “he is dead to me” for leaving the fold.
An espoused emphasis on a private-sector-driven economy as the best method to finance social programs will not easily win the day, so he is signalling he wants a “big-tent party” that embraces and doesn’t merely tolerate diversity.
A leadership run in 2021 has a different priority pile than one in 2011. He lists biodiversity, healthy living, the outdoors, mental health and addictions and equality of opportunity as top-of-mind matters now.
He is haunted by the 2017 post-election failure of the Liberals to form government with the Greens, given it had introduced a carbon tax that the NDP opposed, so he wants the party to “be leaders on that file again.”
Still, he is cast from a conservative mould, so his heaviest lifting and that of his leadership rivals will be in convincing liberals they have a home in the party that will shed that name. How he does this with lodging but not accommodating social conservatives will be his test if he secures leadership.
He promises progressive policies that drive prosperity and cites his longstanding commitment to $10-a-day daycare as something he would more tangibly deliver than the NDP has so far.
The longer a government reigns, the more its problems pour out. In the BC Liberals’ case, Falcon identifies money laundering and housing unaffordability as latter-day failures and believes the party is obliged to confess and be contrite.
“Where we had shortcomings, we should acknowledge that and say, look, if we didn’t do a very good job on something, we acknowledge it, we apologize for it, we promise to do better. That’s what I think the public is looking for from BC Liberals. A little bit of humility would be nice, and then the ability to move forward and try to do things better.” •
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of BIV and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
