Following the end of the BC United election campaign, supporters might want to double check if they’re contributing to the campaign.
Former candidate Kevin Acton told Castanet the party is still eligible to receive donations.
“Let's say, for example, that you're a monthly contributor on your credit card, and you're not paying attention, right now your contributions are still going to the party,” explained Acton.
Senior communication director for Elections BC Andrew Watson, confirmed Thursday that BCU is still a registered party, despite the decision to suspend its campaign. He says it can still accept donations from eligible individuals.
Acton says that means the party has options amid rumours of financial issues.
“If they're smart, I think – as far as the intricacies of politics – if they run a couple of candidates and get 5% of the vote, they'll also receive money back from Elections BC,” said Acton.
According to the Elections Act, the Chief Electoral Officer must pay an annual allowance to a registered political party whose candidates in the most recent general election received:
- at least 2% of the total number of valid votes cast in all electoral districts, or
- at least 5% of the total number of valid votes cast in the electoral districts in which the political party endorsed candidates.
Acton said Thursday he would imagine the party is considering running a select number of candidates.
On Friday, The Canadian Press reported BCU said in a letter to party members, it now intends to run a select number of candidates in the fall election.
When asked if Acton would run under that banner again, the Lumby mayor said no.
“When this first all started going down, I was willing to run even under the BC Conservative banner because I didn't want the sacrifice (of the campaign end) to be for nothing,” said Acton.
“I understood what Kevin was doing because when we're door knocking everybody was worried about the vote split, so I definitely didn't want to be part of that.”
Ultimately, the BC Conservatives decided to parachute former Kamloops-Centre candidate Dennis Giesbrecht into the Venron-Lumby riding.
Acton decided to run as an independent, he said he doesn’t feel he’s splitting the vote because he doesn’t think a parachuted candidate would be able to oust an NDP incumbent in this riding.
“I feel the responsibility is on them for splitting the vote,” said Acton.
“When they did the announcement, John Rustad and Kevin Falcon, they said they were going to go through all of the candidates and pick the strongest team to run against the NDP to make sure that we had a free enterprise government. And they didn't do that.”
Castanet has reached out to the BC Conservatives and BC United for comment.
