Ken Boon, a respected citizen of northeastern BC, is a regular contributor to the newspaper based in Fort St. John. He is concerned about provincial political parties dictating local government policies. This is a recent column by Ken:
BEAR FLAT, B.C. — The Conservative Electors Association registered in August as a local elector organization in 15 communities, including Fort St. John, and has since opened applications for candidates interested in running for mayor and council in the October 2026 election.
It claims that Conservative mayors and councillors will keep our streets safe, lower taxes and always put families first, with no details about how that will be achieved.
Neither is there any indication on whom the true decision-makers would then be. Would it be these local folks that are elected, or others? Would there be ‘whipped’ votes in council?
As reported by Energeticcity.ca in August, Peace River North MLA Jordan Kealy has voiced concerns about the presence of political parties in municipal communities, including Fort St. John, arguing it could “undermine the independence of our municipalities” and turn local government into an “extension of provincial party politics.”
I am impressed that Kealy said that, and I very much agree. I suppose having now experienced the liberating freedom of being an independent after that Conservative Party of B.C. experience has given him some valuable insight.
The Conservative Electors Association president David Denhoff said the group is also reaching out to incumbent mayors and councillors in jurisdictions where it is already registered. I find that very disturbing.
It is easy to imagine where incumbents could feel pressured to join the party to avoid facing a party-sponsored candidate in the next election.
This region is a Conservative stronghold politically, and there is an old joke that the Conservatives could run a fence post for a candidate and still win. Any candidate left out from that Conservative umbrella could face challenges getting elected, no matter how qualified they may be for the job.
I am encouraged by the recent Energeticcity.ca article where the locals spoke out strongly against this initiative. I sincerely hope those who are considering running in our upcoming municipal election view this scheme for what it really is: a hostile takeover of municipal elections.
I hope all Fort St. John candidates campaign on saying no to any party affiliation. Party politics tend to be divisive, and we don’t need that at a local level.
I can well imagine that should this nonsense get a foot in the door, there will be no going back. Furthermore, it is said that ‘nature abhors a void’, and it is likely that left-leaning party affiliations will soon join this race to the bottom in many locations should this bad idea take hold.
Categories: Conservatives, BC, Local Government
in-sights.ca 
Reading about school board elections south of the border where MAGA policies on book bans, SOGI and DEI, and just about everything else come to the fore is the illogical extension of FEDERAL politics into local jurisdiction. Is Vancouver council already fully inoculated with this nonsense. It also seems that there is no system that can produce good results when it is run by people whose first concern is not the well-being of their constituents, and also that good people have to wrestle with obstacles, blockages and sticks-in-spokes from both tradition and our current legal scaffold. Not sure how we get around this, but having provincial “caucases” at the municipal level doesn’t really look like a step in the right direction.
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Political movements recognize that low voter turn-outs in local elections allow rather few electors to control the outcome. That’s partly what appeals to partisans who want to be policymakers.
Municipal councils have often been training grounds for politicians planning movements to higher levels of government. They don’t usually label themselves as representatives of provincial or federal factions.
In BC, local candidates often organize informal or formal slates of like-minded men and women, but these typically focus on community issues.
I agree that control of municipal councils by parties that focus on issues outside the communities would be retrogression.
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We saw this in Maple Ridge from 2018 to 2022 where a Conservative mayor and council in all but name went on a four year war on Maple Ridge’s homeless and drug user communities, all in service of their developer friends.
Coun Ahmed Yousef, who’s now been charged with numerous assault and gun charges, even went on Stephen Quinn’s show to proudly announce that supporters of the homeless and NDPers were no longer welcome in Maple Ridge. And Mike Morden, the mayor at the time, declared in a video produced by a Conservative Party staffer, that drug users and the homeless had invaded downtown Maple Ridge turning it into a drug infested slum. Then there was the councilor who actively aligned herself with the freedumb truckers nonsense.
There were those who clearly saw this state of affairs could not continue and that something needed to be done. Hence, the creation of A Better Maple Ridge, which is essentially a coalition of federal liberals, New Democrats and independents. To say that this group has wrought positive change to Maple Ridge would be an understatement!
Maple Ridge is a fun and desirable place for people to live in again! Dan Ruimy is our former federal liberal MP while Korleen Carreras and Sunny Schiller are longtime New Democrats Onyrke Dozie and Jenny Tan being the independents on council with Dozie having a long history of community involvement and Tan being very active in the student’s rights community at UBC.
I guess my point is that sometimes community coalitions have become formalized as political parties subject to Elections BC rules. As an aside Maple Ridge is one of the communities targeted by the BC Conservatives for the next municipal election. Whether the left and the centre becomes the local NDP remains to be seen.
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