By Cheryl Jahn

Election 2024 Campaign officially underway

Sep 23, 2024 | 3:49 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – BC’s political leaders have hit the campaign trail with a vengeance. The deadline for parties to nominate candidates or for independent candidates to put their names forward is this coming Saturday, Sept. 28 at 1 pm. The Prince George-North Cariboo riding is the only one in this region not to have candidates from all major parties. And there has been a reshaping of the ridings in this region and that will make things different this election.

“Absolutely,” says Chris Beach, Political Science Instructor at CNC. “Take Coralee Oaks, who wasn’t able to run as a BC United or BC Conservative, she’s running as an Independent. She’s a sitting incumbent MLA for Prince George – Cariboo. But it didn’t include Prince George before. Now it’s College Heights. About a third of the population of this new riding is in Prince George. And the candidate for the BC Conservatives, Sheldon Clare, is from Prince George. So yeah, how will that play?”

In late August, then-BC United party Leader Kevin Falcon opted out of the election leaving many of his candidates in a bind. It’s something Beach says throws this election into the realm of the highly unusual.

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“In the last month, there’s been some definite surprises, right? Usually, a caucus fires its leader, but Kevin Falcon, the former leader of the B.C. United, basically fired the rest of the party without even really letting them know. Yeah, that was a definite shock. And we haven’t seen that before. But we have seen the Center-Right coalition in British Columbia reorganize and rename itself time and time again. So that part is not new.”

But with the writ officially dropped, BC is now in the status of “Caretaker Mode.”

“Once the writ is dropped, those MLAs are not MLAs anymore. Those seats are open. And yeah, the government is in caretaker mode for a pretty short campaign, basically just four weeks.”

Caretaker Mode limits government communication to only statutory, routine, emergency or public health and safety matters. It stays in place until a new government is formed and sworn in, which is expected to be late November or early December. However, Caretaker Mode does not mean the suspension of routine government work.