John Cummins stays as BC Conservative Leader

At the BC Conservatives' AGM today - BC Conservative Party members' voted by a spread of 778-316 to confirm their confidence in John Cummins as Leader of the BC Conservatives'

Parts of John Cummins speech included:

a) Election next May will be a battle bewteen change (BC Conservatives') and the status quo (BC Liberals/BC NDP)

b) if Victoria / legislature is sick --- we (BC Conservatives) have a duty to nurse it back to health and make sure it does work

c) all sessions under BC Conservative Gov't will see MLA's asigned to ministries & crown corporations to review & ask questions on expenditures and on planned outlays for coming year

d) Focus must be high paying jobs for British Columbians

e) BC Conservatives want to change that -- will restore province as a high wage province

f) Labour income falling for BC workers -- down $10.8 billion under BC Liberals

Editor's Note -- I'd be interested in hearing where they (BC Conservatives') got that stat from??

g) BC Conservatives will be dedicated to spending our tax dollars wisely and be accountable

And the litany of complaints from a ultra right-wing party goes on and on...

Probably that explains why both John Martin (former candidate for the BC Conservatives' in Chilliwack) and Abbotsford-South MLA left the BC Conservatives' in the last few days (Editor's Note - I'll have more on the John Martin story in a future blog post)

For now - the real question is whether or not the BC Conservatives can bankroll the necessary millions to compete one-on-one with the BC Liberals/BC NDP with the evidence to date suggested that they can not and given the BC Conservatives' have all but written off both Cariboo ridings (Cariboo-Chilcotin and Cariboo-North), it appears for the moment that the real fight for this ridings are between the following parties:

Cariboo-North -- Ind MLA Bob Simpson vs NDP vs BC Liberal

Cariboo-Chilcotin -- BC Liberal MLA Donna Barnett vs NDP's Charlie Wyse

Finally - the provincial media do a good wrap on the story including the BC Conservative AGM and the fall-out of former BC Conservative and now Ind. Abbotsford-South MLA John van Dongen

Read CTV-BC here (Cummins stays) and here (van Dongen leaves BC Conservatives)

Watch below for video from Global-BC: