BC Conservatives' delivers blunt message to 15 detractors'

Earlier today - the BC Conservative Party announced the following:

After several meetings over the weekend, the Board of the BC Conservative Party has settled the issue of internal Party discipline by voting to send out a total of 15 disciplinary letters, including terminations of membership and letters of censure. The discipline is being meted out to these 15 individuals for their ongoing and public calls for a leadership review in violation of the clear processes outlined in Section 11.04 of the Party's Bylaws.

The affected Party members will be receiving notification of the disciplinary proceedings by mail this week.

Out of respect for the privacy of those involved, we will not be releasing the names of the individuals in question, and neither the Party President, the Leader, nor any member of the Board will be making any further public comment on these internal matters.

The Board also passed two other motions.

One of them will create a new "Unity Committee".

"We recognize that there are things which can be done to improve our internal processes," said Party Leader John Cummins. "The motion was clear when it said that we are looking for ways to engage our members, Constituency Association Presidents and Boards, and improve communications within our Party."

Party President Al Siebring added: "We're a forward-looking Party, and we recognize we need to do more to engage our membership. There's always room for improvement."

The Committee will be chaired by Director Daniel Brooks, and will also include Vice-President Christine Clarke and Director Dennis Belliveau, who is an experienced mediator in his professional life.

The Board also passed a motion to express "its full confidence and support for John Cummins as the Leader of the BC Conservative Party heading into the May 2013 election."

For myself - I wasn't surprised as most of the BC Conservative Party's Board of Directors' has plenty of John Cummins supporters. But let's contrast this action by the BC Conservative to the 2 other major political parties in BC. The NDP when they were having leadership issues when Victoria-Beacon Hill MLA Carole James was the Leader of the BC NDP did not seek actively to terminate the membership of those MLA's, with the exception of Bob Simpson, critical of Ms. James leadership at the time including current Vancouver-Mt. Pleasant MLA Jenny Kwan

In addition -- the BC Liberal Party, through its' Provincial Council, when it had its' own Leadership challenge under former BC Premier Gordon Campbell, did not seek to kill the membership of those who directly challenged Mr. Campbell including myself, Scott Nelson and former MLA Sheila Orr or even current Peace-River South MLA Blair Lekstrom.  That, in my view, shows the maturity of these two political parties over the BC Conservatives.

Tough to say what the result of this action on the part of the BC Conservatives' will be but I suspect the fight is not over for those who remain opposed to John Cummins continuing to be Leader of the BC Conservatives, but those like Alan Forseth of Kamloops (read here) remain convinced that this is the right thing to do and hope that this ends this sad chapter in the life of the BC Conservative Party... methinks though that the in-fighting will continue.  Read the story from Black Press here

SBF